Category: Minister

https://youtu.be/qma77r756kI

Hespeler, September 3, 2023 © Scott McAndless – 14^th Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 3:1-15, Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45b, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28

Earlier this year, I did a sermon on the story of the binding of Isaac – the story of the time when Abraham was apparently ordered by God to sacrifice his son. Something struck me in particular in that story. Every time Abraham is addressed in it – by God, by Isaac and by the angel of the Lord – he responds in exactly the same way.

How we Respond

Abraham doesn’t answer like you or I would. If someone calls your name, how do you respond? “Scott,” or “Dad” I hear someone call out in my house, what do I say?

“What do you want?” I might say, assuming, of course, that the person calling me has some request of me or something they want me to do.

Or I might respond with, “I’m down in the basement,” or something like that if my assumption is that they are looking to come to where I am.

Or, and doesn’t this happen a whole lot in life these days, if I am right in the middle of something when somebody calls, I might respond, “I’m practicing my sermon,” or whatever else it is that I might be doing. This can be said, of course, with varying degrees of frustration or annoyance – never by me, of course, but I understand that there are people in the world who can get annoyed by interruptions.

Assumptions Behind How We Respond

So, to sum up how we respond, we tend to respond with an assumption that the person calling us wants something from us – either something we’ve got or something that we can do for them.

And we do all of that, mind you, without even thinking about it. It just comes naturally, probably because we assume that everything in life is about what you have got or what you can do that offers value or significance.

This is actually the central assumption of most capitalist societies – that work and possessions are the only things that give value to life. Because we live in such a society, we generally assume that that is how things have always been and how everyone else has always thought.

Abraham’s Response

So that is why it really struck me how Abraham responded when God or others called him. He didn’t say, “What do you want,” or “I’m in the tent,” or “I’m washing the camel.” He responded, we are told, by saying, “Here I am.”

Now, presumably, he responded that way because it was a Hebrew idiom – a common phrase used by many people. But that fact alone tells us a great deal about the people who spoke ancient Hebrew – that they weren’t necessarily task or possession-oriented like we are and that they responded to people differently than we do. That might mean that they could have something to teach us about responding differently.

What He Actually Says

So, I decided to look a little closer at what Abraham actually says. His response, in Hebrew, is actually just one word. When God calls he says, “hin·nê·nî” (הִנֵּֽנִי). And, while the best English translation is indeed, “Here I am,” the Hebrew phrase doesn’t mean exactly that.

For one thing, there is no verb in it. The word that Abraham uses is actually just a very common Hebrew word that is used to indicate things. It was the word you used, for example, when you pointed at something. Someone would ask you, “Hey, where is the TV remote?” and you point and say, “hin-nêh.” (הִנֵּה)

Behold!

In the old King James Version, this Hebrew word was most often translated as “behold.” And one thing you notice very quickly when you read the King James Bible is that there are a lot of “beholds!” People said this all the time in Hebrew.

Of course, nobody ever says “behold” in English anymore so modern translations tend to use words like “look” or “see.” But the Hebrew word doesn’t really have anything to do with vision, it was just a way of indicating something – the spoken equivalent of pointing.

So, what does Abraham say whenever anyone calls him in that story? He points at himself and says, “Here me.” He says, “voila!” or maybe, “Ta da!” And I just want you all to understand how different that is from how we generally respond to somebody calling us.

Also in this Story

That same word, “hin·nê·nî,” appears in our reading from the Book of Exodus this morning. And this is a really important story because it is the story of what is probably the most important experience anyone has ever had of the presence of God.

In this story, God appears to Moses in a burning bush. And remember where Moses is at this point of his story. Despite growing up as a prince in Egypt, he has come to recognize that something is very wrong with the way things are in Egypt. Though he has apparently benefited from slavery all of his life, Moses has come to recognize the evil in it. As you can imagine, this creates a bit of a moral crisis for him.

Previous Failures

And we are told that Moses did try to do something about what he saw was wrong with the world. When he saw an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave, he intervened and ended up killing the Egyptian. This, let me be clear, was not a good plan. It clearly took a bad situation and made it so much worse. And Moses ended up running away from the consequences of his actions.

And, at this point, Moses seems to have kind of given up. He recognizes that the world is not right, but he’s withdrawn into the desert because he’s lost any hope that things might get better. I think a lot of us can sympathize with where Moses is at this point in the story.

An Epiphany

And, if Moses is going find the hope of a better world and he’s given up on making it happen himself, he is left with but one option. He needs to find God. And God does appear to Moses; that is the good news of this story. But God also appears, somewhat famously, in a strange kind of epiphany. God appears in a bush that is on fire.

A Timely Appearance

And oh, is there any other way that we could speak of God appearing that would be timelier than that right now? Haven’t we been talking about a whole lot of burning bushes and trees recently? We have just gone through a spring, summer and the beginning of a fall where we have seen so many out of control fires. This summer saw a record number of wildfires spread all the way through British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes.

And, for the first time that many of us can remember, these weren’t just fires that were way off in distant forests, but we all experienced the effects of them firsthand as the smoke enveloped our cities and made it dangerous for some people to breathe outdoors.

And, of course, it has not just been about Canada this year, as distressing as that has been. We have also seen how places all over the earth, including Greece and Hawaii have been devastated by such fires.

Can God Speak through Burning Trees?

And so, it seems to be a perfect time to ask the question if God can speak through burning trees. I personally think that God can. I think there is a powerful message in all of these burning trees – a message about our need to change how we live in relationship to this fragile earth.

But maybe I’m wrong, because there seem to be a lot of people who don’t hear any such message or, if they hear it, are much more concerned with what they call important things like keeping the economy humming along and allowing the rich to get richer. So, if God can and does speak through burning trees, how is it that so many don’t seem to find God or hear God’s voice today?

How did Moses Realize God was in it?

That’s the question I have to ask of Moses today. He saw a bush that was burning. And bushes have been burning forever. I mean, yes, it seems as if we are bound to break a record on wildfires this year, but I suspect that God has been present in and speaking in them a long time. So, how is it that Moses recognized God’s presence in that bush when a lot of other people could have gone by that bush and seen it and yet never suspected that God might be in that thing?

That is where I think that an understanding of how Moses replied when God called is so important. When God called, Moses replied, “hin·nê·nî.” He said, “Here I am! Voila! Ta Dah!!” In that moment, Moses simply proclaimed himself to be present. He didn’t reply like we tend to these days. He didn’t say, “I’m busy with the sheep,” or “I’m worried about the slaves back in Egypt,” or even, “What do you want?” He just said “hin·nê·nî.”

Why don’t we Experience God?

And it makes me wonder, is that the reason why we don’t have such experiences of God? It is not that God is absent or doesn’t appear. It is just that we are just so busy at being busy and concerned with what people are expecting from us that we can’t just stop and be present to God in the moment.

So, yes, maybe we do need to learn something from the Ancient Hebrews about how we respond to God in this world. The very fact that we are so task-oriented and materialistic may just be the thing that is preventing us from experiencing the very real presence of God that I do believe is active in this world. Maybe we need to develop the mindfulness and the self-awareness to say, “hin·nê·nî.” Here I am.

Something Unique about the Bush

There is one other thing that I haven’t mentioned yet that might also have allowed Moses to have that experience. We are told that he turned aside to see a burning bush, but it was not just any burning bush. There was something that he noticed that was very unique about it. “The bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.”

And I am not quite sure how you would even notice that peculiar fact about a burning bush. Anytime I have ever looked at something that was on fire – not to mention something as dramatic as a wildfire in the wilderness – the thing that usually strikes me is the power of it, the heat and the smoke.

Paying Attention

I do not generally pay attention to how quickly the fire is consuming whatever is fueling it. It seems to me that that is something that you’d have to specifically pay attention to and watch for over a period of time.

So, it seems to me that another reason why Moses was able to have such an experience of God is that he was paying attention to things that we tend not to. We seem to have been trained to pay attention to the noisy things, whatever causes harm and destruction.

Why We Pay Attention to the Wrong Things

This is, by the way, exactly what most social media has been training us to do for some time now. The algorithms that control the content on Facebook, Twitter (or whatever it is called) and other sites are all tuned to present to you whatever stories are likely to get you upset and angry because that is what drives engagement.

But Moses has already tried anger and fiery deeds when faced with injustice in Egypt and look how that turned out. He seems to be ready for something different. And so, he pays attention to something else. He pays attention to what, in the midst of all the fire and destruction, is miraculously able to survive.

The Possibility of Hope

In the context of the situation in Egypt, on which he had given up, that means that he is suddenly made aware that despite the fiery trial of slavery that his people are suffering from in Egypt, they have somehow survived, perhaps even thrived to a certain extent. He is suddenly confronted with the possibility of hope.

And I think that that is the other thing that allows Moses to experience God by that bush. He is suddenly open to finding hope even in the direst of situations.

This also might be the thing that sometimes prevents us from experiencing God in this world. If all we can see are the flames, if all we can see are all the things that cause us to give up hope, I suspect that the experience of God will continue to elude us. But once we open ourselves, even just a little bit, to the possibility of hope, I believe the presence of God can shine through.

God is alive. God is here. God is acting in this world for hope and looking for you to work alongside. The only question, really is where are you, and will you say, “Here I am.”

https://youtu.be/jmjOETYhd6A

Hespeler, August 20, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 45:1-15, Psalm 133, Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32, Matthew 15:21-28

Joseph’s story in the Book of Genesis stands out as an amazing piece of ancient literature. The story is told in eight chapters and is the longest continual narrative in the Old Testament.

In the course of this story, terrible things happen to Joseph one after the other. His brothers, out of jealousy and spite and as a result of Joseph tattling on them for their sloppy work, make a plot to capture and kill him. They throw him in a pit. They then think better of it, decide to sell him into slavery for profit and just tell his father that he is dead.

Joseph lands in Egypt as a slave. There, despite excellent work done for his master, he is falsely accused and ends up in prison. As some of his fellow prisoners are executed, he seems to be on death row.

Horrible Experiences

And I think it is very important that we do not just breeze over that part of the story. These are simply horrible experiences for anybody to live through. Not only does Joseph suffer greatly but, and this point is stressed again and again, he suffers unjustly. He did absolutely nothing to deserve any of it.

The only negative thing that you can say about Joseph throughout this story is that he was a little bit boastful and insufferable with his brothers. He spoke to them about the dreams that he had that seemed to indicate that he would end up greater and more powerful than any of them. That’s it.

And sure, that would have created some friction in the family, but there are so many better ways of dealing with that than through attempted murder and kidnapping! Like can’t we maybe talk things out?

Before the Happy Ending

We didn’t read anything about the trials and tribulations of Joseph this morning, but I think it is very important that we do not lose sight of them as we read the ending of the story today. Because it is very much an “all’s well that ends well,” and “happily ever after” ending. And I like a good Hollywood ending as much as the next person, but I also need to acknowledge that this one is not without its problems.

At this point in the story, Joseph has definitely seen much improvement in his situation. By being in the right place at the right time, he has become a ruler in his own right. He is the Grand Vizier – sort of like a Prime Minister under the all-powerful Pharaoh.

And this is all very fortunate for his family because a terrible famine has struck the land of Canaan. People there and everywhere are starving because nothing is growing. But there is food in Egypt, and Joseph is in charge of its distribution. He is now in a position to save his entire family.

Joseph’s Realization

And that is exactly what Joseph himself says in our reading this morning. He says it like he is just realizing it himself for the first time as he explains it to his brothers. “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors,” He declares in wonder. “So it was not you who sent me here but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt!”

And let’s just pause here for a moment and celebrate what this is saying. There are indeed many people who have suffered unjustly in this world. I would even go so far as to suggest that it is a common human experience – that everyone has experienced at least some degree of unjust suffering.

Meaning in Suffering?

That is not to suggest, of course, that all such suffering is equivalent. A people suffering genocide or enslavement is not the same thing as an employee being unfairly passed over for a promotion. An abused woman is not the same thing as a person cheated in a transaction. Every experience is absolutely unique and brings its own particular suffering, but there is something that connects us all in the great tide of human suffering.

