Hespeler Village Little Library
Put away your sword
Introduction Video:
Hespeler, 9 April, 2017 © Scott McAndless – Palm Sunday
Isaiah 51:9-11, Matthew 26:47-56, Colossians 1:13-22
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few weeks ago I watched a movie you may have heard of. It was called “The Magnificent Seven.” It was a remake of an original 1960 western (which was itself a remake of a classic Japanese film), so I am betting that most of you have seen this movie in some form or another at some point in your life. That’s why I feel as if I am not going to spoil the movie for anybody if I give you a quick recap of the plot.
The story went like this. A very bad man got a bunch of very bad people together and they hurt and shot and killed some innocent people in a town. A group from that town went to get some help and found seven people (who were all magnificent) and they came and killed the bad people in the town. Those who were left alive all lived happily ever after.
I really enjoyed watching it. It was a great movie. And it made me think of another great movie I’ve seen recently. You know the one – that movie where there is this really evil gang who do terrible violence and destruction and then the good guys come in and put things right with lots of death and destruction. Oh, what was the name of that movie? (John Wick) No, that’s a good one but not the one I was thinking of. (Dredd) Yeah, that is the plot of that one too, but I wasn’t thinking of that one either. (Avengers) No. (Batman vs. Superman) No. (Lego Batman) Yes, that’s it.
But, you know, now that I think about it, there are an awful lot of movies that kind of have the same plot, aren’t there. The bad guy or the bad woman or group hurts or threatens innocent people with violence and the good guy (or Gal Godot or team) comes in and saves the day with more and better violence. It is what is called a happy ending. Do you realize that if that basic plot did not exist, Hollywood would produce about half as many movies a year as they presently do? It is just a story that we keep telling over and over again. The characters and the setting may change, they may throw in a few twists, but it is all just basically the same story. Why do we do that?
Well actually, it is something that human beings have always done. One of the things that distinguishes us from all the other animals is that we tell stories. Telling stories is what we do to make sense of the world and figure out where we fit into it. These stories may not be true in the literal sense – in fact they are usually not. There was never an actual group of seven gunslingers who saved a town in the old American west, for example. But on another level, we keep telling them because we see them as true in the sense that they are telling us true things about the world and how it works. Stories of this sort are called myths.
I realize, of course, that most of the time when modern people call some story a myth, they simply mean that it is not true. But that is not the classic definition of a myth. A myth is a story that is probably not literally true but that speaks of a truth that is widely accepted.
And one of the oldest recorded myths goes like this: there was once an evil dragon named, in some cultures, Tiamat (though in the Bible they called her Rahab as we read this morning). Tiamat was a monster who was only interested in bringing death, chaos and destruction. But then a hero, called by some people Anu, came and fought against Tiamat with all of his might. The struggle was long and hard but eventually he defeated the monster and out of her destroyed corpse, created the world as we know it today.
That is a myth that human beings have been telling since before recorded history – a story of an evil destructive monster who did violence and was destroyed by the better violence of a “good guy.” It is, I would suggest, a story that we are still telling today – not only because that myth is the plot of every other movie but also because we all still seem to believe that basic premise.
After all, when something goes wrong in this world, when some evil is done or somebody is a victim of violence, what is our first reaction? The first thing we always say is, we’ve got to fight back. We assume that the only way to defeat violence and destruction is with more violence and destruction.
We have actually seen that very thing played out in the last few days. Assad, the President of Syria, carried out an appallingly evil attack against a town in an area occupied by his enemies. The unspeakable violence was an attempt to destroy his almost equally evil enemies. And then, as we all heard, the United States responded with overwhelming violence through a targeted bombardment by 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on an airbase. That is how we do it. Evil and violence, we assume, can only be countered by more violence. It is what makes the world a better place today – at least, that is what the myth promises us.
It just seems that we have yet to come across a problem that we are not willing to solve by shooting something, stabbing something or declaring war against it. Perhaps no one puts this myth better or more succinctly than American National Rifle Association when they say, “the only person who can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Because the basic assumption of this myth is that violence is the best way – maybe the only way – to make things better in this world, it is sometimes called the myth of redemptive violence. And I suggest to you that, at some level at least, we believe this myth. We must believe it. Otherwise we wouldn’t cheer when the Magnificent Seven come riding into town with their guns blazing. Otherwise we wouldn’t always be so ready to go to war when we see evidence of evil in the world. That is the power of a myth. It makes us believe it even when we may not want to.
