Palming off the palms

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, April 14th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 14 April 2019 © Scott McAndless – Palm Sunday

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Luke 19:28-40, Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11

oday is Palm Sunday – the day when the church celebrates the triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem. Every Christian knows that. Every year we read the story of that day. If you follow the lectionary (as we are doing this year) one year you read the account in the Gospel of Matthew, the next year in Mark and the next year in Luke. So I was very eager this year to turn to Luke’s account of the story of that day. What new insight would I find into the palms and that meaningful entry? So I read the passage… and I honestly could not believe what I saw.

I read it through once and I just thought that I missed them, so I read it again. Nope, still weren’t there. What is missing in Luke’s story? There are no palms and no triumphal entry in the Gospel of Luke. I went and looked it up on Wikipedia and Wikipedia assured me that, yes, that they were there, but I couldn’t find them. I thought it might be a translation error. I actually went and got out my Greek text of the New Testament and looked in there. But there are no palms in the original Greek text and not in any English translation that I could find. The Gospel of Luke’s story of the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday contains neither palms nor entry.

Are you shocked? I was. I’ll bet you didn’t even notice when we read it. I’ve been reading and preaching on this passage for years and I never noticed it before. Luke states that the disciples lay their garments on the ground as Jesus went past, but there is not a single word about waving greenery either in people’s hands or on the ground. What’s more, while Luke does describe Jesus’ approach to the city from the Mount of Olives, his account of the event ends while Jesus is still outside the walls.

So what am I saying here? That we should gather up all of the palms that the kids were waving around this morning and throw them away? Am I suggesting that we did something wrong this morning by re-enacting it as we did? No, not at all. The mere fact that Luke doesn’t mention palm leaves doesn’t mean that there weren’t any there. And just because Luke cuts off the account before Jesus arrives in the city doesn’t mean that he didn’t make a triumphal entry. Of course he did. In fact, there is evidence that Luke knew that palms were part of the story, they were in his source material. But that leaves us with another question, doesn’t it? If Luke knew that people had them there, why didn’t he mention them?

Well, consider this: what if Luke knew what he was doing? Have you ever wondered about why the palms were there in the first place? Why is it that a crowd of people who were excited about the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem just spontaneously all went and broke down branches and started waving them around and throwing them on the road? I have seen a lot of people in crowds or spontaneous demonstrations. I have seen people do a lot of things in those situations and use a lot of props, but I have never seen anybody cutting down branches to use as a part of a demonstration. So, if the people were doing that particular thing on that particular occasion, they must have had a reason. The palms must have meant something to them. And indeed they did!

I’m going to have to give you just a little bit of history here to explain. As you know, in Jesus’ time Judea and Galilee were under Roman control. But before the Romans had come along and conquered the region, Judea had actually been an independent kingdom that was ruled over by a Jewish dynasty known as the Hasmoneans. When the Romans took over they ended the Hasmonean dynasty and put their own puppet king in charge of the region, a guy that you might have heard of named King Herod the Great. Later some parts of the region, such as Galilee, passed on to King Herod’s sons while Rome took on direct rule of other parts, such as Judea.

Okay, what does that have to do with people waving around palm branches on Palm Sunday? Everything. What if I were to tell you that palm branches where a symbol of the Hasmonean dynasty? That’s right, thousands of ancient Hasmonean coins have been found marked with the symbol of crossed palm branches. Now, do you think that it was just a coincidence that the people cut down palm branches on that day?

And think about what all of this would have looked like, especially to the Romans. It is only days before the great feast of Passover, the day when the people of Israel celebrate the time when their God freed them from being slaves to a great empire and a large procession of people approach the city of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives where everyone could see them waving the symbols of the very kings that the Romans displaced when they took over and hailing somebody in their midst, somebody riding on the back of a donkey, as a king.

I’ll tell you what it looked like. It looked like sedition. It looked like open revolt. Is it any wonder that, within a matter of days, the guy who had been riding on that donkey had been arrested and nailed to a cross?

The people waving palm branches was roughly the equivalent of people today wearing orange to an NDP or blue to a Conservative or red to a Liberal rally, except, of course, that those parties are all legal in Canada. The Hasmonean party, if you can call it that, was not legal.

So, having learned all of that, the mystery of Luke’s story of a palm-free Palm Sunday is an even bigger mystery to me. Why did Luke leave out the palms when all of the other gospel writers mention them? I’m convinced it must have been a deliberate decision. Is it possible that Luke was concerned about the idea that Jesus and the people with him might have indeed been making a political statement that day?

I think I know exactly how Luke felt. I too am feeling pretty cautious about political statements these days. Can I be candid here? I’m a bit worried about what the political environment in this country might look like over the coming months. We are heading towards a federal election as you know, and I fear that it will be one of the most divisive we have seen in recent times. The problem, in my mind, is not the parties or their policies (though I won’t say I don’t personally have some concerns about both); the problem is the context that we find ourselves in. We are living in a time when fewer and fewer Canadians get their news and information from reliable sources – a world where a totally made up meme posted on Facebook or Twitter is read by many more people than a well-sourced and researched article in a reputable newspaper.