This story of Joseph holds out an enticing possibility to each one of us in the midst of the suffering of this world. Perhaps there is meaning in my suffering. Perhaps there is a purpose. Maybe, just maybe, I had to go through all of that because God had a plan to bring about something good. That seems to be exactly what Joseph is saying to his brothers.

Many Experience this

And I do believe that this is not an uncommon human realization. Many of us, when we have gone through a rough patch in life, have been able to look back on that difficult time afterwards and have seen how the lessons we learned or the decisions we made as a result set us up for success afterwards or put us in a position where we were able to do something really good.

It is wonderful when that happens. And we, like Joseph, might well want to jump to the conclusion that such a happy outcome means that all the bad things that happened were part of a divine plan.

And I will definitely agree that there is a great truth in what Joseph realizes and in what we may retroactively realize looking back at our own suffering. It is true that God has a way of working through even the worst events of our lives in order to bring about some good. That is an amazingly comforting truth.

Keeps People Going

Sometimes just holding onto the possibility that God might have a secret plan to bring good, even if you have no clue what it could be, is all that keeps people going through the darkest times. And sometimes that belief has also prompted people to use their pain to create a better world by mounting campaigns or changing policies for the better. Just believing it has allowed people to make it true by the sheer force of their own will.

But I also know from personal experience and from experience in counseling others that there is something in this that can absolutely mess us up and I do not want to lose sight of it.

Struggling with Why

Have you ever encountered someone who has lived through a horrible personal episode – the loss of a loved one, the diagnosis of a dreaded illness, the aftermath of a terrible accident – and they really struggle afterwards with that terrible question why? “Why did this have to happen to me or to this person that I care for. What is the purpose in it?”

People ask that why question because of what seems to be promised in this story of Joseph – that God only puts you through hard times because there is a plan to bring about something better.

And sometimes that only creates more pain for people. It creates pain because the answer to that why question is not forthcoming. And so, people engage in a fruitless and frustrating search for that sense of purpose.

Disturbing Conclusions

In desperation they might settle on some sense of purpose that is deeply disturbing like, for example, when grieving parents are told that their beautiful infant died because they were too good for this world and so God took them because God wanted them.

Explanations like that only create an image of a cruel, capricious and selfish God who cares nothing for the very real pain that those parents are going through! That is a horrible explanation! But sometimes people are so desperate for a purpose that they will embrace such deeply flawed explanations.

So, let me be very clear about one thing. God doesn’t want you to suffer. Nor does God make plans that include or depend on your suffering. Above all, I know that God takes no comfort or joy from your suffering. I know that because God’s relationship to suffering is very clear in the Bible.

The Depth of Joseph’s Grief

There is an amazing description of Joseph’s grief in this story. It says that, once Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, he wept. It seems that all of the grief and pain and sorrow that he had bottled up suddenly came out of him all at once – an incredible release of years of tension and tears. And so, this was no ordinary weeping, but an extraordinary display.

This is how Genesis describes his weeping. “And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.” Now, does that sound realistic to you – that Joseph or anyone could actually weep that loudly? I mean we are not just talking about a cry being heard by his next-door neighbours. The pharaoh didn’t just have a house, after all, he had a palace complex. Can the sound of weeping really travel so far?

Hyperbole

This is an obviously and intentionally hyperbolic description. It is kind of like the trope you see in comics sometimes where the comic character is hurt and we hear them cry out, and then the scene pulls back, and you see their scream echoing over the whole city. Then it pulls back even more, and you hear it throughout the continent, and then the whole world and then from a small corner of the Milky Way galaxy. It is an illustration of an extreme reaction.

But I do not think that it is just a comic trope that the author is using here. He trying to illustrate to us just how extreme Joseph’s feelings are at this moment. It is as if everything that he has suffered over years of mistreatment is all concentrated and released into this one powerful cry.

This is certainly a warning that we should never take anyone’s suffering lightly and that, even if it does lead to a positive outcome that might never have been anticipated, that hardly makes the suffering just or worthwhile. Suffering is just suffering, and it is a part of the human condition. The author is inviting us all to respond to those who have suffered with deep empathy and love and support.

God’s Response

But he is also saying something much more important. He is saying something about God’s response. For, if the cry of Joseph reverberated in the household of Pharaoh, how much more was it heard in the halls of our heavenly father? He is reminding us that God’s first response to all of our pain and suffering is empathy. God feels our sorrow deeply.

That is, of course, what the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is all about. The reason why Jesus had to come into this world, the reason why Jesus had to be completely human and yet, in a way that defies all logic, entirely divine, is so that God might know our suffering. Jesus on the cross is a picture of God entering into the reality of human suffering.

That is how I know that God’s first and primary response to whatever you have suffered is deep, deep empathy. God weeps when you weep. God feels your pain deeply. That is what Jesus shows us.

That is how I know that God never plans or intends to put you through terrible suffering. Yes, God can and does indeed bring good things out of terrible episodes in your life, but that is simply a testimony to the greatness of God.

Florida Controversy

There was something in the news earlier this summer that I think is a good illustration of the principle I’m trying to state here. Do you remember all of the controversy that hit the news when the state of Florida published its curriculum on history and, as part of its coverage of the history of the institution of slavery, made a point of including the notion that enslaved peoples learned some skills as slaves that they were able to use to their own benefit when they were freed sometime in the future.

Now, I hope I don’t need to say all of the problems with a statement like that. A lot of it has already been said. It is rather ridiculous in a number of ways. After all, if any master permitted any slave to learn a skill, they did so in absolutely self-interested ways. They were only looking for how that skill might be used to enrich themselves. That’s what slavery is; it is using another person and any skills they might have to enrich only yourself.

And if, in spite of that intention and all of the inhumanity of the system, somebody survived and was actually able to build a future for themselves, that only reflects well on them and in no way on the institution of slavery.

Doesn’t Make it Okay

It is the same thing in the Joseph story. If Joseph was able to survive and save his family, that in no way makes what happened to him okay. It certainly doesn’t mean that God wanted and endorsed what Joseph went through. It only reflects well on Joseph and his character, and it reflects on a God who is able to perform the miracle of bringing something good out of the worst of evil.

But never forget that the cry of Joseph’s heart was heard and felt by God. Let us also be like God in practicing deep empathy for all who suffer.

https://youtu.be/1H-TkFzcK74

Hespeler, August 13, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
1 Kings 19:9-18, Psalm 85:8-13, Romans 10:5-15, Matthew 14:22-33

Ladies and Gentlemen, we begin this morning with a special report on the state of the church. We take you live to the Prophet Elijah who is standing by to give us this vital information. Elijah, where are speaking from to us today?

Elijah’s Report

Elijah: “Good morning, Scott, though I’m not sure how good it is. I am reporting to you live from this cave where I have hidden out because of just how bad things are.

“Look, I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, but the people around here have forsaken God’s covenant. The pews are empty, the church buildings are falling into disrepair. People are not giving as much. and the church is no longer automatically given respect in society.

“We don’t get to just do whatever we want any more! And sometimes, when the church’s pastors and preachers say things that the society around them finds to be intolerant, they get cancelled! People actually unfriend them on Facebook and unfollow them on Twitter.

“Why, these days, it is as if I alone am left, and they are seeking to cancel me too! So, I have come on this major television network to warn you all that they are not letting us have a platform anywhere! Beware! Beware!

“We’re all doomed, I tell you, doomed! It is like they are trying to cancel God!”

Okay, Elijah, thanks for the report. Um, I think I’m going to talk to the head of the network about getting you a few mental health days, okay?

About Elijah’s Complaint

I don’t know about you, but when I read that famous story of Elijah in the cave recently, I couldn’t help but make the connection between his thrice repeated complaint and what we often hear in the church these days.

Now, I want to be clear, of course, that, in the Book of Kings, Elijah’s complaint is not entirely out of line. He actually has had his life threatened by a very powerful person – Jezebel, Queen of Israel. So, I can hardly blame the guy for feeling persecuted.

But let’s just inject a bit of realism into his situation. The reason why Jezebel threatened him was because he just finished engineering the slaughter of 450 prophets of her God, Baal.

And I know, I know, as far as the Bible is concerned, Baal is a false god and his prophets are false prophets. But still, if Elijah just managed to pull that off, he can hardly be as powerless as he claims when he cowers and whines in his cave.

Is his problem really that belief and worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel is suddenly illegal? Or is it just that he is struggling with the reality that his religion no longer has the unrestricted power that he thinks it once had to impose itself on everyone and maybe kill those who don’t go along with that? And is that really persecution, or is it just a loss of privilege?

It is enough to make me wonder if God, who must have had an understanding of the entire situation, was rolling his eyes at Elijah’s complaint just a little bit?

Reminds me of Something

But there is so much in that – in all of that – that really reminds me of where we seem to be in the church in the world today. We seem to hear a lot of people complaining that the church just doesn’t quite seem to be living up to what we think it should be. Across the board – on every part of the spectrum from left to right wing – the church seems to be struggling with its loss of power, influence and cultural clout. And often this is decried as a loss of religious freedom and even persecution.

And sometimes that makes me wonder, just like the story of Elijah does, whether the real thing we are decrying is not persecution so much as a loss of the privilege that we once enjoyed. Some of it is certainly about making a hard adjustment to living in a much more diverse society than we had been used to. Does God sometimes roll God’s eyes at our complaints? Maybe.

God’s Response

But, even if God might have been doubtful of some of Elijah’s complaints, he still did respond to him with compassion and care, and I believe that God does the same for us. The truth of the matter is that, even when we are inclined to overreact and over complain, we still have a God who is ready to meet us where we are and respond to us as we need.

So let us take a look at how God responds to Elijah when he is really feeling at his lowest. The first thing I note is that God actually responds to Elijah in a variety of ways.

First of all, God responds through self-revelation. “He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’” Now, if you were to put yourself in Elijah’s position for a moment, and you’ve just been promised a revelation of God, what kind of revelation would you be looking for? You would be looking for the revelation of a powerful God, wouldn’t you – a God who would smash your enemies like a cosmic Hulk?

Not in the Wind

So, when Elijah was looking around for what was coming around the mountain to reveal God to him, I bet he was excited to see “a great wind.” Oh yes, here was the ticket. That was just the thing to destroy all of the people who were standing in the way of Elijah doing whatever he wanted, a wind “so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces!” Yes, surely God would show everyone who was boss with a mighty wind.

But, wait a minute, God wasn’t in the wind. The wind just seemed to be stirring everything up and unsettling things. Surely God could use such power to remake the world just as Elijah wanted but was choosing not to do so!

Not in Earthquake or Fire

So, then Elijah looked around to see what else was coming around the mountain and it was an earthquake. “Ah, here it is, he sighed to himself, this is how God is going to shake up all my enemies. But, no, God wasn’t in the earthquake either.

By the time the roaring fire came around the mountain, Elijah was not too surprised that God wasn’t in that either.

The Silence

But then something very different started to come around that mountain. Elijah dismissed it at first because it really didn’t seem to amount to anything. It certainly didn’t seem to shake up or disturb anything. It didn’t make any noise, in fact it was kind of the opposite of noise; it was the sound of sheer silence.

And then Elijah realized something and he was so shocked by his realization that I think he spoke aloud: “Oh, great, this is it, isn’t it? God is going to come in the silence. How is silence supposed to smite anybody?” And with that he sighed, pulled his mantle around his face and stepped out to the entrance of the cave.

And so it was that God appeared to Elijah in the silence. And you would think that Elijah might have learned something from that mode of appearance.

Maybe this would finally make him realize that, when the world is not going in the way that you think it should, the proper response may not be to try and impose your will on the world with powerful displays of wind, earthquake and fire – that maybe, sometimes, when the world is not living up to your expectations, it might be time to stop and listen and maybe learn something in the silence.

Did Elijah Really Hear?

But no! As soon as Elijah realized that God had finally shown up, he repeated the exact same complaint with exactly the same whining tone: “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

At this point, I assume, God just decided that this Elijah fellow was so committed to only seeing himself as the victim in this story that some other response was going to be needed. And so, we’re told, God gave Elijah something to do. “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. Also, you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel, and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place.”

