News Blog

I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God.

Posted by on Wednesday, November 7th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 4 November, 2018 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Luke 1:8-20, Daniel 9:20-23, Psalm 91:1-16
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echariah was a priest – not an important one, not one of those wealthy priests who lived in the big houses in the prosperous Upper City. They had money and political connections and were famously corrupt. They were in so deep with the enemy – with the Romans – that the people had nothing but scorn for them anymore. But big important priests like that; they wouldn’t have had anything to do with Zechariah or his wife Elizabeth.
      Zechariah was just a low-level priest who would never be rich or powerful but he took his position seriously. It was his job, when his turn came around, to stand in the temple, to stand in a place where he was uniquely in the presence of God, and to carry all of the hopes and the dreams and the burdens of the people to the very throne of God. That is an awesome responsibility especially in times of great trouble, and Zechariah certainly lived in times of great trouble.
      We are told that one day when Zechariah was in the temple and making an offering of incense – a burning of sweet smoke that went straight up into heaven as an image of the prayers of all the people rising up to the very presence of God – that “the whole assembly of the people was praying outside.” Can you imagine that? This is just a low-level nobody priest offering a bit of incense and yet for this everyone seems to be there. The people have gathered, I suspect, because they know that Zechariah is a man of integrity and honour unlike most of the priestly leadership in the city. And so the people seem to have recognized that this is a unique opportunity to have the concerns that weigh on their hearts lifted up to God through this man that they can trust.
      What were they praying for? I can only imagine that they were praying for religious and spiritual renewal, for political change that would allow the people some breathing room in their own land. I’m sure they were praying for hope in a time when there seemed to be a lot of hopelessness.
      Now all of that – all of the hopes and expectations of a people – was a lot for one man like Zechariah to bear. But that was only the half of it. As is often the case with those that God calls upon to minister to his people, Zechariah was dealing with his own issues. He carried his own personal sorrow that, even after years of trying, he and his wife Elizabeth had been unable to have a child. This was a personal sorrow that no words could express and that was made even worse by the insensitive comments of people who just didn’t understand.
      Now, of course, Zechariah did not go into the temple with the intention of praying about that personal crisis. That was not what he was called to do in his position. But that sorrow was so much a part of him that there was no way he could leave it outside of the room when he offered up his prayers.
      That is the situation that we find ourselves in at the beginning of our reading this morning from the Gospel of Luke. And into that extraordinary situation comes an extraordinary presence. He appears right beside the altar of incense with these words, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.”
      Now, I will leave it to you to figure out why my mind first turned to a passage of scripture in which Gabriel appears in the Gospel of Luke on a day when we have the privilege of baptizing an infant by the name of Gabriel Lucas. But, having made that connection, I must say that I find the situation that is set up in this passage a rather compelling one for our time.
      My friends, we are living in a time when “the whole assembly of the people is praying outside the sanctuary.” We are living in a time when people are losing confidence in the religious institutions of our society, and not without some good reason. Just like in the days of Zechariah, we have seen religious leadership that has not inspired a great deal of confidence. The scandals are too many to mention. The Roman Catholic Church seems to be practically drowning in the sexual abuse scandals lately. Evangelical leaders have also seemed to be ready to sell their souls for political gain. (Take the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network who recently said that an arms deal is more important than the death of a journalist. Can you imagine that: a Christian teacher saying but the death of one man matters less than thirty pieces of silver? That goes against the very foundation of our faith!)
      Those are just a couple of examples, but the overall trend regarding the attitude towards religion is quite clear in our time. Yet, remarkably, even while people are turning their backs on religious institutions, interest in spiritual matters is only growing, as is belief in God and in the afterlife. People, in other words, are still praying in their own way, but they are praying outside the sanctuary because they are unsure whether they can trust those who are inside the sanctuary. It is at times such as this, that what we need most are people of integrity like Zechariah and Elizabeth to come forward to offer the incense of prayer and service before the Lord. It is when we need people like their son, John, who will be known as John the Baptist.