I am worried that we are living in a country where increasing numbers of people are so entrenched into their positions that they immediately dismiss as fake anything that doesn’t fit the narrative that they have already bought into. Please understand, I am not saying that it is only one party or one group that is doing this. I am seeing it happen on all sides and I have even caught myself doing it as well. I worry about where that will lead us. I’m not scared that the result will be this brand of government or that one. I’m worried that the road to that end will bring to light all kinds of hatred, racism and destructive rhetoric. I fear that we will all be brought lower as a result.

Now maybe I am wrong and it won’t be like that. I hope I am. But it has certainly made me think a lot about how we as the church participate in the political discussion. I do not believe it is the place of the church in a democratic country to be political partisans. You will never hear me endorse a particular party or candidate in the church, though I will always vote as a citizen. Nor do I expect that we should all agree in the church on how to vote; it is a healthy sign that we don’t.

But, when Jesus went to Jerusalem and the people responded to his coming by grabbing onto a symbol of a certain political idea – palm branches – did Jesus rebuke them? No, but clearly not because Jesus endorsed that particular political idea. He let them do it because he knew that they had deep aspirations and needs, they were grasping for some way to express those things and they gravitated towards the palm as a symbol. It was an imperfect expression of their real hopes. In many ways, the palm leaves are like the political symbols, memes and fake news stories that people cling to today. I don’t think that we should blame people for being attached to such things, but at the same time, I think we should recognize that the issue is not the palm branches. The issue is the deeper drive that makes people grab onto those palm branches and wave them around.

So, in some ways, I think Luke had it right. He was right to leave the palms out of Palm Sunday because the political partisanship of the moment was not actually what mattered. What mattered was what was going on in the people’s wounded hearts. That’s what Jesus was responding to. And Jesus recognized that there was no denying that. That whole incident at the end of this morning’s reading when the Pharisees come up to Jesus and tell him that he needs to shut down this dangerous political demonstration (and that is what it was), and Jesus responds by saying, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out” – basically saying that there is no way to shut this down because you can’t silence the aspirations of the people – that is found only in the Gospel of Luke. And it represents a very important insight. Clearly, Jesus is not interested in getting caught up in the dispute between the Roman Empire and the partisans of an old Jewish dynasty, but he is there for the people and he’s not going to shut them down. He’s going to meet them where they are.

And I think there is a model in that for the church in our present and somewhat difficult times. Yes, it is not the place of the church to get in the middle of partisan fights. But people are struggling. There are issues, often called hot button political issues, that are deeply affecting people’s lives – issues like poverty, immigration, racism, sexism and general inequality. The church doesn’t call these political issues; we call them justice issues, but to the outside world they often look like the same thing. And we can try to ignore those issues, but Jesus warns us that if we do try and shut those discussions down, we will fail. We try to ignore what the people are calling for and the stones will cry out in their place.

The church needs to speak out, to cry out for what is just and right. In a world where truth has become little more than whatever people have already decided to believe no matter what the evidence is, we need to put it all on the line for certain truths. In a world where it has become easy to demonize and scapegoat anyone who disagrees with you – to call them the enemy of the people – we need to be a community where reconciliation is possible, where we pray for our enemies and love them. In a world where people are constantly told to look out only for what is in it for them, we need to be a place where the first must be last and the servant of all.

Indeed, many of the things that most disturb me about our present political climate have their antidote in the church – or at least in the church as it is meant to be. I think we can lay down our palms – our partisan symbols – when we enter into the church community, but we have much that we could bring to the political discourse if we dare to speak up. It is our role and it greatly needed in the world today. I hope that the church steps up to that role in the days to come.

Thank you Gay Lea Foundation!

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, April 12th, 2019 in News

Apr 12, 2019

Gay Lea Foundation announces five new charitable grants

This January, the Gay Lea Foundation announced it had approved more than $250,000 in grants at its first meeting of the 2019 fiscal year (October 1 – September 30), with funds being channeled to 15 registered Canadian charities working in Ontario, Alberta, Haiti, Malawi and Tanzania.

Today, the Foundation follows up on that announcement with news of five more Canadian charities set to receive grants in 2019, raising the total value of funds distributed by the Foundation since its creation in 2014 to more than $957,000.

“At times, the number of applications we receive can seem overwhelming,” says Foundation Chair, Rachel Caldara, who is also the Manager of Compensation, Benefits and Human Resources at Gay Lea Foods. “There are so many stories of people in need, and the number of applications is constantly increasing.”

“But at the same time,” she continues, “it’s heartening to know there are so many Canadian organizations helping people. At the end of the day, to be able to support these organizations, and know that what we’re doing at Gay Lea Foods is making a difference is something I’m incredibly proud to be a part of.”

Funding for the Gay Lea Foundation is provided by an annual contribution of $150,000 from Gay Lea Foods and personal donations from across the Gay Lea Foods’ family. The organization supports registered Canadian charities that work toward poverty relief, the advancement of education and/or purposes beneficial to community development.

Read on to learn more about the five new grant recipients and the unique projects they’ve undertaken to cultivate hope for those who need it most!

CROSSROADS INTERNATIONAL

Crossroads International is a leading Canadian international cooperation agency, dedicated to advancing equality for women and girls and eradicating poverty in some of the poorest countries in Africa and South America.