And to all of you who are saying to yourselves, “Doesn’t that sound nice, God is taking care of Elijah by giving him a friend, Elisha, to work alongside him,” let me explain a few things.

What do these Tasks Mean?

This is not really a good and certainly not a comforting job that God is giving the prophet. He is to anoint Hazael as king over Aram. Who is Hazael? He is actually a usurper who is going to engineer a coup against his predecessor. Even worse, Hazael will build an empire that will invade and bring death and slaughter to many people in the kingdom of Israel. To anoint Hazael as king over Aram is to anoint an instrument of chaos, death and destruction to be unleashed on Elijah’s own people!

And what about anointing Jehu as King of Israel? Well, he too will be a usurper who pulls off what is perhaps the bloodiest coup in the ancient history of Israel against his master, King Ahab. And, yes, Elijah is no fan of King Ahab, but the kind of chaos that Jehu’s coup will create is not good news for anybody. The Prophet Hosea, for example, soundly condemns it in the name of the Lord.

And finally, Elijah is to anoint Elisha as his prophetic successor. Here and here only is there any measure of comfort for Elijah in some companionship, but the message that he receives in the moment is hardly comforting to anyone but Elijah as it is stressed that Elisha is being put into place to slaughter anyone who escapes the sword of Hazael or of Jehu.

If you Demand Action

So here is what I understand God saying to Elijah in this moment. If you are not going to find an answer in silence, reflection and listening, if you’re going to demand action, then I am going to show you the cost of such action. If you want God to act in such a way as to bring about what you think is best, the result might just be a lot of chaos. So just be very careful about what kind of action you are asking for from God.

And then, after all of that, God gives one more response to Elijah that has got to be the most critical of all. All this time, what has Elijah been saying? He has been complaining to God that he and he alone has been trying to save God’s reputation. Why, the way Elijah tells it, God is really lucky to have him because otherwise God would be completely destroyed by the opposition.

A Final Word

But God’s final word to Elijah outside that cave tells a very different story, doesn’t it? “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel,” God says, “all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” In other words, God has been doing just fine without Elijah’s help thank you very much. God doesn’t need Elijah to save God or defend God’s honour. God is quite capable of taking care of God’s self and of those who are God’s faithful followers.

I will admit that it can be rather hard these days to be a person of faith in this world. The things we once took for granted about our place and our voice in society are just no longer true. Like Elijah, we might feel like hiding out in some cave somewhere and whining “I alone am left.”

God Meets you Where you are

And, on one level, I want to affirm that, if you are feeling like that, your feelings are valid. It is difficult to manoeuvre this world of change and uncertainty. I want to encourage you by assuring you that God will meet you wherever you are in your journey, even if it is hiding out in a cave somewhere.

But I would also encourage you, when God does meet you, to put yourself in a mind to listen. Perhaps God has been speaking, but you have not been hearing because God speaks in the silence, and you prefer to pay attention to the wind, earthquake and fire.

And above all, listen when God tries to tell you that you don’t have to be the one to protect and take care of God’s honour – that God can take care of Godself. That might just be the most freeing lesson that any of us needs to learn.

https://youtu.be/-z4LGXZi3cA

Hespeler, August 6, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 55:1-5, Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:13-21

Earlier this summer, the Southern Baptist Convention – the national body of the largest Protestant denomination in North America – made a controversial decision. The Southern Baptists voted to expel two of their congregations, one of which was their largest: Saddleback Church.

Amazingly, this did not have anything to do with the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked that denomination for the last few years. No, apparently the congregations were exiled for permitting something much, much worse. They were expelled because they had chosen to have women on staff as pastors.

And I would note that women pastors are not necessarily a new thing in such churches. Many Baptist congregations have had women employed as pastors for a very long time. In fact, one of the congregations that was expelled, Fern Creek Baptist Church of Louisville, Kentucky had had the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham as their senior pastor for three decades before being kicked out!

A Crackdown

This decision is part of a reactionary crackdown within that denomination – a retrenchment as the church reacts to a time of crisis. You see, the Southern Baptist Convention might be the largest denomination, but it is also the one that is declining the fastest. I know that lots of denominations are in decline these days, including our own, and I do not rejoice or crow over any of it. But the decline they are facing is rather stunning. The Presbyterian Church in Canada is getting smaller, but the SBC loses more members than are in the entire PCC every few months!

And so, what has happened is that a reactionary conservative group has seized power and is intent on taking the church back to a time long before the decline began – back to a time when, they might say, women knew their place and it wasn’t in leadership.

It is not a new idea. It is a very, very old idea that has been with the church for a very long time. It is the idea that certain sorts of people don’t count, not when you really want to build a church.

An Odd Ending

Haven’t you always wondered about the end of the story of the feeding of the five thousand? The story is told in all of our gospels, and it ends in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark with a count of those who ate. The counting is obviously really important. It is a way of making it clear that a great miracle has occurred.

The story ends like this in the Gospel of Mark: “The number of men who were fed was five thousand.” (Mark 6:44) But the Gospel of Matthew ends with an explicit detail found nowhere else. He puts it like this: “The number of men who ate was about five thousand, not counting the women and children.” But I have to ask the question, why not count the women and the children? If the point of this story is to show us the great wonder that Jesus performed, why exclude so many people from your accounting?

Why Would You Understate the Numbers?

Every politician, every organizer and certainly every preacher I have ever heard has always tended to overstate, not understate, the size of a crowd. Donald Trump was kind of famous for it and if ever the media tried to correct the record with a more realistic estimate, he would attack them relentlessly for it. And yet here we are told that the gospel writer could not be bothered counting part of the crowd.

Interpreters have come up with various theories for how many people would have been in the crowd if there were 5,000 adult males. Not everyone agrees, but I’ve seen some commentators who’ve made a study of the demographics of early first-century Galilee estimate that this could mean a crowd as big as 15 to 20,000 people. If you knew that the crowd was as big as that, why on earth would you not bother to count three-quarters of them?

Is it Because Certain People don’t Count?

Why indeed? I believe that it comes back to the issue that I started with – an idea that is obviously much older than the most recent meeting of the Southern Baptist Conference. The idea has long been built into the very foundation of the church that certain people don’t count, or at least don’t count the same.

The notion that women don’t count has deep roots. And I feel that I must say that I don’t believe that it is something that comes from Jesus or from God or even the true nature of the church.

Jesus’ Self-Care

We see where Jesus’ concerns lie at the beginning of this story. He is going through a very rough time. He has just learned that John the Baptist who, to a certain extent at least, seems to have been a kind of mentor to Jesus, has been murdered by Herod. Of course this is hard and of course Jesus, who Christian doctrine teaches us is utterly human no matter what else he is, feels this deeply.

And so, he needs a little bit of self-care. He heads off to a deserted place on a boat, hoping, no doubt, for a little bit of time to reflect and meditate. But his self-care is interrupted by the needs of the great mass of the people who come looking for him, even though they have to walk a great distance to find him.

Jesus’ Care for All the People

And, as much as he may need some time alone, as much as he is aware of his own needs, Jesus recognizes the need to care for the people – all of the people. When he saw them, “he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” And when he heals them and goes on to feed them, he quite clearly does not fail to count all of them. He does not simply provide for the most important or the most powerful. He certainly doesn’t feed or heal only the men. Obviously, for Jesus, the women and the children count, as do their needs.

So, if it didn’t start with Jesus, where does it come from? Why, by the time that this gospel was written, had people stopped counting the women and the children? Well, it had everything to do with the society and culture in which the early church found itself. There is lots of evidence that shows that the early church did count women. It counted them among the leadership, with women named as apostles and leaders of churches. That is why the Apostle Paul could say things like, “There is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

A Patriarchal Society

But the early church found itself in a culture, dominated by the Roman Empire, that was extremely patriarchal. Such a culture found the very idea of counting women – or at least giving them any significance – to be offensive.

And, by the time that the Gospel of Matthew was written and by the time that some of the later letters of the New Testament were written, that attitude had begun to drift into the church as well. Basically, the church began to feel that it needed to go along to get along. And, in many ways, that attitude continued to affect the church for many centuries. And, as we see in recent decisions by the Southern Baptist Conference, among others, it hasn’t really gone away.

Who We Count

It does mean a lot to me to be part of a church, and a denomination, that has done some serious work on counting women, on truly recognizing and appreciating their contribution, over the last few decades. I also appreciate the steps that we have taken to count others who were excluded from our accounting for way too long.

But I do not think that we can or should just lean back and put our feet up and assume that the job is done. I believe we will always encounter a cultural tendency not to count certain kinds of people, and as long as we do that, we will be missing out on a true picture of what God is doing among us.

People Sitting in Pews

For example, for a very long time, the impact of a church such as ours was measured by only one metric – by the number of people sitting in pews for one particular hour on a Sunday morning. Congregations that had lots of people sitting in the right places at the right time every week were considered to be successful congregations that were having real impact.

Even back then, this was not necessarily an accurate measure of the liveliness of a church. There were lots of people who were vital to the church who were not counted – people who were teaching Sunday school, people who had some pretty good reasons for why they couldn’t be there at that time, but that were great supporters of the church in other ways.

Old Assumptions No Longer Work

So, it was never quite accurate, but these old assumptions have become even more problematic because of recent developments. Now we have people who attend our worship services online through Zoom or through Facebook Live. Others watch the videos of sermons and other elements of our worship at another time than that extra special hour that was once the only one that mattered. Some of them do that from great distances away – all over the globe, in fact. Do they count? Are they part of the life and work of our church? Of course they are, but we do not often count them.

But there is more than that. There are all kinds of people in this community for whom this church is part of their spiritual life and for whom this congregation helps to meet both their spiritual and physical needs, and yet we have never seen them during the magic hour on a Sunday morning. Maybe we never will.

Who is Part of our Church?

I’m talking, for one thing, of those who come in for a good meal, to pick up some food from the Food Bank or our Community Cupboard. I’m talking about people who need help to get decent clothing for their families. This church is their church too and it meets their needs. The very fact that they are welcomed warmly here and treated without judgement absolutely feeds their souls as well as their hungry stomachs. If you asked them what they know of the church, they will speak well of St. Andrew’s. But do we count them? We do not.

I am also talking, by the way, about the amazing army of volunteers that keeps our ministries operating. Many do not worship here but they also have formed an amazing society of mutual support and encouragement and surely that is what the church is supposed to be about. Recently, for example, one of our Hope Clothing volunteers suffered the sudden death of her spouse. I know that she found the support that she received from her fellow volunteers to be invaluable.

Undervaluing Volunteers

I was talking with the people from the Food Bank recently, and they were noting just how seriously we undervalue the contribution of such volunteers. If you were to put a dollar value on it – and they are working up some models to help to put a dollar value on it – it works out that this church is making an additional contribution of thousands of dollars every year to this community. This is the mission of the church.

These are all people who are living out the mission of the church and doing it admirably. Are you going to tell me that they don’t count because they have never sat in a pew? That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? And yet we seem to assume all the time that that is how things are.

A History of Not Counting Some

The church, sadly, has a long history of not counting certain people. For centuries women didn’t really count, even as they often did the greatest part of the work in many churches. For centuries members of certain minority racial, ethnic or language groups didn’t count.

Oh sure, we were happy enough to include them in our statistics when it made us look good, but we didn’t seem to believe that they could really contribute anything of value. Their theological reflections were often simply dismissed.

Work Yet to be done

I’m glad to say that our church today has learned better about such things. But we still do fall into the temptation of not counting certain people. We say we would love to welcome families with children, for example, but can have a hard time making space for families that don’t quite fit into the pattern of families that we are used to.

Imagine those people who went out to find Jesus when he set off to be alone after he heard of the death of John. Those people are a picture of the whole of the church. They are gathered, as we are gathered, for one reason alone – because the compassion of Jesus met them where they were. Each one was met according to their need. Each one given a role in the ministry according to his or her ability. And they all counted. They all count. So, we must always be careful about who we don’t count.

https://youtu.be/cDewdKfJGD0

Hespeler, July 9, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 16:14-23, 18:1-11, Psalm 150, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

It’s not easy to be a musician these days. If your passion is music, it seems almost impossible to make your living playing. Employment is intermittent at best. Wages are low unless you really make it. And even if you do finally make it and actually get a hit streaming on Spotify, you are paid in pennies while the streaming service and the label takes everything else.