The problem with this myth of redemptive violence is all the destruction that it causes. When, for example, a government tries to stop the terrible violence being planned by a group of terrorists by ordering a drone strike on the terrorist compound, that sounds, to us, like a smart thing to do. Surely the violence of the drone strike is the only thing that can prevent a greater evil. But it that doesn’t always work out that way in reality. In reality, what happens is that some people are killed – some of them with evil intentions, no doubt, but also some who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In reality, all the people who are killed are all connected to other people who then hate you and probably vow to kill you in vengeance. In reality, you often only manage to create more chaos, more hatred and more death.
There may be cases where a better world has been created by means of violence. I will admit that. But I suspect that more often it has quite the opposite effect. And yet we keep on believing in the myth of redemptive violence. Why? Probably because we think it’s the only answer that there is to what goes wrong in this world. But what if it isn’t?
As Christians we believe that Jesus came into this world because God loved the world so much that he wanted to save it. Jesus came as the response to all that is wrong with the world. There were people who seemed to recognize that about him right away. When he arrived in Jerusalem, for example, people turned out en masse to welcome him as the “one who comes in the name of the Lord” – the one who would set all things right. But how do you suppose that they thought that he was going to do that? Since they, just like us, had lived all their lives believing the myth of redemptive violence – believing that the only way to counter the unjust violence of the world was with more violence – you can just imagine how they thought that he was going to do it.
You don’t really have to imagine it, though; you just have to read what happened when everything finally came to a head. All week Jesus had been causing unrest in the City of Jerusalem by stirring up the crowds and the authorities had been trying to get rid of him but dared not make a move for fear it might provoke a riot. But finally, on Thursday night, they caught up with him while he only had a few followers with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. They made their move and at least one of Jesus’ followers decided that this was the moment to set everything right.
And how do you set everything right? According to the myth of redemptive violence he knew exactly what to do. He “put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.” He thought he was starting something – that his first blow he would set in motion the events that would put everything right again. That is how it is supposed to work according to the myth of redemptive violence. And if that had ever been Jesus’ intention for accomplishing the work he had come to do, that would have been the moment to do it – the spark that would have ignited the flame of violence in order to set everything right.
But what did Jesus do? “Put your sword back into its place;”he cried. He immediately rejected the possibility of putting things right through violence. Not only that, but he exposed the myth for what it was: a lie. “For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” He was not only saying that violence doesn’t make anything better. He was saying that it only makes things worse – that violence only leads to more violence until the world spins completely out of control taking with it all the people you hoped to save by resorting to violence in the first place.
Jesus makes it clear that he isn’t saying this because he has no means of winning through violence. He has more power at his fingertips than the world’s worst tyrant could muster: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” It is just that Jesus knows that such an approach can never work.
But this is not just a matter of Jesus rejecting violence under these specific circumstances. There is something much more important than that going on here. You see, one of the big problems in our world is, in fact this myth of redemptive violence. Because we believe this myth, because we don’t think that there is any other way of creating a better world than according to the dogma of this myth, the world is caught in a web of despair. So long as the myth of redemptive violence rules in our hearts, it will force itself upon us and will drive us deeper and deeper into the endless cycle of violence and hatred answering violence and evil until we have all died by the sword.
Jesus came to expose the myth as a lie. He did that, first of all, by always demanding a better world – a world where the poor, the meek, the weeping and the hungry were blessed – and yet by refusing to take up violence and extremism in order to make it happen.
But he did even more than that. This coming week we will have the chance to review the story once again of how, in response to Jesus’ demand for a better world, the world refused. The world resisted what Jesus was asking for because it was unwilling to change. And so the world responded to Jesus in the way that it always does to anything that threatens what it values. The world responded with violence because it believed the myth of redemptive violence that this would make everything better.
But Jesus, by becoming the ultimate victim of the world’s violence, by accepting the consequences of that violence without complaint and without condemnation, finally proved the myth of redemptive violence to be a lie by turning it on its head. On Good Friday, violence won and asserted its power over Christ fully and completely. And the God turned that defeat into a victory.