Project: Building climate change resilience with women co-operative farmers in Senegal

Supporting subsistence women farmers in two extremely vulnerable communities in Senegal, West Africa, this initiative aims to promote an environmentally sustainable gardening system exclusively managed by women co-operative members. The project will introduce drought resistant, nutritionally dense crops with shorter production times, a drip irrigation system, solar powered water pumps, a storage unit and farmer “field school” training, providing the women with the equipment and knowledge they need to produce vegetables year-round using green technology and agroecological practices adapted to the region.

Ultimately, it is anticipated that 1,500 women farmers and an estimated 22,000 community and family members will benefit from a nutritious and reliable food source, as well as additional sustainable income through year-round market gardening. Importantly, the female farmers will be equipped and trained to resist the effects of climate change in their community.

Gay Lea Foundation Donation: $25,000 to dig seven new wells, rehabilitate four existing wells, finance equipment purchases to launch the project, and train women on the use and maintenance of the solar powered pumps.

EDUCATION 4 CHANGE

Education 4 Change is a Waterloo, Ontario-based volunteer organization that works with local education and community leaders in the remote and underserviced Kelafo region of Ethiopia to help children attain their potential and aspirations through education, improve the quality of their education system and increase literacy rates for all.

Project: Expanding literacy programming

The Kelafo region has more than 40 villages and a population of more than 200,000, but past political disputes have left the area underserviced, resulting in low literacy rates, a lack of employment skills and extreme poverty. Over the past 10 years, Education 4 Change has provided training for the government-hired teachers, helped the communities form parent councils and provided much needed classroom supplies. They currently have three projects impacting seven villages in the area: a mobile school; adult literacy classes; and the region’s first and only library. The current project will allow E4 Change to expand these existing programs and bring much needed educational resources to more communities in the region.

Gay Lea Foundation Donation: $25,000 to hire a second full-time teacher for the mobile school; hire a full-time employee to assist the librarian and run literacy classes from the library; hire a part-time teacher to offer adult literacy classes in a new village; and purchase 300 more locally-sourced Somali books for the library.

GREATER HAMILTON FOOD SHARE

Through its food recovery program, Hamilton Food Share sources good, healthy food deemed surplus and redirects it to 12 food banks and 103 hot meal programs in Hamilton and the surrounding areas. Last year, Hamilton Food Share redistributed 3.2 million pounds of food, more than 60% of which is fresh or frozen, to 12,628 individuals accessing food banks every month, one third of whom are children. Hamilton Food Share puts healthy food on the tables of families who need it the most.

Project: Support for food procurement operations

To collect and distribute food, Hamilton Food Share operates a warehouse with docking capacity, full refrigeration system, cold storage, two refrigerated trucks and one cargo van.

Gay Lea Foundation Donation: $5,000 to support the operational costs of food procurement, including fuel, driver’s wages, and repair costs associated with operating a trucking vehicle.

OPEN DOORS AT ST. CHRISTOPHER’S

Open Doors at St. Christopher’s Anglican Church is a group of free, community-based, non-denominational programs that support families and individuals in the church’s Burlington, Ontario, neighbourhood by relieving symptoms of poverty and improving lives through connection, food, clothing and assistance.

Project: Community Meal Program

The Community Meal Program is the heart of Open Doors, providing a sit-down dinner for an average of 150 people every Tuesday night, and a warm, healthy sit-down lunch for over 80 seniors every second Thursday (two times per month). Working with food rescue partners in Burlington, the church is able to provide meals for only $1.00 per person, and also operates a food bank so that guests may pick up additional groceries after their meal.

Gay Lea Foundation Donation: $9,880 to purchase food and cooking items not made available at the food rescue (i.e. certain meats, milk, cheese, eggs, etc.) for the community over the next year.

ST. ANDREW’S HESPELER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Hope Clothing at St. Andrew’s Hespeler Presbyterian Church in Cambridge, Ontario, provides free new or gently used clothing, personal care products and small household items for those in the community who need extra help making their budget stretch, including the working poor, and those who are unemployed, homeless, victims-of house fires or abuse, etc.

Gay Lea Foundation Donation: $2,000 support the creation of a permanent paid Hope Clothing Coordinator position to coordinate volunteers and ensure all people are treated appropriately.

Sunday, April 14, 2019; Palm Sunday

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Wednesday, April 10th, 2019 in News

Please join us this Sunday, Palm Sunday as we begin Holy Week.

The scripture readings for Sunday are:

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Luke 19:28-40
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Philippians 2:5-11

The message is: Palming off the Palms

If you have any questions or comments about the scripture readings or message please contact Rev. Scott McAndless at [email protected]

All children, friends, grandchildren, neighbours are invited to join Joni Smith in the foyer at 9:45 am, just prior to the beginning of the service so that we can parade into the church together.

The Thursday Night Supper & Social Gala dinner event is also on Sunday evening, 5:00 pm and there are still a few tickets left. The menu includes ham and turkey & all the fixings. This year the ticket price of $15.00/person includes dessert as well.

One Perfect Afternoon

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, April 7th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 7 April, 2019 © Scott McAndless – Lent 5

Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126, Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8

remember one perfect afternoon when I was in grade 6. It was a winter’s day and after school a friend and I had stayed late. We were having fun in the schoolyard. The hills behind the school were covered in ice and snow and we were sliding down them. And we were having so much fun particularly because my winter boots at that point were kind of old. The tread was all worn away and so I was able just slide all the way down the hill on my feet. It was so much fun. It was a perfect afternoon and I never wanted it to end.

