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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corey Linforth, our Director of Music, along with our choirs, instrumentalists and guest musicians have been busy preparing for Sunday's Service.  Please join us at 10:00 am.

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

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

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

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

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

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

      For how many days was Jesus tempted in the wilderness?

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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Hespeler, 25 November, 2018 © Scott McAndless

Mark 12:41-13:2, 2 Corinthians 9:6-9, Psalm 24:1-10

s you have already heard, this coming Tuesday is Giving Tuesday – a day to celebrate generosity and a day to consider giving generously and in perhaps unusual ways. So I thought a lot about what I should preach on such a day. What does the Bible have to say about giving and giving in extraordinary and even generous ways ?

      My thoughts were drawn, like so many other preachers before me, to the famous story in the Gospel of Mark. The people are in the temple making their contributions to the temple treasury and Jesus sits down to watch. All of the wealthy people put in enormous amounts of money, but Jesus doesn’t much notice that because they are merely putting in a relatively small portion of their total wealth. But then this widow comes along and she contributes such a small amount, just two copper coins, and at this Jesus sits up and notices. “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury,” he says. “For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

      The message seems clear enough: Jesus notices when we give, especially when we give generously and sacrificially. So let’s all be like that widow when we support the church. Here endeth the sermon.

      But what if I were to tell you that that is not what that story in the gospel is really about. Oh, Jesus was clearly speaking up in favour of that widow; there’s no mistake about that. And Jesus was also clearly in favour of the practice of extreme generosity. He said it often. But that is not quite what this particular story is about. You see, there is one key thing that people miss in the story and that is what Jesus’ mood was.

      Jesus was from Galilee and we just happen to know a fair bit about what the mood towards the temple was in Galilee in his time. The Galileans, you see, were being bled dry in Jesus’ day. There were three main culprits. First, there were the rents and fees that the people had to pay to their landlords and masters. Second were the exorbitant taxes imposed by the Romans and by King Herod. But a close third was definitely the Jerusalem temple complex. Jewish Galileans were taxed mercilessly (and some have suggested even more heavily than the Judeans) to support the temple, the lavish lifestyle of the powerful high priests and the ongoing major building projects that continu­ed throughout the lifetime of Jesus. And this taxing (or tithing) was anything but voluntary.

      So what do you suppose that Jesus’ mood was as he watched the people place their money in the temple treasury – as he watched a poor old widow put in her very last two coins? I’ll tell you what his mood was, he was mad. So you need to understand that Jesus didn’t say (all sweetly), “Aw, look at that. Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.” No, he said, (angrily) “Would you look at that! Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury!”

      How mad was he? Well, there is another thing that we usually miss in this story. This story comes at the very end of a chapter so we tend to stop reading and put our Bibles down as soon as it is over. But here is a secret that I don’t know if anyone has ever told you before: the verse and chapter divisions were never part of the original text. They weren’t added until centuries later. So the Gospel writer never intended you to stop reading there. The story continues from there.

      And what happens next in the story? If you continue into the next chapter, you find Jesus turning around and walking out of the temple. He leaves. This is significant. Jesus is so mad here that he has actually just turned his back on the whole thing. What’s more his disciples all know it because look at how they react. They run after him even as he is leaving and try to stop him. They are worried about his anger. “Look, Teacher,” they say, “what large stones and what large buildings!”

      But what I think we are realizing these days in the church is that that was what the mission of the church always was: to embody the gospel. And we have often gotten confused down through the centuries and thought that it was something else – that it was about building institutions (setting beautiful stones one on top of the other). This gospel story has been given to us today to remind us of that.

      My prayer and my desire for you today is that you participate in Giving Tuesday. I think it is important that you do so, according to your ability and according to how God has blessed you, because we all need it. The annual orgy of materialism has now begun. The people flocked in their thousands to the malls and stores on Black Friday, often fighting with each other to get what they see as the best deals. Tomorrow, on Cyber Monday, that orgy will continue with online purchases. And that is all good for the retailers and the manufacturers. But how good is it for our society? I suggest that, come Tuesday, it is time for something different – something that is truly good for society: a practice of generosity.

      Now, I may hope that you choose to exercise that generosity in the support of this church, but that is not the point of what I’m saying here. Honestly, if God has laid another need on your heart and is directing you to give your generosity in that direction, I rejoice in that and I hope that we can all respond to it by saying, praise the Lord. Of course, I also rejoice if you do give to the church but I also want to say that I don’t want you to give for the reasons we usually offer. I don’t want you to give because we’re behind on our budget. I don’t want you to give because if we don’t get the money to do this or to do that we won’t be able to continue on. I don’t want you to give in order to keep big beautiful stones one on top of the other. All that stuff may be true. We are behind and we always do have needs to fulfil if we are going to keep going, but that is not why I want you to engage in some extra, beyond your regular commitments, giving on this Tuesday or in the weeks to come.

      I want you to do it because there is a wonderful opportunity here. You can be a part of something amazing. It may be one of our best kept secrets, but did you know that God is actually present and doing amazing things among all these people here? Here, on a regular basis, they happen. The hungry are fed and parents who have few resources are given food that they can take home to their children. Here, on a regular basis, people who have no decent or warm clothes, are given something to wear and to take to other members of their families. Here troubled people are counselled and encouraged, sometimes by me and sometimes by Sasha who comes in on Tuesdays and works with the Cambridge and North Dumfries counseling service (which charges according to what people can afford to pay). Here people who are lost or discouraged come to hear a word of hope or wisdom or direction and have their spirit lifted through music or through word. Here, on a regular basis, wonderful and even miraculous things do happen. I have people who can tell you stories.

      And, yes, I understand that we wouldn’t be able to do all of that and more without maintaining a building and other organizational structures and programs. I understand that we can’t do that without money, I’m just saying that I hope your attitude in giving is that you want to be part of what God is doing and that we not be focussed just on maintaining those structures.

      Because you have a remarkable opportunity: you can be part of all that. You can be part of it when you give of your time and talent and your treasure. That’s what Giving Tuesday’s about. It is about being part of something much bigger than yourself – something that God is doing. Don’t give for the sake of stones – whatever those stones may be – give because God is alive and at work. That is what can change the world. 

Thank you to everyone who helped in any way with our most recent Bake Sale.  Special thanks to the Holy Sherlocks class for all of your hard work to make the Bake Sale so successful.

(thank you from your Christian Education Committee)