That is one of the things that we mean when we say that the death and resurrection of Jesus changed everything. It destroyed the power of a myth that has held sway over this world for many centuries and caused endless destruction. Jesus showed us a better way. Now if only we could learn to live out that truth in all our reality.
140CharacterSermon World teaches violence is the only way to fix what’s wrong in the world. Jesus’ death & resurrection teaches that’s a lie
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Join us on Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday is a very important day in the Christian year. On this day we remember the entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem and how he was greeted by the people. We also look forward to the suffering and death that awaits him within the week. We will mark this Sunday in several special ways at St. Andrew's Hespeler this year:
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- We will begin our celebration of the day with a very special procession led by the children in our congregation. Anyone is invited to come, shake a palm and celebrate the day.
- Our very talented Youth Band have been working very hard to lead the congregation in worship and to offer their praise to God through music. They will do this in various ways and will even play (at least) two versions of Hosanna.
- Our minister, the Reverend Scott McAndless will turn our thoughts to the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and what the events that transpired there teach us about an idea that we often take for granted but that might just destroy us. The following video offers an introduction to this idea:
Jonah: A journey from sloth to sympathy
Hespeler, April 2, 2-17 © Scott McAndless
Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah 4:1-11. Jonah 2
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f all the prophets in the Bible, Jonah, I think is the one who just gets me. I mean, here is a guy who is just going on about his own business one day when he receives a message from God. “Wow, Lord, me? You think that I’m important enough to give a message to me?” But then, as Jonah listens or attends or does whatever you do when you receive a message from God, he begins to realize that this is not really a message that he likes or wants to receive: “Jonah, go an d preach my message to the people that you hate most in the world: the Ninevites.”
And then what does Jonah do? He behaves as if he was Donald Trump and the German Chancellor just asked him to shake hands. “What? Message? I didn’t receive any message. As a matter of fact,” Jonah goes on, “I think I just remembered that I gotta do something in completely the opposite direction of Nineveh. Yeah, that’s it, I have to get in this ship and travel to, uh, Tarshish instead. Yeah, Tarshish – it was planned months ago.”
What I’m saying is this: different people will react in different ways when they’re in an unwelcome situation like being asked to do something that they really don’t want to. Some will get aggressive and attack. Some will do it but complain the whole time. Some will talk themselves into thinking that it was all their own idea all along. But I love the way that Jonah deals with it. He just avoids the whole thing. He just gets out of town.
Why do I love that response? Because that’s exactly what I would do. Given a negative situation, something gone wrong, some unexpected conflict, my first instinct is always to avoid the situation in whatever way I can. You see, for the last eight weeks, I have been spending time here going through various personality types and trying to understand them according to Biblical characters who seem to represent them. I have found some common ground with some of these characters but there has not been one with whom I can completely identify – until now. But Jonah, I am just like Jonah in so many ways. And so he represents a personality type that I would very much like to explore.
You see, for whatever reason, when he was growing up Jonah felt kind of overlooked. I figure that he was probably a middle child and, for whatever reasons, the other kids, older than him and younger than him, just managed to capture the lion’s share of attention in the household. I don’t think it was that anyone purposely neglected him. It is just one of those things that sometimes happens.
So, when he was already feeling as if he was disappearing and no one was paying any attention, Jonah just developed the habit of actually disappearing in whatever ways he could when things didn’t go his way. And, what’s more, he convinced himself that that was that he really wanted anyways, that he didn’t care that much about anything and was only too happy to let everyone else have their way. This becomes a lifelong strategy for dealing with any unfavourable circumstances when you are somebody like a Jonah.
This why the sin of a Jonah – the one that besets people like him more than other types – is sloth. Sloth is, I would suggest to you, not quite the same thing as laziness, though it may look like it from the outside. Jonah avoids doing a job that God asks him to do, but he actually does so rather energetically. Laziness is about not being willing to expend any energy but Jonah actually expends lots of it. Sloth is more about actively avoiding something because there is something about it that you don’t like. It is a sin of active and sometimes energetic avoidance.