And then my mother came along. You see, she had been waiting for me at home and wondering why I was taking so long so she came to look for me. She had decided that today was the day I needed to get new boots. She had noticed something. She had noticed that my winter boots were really old. So old, in fact that the tread was, like, completely worn away. We had to go shopping for new boots and we had to go now.

So I went. And my mother has never said anything, but I suspect that what happened next was probably one of the most frustrating experiences has she ever had shopping with me because, well, none of the boots that we tried on were what I liked. I couldn’t, or at least I didn’t, explain what was wrong with every pair of boots that I tried on, but I’ll tell you right now what was wrong with them. They were all winter boots and, as winter boots, they all had treads on the bottom. And that was the last thing that I wanted because if I got boots with winter treads on them, I would never be able to go sliding down the hills behind the school standing on my feet again. I would never again have that perfect afternoon.

Well my mother was not going to leave that shoe store without a new pair of boots for me. So there was nothing for it but that I choose a pair and finally I found them. They were ugly. They had these weird high heels on them. They were actually really kind of heavy so that if you walked too far your feet would drag. But they had one thing going for them: they had virtually no tread. I don’t know what my mother thought about my taste in boots. I’m quite sure she didn’t know what I was basing my decision on. But at that point, I’m sure she just wanted to get out of the store. My winter boots had been chosen.

I’m sure you can guess the rest of the story. Spring came soon after. I graduated from that school and went to another school that was a much longer walk. I never again had the opportunity to slide down those hills on my feet. And I was stuck trudging along in those ugly, heavy boots for many years to come.

And I think I’ve gleaned a little bit of wisdom from that experience. It is probably not a very good idea to make a life decision based on wanting to go back to one perfect afternoon. And I’ve noticed that nobody ever talks about that side of success and perfection. When something goes extraordinarily well, it can sometimes doom us to future failure.

You know, the people of Israel once had a perfect afternoon. It was amazing. There they were, trying to escape from lives of slavery in Egypt when they were caught, red handed, between a hostile army of horses and chariot drivers and an uncrossable body of water. They were sure they were done for. They were getting their affairs in order. And then, a miracle happened. God made “a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters.” It was a path that they could follow on foot but when the chariots tried to chase them their wheels stuck in the muck. “They lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.”

It was perfect – they were saved, chosen and beloved by God and their enemies got everything that they deserved. And so they told the story of that perfect afternoon over and over again and who wouldn’t forgive them if the story grew a little bit in the telling over the years. But here is the thing. The story was so perfect that, generations later, they were still trying to make it happen again. They were still buying winter boots without treads just in case they might have the opportunity to go sliding down the hills on their feet. No, wait, that’s not quite right. Let’s say that they kept buying rubber boots just in case they had to go wading through the Red Sea again.

And you might think that that should be a good thing, that we should remember those moments in our history when God did something truly amazing for us. And of course that is true. But the fact of the matter is that that perfect afternoon was creating big problems for the people at one particular moment.

You see, the people were in a position once again where they needed God to save them. But they weren’t slaves in Egypt. They were exiles in Babylon. And you might say to that, fine, what’s the problem with that? Surely the God who could save them from Egypt could save them from Babylon too. You would think. But it seems that they were having problems. There wasn’t a Red Sea between Babylon and their homeland. What there was instead was a huge uncrossable desert. They were so stuck back in the time when God saved them by creating a path through the sea that they couldn’t imagine that God could save them by creating a path through an uncrossable desert. They had bought rubber boots and they were no good for walking in the desert. That is the only way that I can understand the message we read in the Book of Isaiah this morning.

“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old,” says the prophet. Now normally that is not something that we would expect to read in the Bible. Usually the people are being told to remember what God has done for the nation in the past. But, no, this prophet insists that they must forget it. Why? Because God says, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” You see, that is their problem. They do not perceive it. And the reason why they do not perceive this new thing that God is doing is because they can’t forget that perfect afternoon that they had so long ago. They can’t stop trying to go back there.

I sometimes wonder if this isn’t the problem that we also have as the church these days. It’s not that God is unable to save the church, that is, to give to the church a future that is exciting and meaningful. God is doing that and it’s going to do that. Our problem is that we do not perceive it. The reason why we don’t perceive it? It’s probably because we remember one perfect afternoon. and the perfect afternoon that we remember doesn’t include sliding down snow-covered hills or jaywalking across the Red Sea. The perfect afternoon that we remember is that moment when everything seemed to be just right in the church. And I realize that that perfect afternoon occurred at different times for different people. For some people, the perfect afternoon of the church happened back in the 1960’s and 70’s when Sunday Schools were full to bursting with the children of the baby boom. I don’t know how many times I have had people paint the picture of that particular perfect afternoon for me. But other people may locate that perfect afternoon of the church at another point in time – especially at a moment when the ministry of the church may have fulfilled a particular need for them or touched a particular nerve.

