I spent most of my day, our third day at Winnipeg Inner City Mission, at Flora House. The day's activities there began, as they often do, with a smudging ceremony. The First Nations kids take smudging very seriously and respectfully and it really makes for a good start to the day together for them.

I'll start today's blog entry where the day started at The Place of Hope. We had a sharing circle where everyone was asked to share some reflections from the previous day. As we went around the circle, one word that came up again and again was "overwelming." It had been overwhelming in terms of the information and the stories that we had had to absorbed and were only beginning to process and in other ways as well.



Well, off to bed because I know that tomorrow will be just as challenging, if not more!

We started out first day of working with WICM with a round circle discussion in the Place of Hope. Margaret Mullin and some of the people involved here gave us an incredible look at the work they do here and the challenges that they face. Mostly she just told us the stories of people touched by the ministry here. Some of them are stories of great triumph -- people who overcome addiction, bad backgrounds and gang affiliations who managed to pull their lives together. Some of them were not necessarily triumphs but there was still much evidence of God's love and care touching their lives in some really profound ways. So many of the stories, sadly, even the triumphant ones, end in tragedy and death. She walked us through so many names on this banner. But even through the stories of tragedy, hope found a way to shine through.

I am starting this post in a Bombardier Q400 Turboprop airplane about 20,000 feet somewhere over Lake Superior. Soon we will be decending to Thunder Bay -- about halfway to our goal in Winnipeg. Of course, I cannot post this now, but I will as soon as I get a chance to connect to WIFI.

One week from today I will hop on a plane with the members of our team and fly off to Manitoba to spend a week together immersing ourselves in the ministry of the Winnipeg Inner City Mission (WICM). I expect that I will be experiencing many things during my time there. We will be witnessing firsthand the very real issues and problems created by poverty in the inner city of Winnipeg. Also, since the inner city of Winnipeg has a very high First Nations population and Native ministries is a very big focus at WICM, I expect to be exposed to the issues, problems and challenges that are particularly important to native people today.

Lately I have been doing a lot of reflection on the genealogy of Jesus that is offered in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. (This is part preparation for a series of sermons in November and part preparation for a book I hope to write about Matthew's nativity story.)

It has long been noted that, in this genealogy, Matthew names four woman apart from Mary, the mother of Jesus. These women are: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. (Bathsheba is not actually named but referred to as "the wife of Uriah.) People have long puzzled over the naming of these women as, in ancient Mediterranean society, women were considered to be utterly unimportant in all kinds of ways and so were never mentioned in genealogies. I don't know why Matthew felt he needed to name them but I suspect that it may have something to do with the social scandals that surrounded each of these women in the Old Testament traditions.

These days, I am particularly noticing the fact that the Bible identifies half of these women, Tamar and Rahab, as prostitutes.

Prostitution is on my mind because of a new law being proposed. In 2012, the Ontario Court of Appeal struck down the existing laws on prostitution, not because it felt (or because Canadians felt) that prostitution was fine and dandy but because the existing laws infringed the rights of those working in the sex trade to security of the person.

The government has now proposed a new law to replace the law that was struck down. Basically, the new law makes it legal to sell sex but illegal to buy it. In addition it makes it illegal to advertise sexual services or to solicit in any place where a person under 18 years old might be present. Given that we have a majority government, the new legislation is expected to pass.

The new law doesn't really address the concerns of the Ontario Court of Appeal in that it does nothing to enhance the security of those in the sex trade (and may make them less secure) so I do expect that the new law will eventually be challenged and struck down by another court and we'll be back at the beginning again. But that is a legal matter (and I have no expertise in such an area) and others would be in a better place to comment on that than I.

My concern is how do we approach such an issue as Christians. I cannot condone the sale and purchase of sex. I know that it happens in this world but I do not see it as conforming to God's intentions for how we ought to relate to one another with honour and respect. But I am concerned about these new proposed laws. Because prostitution will not just go away no matter what laws are passed, the effect of this law will be to push the trade into marginalized areas and prevent prostitutes from screening their clients in any meaningful way. This is what happened in Vancouver around the turn of the millennium which made the city a prime hunting ground for a serial killer named Robert Picton who boasted of killing 49 women, most of them prostitutes.I cannot celebrate a law that would make things easier for the likes of Robert Picton.

That brings me back to the prostitutes in Matthew's genealogy. I do not think that, by naming them, Matthew is celebrating their profession. But he certainly doesn't seem to be condemning them as people either. Little is said about Rahab's practice of prostitution in the Bible but the New Testament only has good things to say about her:

By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace. (Hebrews 13:31)

 Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road?  (James 2:25)

Tamar's story is far more interesting (Genesis 38). Basically, Tamar resorts to prostitution out of desperation. Widowed twice (having married Er and his brother Onan who have both died) she is in dire straits because she has no husband and no sons. A woman in that culture was not permitted to earn a living and had to depend on a male to support her. According to custom, her father-in-law, Judah, should give her another son to marry but he is superstitious. He has already lost two sons that have married her and he doesn't want to lose another. He refuses leaving Tamar with no other options. Tamar becomes a prostitute - but a prostitute with a plan. She disguises herself and solicits her father-in-law Judah who goes into her tent. Tamar conceives and becomes visibly pregnant. When the pregnancy becomes public, Tamar, is brought before her father-in-law to be judged for immorality. (He seems to be the only male in her life and so has to right to judge her according to the rules of that society. He intends to sentence her to be burned to death.) But when she is accused, Tamar produces the proof that Judah is the father. He acknowledges what he had done and acknowledges her children (she has twins) as his own. One of her children, Perez, becomes the ancestor of King David and of Jesus.