Tough Audiences

But if you think things are tough today, you should try being a musician in the court of King Saul. Apparently, if the audience (and in that audience only one member really mattered) didn’t like what you were playing, you might find yourself pinned to the wall with a spear. Now, I know that there is really no danger at all that the audience this morning will object in any way to the music that they hear but you never know when the people of St. Andrew’s might seek to imitate the Bible a little too closely. So let me put Martin’s mind at ease. I have taken the precaution of removing all spears from the church this morning.

But let’s look at what Saul does in that interesting little story we just read. In it, Saul is starting to get a little nervous about a young man named David who is in his service. David is the best fighter in his army and is his son-in-law. But lately Saul has been worried that David’s getting too big for his britches. Absolute rulers always worry when their servants get more popular than they are.

Music to help a Troubled Spirit

Saul was given, the Bible says, to being tormented by an evil spirit. What that likely means is that he suffered from what today we would call a mental health issue – some have thought (given that he did eventually commit suicide) that he suffered from severe clinical depression. In any case, whatever exactly afflicted him; he often had these episodes where he was quite out of his mind. And when that happened, the only thing that could break him of his evil mood was the music that David played on his harp.

Sometimes, you see, music is the gift that God gives you to help you break out of that dark mood, to see the hope in tomorrow, to leave anger or despair behind. That’s what David could do for Saul. But one day, Saul couldn’t listen to the music. He let his anger, his fear of David and his bad mood overcome him instead. The spear was cast and for Saul, that was really the beginning of the end. He began from there to lose support, to lose his army and eventually he lost his kingdom. Maybe he should have listened to the music instead.

W. A. Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756 and by the time that he died in 1791, he was an incredible musician and a fantastic composer. His personal life, by all accounts, was a mess and his finances were so bad that he was buried as a pauper, but his music was a different story. In his music, all was in incredible and perfect order. The harmony was always just so. And he apparently had the ability to put all the notes together in such order right out of his head and directly onto his manuscripts.

Mozart did things with music that nobody had done before. He pushed the forms of music that were available to him to new heights of excellence and always succeeded with his compositions. So much so, in fact, that you might have said (and perhaps some did say at the time) that no one would ever top what he had accomplished musically. Mozart had pushed the classical styles and forms of music to their extremes and there was no reason to expect that anyone would ever be able to do as much as he had done.

The World Changes

But the thing is this, in the year 1791, the year that Mozart died, the world changed. That was the year when the King of France tried to flee and was arrested by the Revolutionary Government of France. At that point, France passed a point of no return.

After 1791, France and most of Europe were completely transformed. Gone were the days when society was seen to be in perfect order and harmony – when kings and princes, commoners and peasants all knew their places and kept to the tasks and roles that they had always done.

The world was now a place of chaos, disorder and constant change and suddenly a very fearful place particularly for those who had been on top of everything in the upper classes – that is, those who were the patrons of the music. So, the world for which Mozart had written during his life – a world of order and predictability – no longer existed after his death.

Beethoven

In 1792 Ludwig van Beethoven arrived in Vienna – the city where Mozart had died the year before – and began to emerge as a musician and composer. His music was composed, therefore, for a very different world than Mozart’s and if you listen to what he wrote, you can tell.

The great works of Beethoven are more chaos than order, more discord than harmony. They are very much a reflection of their times. This does not make Beethoven’s music any less beautiful or meaningful, of course. In fact, his ability to use such things made his music far more extraordinary than anything that had been written before!

It is quite interesting, therefore, to compare Mozart to Beethoven. They were both masters, both extraordinary composers in their own right. And their music tells us so much about the worlds that they lived in – despite the fact that they lived in the same city one year apart.

Jesus’ Complaint

One day Jesus made this particular complaint against the people of his generation: “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” This is interesting because Jesus seems to be speaking of the popular music of his own day – the kind of music that was played by young people in the streets. The equivalent for us today might be the sight of young people standing at a street corner and dancing as they stream music from Spotify.

Jesus is speaking to the religious-minded people of his own age – the people who criticized John the Baptist and the people who are criticizing Jesus. And what is the problem that he has with them? They won’t listen to the music of their times – the music that the kids on the street corners are playing.

Jesus and John

Now, in part, of course, Jesus is comparing himself and John the Baptist to these two styles of popular music. John, who lived out in the wilderness and ate a diet of locusts and wild honey and preached fasting and repenting and was generally a downer, is the dirge.

Jesus, who was all about joy and didn’t hesitate to enjoy food and to drink with people is the music of the pipes that invites you to dance. Jesus is complaining that these people were presented with two very different kinds of ministry and managed to find fault with both of them.

Popular Music

But I am sure that it is no coincidence that Jesus chose to use images and examples of popular music to get his point across. He was always reminding his followers to keep their eyes on the “signs of the times” – to be aware of the currents and flows that were going on in society and in the wider world because these things could give you an indication of what God was doing.

Music can be a very important barometer for what is taking place in the wider society. So, don’t you think that Jesus would want us to pay attention to the music of our times?

The Church and Popular Music

Now, this can be a bit of a problem in the church which seems to be very slow to accommodate to new musical trends. Sometimes, in fact, I think we’re like King Saul and the only kind of music we can listen to is the music that is calming to our troubled souls. Certainly, there are some churches where, if anyone does try and introduce new musical styles, they are bound to have a spear chucked at them. So, we’re not exactly riding the latest musical wave. We are likely going to have to learn a bit more musical flexibility in coming years.

But even if we are slow to adopt new musical styles, that certainly doesn’t mean that we can’t be open to listening to the meaning behind the music in the society around us.

Now, a lot of the popular music today frankly doesn’t have much meaning in it. It is produced in such a way as to attract the biggest possible audience and get the most streams. But some of it really does manage to speak to some of the fears, the passions and the hopes that haunt people’s lives.

Rap and Hip Hop

Take Rap and Hip Hop music – perhaps the most popular forms of music overall today. Yes, it can be very crude, the language very objectionable and attitudes towards women and some other groups can be downright frightening. But many young people growing up in inner cities find that nothing else is able to express the things that they are feeling better.

There are real grievances, real hopes and dreams being addressed in it. That’s why those songs inspire such energy. It is, unfortunately, a kind of energy that is often directed – at best – towards making money and – at worst – towards violence and hatred. But when that kind of energy is directed in more positive and constructive ways there is no limit to what can be accomplished. When you are willing to listen to the music, those kinds of possibilities are there.

Music and our Generation

The music of Beethoven reflected the kind of chaos that existed in Europe during and following the French revolutionary times. But if you think the French Revolution stirred things up, that is nothing compared to the kind of turmoil we see in our world today! And so, music can be pretty disturbing to listen to today.

Sometimes we are rather tempted to just ignore all forms of modern music and hope it goes away. After all, we are Christians. We can just hold on to our old and familiar sacred forms of music and try and forget about everything else.

Except Jesus told us that we have to pay attention to what is happening in the society around us. “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky,” he complained one day, “but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:3) “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree:” he said on another occasion “As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.” (Matthew 24:32)

Jesus didn’t want us to just keep our heads down listening only to the things that are familiar to us or that we find pleasing or calming. He wanted us to be aware of the major movements in our world.

Encountering God in our Generation

Why was this so important to Jesus? Because he saw that it was in such things that God was at work. Jesus had a much bigger understanding of God’s power than we do. We tend to think that God can only work through our plans, our schemes and ways of doing things. Jesus knew better and that was why he was always reminding people to be on guard, to watch and to listen. God can come at you from just about anywhere, even from the music that the kids are listening to on the streets.

https://youtu.be/VWr9pc77ICc

Hespeler July 2, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 22:1-14, Psalm 13, Romans 6:12-23, Matthew 10:40-42

Years later, even after he had become a father himself, Isaac still had nightmares about it. And sometimes, when he was awakened suddenly by some noise in the night, he would lie in his tent, and it was as if he was back there again – back at the night when he was merely a child and he heard his father in the nearby tent.

A Strange Conversation

It was in the darkest time of the night when he suddenly heard Abraham cry out, “Here I am.” What followed after that was a strange discourse, as if Abraham were having a conversation with someone but Isaac could only hear one side of it – only what his father said in response to unheard words.

“But, my Lord, which son do you mean? I have two.” <Silence> “But what do you mean, ‘my only son,’ I said, there are two?” <Silence> “Isaac? What do you want with Isaac?” <Silence> “Well, I do love Isaac, but of course I love Ishmael too!”

And then, after a longer pause, Isaac could hear the cold fear and dread in his father’s voice as he said “Yes, Lord, to Moriah. We will go if you show us the way.”

Isaac didn’t know what any of that meant at the time, but it did not seem good. Every time he remembered it, or even if someone spoke in a tone that reminded him of how his father spoke that night, he would begin to tremble and would sometimes be physically ill. Even when he was a strong patriarch and respected man, it always made him feel so powerless, as if he were a small child all over again.

Departure

The next morning, Abraham rose early and saddled his donkey, taking two servant boys with him. When he called Isaac over to join the group, Isaac didn’t want to come. He was filled with an unaccountable dread. But he was in no position to refuse.

As they set out, Isaac noticed that his father wouldn’t look at him – wouldn’t even meet his eyes when he glanced his way. And that he offered no explanation of where they were going or why.

After they had walked a short way, they came upon a fallen tree and Abraham stopped and split several pieces of wood with his axe and fastened them onto the back of the donkey. That, together with the pot containing a small smoldering fire that was carried by one of the boys and the special ceremonial stone knife in his father’s belt, led Isaac to assume that the purpose of this journey was to perform a sacrifice. He had so many questions about that, of course, but did not dare to speak.

The small group traveled for three days before Isaac finally looked up and saw a mountain looming in the distance.

Abraham and Isaac go on alone

At this point, Abraham told the boys to stay behind with the donkey and that he and Isaac would go on alone. He took the wood from the donkey’s back and tied it onto Isaac’s before himself taking the pot of fire, which had been carefully fed all this time so as not to go out, and carried it himself. And so it was that father and son moved on together.

When the servant boys had fallen into the distance and the two of them were completely alone, Isaac finally found the courage to ask the question that had been burning in his mind for three days. “Father!” he said. “Here I am, my son,” Abraham immediately replied. And the phrase took Isaac right back to when he had heard his father speak in the tent a few nights previous. He had a deep feeling that something was very wrong. But he still felt he needed an answer to his question. He pointed to the fire pot. “The fire is here. And so is the wood,” he added, pointing to the load on his back.

His gaze then paused for a moment on the handle of the blade that protruded from his father’s waist, but something prevented him from mentioning that. Possibly it was the same thing that, ever since, had made him shudder whenever he caught sight of such a ceremonial knife.

The pause was going on too long and Abraham automatically looked at his son. For a few agonizing seconds, their gazes met, and Isaac managed to stammer out, “b-b-but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham looked away and when he spoke, it was as if he were speaking to someone else, someone not present, “Godself will see to the lamb for a burnt offering, my son, don’t you worry about that.”

Dangerous Memory

Isaac had done his best to never remember what had happened when they finally arrived at the top of that mountain. Whenever his conscious mind seemed to drift in the general direction of the events, he forced himself to think of something else.

But it never seemed to work. The memory would come back to him when he least expected it, triggered by the oddest things. He often found himself flying off the handle, especially with his son Jacob, at the least offense because the boy looked so much like his grandfather.

And how often had he become unaccountably enraged at Rebecca, who had only been kind to him? Sometimes these days, she treated him more like an adversary than a husband and he knew it was all because, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t let go of what had happened to him on that damned mountain. It made him so angry, and she often bore the brunt of it.

On the Mountain

When they reached the top of that mountain, Isaac watched warily as Abraham gathered stones and built a makeshift altar. He then took the wood and carefully laid it out before turning towards his son.