The problem is not that we have such perfect afternoons in our memories of the church. Nor is the problem that we may sometimes remember them in some idealized way (forgetting some things about them that were less than perfect). The problem comes when we are so fixed on that perfect afternoon that we do things like try to revive programs that no longer work, or we reject new ideas or new ways of doing things because they do not look like that perfect afternoon or we criticize something that is happening that is really good because it doesn’t look like or measure up to something that happened during the perfect afternoon. When the memory of that perfect afternoon means that we cannot perceive the new things that God wants to do and is already doing among us, then we are certainly better to “not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.”

So, I do think that the wise words of the ancient prophet do apply very powerfully to our collective life as the church today. But there is also an individual application that the Apostle Paul would bring to our minds in the reading from his Letter to the Philippians today. Paul is speaking to the Christians in Philippi in this passage about his own struggles to be a faithful follower of Christ. He looks back on the perfect afternoon of his own life and says he was “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

Paul is here looking back at a very idealised time in his life. It was basically a time when everything made sense. He had answers to every question. He knew what was right and he knew what was wrong and he knew what he had to do in every circumstance. Yes, that sense of certainty that he had made him do things, like persecute the church, that now horrify him, but he cannot deny that it just felt right at the time. And Paul could have held onto that perfect afternoon, kept trying to go back there, but it would have meant missing out on this incredible new thing that God had done in Jesus Christ. It would have meant missing out on the wonders of God’s grace and the power of Christ’s resurrection.

But even after Paul had given in and become a follower of Christ, he could still have spent all of his energy trying to get back to that perfect afternoon. He could have become one of those Christians who was always trying to say he was better than everyone else and that he had it all right. Paul knew that that was the danger and so he made a conscious choice. He would forget what lay behind and strain forward to what lay ahead. He would press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

My friends, we have all of us been blessed to have had perfect afternoons in our lives both individually and communally. We have those moments in time where everything just seemed to go so well. That can be a wonderful blessing but the warning of Paul and of the prophet is that it can also be a curse. I invite you – I invite all of us – to examine the things that we do in our Christian life. Ask yourself, are you buying boots in the hope of recreating a perfect afternoon that will never happen again? Think of some of the decisions you make, some of the things you buy. Are you doing things, trying to recreate a memory of a time that may be wonderful but just won’t happen again?

I don’t blame you for doing that. I’ve done it myself, as I have confessed. But I will remind you that the danger is not that you might end up wasting your mother’s money on boots that you don’t really like (if you know what I mean). The real danger is that you might not perceive the new thing that God is doing in our midst. And I’ve got to admit that that is my greatest fear, that I, that you and that we together as the church might miss out on the great new thing the God has probably already begun to do in the world today.

Keeping Up-to-Date

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, April 5th, 2019 in News

Easter Flowers: if you would like to order a flower to be placed in the sanctuary for Easter Sunday orders/payment are due on Sunday. This helps us to decorate the sanctuary for Easter. Once the Easter service is over, you may take your flower home to enjoy. Order forms are available at church

The Thursday Night Supper & Social Gala Dinner event (the one fundraiser which enables TNSS to continue serving) is on Sunday, April 14th. Tickets are on sale now, but you better hurry, this dinner always sells out. On the menu: ham & turkey with all the fixings.

Saturday, May 4, 8:00 am - noon: the Athalie Read Group Annual Garage Sale. Donations of your not wanted treasures are appreciated, please no electronics or clothing. Drop off of items can be made to the church on Friday, May 3 from 2:00 - 7:00 pm.

Sunday, May 5th, following the service our Holy Sherlocks Sunday School class will be holding their annual Bake Sale to support a mission project. Stay tuned for details on the mission project, this class is in the process of choosing who they would like to help. Any donations of baked goods, peanut free, are always appreciated.

Sunday, April 7, 2019

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019 in News

The scripture readings for this week are:

First reading

Isaiah 43:16-21

Psalm

Psalm 126

Second reading

Philippians 3:4b-14

Gospel

John 12:1-8

The message this week is: One perfect afternoon

If you have any questions or comments about the scripture readings or the message please feel free to contact Rev. Scott McAndless at [email protected]

Explorations in Music will be held in the Fellowship Room following worship for JK – Grade 6 children to participate in. Everyone is welcome to come in the see what goes on in these interesting and fun classes.

While I kept silence…

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, March 31st, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 31 March, 2019 © Scott McAndless

Joshua 5:9-12, Psalm 32:1-11, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

e read a story today – a rather famous story told by none other than Jesus – in which a young man gets a number of things tragically wrong. He goes to his father and asks to receive the inheritance that will rightly be his upon his father’s death. That is a bad thing to do. He is basically saying to this man who has done everything for him that he doesn’t value him as a father. He is saying that he would rather have him dead so that his value can be converted into cold, hard cash.

Can you imagine how much it would have hurt for a father to hear something like that? I’m pretty sure it would have broken his heart. And that is all on the son. But the father, perhaps recognizing his own imperfections in the parental role (for, I’m sad to say, there is no such thing as a parent who gets it all right) gave in to his son’s demand. Perhaps he was at a loss and didn’t know what else to do.

But the young son was not finished making bad choices. He went away to a distant land, foolishly thinking that he would leave all of his problems behind him. That is a strategy that almost never works. His problems went with him because he carried them within. The next mistake was to waste the precious resources that had been maintained and passed down by his family for generations. He threw it all away because he did not know its true value. He made bad connections – befriending people who did not value him for who he was but merely for what they could get out of him. Such people never make good friends.