      Who are those people that God will use? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that some of them are here today. Perhaps God will use Gabriel’s parents. I do know, for one thing, that God has put a calling on his father’s life. I don’t think that he has quite figured out how and in what kind of ministry, but there is a lot of evidence that God has something for Matt to do in the church. But it is not just those who are specifically called to the ministry of the church that God needs to use at such times. All of us must ask the question: Does God have something for me to do in the work of renewal in these times of great change?
      But there is something that seems to happen as soon as someone asks that question. Everyone agrees that something needs to be done. Everyone agrees that the system is not working and that we need some real change, but they also immediately begin to think of all the reasons why they cannot be the one to bring about that change. Why? Because they’ve got their own problems – they’ve got their own stuff that they’re dealing with. Everybody can say that because everybody does. And that is an excellent explanation for why the real change that is needed often never materializes: people are just too busy dealing with their own problems.
      But here is what I see going on in our passage from the Gospel of Luke: Zechariah could have said that too. Zechariah was dealing with a terrible personal tragedy and he could very well have said, “Because I am busy carrying this terrible weight of my and my wife’s infertility, there is absolutely no way that I could possibly carry all of the hopes of the people before God. But Zechariah didn’t say that. Zechariah took all of his personal pain with him and he went and he offered up the incense before God on behalf of all the people.
      And here is the really beautiful part: Zechariah didn’t go into that temple to pray to God for his own personal pain. Though he could never hide the pain that he bore in his heart, he did not say a word about infertility as he offered the incense. He took the prayers of all the people and not his own need. But where does God meet Zechariah? Right in his personal pain. “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard,” Gabriel says. “Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.” God ministers to the minister in need.
      But here is where we discover how amazing our God is. Yes, God ministers to Zechariah in his need. Yes God answers the prayer of his heart, but in the answer to Zechariah’s prayer, we also see the seed of the answer to the prayers of the people. “You will have joy and gladness,” Gabriel begins, confirming that this is absolutely a gift for Zechariah and Elizabeth. But the blessings do not end there: “and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord... He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
      I find an incredible comfort in this part of the story. If you have ever felt that you cannot be part of what it is that God is doing in this world because you have your own problems that you are dealing with, remember the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Remember that you have a God who would love to minister to you in order that the whole world might be blessed.
      I have been blessed to know a little bit of the story and the journey of Gabriel’s parents and what brought them to this point in their life. I won’t go into it here, but I know that they have had their struggles as many of us do. And God has ministered to them in those struggles. God has brought them through all of that and then brought them together to be a blessing to each other and has now given them this extraordinary blessing in their beautiful son.
      That is their blessing and their gift from God and we wish them so much joy in it. But looking at the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, I cannot help but think that God has a plan to multiply those blessings from there. I am no Angel Gabriel; I do not stand in the presence of God and so I don’t know exactly how those blessings may come. I do suspect that God might do with them as he often does and that the very things that they have struggled with may become the seeds of their ministry. I cannot forget the calling that Matt has testified that God has put on his life and I cannot stop thinking that the very things that he has struggled with in his life may give him a unique ministry in the lives of others who struggle with similar things. I don’t know the particulars but I do know that God has an uncanny ability to find a way to make that kind of thing happen.
      We live in interesting times – times when “the whole assembly of the people” is praying outside the sanctuary. The hunger and the thirst for new life and new hope – the hope that can be found in the gospel – is there in the people, but they are also not inclined to trust the institutions of religion to help them find that hope. That might seem discouraging, but it is not. Yes, if we just continue on in the churches with business as usual and we resist all change, chances are that the whole assembly of the people will remain praying outside.