Isaac had successfully managed to block out the next few seconds from his memory, it only came back in his nightmares. So, as he recalled it, when he dared, he suddenly found himself lying on the altar, his legs and arms trussed up just like you might do to an animal sacrifice before the slaughter. And he saw his father, holding the knife over his throat with a wild look in his eyes.

Saved!

And then, Abraham’s face changed. It went blank for a moment and then he turned and uttered for a third time the same words still haunted Isaac. “Here I am!” he said. And then Isaac heard something too – the sound of rustling in a nearby bush.

Abraham immediately dropped the knife and ran to the spot. He yelped with pleasure and surprise as he pulled back the undergrowth to reveal a young ram struggling there, caught by the horns.

“You see, Isaac,” he cried, “I was right. God did see to it. He is Yahweh who sees my need!”

Left Unresolved

Abraham was long dead now. Never once, before he passed, had he spoken to Isaac about what had happened on that day. Perhaps that was why Isaac never felt as if it had been resolved. It was like some horrible doom that still hung over him. And now his own children were grown, and he had never been able to talk to them about these things. Sometimes he couldn’t help but feel as if that was why Esau was so wild and why it seemed as if he had driven Jacob away. That is how it goes sometimes and perhaps that’s what it means when it says that the sins of the fathers are passed down to the sons.

Despite it all, however, Isaac still held on to faith in Yahweh, the God of his father, the God who saw. He just wasn’t convinced that it was God’s fault, all that his father had put him through. Yes, perhaps Abraham had been trying to do what he thought his God wanted, but that doesn’t mean that he was right, does it?

A Troubling Story

The story of the binding of Isaac, as it is often called, is definitely one of the most difficult in the Bible. However you understand it, it is very difficult not to see it as reflecting very negatively on God. If God really did want Abraham to literally sacrifice his son on an altar, only to change his mind at the last minute, that leaves us with an image of a God who not only demands the unacceptable but is also changeable and perhaps unreliable.

The only other option seems to be that God never really intended for Abraham to go through with it at all, that it was only a test. But I fail to see how that could be much better. To put a father and, oh, how much more, a child through such a test would not merely be cruel, it would be unquestionably immoral. Can you imagine the scars, the lifelong trauma, that such an experience would have created?

I realize, of course, that ancient people did not have the same understanding and appreciation of the potential life-long effects of post-traumatic stress that modern people do, but surely, you would think God might be able to understand the effects his stunt would have on Isaac!

What do we do with it?

So what can we do with this story? I tend to approach these questions from a somewhat different angle than most. I assume that the Bible is the record of human experience of God. As such, it is a human product, even if the overall process of its creation is inspired. Thus, it reflects a growing and changing understanding of God over time. This would naturally include understandings that were wrong or incomplete and that were corrected by new experience.

So, were there people – even early Israelite ancestors – who thought that God might want human sacrifice? Possibly. Were they right about that? Of course not!

Were there ancient Israelites who believed that God wanted them to go through cruel tests that would leave permanent scars on their children? I have no doubt that there were. But they were wrong, and I believe that their subsequent experience showed them that they were wrong. The Bible is an incredibly valuable record of that journey of discovery.

For me, this story of Abraham and Isaac is a story of Abraham discovering that God didn’t want him to behave like he thought God did.

The Dangers in Such Religion

But, because we do not always take the right approach to the Bible, a danger still persists. What happens when people take stories like this one as the end of the journey of discovery and not just a step along the way? What happens when they discover, for example, that their children are expressing themselves in ways that they do not approve of? They might react by “binding” their child – by forcing their child to conform to their understanding of what God wants, suppressing the child’s God-given self-understanding.

And that kind of thing continues to happen. Psychologists and counselors are seeing that people who grow up in or spend extended lengths of time in high control religious environments can indeed suffer from long-term post-traumatic stress.

I’m talking about the kind of religious environment (Christian or other) where the members of the community are under constant surveillance. Their speech, their thoughts and dress and appearance are ever liable to be judged and found lacking either by their family or by their church community. Living under these kinds of circumstances, being bound in this way by not being able to express yourself, can leave lasting scars on the psyche. Many have undergone extensive therapy trying to find healing.

Stems from Fear

And why do people do this to the people that they love and to the members of their spiritual communities? Because they are afraid. They are afraid of people who are different. They are afraid of divergence. And they are likely carrying around an image of a very angry God of whom they are afraid.

That’s why I don’t think we should be afraid to say that Abraham was wrong about what he thought God wanted and demanded. By the end of this horrible episode with his son, he knew better. And, yes, it would have been preferable if he had not had to put himself and his son through such a terrible ordeal to get there. But the truth of the matter is that we human beings can have the hardest time with some of the most important lessons.

High-control religion can absolutely be dangerous. It causes trauma. I am certain that it is not what pleases God. In the end, this story in Genesis is a story about a God who sees. That is what the name, Yahweh Yireh that Abraham gives to God at the end means. It is about a God who sees the damage that is done, who sees to what we need to survive it. The real question though, is what do we see and what are we going to do about it?

https://youtu.be/pQmiVFSOx2Q

Hespeler, June 25, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

As I think most of you have realized by now, there are two things that I am committed to doing in my preaching that may sometimes clash with one another. First of all, I have committed myself to preach every week from the lectionary, a 3-year-long cycle of readings that are used in many churches.

But I am also committed to our practice of when we celebrate an infant or child baptism here at St. Andrews, we focus all of our worship on that day on that very important and blessed event. That means that I want to preach, in this case, about Oliver and his family and the important spiritual step that they have taken here among us today. This is actually my favourite thing about baptism Sundays, and I always look forward to it when the occasion arises.

But I am sure that you can see where the problem might come from. The people who choose the lectionary passages don’t know and don’t much care about when we celebrate a baptism. So, there’s really no way of making sure that the passage we read on a given Sunday is going to have anything to do with what we are doing during the service.

A Promising Start

So, it was with much trepidation that I opened up the readings for this Sunday, wondering how they might help us to talk about what we have done here this morning. And I read the first few opening words and I breathed a big sigh of relief. “The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.”

I mean, isn’t that just perfect? The passage opens with almost the exact situation we are celebrating today. A child has reached a certain age – and it is probably about exactly the age the Oliver is today because they would have weaned their children at a somewhat later age than is common today. And obviously, in that culture, that was considered to be the perfect moment to gather friends and relations and the whole community and just celebrate the birth and the early life of this young child.

That is so much like what it is that we have come together to do today. We are celebrating Oliver, this wonderful symbol of new life and hope for the future. We are celebrating all of his potential and lifting up our prayers for his future. I am quite sure that was almost exactly what Abraham and Sarah were doing for Isaac on that wonderful occasion that they had organized.

It All Falls Apart

But, if I was thrilled with the first sentence of our passage this morning, my enthusiasm soon waned. Because, after just one sentence of the best intentions and the most wonderful of celebrations, it all falls apart, doesn’t it? That’s all we get, just one sentence. After that, almost everything about this seemingly perfect family that could possibly go wrong does.

Isaac has an older half sibling named Ishmael. And Isaac’s mother sees the two boys playing together and she kind of freaks out. Now, whether her concerns are valid and Ishmael had been playing inappropriately with the boy, we are not told. I don’t know whether Ishmael has done anything wrong, but we certainly do know that things sometimes happen between siblings – maybe especially half siblings – that create great stress within families.

But, as is often the case, it is not what the kids do, it is how the parents overreact that creates the real crisis and problem. Sarah is so upset that she demands that Ishmael and his mother be thrown out of the family altogether! Now, I know very well that mothers are protective of their children. Her knee-jerk reaction of kicking Ishmael out is just wrong, but in her anger she could just not be thinking straight. She is just human, after all.

Parents are just human – that is a radical thought and just hold onto it for a moment.

Can Abraham Save the Day?

So, Sarah has a bad reaction. This would obviously be a wonderful opportunity for her husband, Abraham, to step in and maybe calm her down and help her direct her anger in a more helpful direction for everyone. But, of course, it is at this point that Abraham fails, in my mind, even more tragically than his wife.

We are told this about Abraham’s reaction: “The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.” So, Abraham knew it was the wrong response. He was distressed about it. And I want to say, first of all, poor Abraham, right? Poor, poor Abraham! Don’t you feel bad for him? He started out this day ready to celebrate and now it has turned out like the worst day ever and he is all distressed!

But wait a minute, who cares about Abraham’s feelings? What are they compared to a mother and son who are just about to be turned out into the desert with nothing more than a loaf of bread and a skin of water? But, of course, Abraham is the hero of the whole story. I guess we just have to focus on his feelings.

So, while Abraham absolutely has the power to do something about the tragedy that is about to unfold, he doesn’t do it. I guess you might say that he just sends his thoughts and prayers without actually doing anything other than gathering the skin of water and loaf of bread.

Parental Failure

In case you haven’t picked this up from my comments so far, I am trying to say that I’m not overly impressed with the actions of the parents in this story. Sarah fails. Abraham fails. The only one who stands up and does the best she can for her child is the most powerless among them, Hagar. But such are the limitations of her power to do anything at all, that she gives in to despair and practically gives up hope. I can’t really blame her for that either.

So, here I am with this Bible passage that starts out wonderfully reminding us of what we are celebrating today, but then quickly devolves into a tale about a deeply, and I mean deeply, dysfunctional family. How on earth can this offer me anything constructive to say to Oliver and his family today?

Well, I am very aware of all of the stresses and strains that are on families these days. You all have these amazing expectations being piled on you. You have to be these perfect parents. If you are like most parents – if you are like I was as a parent of young children – you put that expectation on yourself as well.

Failed Expectations

Every time that you don’t react like you think you should, every time you discipline too harshly or not firmly enough, every time something bad happens to your child and you can dream up some obscure way that you could have stopped it from happening, you just won’t forgive yourself. And of course, it is even worse when you have people all around you telling you what they think you are doing wrong, which is often the case these days.

So, if you ever feel bad about your parenting or other choices in life, this story in Genesis stands as a wonderful reminder that parents are just human, and they all make mistakes. And, in fact, no matter what you get wrong as a parent, chances are that its effects will be nowhere near as bad as the mess that Abraham and Sarah, those great biblical examples of parents, made of their family.

There is Grace

But there is more than that going on in this story – something that should give encouragement to us all. There is grace. Hagar and her son Ishmael are treated terribly in this story. But despite that, Ishmael does alright. “God was with the boy,” it says, “and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.”

So, despite all that was done to him, Ishmael is able to find his way in the world. Now, should Abraham and Sarah be given credit for Ishmael’s success in life? I don’t think so. If he succeeded, he obviously succeeded in spite of them. And I hardly think that, later in life, he looked back fondly at that skin of water and loaf of bread that he received from his father thinking that it gave him a good start. But he came through despite a lack of his father’s support and despite the fact that his mother Hagar had so little to work with.

But that is the nature of God’s grace. Whenever we fall short or fail to live up to our best intentions, God has a way of bringing about good results in spite of us. That is the good news that every single one of us needs to hold onto whenever we feel as if we fail or fall short. God does have a way of taking even our worst mistakes and bringing something good out of them. I can’t tell you how often that has given me comfort when I look back at the mistakes I made as a parent, in my work and in the advice I have given.

A Caution

But there is one caution that I would put on that truth. While it is always good to trust in God’s grace, we must never use it as an excuse to walk away from our commitments and responsibilities. And that is exactly what I see Abraham doing in this story.

We are told that God actually spoke to Abraham saying, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”

I don’t know about you, but I am always suspicious when I hear somebody claim that God told them to do something that really only benefited themselves or was just the easiest and most trouble-free course for them. In my experience, people who do that have always misunderstood or taken the promises of God out of context.

Sure, Abraham knew that his God was committed to his family and his offspring and that that included Ishmael.  Of course God would take care of the boy. Of course God would make a great nation of him. That was the fundamental truth that Abraham heard from God.

I don’t necessarily mean, by the way, that Abraham actually heard the voice of God reverberating from heaven. The Bible is quite clear that God speaks in various ways, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be audible. But however he received the message, Abraham heard correctly; God’s commitment to the boy was unshakable.

But I don’t believe that Abraham correctly heard the implications of that truth. It was just easier for him to believe that it let him off the hook and that he didn’t need to resist the evil thing that Sarah wanted him to do.