And that is why I can say that I identify so much with Jonah. I am not a lazy person. I know that I have the capacity to work very hard, especially when I am working on a project that I really care about. But I also know that, when I come up against a situation when I don’t feel comfortable, when there is conflict or when people are not being appreciated or treated right, my first instinct is not to fight or to submit, it is to avoid. Now, that doesn’t mean that I will always actually do that. I have had to learn that it is not always the best response. But there are reasons why that is my first inclination – reasons related to my personality type.
I am not alone in this. Jonah represents a personality type that is actually quite common in our world. There are some people who are so adverse to conflict that they will avoid it in whatever ways they can. But what is fascinating in the whole story of Jonah is how God deals with him in the whole arc of the story. I think it is representative of how God likes to work in the lives of people like him – maybe in people like me too.
The first and most obvious thing that I can observe in this story is that God has a way of thwarting all of Jonah’s attempts at avoidance. Jonah gets on a ship; God sends a storm. Jonah tells the other men in the boat that they might as well just throw him overboard because the storm is probably all his fault. (This is, by the way, a classic passive aggressive avoidance strategy that people like me employ all the time: “Oh, it’s all my fault, I can’t do anything right, just give me my punishment.”) So Jonah employs that strategy but God sends the big fish. When God has decided that we actually need to deal with something, he is not going to let our avoidance strategies get in the way and that is a good thing. God is doing it because he loves Jonah.
But God seems to be most intent to work on Jonah once he actually arrives in Nineveh. Now Jonah had a real reason why he didn’t want to go and it was, as far as he was concerned, a very good one. The Ninevites, you see, were pure evil. This is an established historical fact. Of all the horrible bloody empires that filled the history of the ancient Near East the Ninevites were the bloodiest and horriblest. They brought more death and destruction to their enemies than anyone else and Jonah had very good reason to hate them.
But here is something else you need to understand about Jonah’s personality type. They are people who, when they finally get into a situation where there is potential conflict – when they finally cannot avoid it any longer – have an incredible gift. They can understand the positions of people on both sides of an argument really well. They understand and appreciate where people are coming from.
I have experienced this myself often enough. I get in the middle of a discussion where people take opposing views and find that I, more than anyone else in the room, am prepared to understand everyone’s point of view at once and I am never inclined to move too quickly to judgement. This can be a problem sometimes, of course, when a choice must be quickly made but, when it comes to fostering peace and understanding between groups, this can be a remarkably valuable skill to have.
I think Jonah had it too because once he got to Nineveh and no matter how he had been taught all his life to hate Ninevites, he found that, in spite of himself, he could sympathize with them and their experience. That is the only way that I can explain what happened next. We are told that “Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk” into a city that took three days to walk across. “And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’”
Now that, I’ve got to say, might be a powerful message, but it is not really a very encouraging one is it? How do you sell a message like that? Well Jonah obviously did sell it. After only one day of preaching that simple, discouraging message, people just started responding. “The people of Nineveh believed God,”it says. “They proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” I think that the credit for such a strong response goes, not to the message itself, but to the man who was preaching it. Jonah, in spite of himself, connected with the Ninevites. Maybe he didn’t want to care about them, but he couldn’t help himself and he did. And the people of Nineveh picked up on that and, because of that, they responded positively and were willing to make some changes.
So God can use the gifts and talents of a Jonah in some surprising ways. If you can see some of yourself in Jonah or if you know someone who has those particular gifts, recognize that God has offered through you or through that person a real blessing to the world. There is so much misunderstanding in this world, so many opposing camps, that there is a desperate need for people who can bridge the divides and create some peace. God has given us people like Jonah because he wants them to use their special gifts to bring some measure of peace to the world.
But even after this, even after he is able to bridge an impossible gap between God and the Ninevites, Jonah still finds himself conflicted. He had persuaded them, in spite of himself, to repent. And Jonah knew God too well. As he himself in his bitterness declares to God, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” So Jonah gets angry at God and ultimately at his own success. We Jonah types can get like that so easily – internally conflicted and not even sure what we want from a difficult situation.
And so Jonah responds to that internal conflict in a way, once again, that is typical of his type. He withdraws and sulks. “Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.”