      But I don’t think God will allow that, God will call people from among us – maybe you, maybe Matt, maybe me – and God will use those people to enable us to take some bold steps. It will come. It may have already started, after all hasn’t Gabriel come to us today from standing in the presence of God. So offer up the incense of your prayers. God is alive and God ministers to all who struggle among us. In God’s ministry to each of us are the true seeds of the renewal we need.
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Better call Rob they won’t last long

Posted by on Thursday, November 1st, 2018 in Clerk of Session

                              
Yep they're back - Sweet & Meat pies and soups you can't resist.     

The fourth year of our pay down the debt fundraiser for St. Andrews Hespeler.  100% of the profits go to sustain our Church. We host ministries that enrich the Hespeler Village. Home of the Satellite Self-Help Food Bank, Hope Clothing and our oldest outreach the Thursday Night Supper and Social. Thank you for your support. Order sheets available NOW.

Place your order before November 18th 



double click to enlarge
                          email, [email protected] 
                          call   519-658-5237      
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Bake Sale!

Posted by on Tuesday, October 30th, 2018 in News

Please join the Sunday School children and the Christian Education Committee for this Bake Sale.

This will be a chance for you to "do some Christmas baking!" :)



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So you are no longer a slave but a child

Posted by on Monday, October 29th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 28 October, 2018 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Galatians 3:23-4:7, Psalm 78:1-8, Mark 9:33-37
O
ne day, when his disciples were being kind of awful with each other – when they were arguing and fighting with each other because this one thought that he knew exactly how things ought to be done and was frustrated that no one else would listen to him and that one thought that the other guy over there wasn’t giving him the respect he deserved and then there was this other one who totally hated all of the songs that the other guys would sing when they walked down the road – anyways I don’t really want to get into it but they were being kind of typical for them honestly and so Jesus decided to do something that would help them to see what was really important about what it was that they were doing together.
      So this is what Jesus did. He said to the disciples, hang on for a minute guys because I need to show you something. And he went over to a place by the side of the road where there were some women sitting and talking together and they were holding their babies. And Jesus said to one of them, “Please, ma’am, could I borrow your beautiful child for but a moment? In fact, if you would share her with me it would really help me to set these disciples of mine straight.”
      The mother looked at Jesus for a moment and decided that he looked trustworthy enough and she let him take the child gently into his arms. And then Jesus carried that child back to the circle of disciples and sat down in their midst with the child upon his knees and said to them, “Guys, do you see this here? This is what it is all about.”
      And I kind of feel that that is what Jesus has done for us today. Jesus spoke to Mark and to Dina and he said to them, “Say, would you bring your two beautiful children, Jackson and Amelia, and would you share them with my church in Hespeler for about an hour today? And, praise God, Mark and Dina said yes.
      I know that they think that they brought their children here in order that they might be baptized today. And indeed they did. But I have no question that Jesus also had an ulterior motive and making sure they can come here today. Jesus wanted to make sure they came here so that they might teach the gospel, the good news, to us.
      So, if Jesus has gone to all that trouble to communicate with us today, I think that we ought to listen. But we are kind of in the position that those disciples were in on that day when Jesus plunked a child down in their midst. They probably looked at each other and shrugged and said, “I don’t think I get it.” And the message may not be so obvious to us either. So let me suggest we turn to the Apostle Paul, that explainer of all things, because he may be able to help us.
      In our reading this morning from his letter to the Galatians, Paul is speaking to a church that is struggling with the same kind of problems that the disciples were having on that walk with Jesus. They were trying to figure out who should be in charge of the church and how things should be done. They were arguing over whose concerns were more important and whose were less. And Paul, in this letter, does the same thing for them that Jesus did for the disciples; he invites them to consider some children.
      The thing is, though, that most of what Paul says is expressed in terms of the normal child-rearing practices of that time and we can’t quite relate to those things. For example, in Paul’s time, children were often raised by a slave who was called a disciplinarian and who was given the authority to actually beat the children, so Paul talks about how children had to deal with that figure in their lives. There were also some pretty strict regulations about inheritance and Paul makes reference to those. But, as I say, those things don’t really have much to do with our experience so I don’t want to get into explaining them.
      Nevertheless, the overall point that Paul is making is really important and helpful to us so I wanted to try and find a different way to approach it. So, rather than talking about what ancient children had to live through, let me do what Jesus did and invite you to consider the child or children in front of you. Let’s consider what Jackson and Amelia can teach us about the good news of Jesus Christ.
      Jackson and Amelia are very young and yet they are Canadian citizens. They are free citizens of a democratic society with all of the rights and privileges that come with such citizenship. We have also welcomed them today into the Church of Jesus Christ through the sacrament of baptism and they have full rights and responsibilities within the church should they choose to exercise them. Nevertheless, over the next few years, how much freedom will Jackson and Amelia practically enjoy? Not a lot. I am pretty sure that there are going to be rules, lots of rules, that they have to live by. There will be rules like, “Hold my hand when you cross the street,” “Brush your teeth before you go to bed,” and, “Never, never, never touch a hot stove.”