It seems to me that Matthew names Tamar as an ancestor of Jesus because she sees her actions as heroic. In her day, the line of Judah - the line that would lead to Jesus - was in danger of failing because of a lack of male heirs. And Tamar, through persistence, wit, creativity and, yes, prostitution, saved it when Judah failed to do so. Judah admits as much in Genesis 38:26. She really had no choice but to resort to prostitution (it was likely that or starve to death) but she chose to do it in the most heroic way possible - in the way that maintained the line of descent for the messiah and that is what Matthew celebrates by naming her.

That is why I think that the Bible teaches us to respect prostitutes as persons. We are certainly taught not to use their services (1 Corinthians 6:12-20) but are to treat them as persons who are trying to do their best under their circumstances. We may not like what they do but they have the right (as the court has said) to do it in as much personal safety and security as possible.

Jesus was famous (or the better word is probably infamous) for being a friend to those who lived on the outskirts of society. Among his friends he almost certainly counted prostitutes. Did he counsel them to get out of the profession and to seek other means of living. Yes, I believe that he did. Even more important (and more effective) he actually gave them the opportunity to do so by creating a community - the disciple community - that made it possible for them to survive without having to earn their living by prostitution. But there is no evidence that he sought to marginalize them any further from society - quite the contrary, he welcomed them when no one else would.

As to those who liked to get moralistic about prostitutes, Jesus has only this to say on the subject:

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him. (Matthew 21:31,32)

Today, at St. Andrew's Hespeler, I did not really preach a sermon. Instead I introduced a method that people can use to read the scriptures for themselves and to discover God in their reading. This method of Christian reflection is called Lectio Divina. Here is an excerpt from my message:

So what I'd like to do today is give you a simple and straightforward way to approach the Biblical text all on your own. The method is called Lectio Divina. It was developed mostly in the Middle Ages by St. Benedict but, in some ways, it is as ancient as Scripture itself – it is the kind of approach to the Bible that is spoken of in that passage in Joshua and in the part of Psalm 119 we read this morning. It is so old that the method itself and the steps in the method are still referred to in the Latin language.

The first step in Lectio Divina, is called the lectio -- which is Latin for reading. During this time you simply read a given passage. But the reading may be a little bit different from your usual reading practice. It's not like reading a newspaper or a novel. You read a short passage slowly and read it over several times. And you pay special attention to the things that jump out at you as you read it. Often there is a word or a phrase that just seems to be louder or more insistent as you read. Don't worry, for the moment, about why those things grab your attention. Just take note of them and write them down.

The next step is called meditatioor meditation. This is when you start to look closer at the things that stood out for you in the passage. Ask yourself questions like, "Why did that jump out to me? Is there something going on in my life or something that happened to me recently that that word or phrase might be speaking to?" Think about these things and, once again, write down your reflections. This is also the time to make use of other resources, if you have them, to better understand some of the things about the passage that might puzzle you. The meditatio might lead you in many directions.

The next part of the Lectio Divina is the oratio – which is Latin for prayer. But think of it as prayer in the simplest sense. It is just talking back to God – reflecting back the things that you have seen in the passage, that have caught your attention and maybe focussed your attention on what's going on in your life. It's kind of like what happens sometimes when you talk with your really good friend. You can share with them what you're going through, just talk it out with them and they don't even have to say very much, but you come away from that talk with a better understanding of what your problems really are. That's the kind of talking to God that you do.

After the oratio comes the contemplatio or contemplation. This ends the entire exercise by taking some time to simply sit in silence – to turn off your mind as much as possible and wait expectantly to meet with God. Various spiritual exercises like the centring prayer that we will discuss in a few weeks can be used to open the mind to hear what God might have to say.

This morning I spent way more time than I ever expected transcribing the results of the election of deacons and elders held yesterday. I will soon begin the long and somewhat complicated process of contacting those who were elected by their peers in the church.

(The process gets complicated precisely because we are electing both deacons and elders at the same time. This means that some people may be nominated for both positions at the same time and (depending on whether all the positions have been filled yet) they may be able to have a choice whether they prefer to serve in one place or the other. So if, say, someone were to come off at the top of voting for elder and just a little lower on deacons, i might have to wait to see if there is still a need for deacons when i get to them on the list before I want to call them to ask them to serve as an elder because I want to be able to give them the choice between deacon and elder if they want. Never mind, it is actually too complicated to explain!)

Anyways, I just wanted to say, before I began contacting anyone, how much I do appreciate this process. I am amazed once again by the wisdom that has been shown by the people of the congregation and by the respect in which they hold  their brothers and sisters in Christ. The best part of this is that I get to call up people in the congregation and tell them that they are loved and respected and that people have great confidence in their wisdom and ability to care for others. I wish I could tell everyone who's name figures on the lists that because it really is amazing to see. Unfortunately not all will have to be contacted so I wanted to send out a general message now to everyone.

Scott

I recently filed a report on my continuing education adventures with my Presbytery. I though I would share that report here as well for those who are interested.

Report on Continuing Education to the Presbytery of Waterloo-Wellington

From W. Scott McAndless

Pastors of Excellence

Self Knowledge

Group Work

The Healing Journey

Revealing Lies

Spiritual Practices

Conclusion