Getting Advice

Lisa and Steve, we are so thrilled to be able to celebrate you and your family today. We honour your choice to raise children at a time when lots of young couples are finding that it is too expensive or too challenging. We know that the path that lies before you will not always be easy, but it will always be worthwhile because your family is an expression of your love.

I know from personal experience that in the years to come you will be surrounded by people who are going to want to tell you how to raise your children. Some of that advice will no doubt be wise and helpful. Some of it will, frankly, just be somebody trying to make themselves feel good by trying to convince you that you’re doing everything wrong.

I understand that most people mean well when they try and give advice to parents, but the honest truth is that they often only manage to make parents feel as if they’re wrong no matter what they do.

So, I’m not going to try and give you any advice today. Just follow your instincts. Follow the love that I know you carry in your hearts. Will you always get it right? Of course not. Nobody does. But love will take you so far. And above all, take comfort in the truth that we have affirmed here today. God is committed to your child. God has some amazing plans for him, plans that you can’t even dream of yet. So, trust in that. God’s grace will meet you and your family where you need it most.

https://youtu.be/ZBRGbBiBjCU

Hespeler, June 11, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Second Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33:1-12, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

We began an important journey together as a congregation at the start of the year. We did so because we recognized that we were facing some unprecedented challenges as a church in the early twenty-first century. We were not thriving like we felt that we could or should. We wanted to know why and what we could do to change that feeling and that reality.

And now, today, we are moving toward the end of that process. After worship today we will discuss a report that includes some specific recommendations that we hope will help us move into the future with a real sense of vitality and hope. But, before we delve into that report, I would like to talk a bit about the attitude that we want to bring with us.

Online Advertising

I wonder if you can remember a time about two decades ago. Online advertising and commerce were still kind of new back then, and, in the early 2000s, the web was flooded with a certain kind of advertisement. They called it clickbait. It was the kind of ad that had a loud and enticing headline that made it almost irresistible to click on it just to find out what it was about.

One Weird Trick

And one kind of ad stood out. I know you have seen them. They proclaimed that a certain man or woman had found “one weird trick” to solve some of the most difficult problems that people struggled with. There were weird tricks for everything – to fix your weight problems, your hair loss, you complexion or wrinkles. And all you had to do was click and the answer to your problem would be right there. Remember those ads?

The ads often included lines like, “Doctors hate him or her.” That part of it was also enticing because it suggested that you could solve your problem without going through painful or expensive medical intervention, that you could be healthier without having to work out or make significant changes to your diet. The implications were that “they” (the doctors or whatever other experts) were intentionally trying to suppress or hide this trick because “they” didn’t care about you like the people posting the ad.

Why These Ads Work

Many of these ads, in case you don’t know, were scams. Some of them managed to defraud people out of thousands of dollars. But I am sure that we all understand why they were so successful. Whenever we are struggling, whenever there is something that isn’t quite right, it is always so tempting to look for that one weird trick. If only we can find that one simple thing we can do to make it all right – especially if it is painless and if you don’t have to make any real changes to what is comfortable to us – everything will be great!

North American Churches Search for Solutions

Churches do that too. In fact, in many ways, the history of the Christian Church in North America over the last few decades has been the story of an endless search for that one weird trick. That history is just full of ministry and program fads. Various experts have come along and promised that, if only you adopt their three-point (or twelve-point or however many point) plan, you will thrive. We have been promised that this evaluation tool or that missional philosophy will make everything alright.

And, of course, I am not saying that there wasn’t anything of value in these approaches. A lot of churches undertook them, and they helped them to make some necessary changes and led to at least some success. But I would suggest that those congregations who saw these ideas as that one weird trick that would fix everything with no mess and no fuss likely did not get what they really needed.

Local Churches Affected

The one weird trick fallacy also affects many a local church. How many times have church leaders had a church member, or even a visitor, come up to them and say, “Pastor, Pastor, I have one weird trick that will save this church.” Well, okay, they don’t actually say it in so many words, but that is what they mean when they say that they heard about this church over there that does this thing or that church over there that does that thing, and they have so many people showing up. If we just did that one thing, just think of the results!

Now, once again, there is nothing wrong with learning from what other churches do successfully. But it actually rarely works that you can just take one thing from one church and expect it to work somewhere else in the same way without taking into account the culture, context and many others specific characteristics of that church that no doubt contribute to that success. It doesn’t really work as a one weird trick kind of solution.

The Woman with a Flow of Blood

There was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years – an absolutely horrible situation. A flow of blood would have made her unclean and, therefore, socially unacceptable. So this is not just a medical issue, it affects every part of her life.

This woman’s story is told three different times in three of our gospels. Each time it is told in the same general terms, but if you compare them side by side, you quickly realize that each gospel writer, Matthew, Mark and Luke, has a way of telling it slightly differently.

For example, in the Gospel of Mark, it speaks specifically about how this woman “had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse.” (Mark 5:26)

But Matthew just jumps over her years of struggles. He doesn’t mention her suffering under many doctors. (Which makes me ask, do doctors hate her?) Matthew jumps straight to her finally coming up with one weird trick to solve all of her problems. “She was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

A “One Weird Trick” Story

The way that Matthew presents it, it really does seem like a “one weird trick” kind of solution. Years of struggling and trying to find health and social acceptability for herself are suddenly wiped away by her doing just one thing. And I’m sure that you will agree with me that what she does is definitely a bit weird!

And honestly, if the story had ended there, I think that would be the message. It certainly represents the way that we often approach Jesus to solve our problems. We like to wait until we’ve gotten ourselves into a bad corner and then finally turn to Jesus in desperation to just fix things for us.

As I have already said, we tend to do it when we are worried about the vitality of our churches, but I can also give you countless examples of people who do it when they run into serious problems in their lives. I know I’ve done it too. Our default is to want to turn Jesus in to that lucky charm, that talisman, that one weird trick.

That is not how it Ends

But the story doesn’t end there. And here again, if you read the other versions of this story in the other gospels, you will get quite a different impression. They spend a fair bit of time puzzling out how Jesus figured out what had happened.

In the Gospel of Mark, we are told that Jesus felt the power going out of him and stopped, looking around to try and figure out who had touched him. But Matthew mentions none of that, likely because he recognizes that it might leave his readers with the impression that Jesus really is a magical source of healing power, that he really is that one weird trick that can solve your problem.

Jesus’ Response

But Matthew and Jesus know that that is not the case. And so Matthew jumps immediately to Jesus’ commentary on the whole affair. “Take heart, daughter;” he says, “your faith has made you well.” And only then Matthew finishes her story by saying, “And the woman was made well from that moment” – that is, from the moment when Jesus said that to her.

Now, at first glance, it may seem as if all of this is only reaffirming this woman’s “one weird trick” approach to health and vitality. It is her faith that has made her well; doesn’t that simply confirm that she was right to believe that she would get well just by touching the hem of his garment? But, of course, Jesus doesn’t say that she has been healed because of her belief in the magical power of the hem of his robe.

Having Faith

He says that her faith has done it. And in the Gospel of Matthew, in all of the gospels, having faith is never simply a matter of just believing certain things. It is always a matter of trust. It is always about trusting in Jesus and in what he has said. It is always part of an ongoing relationship and so it can never be reduced to one weird trick.

The woman’s wellness doesn’t begin when she touches his cloak. Matthew makes it clear that it only starts with Jesus’ affirmation of her faith and his encouragement to take heart. Most significantly, it begins when he calls her “daughter,” which is all about her relationship with him and with her God.

Our Report

When you get your copy of the report today, you will find that it is filled with things that we propose that we do as a congregation together. There are actions that we plan to take by particular dates. There are new regular practices that we mean to put in place. I hope you will find that there are a lot of specifics that will help us to discover a thriving future and do it well.

But do you want to know what you won’t find? You won’t find one weird trick that will solve all of our problems and fix all of our worries. Health, well-being and thriving are not things that we will ever achieve by just finding one weird trick.

Yes, there are some relatively simple things that we can do and that will help us, but none of these are about doing something that costs us nothing and fixes everything. They will only make a difference if they are part of it an ongoing journey of faith and faithfulness – faithfulness to God and faithfulness to one another.

Cultivating a Culture of Kindness

Let me get a little more specific by talking about one of the aspects of our report. We identified as one of our priorities the need to cultivate a culture of kindness. That includes things like making sure that people feel that they are welcome and that they can participate no matter who they are. We do believe that that priority can certainly help us to bring vibrancy to our church.

But if we try to do that through a one weird trick approach, it will be doomed to failure. It’s not going to work just to tell people that they are welcomed or included, for example. It is not enough to just lay out a welcome mat. Actually, getting to a place where people, especially people who are perhaps a little different from us, feel as if they can really belong, it’s going to take some work. Because it can only be achieved by building trust over time.

Healing Hurts

I don’t know if you realize this, but a lot of people have been hurt by churches over the years. It may not have always been intentional. Sometimes, perhaps, it was unavoidable. But it has happened. And when you have been hurt, when you have been made to feel as if you do not have a place, there’s no one weird trick that can fix that. It takes time to build a relationship, to get people to a place where they feel as if they can let their guard down because this time nobody’s going to try and hurt them.

Hespeler, June 11, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Second Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33:1-12, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

W

e began an important journey together as a congregation at the start of the year. We did so because we recognized that we were facing some unprecedented challenges as a church in the early twenty-first century. We were not thriving like we felt that we could or should. We wanted to know why and what we could do to change that feeling and that reality.

And now, today, we are moving towards the end of that process. After worship today we will discuss a report that includes some specific recommendations that we hope will help us move into the future with a real sense of vitality and hope. But, before we delve into that report, I would like to talk a bit about the attitude that we want to bring with us.

Online Advertising

I wonder if you can remember a time about two decades ago. Online advertising and commerce were still kind of new back then, and, in the early 2000s, the web was flooded with a certain kind of advertisement. They called it clickbait. It was the kind of ad that had a loud and enticing headline that made it almost irresistible to click on it just to find out what it was about.

One Weird Trick

And one kind of ad stood out. I know you have seen them. They proclaimed that a certain man or woman had found “one weird trick” to solve some of the most difficult problems that people struggled with. There were weird tricks for everything – to fix your weight problems, your hair loss, you complexion or wrinkles. And all you had to do was click and the answer to your problem would be right there. Remember those ads?

The ads often included lines like, “Doctors hate him or her.” That part of it was also enticing because it suggested that you could solve your problem without going through painful or expensive medical intervention, that you could be healthier without having to work out or make significant changes to your diet. The implications were that “they” (the doctors or whatever other experts) were intentionally trying to suppress or hide this trick because “they” didn’t care about you like the people posting the ad.

Why These Ads Word

Many of these ads, in case you don’t know, were scams. Some of them managed to defraud people out of thousands of dollars. But I am sure that we all understand why they were so successful. Whenever we are struggling, whenever there is something that isn’t quite right, it is always so tempting to look for that one weird trick. If only we can find that one simple thing we can do to make it all right – especially if it is painless and if you don’t have to make any real changes to what is comfortable to us – everything will be great!

North American Churches Search for Solutions

Churches do that too. In fact, in many ways, the history of the Christian Church in North America over the last few decades has been the story of an endless search for that one weird trick. That history is just full of ministry and program fads. Various experts have come along and promised that, if only you adopt their three-point (or twelve-point or however many point) plan, you will thrive. We have been promised that this evaluation tool or that missional philosophy will make everything alright.

And, of course, I am not saying that there wasn’t anything of value in these approaches. A lot of churches undertook them, and they helped them to make some necessary changes and led to at least some success. But I would suggest that those congregations who saw these ideas as that one weird trick that would fix everything with no mess and no fuss likely did not get what they really needed.

Local Churches Affected

The one weird trick fallacy also affects many a local church. How many times have church leaders had a church member, or even a visitor, come up to them and say, “Pastor, Pastor, I have one weird trick that will save this church.” Well, okay, they don’t actually say it in so many words, but that is what they mean when they say that they heard about this church over there that does this thing or that church over there that does that thing, and they have so many people showing up. If we just did that one thing, just think of the results!