The young son truly did mess up. But, you know what, I’m not going to write him off because of all that. Yes, he was foolish. Yes, he valued the wrong things. Yes, worst of all, he deeply hurt people who cared about him. But I have done that and so has pretty much everybody else. I think I’m actually pretty fortunate that, when I messed up, the consequences that were visited upon me did not lead to me sitting starving in a pigpen and dreaming about eating the food that I was supposed to feed the pigs. But it could have. I suspect that all of us have made mistakes in our lives that, had the circumstances been right, would have lead to a similar dire situation.

For example, one good way that someone the age of that young son can really mess up their life is by not taking their education seriously. A young person who is not interested in study and work – who only sees school as a place where they plan for their next party – runs a very serious risk of messing up the remainder of their life. We all agree that is true, right?

But is it? It may well be true if you are poor, a member of a racial minority or don’t have other advantages, but there are other young people who seem to have this privilege of being able to mess up without worrying about consequences. We just heard about a scandal in the last couple of weeks in which wealthy parents bribed their children into the best of colleges and universities regardless of how seriously those children had taken their education. Some people are spared the worst consequences of their errors because of who their parents are or because of other advantages that they have. But I think we can probably all say that we have done some things that could have, given the right circumstances or the lack of certain privileges, landed us in a very bad place.

What I’m saying is that I am not willing to condemn the young son because he messed up. Neither, by the way, is his father. And since Jesus told this parable in a way that clearly was trying to teach us something about God, neither does God. The crisis in this story is not that somebody sinned or made a big mistake. Sin and error are just part of what it means to be human. Sin, as a problem, is something that God has taken care of. That is what the coming of Jesus is all about. The crisis is in something else.

That brings us to the words of the psalm that we read together this morning. It is what is called a penitential psalm – a song that was written to be used by worshipers who have messed up and want to make things right. It is a prayer that certainly could have been prayed by the young son at his lowest point. But, as a prayer, it also points out where the biggest problem is. The penitent says this, “While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”

You see, sins, mistakes errors and screw-ups they can all be overcome. In fact, they have all already been overcome. Jesus came and he was obedient even unto the cross so that the power of sin over the lives of people might be broken. We do not need to be in bondage to sin, not here and now and not in the life to come either. But people are in bondage. Many people are caught in patterns of disobedience or dependence. Many people are victimized by violence or hatred. Many more are trapped in the consequences of their own foolishness or of the evil systems set up by others. So what is the problem? What is it that keeps us in bondage to all of these things? I think that this psalm hits the nail on the head. The problem is silence.

I mean this certainly applies to the young son in the parable of Jesus. I suspect that he knew very early on that he had messed up. He knew it when he saw the hurt in his father’s eyes as he made his request for the inheritance. He knew it when the wild life that he was living in that far distant country did not satisfy him. He knew it as he watched the people that he had thought were his friends turn away from him when his money ran out. But clearly there was a long walk from knowing the truth of his errors and speaking them aloud even to himself. He held his silence. Why? Out of pride; out of a stubbornness that is common to us all. (The psalmist also hits the nail on the head when he compares us to, “horse or a mule, without understanding.”) He kept his silence out of fear of further repercussions. The reasons for his silence might have been many, but the fact of the matter is that his situation only went downhill while he kept silent about his errors.

But as soon as he decided to speak, everything changed. I’m not saying that it was easy. I am quite sure that he felt a whole lot worse before he began to feel better. But that decision to speak up about how he had messed up was the beginning of healing for himself and for his father and even, I would suggest, for his older brother.

But we all get stuck in that time of silence don’t we? You know that you have hurt somebody. You can feel it every time you are in their presence. The feelings of resentment and tension only build and build. And the longer you wait, the harder it is to move from silence to speech. But breaking the silence is truly the only way to move forward.

It is the same thing with God. I know that doesn’t make sense to some people. Why do you have to tell God your sins or the things that you regret? Doesn’t God already know everything about you? Why do you have to say it; it can be so hard to say – hard for your pride, hard to admit your own weakness. If it doesn’t change anything for God, why do you have to say it? Well, I don’t presume to understand it all from God’s point of view, but I do know this: it certainly changes something for you when you break that silence. It is precisely because it is so hard for you – because you don’t want to do it – that speaking honestly with God about your failures can begin to change things for you. It frees you to start moving forward to new and better ways of acting and being.

And sometimes it is also helpful to speak to God through another human being. I know that, as Protestants, we don’t buy into the whole Roman Catholic sacrament of confession. We don’t believe that you have to go through a priestly mediator in order to find forgiveness from God. But they are not completely wrong in their approach. Sometimes speaking to a wise and trustworthy spiritual counsellor – to speak aloud to another human being our regret – can be a very helpful experience, especially when the person you open up to is then able to speak to you the words of grace and forgiveness that God would speak to you because of Jesus. You break your silence and they break the silence of God and healing and hope can abound.

There are other ways in which silence is the enemy. When people remain in silence, that is an environment in which guilt and shame breed and become ever stronger in their destructive power. Shame, in particular, is a very destructive force – especially when people are made to feel ashamed of things that are completely beyond their control. When someone feels shame for something that is simply a product of who they are (their heritage, their gender, their sexual orientation) or because of something that has been done to them (rape, abuse, other crimes) it can destroy lives. Even when people feel shame for something that is a result of their own choices, it is rarely a helpful or productive thing.