      Why will those rules be there? They will be there because their parents love them and don’t want bad things happen to them – things like tooth decay and burnt fingers.” Those rules will come out of love, but will the children always hear them that way? If they are like most children, probably not. Most children don’t really like rules, probably because they often feel arbitrary and they don’t understand that they are coming from love. But the idea is that, as these children grow up, they will begin to look beyond the rules and understand the love behind them and internalize the reasons for the rules in productive ways.
      Of course, it doesn’t always quite work out like that. Sometimes children never understand the purpose behind the rules and instead just slavishly continue to follow them without understanding. Let me give you an example I heard about recently. One thing that sociologists have been noticing about young people coming of age in recent years in our society is that many of them seem to have an irrational fear of handling raw meat. They almost can’t touch it. This is something that can certainly get in the way of mature adults learning to cook for themselves! As a result, researchers are actually working on developing packaging for meat that eliminates the need to actually touch the meat to cook it. But where did this irrational fear come from?
      It comes from the rules were given to them as young children. It is a good rule to not allow small children to handle raw meat because the danger that they will get bacteria in their mouths or noses is too great. It is a good rule for a small child not to handle raw meat, but as that child grows older that rule is supposed to pass away as they learn to understand what the actual dangers of raw meat are and how to safely deal with those dangers. That learning sets them free from the old rules to explore their freedom by cooking many different things. But if the child doesn’t grow beyond the simple rule-based understanding, they will never know that freedom and that is what seems to be happening.
      And, as it is with that one particular rule, so it is with many of the rules that we grew up with. The point behind them is not simple obedience. The point is to understand their purpose in the love that is behind them. This is something that the Apostle Paul clearly understood when he said, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:10) This is something that these children will have to learn as they mature to adulthood or they will never know the true freedom that they were born to inherit. They will simply be slaves to obedience.
      Another thing that sometimes happens with children as they grow older is that they may become confused about why their parents love them. Now, I have absolutely no doubt that Jackson and Amelia’s parents love them because they love them. They don’t love them based on how well they follow the various rules of the household. But sometimes that message gets confused and children start to think that they can only earn their parents’ love and approval by obedience and by living up to their parents’ expectations.
      This also is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the rules. And, unfortunately, many adults carry that misunderstanding with them all through their lives. They continue to think that they must earn love, approval and meaning by how well they live up to the expectations of others. They often especially assume this in their relationship with God. This error also leads to unnecessary and often debilitating guilt when we feel like we don’t measure up.
      Does that teach us something about our Christian lives? Absolutely! The Bible is just full of laws, rules and commandments. This is true both of the Old Testament and New. These are all expectations that are placed upon us. And it is quite possible, indeed, I would say very common, for Christians to become fixed upon those expectations and to think that it is by living up to them that will become acceptable to God. But that is the understanding of a child – a child who may not know where those expectations come from. Like with Jackson and Amelia’s parents, those expectations come out of love – out of God’s love for us and God’s desire to protect us from what is bad for us. When we fail to understand that, all we are left with is obedience. We think that we can please God by being good enough and we never succeed.
      That’s why Jesus came, by the way. Jesus came to show us what was really behind all that God had done and said – that God only acted out of love and only sought love in return from us. Jesus gave us such a powerful demonstration of the length and the heights and the depths of God’s love that he was willing to give his own life that we might know what God’s love actually looked like. The gospel teaches us that our relationship with God is based on love, not rules. Reflecting on these children reminds us of that truth.
      So there clearly is something that Jackson and Amelia can teach us about our Christian lives today. But I don’t think we’re quite done yet. Jesus specifically brought that child among the disciples to speak to them about how they were struggling with each other about who was the greatest – about who should get their way and who mattered most. How can these children help us to get past those kinds of concerns that, honestly, still plague the church to this very day? Well, our prayer for these children today is that they grow up to be strong individuals who know who they are and therefore don’t need to put other people down in order to feel good about themselves. That is who we are all called to be, in Christ.
      But they will grow up in a world that doesn’t operate that way – a world where people often feel superior to others because of differences like race or gender or status. That is because people have misunderstood the reason behind the rules. They know they are not good enough in themselves and they therefore think that the only way they can be acceptable is by putting down other people. At the very extreme end of that, we have people walking into places like synagogues and opening fire. We don’t go to such extremes in the church, but we do sometimes have a bad habit of putting people down over differences, just like the disciples did it when they were walking with Jesus.
      These children teach us that we don’t need to do that – that because we are in Christ, we don’t need to earn our acceptance by seeming better than others. That is why Paul can write to the church, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Old distinctions like race or gender or status, they don’t matter anymore. No one has to be any greater than anyone else to be acceptable to God and so the need to put one another down has disappeared. This also Jackson and Amelia can teach us, it is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name they have been baptized today. 
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163rd Anniversary Celebration at St. Andrew’s