Now, once again, there is nothing wrong with learning from what other churches do successfully. But it actually rarely works that you can just take one thing from one church and expect it to work somewhere else in the same way without taking into account the culture, context and many others specific characteristics of that church that no doubt contribute to that success. It doesn’t really work as a one weird trick kind of solution.

The Woman with a Flow of Blood

There was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years – an absolutely horrible situation. A flow of blood would have made her unclean and, therefore, socially unacceptable. So this is not just a medical issue, it affects every part of her life.

This woman’s story is told three different times in three of our gospels. Each time it is told in the same general terms, but if you compare them side by side, you quickly realize that each gospel writer, Matthew, Mark and Luke, has a way of telling it slightly differently.

For example, in the Gospel of Mark, it speaks specifically about how this woman “had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse.” (Mark 5:26)

But Matthew just jumps over her years of struggles. He doesn’t mention her suffering under many doctors. (Which makes me ask, do doctors hate her?) Matthew jumps straight to her finally coming up with one weird trick to solve all of her problems. “She was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

A “One Weird Trick” Story

The way that Matthew presents it, it really does seem like a “one weird trick” kind of solution. Years of struggling and trying to find health and social acceptability for herself are suddenly wiped away by her doing just one thing. And I’m sure that you will agree with me that what she does is definitely a bit weird!

And honestly, if the story had ended there, I think that would be the message. It certainly represents the way that we often approach Jesus to solve our problems. We like to wait until we’ve gotten ourselves into a bad corner and then finally turn to Jesus in desperation to just fix things for us.

As I have already said, we tend to do it when we are worried about the vitality of our churches, but I can also give you countless examples of people who do it when they run into serious problems in their lives. I know I’ve done it too. Our default is to want to turn Jesus in to that lucky charm, that talisman, that one weird trick.

That is not how it Ends

But the story doesn’t end there. And here again, if you read the other versions of this story in the other gospels, you will get quite a different impression. They spend a fair bit of time puzzling out how Jesus figured out what had happened.

In the Gospel of Mark, we are told that Jesus felt the power going out of him and stopped, looking around to try and figure out who had touched him. But Matthew mentions none of that, likely because he recognizes that it might leave his readers with the impression that Jesus really is a magical source of healing power, that he really is that one weird trick that can solve your problem.

Jesus’ Response

But Matthew and Jesus know that that is not the case. And so Matthew jumps immediately to Jesus’ commentary on the whole affair. “Take heart, daughter;” he says, “your faith has made you well.” And only then Matthew finishes her story by saying, “And the woman was made well from that moment” – that is, from the moment when Jesus said that to her.

Now, at first glance, it may seem as if all of this is only reaffirming this woman’s “one weird trick” approach to health and vitality. It is her faith that has made her well; doesn’t that simply confirm that she was right to believe that she would get well just by touching the hem of his garment? But, of course, Jesus doesn’t say that she has been healed because of her belief in the magical power of the hem of his robe.

Having Faith

He says that her faith has done it. And in the Gospel of Matthew, in all of the gospels, having faith is never simply a matter of just believing certain things. It is always a matter of trust. It is always about trusting in Jesus and in what he has said. It is always part of an ongoing relationship and so it can never be reduced to one weird trick.

The woman’s wellness doesn’t begin when she touches his cloak. Matthew makes it clear that it only starts with Jesus’ affirmation of her faith and his encouragement to take heart. Most significantly, it begins when he calls her “daughter,” which is all about her relationship with him and with her God.

Our Report

When you get your copy of the report today, you will find that it is filled with things that we propose that we do as a congregation together. There are actions that we plan to take by particular dates. There are new regular practices that we mean to put in place. I hope you will find that there are a lot of specifics that will help us to discover a thriving future and do it well.

But do you want to know what you won’t find? You won’t find one weird trick that will solve all of our problems and fix all of our worries. Health, well-being and thriving are not things that we will ever achieve by just finding one weird trick.

Yes, there are some relatively simple things that we can do and that will help us, but none of these are about doing something that costs us nothing and fixes everything. They will only make a difference if they are part of it an ongoing journey of faith and faithfulness – faithfulness to God and faithfulness to one another.

Cultivating a Culture of Kindness

Let me get a little more specific by talking about one of the aspects of our report. We identified as one of our priorities the need to cultivate a culture of kindness. That includes things like making sure that people feel that they are welcome and that they can participate no matter who they are. We do believe that that priority can certainly help us to bring vibrancy to our church.

But if we try to do that through a one weird trick approach, it will be doomed to failure. It’s not going to work just to tell people that they are welcomed or included, for example. It is not enough to just lay out a welcome mat. Actually, getting to a place where people, especially people who are perhaps a little different from us, feel as if they can really belong, it’s going to take some work. Because it can only be achieved by building trust over time.

Healing Hurts

I don’t know if you realize this, but a lot of people have been hurt by churches over the years. It may not have always been intentional. Sometimes, perhaps, it was unavoidable. But it has happened. And when you have been hurt, when you have been made to feel as if you do not have a place, there’s no one weird trick that can fix that. It takes time to build a relationship, to get people to a place where they feel as if they can let their guard down because this time nobody’s going to try and hurt them.

There are no one weird tricks. But there is hope, and there is life. That is what that woman discovered when she came up to Jesus that day. I don’t know if doctors hate her, but I do know that that day she was finally able to know that Jesus loved her and that she belonged. And that is what made the difference.

https://youtu.be/dAQCsO41F14

Hespeler, June 4, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Trinity Sunday
Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

Many people, even faithful believing Christians, will argue over the passage that we read this morning from the Book of Genesis. Many will ask the question, is it true? By which they usually mean, is it true that God really created everything that exists over a period of six 24-hour days. Many of us, perhaps rightly so, are a little bit skeptical about that idea.

But I actually think we are too quick to ask that question of this story. I would argue that you cannot say whether a piece of literature is true or not until you decide something else first. You have to decide what kind of literature it is.

Different Kinds of Literature

This is actually something that we all know, it’s just that we don’t usually talk about it. Every different kind of literature operates according to its own rules that we use to judge whether or not it is true.

For example, when you read a newspaper article and you ask whether it is true, you are actually asking whether all of the things that the article says happened actually happened as it says that they did. A true journalistic article is one that is properly sourced, that quotes people accurately and tells you what happened.

Fiction and Poetry

When you read a book of fiction, on the other hand, you know very well that the events that it narrates never happened and the characters it describes never existed. But why, then, do you read fiction? Is it because there is no truth in it? Of course not! I think that I can honestly say that some of the deepest and greatest truths I have ever learned about humanity and life in this world, I learned from some of the fictional novels that I have read. They are a great source of truth, just not literal truth.

And then you pull out a poem, let’s say, a much-loved poem by Robert Frost. And you read the part where he says, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” How would you judge whether that poem was true? Would you insist that, unless somebody could show you the actual roads that diverged in a wood somewhere where Robert Frost once stood that that was a false poem? Of course not. The truth of the poem does not depend on the existence of any roads because the road is a metaphor for the course of the poet’s life.

What Kind of Literature is it?

So, I hope you will agree with me that every different kind of literature has different rules for their truthfulness. And the Bible is not just one kind of literature. It is a collection of various types of literature. And so, if you want to know whether and how certain passages are true, you need to know what kind of literature you were dealing with.

So, what kind of literature is the creation story? I suspect that most of us would agree that it was not intended to be a journalistic account of what actually happened at the beginning of all things. It predates the invention of journalism by many centuries. Therefore, the truth of it does not depend on everything having happened exactly as it describes. Nor would we call it a scientific textbook, which would mean that it’s truth would have to be demonstrated through repeatable experimentation and observation. But what sort of literature are we dealing with?

A Liturgy

I am going to make a suggestion that might not necessarily occur to many people. I am going to suggest that the story of creation in Genesis chapter 1 is actually a liturgy. A liturgy is a very specific kind of literature. It is a document written to guide a community through an act of worship. Our Sunday morning bulletin, for example, is a very simple kind of liturgy.

And there are some pretty good reasons for thinking that Genesis 1 could be a liturgy. It is very repetitive, and you can easily imagine how it might have worked as a sort of call and response. You can imagine, for example, the worship leaders calling out, “And there was evening and there was morning.” And then all the people responding, “the first day, the second day, the third day, and so on.”

The Enuma Elish

But, even more important than that, we know that there were worship services in the ancient world that were very similar to what we see in Genesis 1. I mean, extremely similar. In Babylon, during the Neo Babylonian kingdom, there was an annual New Year’s festival. And as a key part of this worship festival for the Babylonian gods, the great epic story, called the Enuma Elish, was recited.

And guess what the Enuma Elish was. It was the story, told in seven tablets, of how Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonians, created the world and everything in it. And there is a lot in common between the two stories.

How Marduk Created

Marduk creates, in fact, following almost exactly the same steps as the Lord God does in Genesis. He separates the waters above from the waters below. He creates lights in the dome of the sky to organize the passage of time and seasons. Step by step, the creation takes place in pretty much the same order.

So, there is a lot in common. But there is also a lot that is different. In Genesis, how does God create? By a word. God speaks and everything in all creation is put into its proper place.

Marduk, on the other hand, has a very different approach to creation in the Enuma Elish. Marduk creates almost everything through violence. When he separates the waters above from the waters below by creating a solid barrier, he doesn’t do it by speaking like God does. He does it by defeating a great monster named Tiamat and then literally ripping her in two from top to bottom.

When he creates humanity, he does so by killing another god and creating the human beings, as slaves to the gods, out of the blood of that dead god. So, while it is remarkable how the two stories are alike, it is in many ways even more remarkable how different they are.

Story Originated in Babylon

The connections between the two stories are so significant, that most scholars today believe that the Genesis account was influenced by the Babylonian creation story. And, by far, the most likely time when that would have happened was while the people of Israel were living as exiles in the land of Babylon.

While they were there, many of them living as servants in the homes of the Babylonian elite, they would have been exposed to the Enuma Elish. And, in the midst of that harrowing experience, some of them may have been inspired by God to create this liturgy of creation.

Why they Needed this Story

Put yourself for a moment into the position of those poor Judean exiles in Babylon. They have been subjugated and defeated by this terrible violent people. They have been robbed of their homeland by them and reduced to being their servants and slaves.

And every year, at the Babylonian New Year, they are forced to listen to a story that affirms that the Babylonians are the greatest and that they deserve to rule over the whole world. And why are the Babylonians so great? Well, obviously because the Babylonian gods are the best. And we know that the Babylonian gods are the best because look at all of the other gods and monsters they killed and slaughtered and tore into pieces in order to create the world. That was the message.

A Better Story

And can you not imagine some poor Judean exiles getting together one day and saying, “No, that’s just not right. The world was not created to be a place of violence and slaughter and death. It was not created merely so that the strong could exploit the weak. It was created to be a place of hope and life. And so, it couldn’t have been those violent Babylonian gods who made everything.

“It must have been our God who is the creator of all. And our God did not create everything by violence and slaughter and tearing other beings in two, our God brought order and meaning to the universe with… with just a few words. And God made it good. That’s how powerful our God is!”

A Festival

But, of course, it wasn’t enough to just say that. Who would care what a bunch of powerless slaves and exiles said. They needed a powerful way to express it so that people would remember it and have hope. And what better way to do that than to start to gather as a Jewish exile community. Over a week they would gather and celebrate their God as the true creator of the universe.

And let’s just guess what exactly they may have worshipped over those seven days. Day one: God the creator of light. Day two: the creator who separated the waters above from the waters below and created the barrier of the sky. Day three: The creator of dry land and growing plants. Day four: The creator of the sun, moon and stars and, well you get the idea.

Just a Basic Outline

So what we seem to have in the first chapter of Genesis is the basic outlines of the worship that was carried out over this weeklong festival. Of course, there would have been more to it than that. There would have been hymns to sing and we might even have some of the lyrics: “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” I can imagine a choir singing that, can’t you?

I’m sure there must have been dancing and feasting too. What better way to celebrate the creator of growing things than with a feast of fruits, for example. But the basic outline is right there in the seven days of creation story.