Shame festers in silence. It spreads its destructive power to every area of a person’s life and can damage their every relationship. But breaking the silence robs shame of its power. When we speak of the reasons for shame aloud, we can realize how ridiculous they often are. And when we speak words of grace and forgiveness aloud, shame is revealed to be a powerless tyrant, defeated by God’s love.

And what of the other sins that plague this world? Sins like racism and hatred, sins like economic systems that drive some people deeper and deeper into poverty while a few reap all of the riches and then think they can bribe their kids’ way into top colleges, sins like an opiate crisis that inflicts our entire society because countless people were driven into addiction by drug companies that, thinking only of their profits, promised doctors that they could prescribe their opioids to patients without worrying that it would lead to addiction even though this was a lie.

Well those sins all thrive in an environment of silence. So long as people are afraid to speak up and name what is happening, these things will continue to rule in this world. So long as people don’t challenge the racism or injustice that they see, it will continue to flourish. So long as we fail to call greed the sin that it is, it will continue to be presented as a virtue and the world will never change. So long as silence is the rule, so will sin be.

The psalmist was incredibly wise. Silence is often the root of so much of our misery. God has done so much to take care of the power of sin and guilt and shame, but the roadblock that gets in the way of us experiencing everything that God has done for us is silence. So I will close today by asking you a simple but very hard question: is there a silence that you need to break? Is there someone that you have wronged and you know it but you haven’t been able to say it to them? Speak. Do you need to break the silence between you and God about something that you have regretted or resented? Speak. Or do you need to speak up about something that is just wrong in some situation that you find yourself in? Speak. It is the simplest thing in the world, but it can also be the hardest thing you have ever done. May God give you the strength and the grace to break the power of silence.

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Wednesday, March 27th, 2019 in News

The scripture readings for Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, are:

First reading
- Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm
- Psalm 32
Second reading
- 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Gospel
- Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The message is: “While I kept silence”

If you have any questions or comments about the scripture readings or message please feel free to contact Rev. Scott McAndless at [email protected].

Special music given in praise by our Adult Choir with soloist Randy Vermaas. We also welcome the University of Waterloo Gamelan Ensemble to our worship service and Explorations in Music. For more information about the Gamelan Ensemble you can go to this link: https://uwaterloo.ca/music/events/uw-balinese-gamelan-ensemble

Explorations in Music will meet in the sanctuary this week, following worship.

And finally, order forms for flowers for Easter are now available.

Ho! Everyone who thirsts!

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, March 25th, 2019 in Minister

Isaiah 55:1-9, Psalm 63:1-8, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9

o, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have money, come, buy and drink. Come, buy and drink.

There is a well, not all that far from here from which a certain company pumps 3.6 million litres of groundwater every day. This is a fact that upsets a few people because it is such a large amount of water from a water table that we all depend on and maybe mostly because they don’t pay anything for that privilege. Well, that is not quite right. They actually pay something – a little over $13 a day. But, considering that they then put that water in bottles that they can sell for a dollar each or more – a markup that is so huge that I couldn’t even figure out how to calculate it – you might say they pay close to nothing.

And I realize that the whole Nestlé Aberfoyle Bottling Plant water contract thing can be a bit of a controversial topic in these parts. And I don’t mean to get into the whole political controversy around it. I mention it, simply to name it as one of the controversial issues of our time.

The fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, whether we are more concerned for the job creation aspect or the environmental health aspect, it is an issue that’s simply not going to go away. We are living in a world where some of the basic things of life, things like water, have become and are becoming commodities and not merely services. And there is a lot of money and jobs and investments on the line as we deal with the question of the commodification of these things. These are issues we simply cannot escape.

And it is strange. In fact, there are times when I just don’t recognize it. I mean, this is not the world that I grew up in. This is not the world that I was promised When I was small, the notion that someone would buy a bottle of water, much less that some corporation would build a billion-dollar enterprise on the sale of water, was simply laughable. Water was a service, not a commodity. That would never change especially in a place like Canada with abundant water resources. And yet here we are. Sometimes I feel as if I’m living as a stranger in a strange land.

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have money, come, buy and drink. Come, buy and drink.

The prophet had heard that song every day of his life for decades now. He was living in the city of Babylon, but he was not a Babylonian. He was a Judean, a foreigner, who had been brought there many years before by a hostile invading Babylonian army that had destroyed his land. And in Babylon, they had these water sellers. Early in the morning they would walk the streets with their song: Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have money, come, buy and drink. Come, buy and drink.

And the Judeans had no choice. They didn’t own access to wells or streams. Since no one could live without water, they had to buy from the water sellers. This was not the world that the prophet had grown up in. In Judah, the people had possessed the land that God had given them. They dug their own wells and built their cisterns or shared them in their communities. Never, back then, could they have imagined that the song of the water seller would be a part of their lives. It was as unthinkable to them as, well, the idea of buying plastic water bottles once was to us. It was simply laughable. It would never happen. And yet here they were, living as strangers in a strange land.