Posted by on Thursday, October 18th, 2018 in News

 This coming Sunday, October 21, 2018, St. Andrew's Hespeler will celebrate our 163rd anniversary as a congregation. We will mark this anniversary, as we always do, by celebrating our heritage, but this year we will try to look at that heritage in some new ways and take a look at our connection with the people who inhabited the land before us. We will pray for healing and reconciliation for both indigenous and non-indigenous people in Canada.

We will have some very special guests that will help us to celebrate as we learn and grow. We are very pleased to welcome:

Theresa McGregor: Drum and Song carrier, Moon Bundle, Earth and Water Protector and Traditional Women’s Dancer

Mino Ode Kwewak N’gamowak (Good Hearted Women Singers) will sing and dance with Theresa.

Sasha Sky & Shannon Pride of the White Owl Native Ancestry Association who work to bring healing to aboriginal people and others.

After worship at 10 am, the celebration will continue downstairs in the Fellowship Hall.

A Potluck Lunch will follow at 11:30. Please plan to bring a dish to share. All are welcome.

The Blanket Exercise which will follow the lunch at noon. The Blanket Exercise is a moving experience that has helped many people understand how aboriginal people have experienced our common history. It will be led by Sasha Sky and Shannon Pride


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Administrative volunteer positions available

Posted by on Tuesday, October 16th, 2018 in Clerk of Session



Effective October 19, 2018 Jan Bancarz will resign as Administrative Assistant.

The Session of St. Andrews has instructed the Human Resources committee to find a suitable replacement. This will take some time to accomplish.

Session has implemented a temporary volunteer schedule to have support in the office and complete administrative tasks in the interim.This volunteer schedule will run from October 22 until December 31, 2018 or an Administrative Assistant is found.

Your help in filling the schedule will ensure we have people to respond to visitors and maintain our open-door policy.  On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 3-hour shifts are available for volunteering. Taking a day or a few days will allow us to keep the office open to the public. 

 THANK YOU

Please contact Rob Hodgson or  Rev. Scott McAndless for volunteering or more information on this program.

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When “Fanboys” Change their Minds