The Seven Days

Of course, you realize what this means? All of those people who tie themselves up in knots about how the Bible says that God created the world in seven days and that therefore all of the scientists who say the earth is millions of years old are wrong despite having all of the evidence on their side, may have completely misunderstood what this passage is actually saying. The seven days is not intended to be an indication of how long it took God to do it. It is only an indication of how long it took for the people to celebrate it.

An Act of Resistance

But, more important, this means that this story is about a whole lot more than how the world came to be. It is all about how a subjugated and exploited people can stand up for themselves and resist their abusers. And that is an aspect of this passage that we definitely need to recover given what is going on in our world today.

So, what can we draw from this story to help build a better world? Well, think of it this way. The exiles in Babylon lived in a world where everyone believed that violence and power were the solutions to every problem and that only the most powerful could rule. The Babylonian Enuma Elish reinforced that view of things.

We still live in a society that believes that today. Think of all of the stories we tell – the stories that come out of Marvel Studios for example. But the Jewish exiles told a very different story of a God who created with words, not violence. It was a powerful witness that the world could be different!

Valuing Human Life

The exiles in Babylon lived in a world where human beings like them were considered to exist only to serve the interests of the powerful and wealthy. This was reinforced by the Babylonian creation story that declared that all humans had only been created as servants to the gods.

And make no mistake that we also live in a world that values human life in much the same way. All of us everyday are constantly being judged in terms of what we can produce, what we contribute to the economy. And those who do not produce, or who do not earn enough from the fruit of their labour, are increasingly abandoned and treated as worthless. The Babylonian Creation story’s message is still powerful!

But the Jewish exiles were bold to proclaim in their story that the purpose of humanity was very different – that “In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” They dared to tell a story of God giving dominion over the land to all people and that the goods of the earth were gifted to all humanity by God for their sustenance.

A Subversive Sabbath

And, if the people who celebrated this story were essentially slaves, what do a slaves need more than anything else? They need time off! And this story of creation is all about taking time off, isn’t it? That is why the whole thing is built around a seven-day cycle! It is all about getting us to the seventh day, the day of rest!

And in this liturgy, what were the Hebrew exiles saying? They were saying that their time off was not a gift of their Babylonian masters. They were saying that it was a gift of their God – indeed that God had built the entire universe around their need for a break! That was a dangerous thing to say in Babylon, but the Jews told this enduring story, and a good story has a way of getting through to people. The story stuck.

The Genesis creation story is a worship liturgy. But, more important, it offered a way to tell a story that went against the narrative of the world. As such, it had a powerful and enduring impact. Let’s think about the stories that we tell about this world. They can also have the same kind of impact. And let’s also consider how our acts of worship can also transform our understanding of this world. That is where the deepest truth and greatest power of the story of creation can be found.

https://youtu.be/T7f-ZKb8vWU

Hespeler, May 28, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Pentecost
Numbers 11:24-30, Psalm 104:24-34, 35b, Acts 2:1-21, John 20:19-23

You might not know this about me, but I have a degree in Linguistics – the study of language. And that has always meant that I look at the famous story of the Day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts a little differently from most preachers.

I cannot just turn off the Linguist part of my brain when I read it. I cannot help but notice, for example, that, on one level, the miracle of people speaking in different languages was not really necessary for comprehension.

Everyone Spoke Greek

It is true, of course, that various people who lived in various places spread all over the known world at that time had their own local languages. But it is also true that, because of the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire, many people had also learned at least one other language.

If you traveled or traded or dealt with government officials, you learned to speak Greek. You had to just to get by. And so, even if expatriate Jews and some Gentiles had travelled to Jerusalem for the festival of Pentecost, and even if they spoke the local language back home, they all had a very easy and convenient way to communicate with each other: just speak Greek.

What is the Point?

So, what is the point of these members of the church suddenly speaking in all these local languages from back home? What is it supposed to accomplish? It can’t be about comprehension, so what is it about?

Ah, but any Linguist understands that language isn’t just about comprehension. It also serves several social functions. So, I suspect that something else is going on in this story. But, to understand what it is, you may need to put yourself in the sandals of one of those outsiders who had come in for the festival that year.

A Visitor from Parthia

Shimeon was a Jew, but he was a Jew who had lived all his life in Parthia. And, for almost all of that life, the King of Parthia had been at war with the Emperor of Rome. Even though it was practically required of all Jews that they should travel to Jerusalem every year for the three main festivals, everyone understood that those who lived elsewhere could only make the trip rarely.

But when you live in a place at war with Rome, when you literally have to cross a demilitarized zone to get from your home to the temple in Jerusalem, you can imagine that even doing so rarely could become impossible.

A Wonderful Opportunity

The fact of the matter was that Shimeon had never been able to make the pilgrimage, not even once in his entire life. So, he had been so very excited when things had worked out and he was able to come down for the Festival of Passover this year. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with the heritage and traditions of his people that had always been so hard to hold onto in far off Parthia.

As a Jew, a member of a minority community, he had always felt like an outsider in Parthia. He was excluded from all religious festivals and most other social gatherings in the mainstream society. So, of course he had been looking forward to being in a place where he was surrounded by Jewish people and by Jewish practices and worship. He had thought that he might find himself here. But, things had not quite gone as he had expected. A lot of it had to do with language.

Jews in Parthia

When the small Jewish community in Parthia gathered in synagogue, they sometimes did some prayers and rituals in the old Hebrew language. But the old language didn’t mean much to them. When the elders read the scriptures, they occasionally read from the few Hebrew scrolls that they had, but then they had to explain what they meant to the younger people in Greek. So, it was usually much easier to read from the popular Greek translation known as the Septuagint. These scrolls, that had first been published some two centuries earlier, were also easier to obtain in far-off Parthia than any Hebrew scrolls.

So, while Shimeon had heard some archaic Hebrew, he really wasn’t comfortable using it. But he hadn’t expected that to be a problem on this pilgrimage. Wherever he had traveled before, he had always managed to get by in Greek, surely things would be the same in Jerusalem.

Treated like an Outsider

But it had not worked out that way. As he dealt with the native Judeans – bartering for a place to stay or for food in the marketplace or even just asking for some directions – when he spoke to them in Greek, he could tell that they could understand him. When he asked for the price of the figs, for example, they looked right at the basket of figs in the booth, but then they stubbornly answered him in the local dialect of Aramaic.

Aramaic was somewhat related to old Hebrew, so he was sometimes able to work out what they were saying, but then, when he tried to answer them in the language that he had heard in the synagogue back home, they laughed at him, calling his accent strange and ill-tutored. They then used this as a ready excuse to overcharge him or deny him the goods he had been looking for.

Understanding the Judeans

You see, the Judeans, who had so long felt like outsiders in the big world of the Roman Empire, tended to make up for that by treating those who came from other places like minorities and outsiders. They refused to speak common Greek to them. They doubled down on the local Aramaic dialect and were only too happy to make fun of the way that the outsiders spoke.

They did this to all of the outsiders who came down to the festival, even those who only came from as close as Galilee. Galileans, in many ways, were the most like the Judeans, especially in their dialect. But the Judeans went out of their way to make fun of their strange northern accent.

So, even though participating in the events of the festival had meant a great deal to him, ever since he had arrived, Shimeon still felt as if he didn’t belong here either. It made him wonder if he really belonged anywhere.

A Sudden Disruption

The greatest day, the climax of the festival, was the day when the people brought their first fruits to present in the temple. It was a chance to give back to God from the very best that God had given to them over the year. And Shimeon was excited as he joined the throng moving through the streets. If he didn’t speak, no one looked twice at him and, for a few moments he could feel as if he was part of something much bigger than himself.

But suddenly, as he passed by a side street, he heard some shouting. It sounded… different. It didn’t have the same cadence and rhythm of the local Aramaic language. It seemed strange and out of place here, and yet the thing that really struck Shimeon about it was a strange familiarity. There was something in it that felt like home to him, as if he were suddenly back on the streets of the city in Parthia where he had grown up and played with the other local boys.

Galileans Behaving Strangely

And so, he turned aside, as did a number of other worshippers in the crowd. They soon came upon a small group of men and women who had gathered outside of a house. It was quite plain that all of them, by their clothing and their mannerisms, were Galileans. But, amazingly, they weren’t speaking like Galileans. To his wonder and amazement, Shimeon noticed that one of them, a young man, was shouting out praises to God in the local language of Parthia – the very language he had grown up speaking on the streets.

As he looked around at him, he saw many other pilgrims has been drawn to the spot. They, like him, had traveled from many places to be here for the festival – Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia. Oh, there were too many to name! And he could see by the looks on their faces and by the tears that they were wiping from their eyes that they were reacting much as he had. They also had felt completely excluded up until this moment, but they all suddenly felt that they belonged.

Judean Backlash

But they were not the only ones who had been attracted by the disturbance. There were also some local people too, some Judeans. And they were moved by what they heard as well, but not in the same way. Many of them were furious. For, in and amongst all of the various languages and accents that had been emanating from the group of Galileans, there were also words spoken in the local Judean dialect.

The Judeans in the crowd felt as if they were being mocked by these crude Galileans. Why, the very idea that their language, the language obviously favoured by God, could be counted merely as one among so many others was unacceptable. And so, they, for their part, began to shout out against these Galileans. “Don’t listen to these country Bumpkins,” they cried. “Here it is. Only nine o’clock in the morning and they are already drunk and raving like lunatics!”

A Galilean Speaks

But then the crowd fell silent as one of the Galileans stepped forward. Everyone wanted to hear what he might have to say about such wonders. “Fellow Judeans, and all who live in Jerusalem,” he said, speaking specifically to those who had been criticizing them. He spoke in very poor Greek, mixed with many Aramaicisms and a heavy Galilean accent. “Let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these people are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.” And so began the very first Christian sermon ever preached.

Something about the Early Church

When the writer of the Book of Acts started writing his account of the beginnings of the Christian movement, he knew a number of things about the earliest church. He knew, for example, that one of the practices of the church from near the beginning (and perhaps it continued into his own day) included believers speaking in strange languages.

It worked like this. Some believers, while they were gathered with the community in worship, would enter into an ecstatic state. This is something that human beings have been doing for a very long time. They get all worked up in a frenzy until they lose all ordinary control of themselves. It is something that still happens to this day in various settings including worship services and raves and even some practices that use psychotropic drugs.

Speaking in Tongues

In this state, the believers would sometimes speak in unintelligible languages. These were not actual languages, but more like ecstatic utterances. In his Letter to the Corinthians, Paul insisted that they could only be understood through a similar act of ecstatic interpretation by another believer.

But the act of speaking in tongues, as it was called, could be very moving and had the effect of deepening the worshipper’s connection to God and the community through the Holy Spirit. As a result, those who engaged in it seem to have sometimes thought that they were somehow better Christians than those who didn’t. The Apostle Paul saw that as a problem.

The Author of Acts Makes it Mean Something Else

The author of the Book of Acts obviously knew about this practice. But when he came to write the story of the origins of the Christian Church, he decided to present it in a different way. He decided, for just this one occasion it seems, to transform this speaking in tongues into something that wasn’t just ecstatic and unintelligible. He had the first Christians on that first day speak in the local languages of people from every corner of the known world.

Why did he do this. I think he was trying to say something – something that was probably more symbolic than it was literal.

A Writer who Knew About Being an Outsider

We don’t actually know who wrote the Book of Acts. Christian tradition says that it was a man named Luke, but we can hardly be sure of that. Whoever he was, though, he was almost certainly a man who spoke Greek as his first language. His Greek is excellent.

So perhaps he had had the experience, as a Greek interested in the God of Israel, of going to a festival in Jerusalem and being treated like an outsider. He knew what it was like to be the outsider who the locals thought talked funny. I wonder if that is why he reimagined the practice of the early church of speaking in tongues as something that could overcome that kind of prejudice and mistreatment.

If that’s what he was doing, he was putting forward something very hopeful. He was drawing a compelling picture of what the church could be – a community where there really was a place for anybody and nobody ever got treated as a second class citizen. That is an idea of the church that I still cling to and aspire to. If we could all aspire to that, I think that God would do some amazing things among us.