That is the situation that the prophet is speaking to in our reading this morning from the Book of Isaiah. This passage was almost certainly addressed to Judeans who were living in exile. In fact, they had been living there so long that they had gotten used to a lot of things – things like the calls of the Babylonian water sellers. They had gotten so used to it that, while they were nostalgic for the lost past, they could not see a way forward.

And the prophet was given the task of proclaiming the word of the Lord to the people who were living through all of that. And that word, amazingly, was that God was about to do something new. There was no way to go back to how things were before exile; that way of life was over. But God was about to take his people in exile back to the land where they had once lived so they could make a new beginning.

We don’t know what the name of this prophet was; he was just the man who took up the words of the original Prophet Isaiah from over a century before and interpreted them for the new situation in Babylon. But I think that in many ways he is the biblical prophet we need most to hear today. I think we have an awful lot in common with the people that he was preaching to. We, like them, often feel as if we are living as strangers in a strange land.

And I’m not just talking about the strangeness of finding ourselves living in a world where water has become a commodity and a part of a corporate business plan. There seems to be so much that we find so strange about the world today. We are living in a multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country of Canada today that I am sure many of us never imagined when we were younger. We are living in a world where we are being forced, many of us, to think of our relationship with Canada’s indigenous people in strange new ways. We are living in a strange, constantly connected world of social media.

And maybe especially the Christian church finds itself living in a strange new world. Thirty years or so ago, the church had a place of honour in society – why society even reserved one day a week to the almost exclusive use of the church. But today that is almost all gone, and it often feels like the church is living in a society that is sometimes even hostile to its existence.

We do often feel like exiles living in a strange land. And, like those exiles in Babylon, we know somewhere deep inside that there is no going back to the world that used to be. But that doesn’t stop us from looking back with nostalgia and pining for that lost world. God sent the prophet to those Judeans in exile in Babylon to break them out of that attitude. He didn’t want them to live in their memories of the past, but he also didn’t want them to just become complacent where they were now. He had to break them out of both of those things because God was about to do something completely new. So how did the prophet do that?

Well, one day he went out in the streets of the exile community and he imitated the cry of the Babylonian water sellers: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?” (And I’m sure that he sang it much better than that but that is probably what he did – he sang it.)

What was he doing? He was taking the familiar song of the water sellers that reminded the people every day that they were living as exiles in a strange land, and he was changing it. He was jarring them with an unexpected twist of the familiar. Pay without money? Buy without price? Spend instead on something that is not a commodity? That wasn’t how the world worked! It still isn’t how the world works? You are kind of forced into looking at everything from an entirely new point of view.

It makes me wonder, what might the prophet do if he were among us today? I think that he would recognize us as fellow exiles – fellow strangers living in a strange land. He would recognize the tendency that we have to look back at the past with nostalgia and see everything in that past with rose coloured glasses. He would recognize the complacency with which we look at where we are right now and how we don’t necessarily want to risk change or anything new. He would recognize us as people who are caught between a lost past and an uncomfortable present. Those were the people he was talking to in exile in Babylon and I really think that we would seem familiar to him.

He might even recognize what all of that leads to at its worst. Some people who can’t let go of that idealized image of the past – who think it must have been always good when for example, white men ruled unchallenged – will try and take us back there sometimes by the most despicable means. They will target and scapegoat immigrants and racial minorities, blaming them for all the problems they see in the world. They will imprison children and separate them from their parents for what is technically a misdemeanour in crossing a border without proper documentation. At the very worst, they will run, guns blazing, into mosques or synagogues. These things are all things that people who are troubled do because they feel like they no longer recognize the world that they are living in. Fortunately, the vast majority do not respond to such extremes, but the fact that a few do should give us pause.

What would the prophet do for us? I suspect he would shake us up – maybe take something familiar to us, something that reminds us that we are caught living in this world where we don’t quite feel at home. He wouldn’t use the ancient water seller’s song, of course, because that doesn’t mean anything to us. But he might do something like impersonate the Fiji water girl at the Golden Globes. But the point would not be to merely mock what’s happening in our world today. The internet is full of people mocking what’s happening in the world today. He would be doing it in order to challenge our lack of imagination. You see, we are falling into this rut where all we can see is the world that used to be, which we look back on with nostalgia and not necessarily a whole lot of accuracy – we see that and the flaws of the present world. But we can’t imagine the world that needs to be – the world that God is calling into existence. That is what the prophet was really doing for the people who were stuck in Babylon. That is what God would like to do for us.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” That is what he would challenge us to do. He’s throwing out before us the radical idea that God is actually doing something in the world today and that, if we are ready to respond, we can be part of it. I know that we have fallen into thinking that God being active in the world is something that only happened in ancient times, a time before this exile in which we find ourselves, but that is a lie and we cannot accept it.

Even more, the prophet challenges us with these words, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” He is saying that we think too small. Our ideas are limited by what we may have known in the past before we entered this strange land of exile, and our ideas are constrained by the realities that we find ourselves living in today. God’s ideas and thoughts are not limited like that and God does not want our ideas to be limited either.

God is calling us onwards towards the new thing, the new creation and the new possibilities. But we have a hard time dealing with that because of where we are. God is sending us messages of possibility, wants us to dream big and to be bold enough to trust him for the big things. That was what the prophet was trying to do and he was successful. He persuaded many of the exiles in Babylon to step out and risk everything to build a brand new future. Now if only we would be so faithful.