Posted by on Monday, October 15th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 14 October, 2018 © Scott McAndless
John 20:19-29, Acts 20:7-12, Psalm 16:1-11
I
f there is one thing you need to know about Simon, it is this. He loves Apple. I’m not talking about the fruit here; I’m talking about the company. Simon doesn’t just like Apple products, Simon doesn’t just exclusively use Apple products. Apple products give meaning to his entire life.
      I mean, you probably know some people who always have the latest and greatest model of the iPhone®, who you never see without the ends of Apple Earpods® hanging out of their ears, who do all of their work on a Macbook Pro®, read and create with an iPad® and an Apple Pencil®, but I’m not just talking about that. For Simon that is only the beginning. He does that almost without having to think about it.
      No, Simon goes out of his way to make sure that every part of his life bears the Apple logo on it. His entire home is run by his HomePod®. Any appliance that is not able to connect to it is not the kind of appliance that Simon wants to have. Any television show that is not available on AppleTV® is a show that Simon doesn’t need to watch. Simon doesn’t have a life, he has iLife® and that is good enough for him. That’s Simon. If you know that about Simon, you will know everything there is to know. You will know how he will react in every situation because he will do whatever Siri® tells him to do. He once drove into a ditch because Apple Maps® told him to.
      Do you know a Simon? I have known a few. And if you don’t know someone who is that big of a fan of Apple products, maybe you know a fan of some other brand: Honda, Nike or maybe Tim Hortons. So, if you don’t know Simon, just imagine for a moment that you do. Can you see him there – wearing his Apple Watch®, Think Different® t-shirt, sporting a tattoo of an apple with one bite out of it? You know the type.
      So let’s say you know a Simon. You know that Apple is the organizing principle of his life until one day it isn’t. Yes, one day Simon comes along holding an Android phone and tells you that he is now Android all the way. What would you think? Wouldn’t you assume that something serious – maybe even earth shattering – had happened in Simon’s life to make such a radical change? You might not know what, of course. Maybe he had his iPhone® explode in his hand or maybe he had an Android phone literally save his life. You might not know what, but you would know with certainty that something undeniable had happened.
      Okay, now consider this. You have eleven guys – just them and a few of their friends – that you have always known one thing about. Most of the time they are pretty normal people. They work, they play, they eat with a few strange habits but they are just regular folks. But there is this one odd thing about them. One day a week they treat completely different­ly.
      I’m not just saying that they take that day off (which is in itself a pretty extraordinary thing in our 24 hour seven days a week world). It’s that that day is completely different for them. They won’t do anything. If the fire goes out in their house, they won’t even relight it. They get on an elevator that day, and they won’t even press the button to say which floor they want to get off on. They are just freakishly strange about this day, so much so that the way that they keep that day gives meaning and definition to their entire week. You might even say that the way they keep that day gives definition and meaning to their entire life. That is how significant it is to them. That day of the week, by the way, is Saturday.
      And then, one day, you run into them and everything has changed. All of a sudden, they don’t care about Saturday at all. It is just another day for them. All of a sudden it’s all about Sunday. Sunday is the day that means the world to them and that gives meaning to their entire week and their entire lives. You’ve got to figure that something very important and undeniable happened to them on a Sunday.
      That is the quandary we have when we look at the early Christian movement. The early Christian Church, in the years following the death of Jesus, was entirely made up of Jews. And, as Jews, these were people for whom the keeping of the seventh day of the week, Saturday, meant everything. It wasn’t just a day off for them, it was, as I have portrayed, an observance that gave meaning to their entire existence. And yet the evidence clearly indicates that, all of a sudden, all of these Jews just stopped observing the Sabbath. Saturday suddenly meant almost nothing to them. And instead, it was suddenly all about an entirely different day of the week; it was all about Sunday.
      People don’t do that, don’t make that kind of radical change, without a very good reason. You have to assume that something happened to them, something very powerful, that made them look at the entire week and at their entire lives in a very different way.
      So, the obvious question when you look at the early church is this, what happened? The short answer to that question, as explained in our reading from the Catechism this morning, is the resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. That is the one thing that changed everything for the church. In fact, I happen to believe that perhaps the greatest evidence we can present for the reality of the resurrection of Jesus is that that is about the only way we can possibly explain why a bunch of Jews would make such a drastic change in their lives. Only something as extraordinary as a resurrection could have convinced them to do that.
      But I know how we usually think of that. We think of the resurrection as a one-time event. It only happened on one Sunday, Easter Sunday. But I am not sure that the early Christians experienced it exactly like that.
      This morning we read the accounts of three Sundays in the life of the early church. The first Sunday that we read about, in the Gospel of John, was, of course, a story of Easter Sunday. “When it was evening on that day (that is, Easter day), the first day of the week (that is, Sunday), and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews...” So what we have in this passage is the church, in the form of the disciples gathered together, on a Sunday. And when the church is gathered in this way, they have an experience of the Risen Christ. “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”
      I realize that you’re going to tell me that there is nothing very extraordinary about that. It’s Easter! Of course the disciples had an experience of the Risen Christ; that’s what Easter is about. But stay with me a moment here because I don’t think the gospel writer is quite done in his explanation of what the church really experienced, because what is the very next thing that he says?
      “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.”[1] so we jump immediately to the next Sunday, the next meeting of the church, as if nothing significant has happened in the meantime. And, indeed, I think that John is saying that nothing has happened. I think it’s important for John to say that the church next experienced the risen Jesus when they gathered again on a Sunday.
      There are other stories of the church meeting with Jesus after his death that happened on Sundays. There’s one at the end of the Gospel of Luke where two disciples are walking along on a Sunday and are joined by a third who explains the scriptures to them and then all three sit down to share a meal and, when the stranger breaks the bread, the others suddenly recognize that the risen Jesus is among them. That also is a description of the early church meeting on a Sunday where two or three are gathered, the scriptures are preached and bread is broken. That gospel writer, Luke, is also saying that this was the regular Sunday experience of the early church.
      We read one more story how about the church gathering on Sunday this morning. This one happens many years later as told in the book of Acts, but everything in this story sounds very familiar. It’s Sunday, the church comes together to break bread, and there’s even a preacher there to preach a sermon. In fact, in a way that no doubt resonates with many Christians down through the centuries, there is a preacher who has a tendency to preach a little bit long. I mean, I’m sure that nobody in the entire history of this church has ever thought the sermon was too long so maybe you can’t relate to that, but I have heard that many Christians do think that sometimes. So we have it all, a Sunday gathering, breaking bread or communion, and a really, really long sermon. It is a stereotypical Sunday church meeting that Christians from down through the ages would recognize.
      But there is one truly extraordinary element in this Sunday meeting as told in the Book of Acts. It happens when Eutychus falls asleep while Paul drones on and on. He plunges from the third-story window apparently to his death. What is important about that story? Is it just another great miracle story among many miracle stories in the book of Acts? No, I think there’s something special about this one because it happens when the church is gathered on Sunday.
      The writer tells his story very carefully at this point. He doesn’t say that Eutychus is actually dead, merely that everyone thinks that he’s dead. And when Paul comes along he doesn’t explicitly say that Paul raises the dead boy to life. It could be that Paul is saying that the others are merely mistaken in thinking that the boy is dead. The author avoids saying in so many words that it is a resurrection miracle, but he certainly gets across the point that the church experienced it as a miracle. The emphasis is certainly on their experience and feelings in the last phrase, “Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive and were not a little comforted.”
      I think that this is the author’s way of saying that, even many years after the first Easter, the church was still experiencing the power and reality of the resurrection of Jesus when they gathered on Sundays – in this case, of course, experiencing it very practically in the salvation of Eutychus.
      I’m not saying that it happened so dramatically every week, of course, but I would say that the New Testament writers are in agreement that the experience of the risen Christ was not just limited to one Sunday or just to a short period of time. It was something that kept on happening over and over again each Sunday as the church continued to meet, to pray, to listen to scriptures and break bread, they discovered the risen Jesus among them in many ways.
      It didn’t only happen on Sundays, of course. I have no doubt that there were some pretty amazing experiences that happened on other days of the week. But it was on Sundays, when they gathered, that it happened most consistently and reliably for the early church. And that is the only thing that can really explain how a bunch of Saturday fanboys were willing to change everything that they had ever been and had ever told them who they were to suddenly start treating Sunday like it was the only day that truly mattered.
      But here’s is the thing: it doesn’t just need to be them. Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified by Pilate so long ago, is nevertheless still just as alive today as he was for the early church. If they consistently experienced the power of his resurrection week after week when they gathered, then why wouldn’t we? The bottom line is that there is no reason why we shouldn’t. Indeed, I know that it still happens sometimes. I have experienced it myself and I have heard of the experiences of many others. Such experiences are a gift of God, come in many forms, and they are received (like all of God’s gifts) by faith. There is no reason why you should not be able to have such an experience of the risen Jesus.
      In fact, I would suggest that the main reason why it doesn’t happen more is because we have largely convinced ourselves not to expect it. In our stubbornness, we have closed ourselves off from the experience by the ways in which we are always rationalizing everything, focusing on the negative and trying to keep control of everything. But just think if you, like those early Christians, were to approach each Sunday with an overwhelming expectation – if you were to walk into church each week not knowing where you would find the risen Jesus (perhaps in a reading or in a word that was shared, perhaps in a beautiful piece of music, in the face of your neighbour, perhaps even in a piece of bread and a cup of wine), but knowing that he would be there for you. Maybe you would also learn the true meaning of Sunday.
     


[1] Some translations here have “Eight days later.” It is true that that is what the original Greek text says, but, in the context, the first Sunday seems to be counted as the first day, eight days later would mean the next Sunday. I believe this translation is correct.


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