Jonah is trying to convince God (and ultimately himself) that he just doesn’t care anymore. He wants to withdraw and just watch without getting involved any more. This is the classic defence mechanism of a Jonah. But actually it is all an act. (I can speak of this from personal experience.) The reality is not the Jonah doesn’t care; it is that he actually cares too much. He is totally invested in everything that might happen and it is his fear that it won’t go well that makes him want to pretend that he is indifferent.
But God knows better. God knows how much Jonah actually cares and he goes about proving it to Jonah by making a small bush grow up and give the prophet some shade to relieve him from the sun. And then God takes the bush away which leaves Jonah in a position where had has to admit to himself and to God that he actually cares about whether a bush lives or dies and that, by extension, he cares about many other things including the lives of thousands of his enemies: the Ninevites.
God doesn’t put that sympathy into Jonah. It was always there. It has always been part of his personality type, and it was the thing that made him able to connect with Ninevites in the first place. But Jonah, like all people of his personality type was afraid of that sympathy and the feelings that went with it. That is why he shirked his job, that was why he ran away. A Jonah will only reach full maturity once he or she comes to terms with those deep inner feelings instead of hiding them behind cynicism, sloth and withdrawal.
But God didn’t give up on Jonah and he doesn’t give up on you either – not ever. Today we come to the end of the longest series of sermons I think I have ever preached. It needed to be this long as I dealt with all of the various personality types. The idea is that one of these types that I have covered should fit each one of you more than all the rest. The idea is that discovering who we are and how we operate can help us to reach our full potential.
But the only thing that makes that hope possible is our recognition that God understands us all better than we will ever understand ourselves, that God is committed to love us despite our flaws, to use our strengths and redeem us through the power of faith. This is the hope we live in, a hope made possible because of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the good news that we proclaim and that is the foundation of all our hope.
140CharacterSermon Jonah was an avoider who ran away from unpleasant situations. God helped him discover the sympathy that made him special.
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Meat Pies direct to you
Hello St Andrews
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It is my great pleasure to announce that meat pies are back! Here are the deets. The order window is open now until April 28th. There is a sample order sheet below and there will be many opportunities to pick one up at the church too. Kindly spread the word so everyone gets a chance to order these "good as homemade pies."
I have some news too - I'm working with a company in Guelph called Portions that have a pretty wide variety of gluten-free, peanut-free, dairy free, egg free and soy-free entrees prepackaged and frozen. They are deeply committed to providing exceptional quality for those that have dietary restrictions. If you are someone or know someone that would like to try some of their meals they are easily contacted. The really good news in the very near future I may be able to offer these meals directly to you. They are looking at providing a special price offer for St Andrews. All the details are not worked out at this time. When I have the details we will have another tasting opportunity to sample their products.
Just a reminder 100% of the proceeds goes to St Andrew's in our second year of fundraising to beat the deficit. Buon Gusto!
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I'd like to present the St Andrews' Little Free Library that will be installed this spring on the church property. All approvals have been received from; the City of Cambridge, Session and Operations for this whimsical library. The Christian Education Committee is pleased to sponsor this active mission and will ensure only the proper materials are offered in this library. Nancy English, Chair of CE assured Session that this ongoing offering of Christian books is an exciting new approach for the folks at the Christian Ed.
Rob for Nancy
David: A journey from lust to mercy
Hespeler, 26 March, 2017 © Scott McAndless
2 Samuel 11:27b-12:14, Psalm 101, 2 Timothy 2:20-26
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ince back in February, I have been working my way through the famous list of the Seven Deadly Sins – a list that I have actually tweaked a bit by adding in two extras. So far we have talked about anger, pride, deceit, greed, envy, fear, and gluttony. There are two left – two of the classic deadly seven – lust and sloth and I haven’t really been looking forward to either one of them. I’ll tell you what my problem is with sloth next week, but today I’m going to focus on lust.
The problem I have with talking about lust is the tendency that has developed in western society to confuse sin with sexuality in general. It was something that mostly began with the Victorian Age as far as the English speaking world was concerned. Christians began to think and speak as if the only sin that mattered was any sin connected to sexuality. The connection became so strong that even to this very day when Christians hear the word sex, they automatically think of sin and when they hear sin they automatically think of sex. This is ultimately a very unhelpful association on the one hand because it definitely keeps us from dealing with the whole breadth of sin that can actually do a lot of damage in the various parts of our lives. On the other hand, it taints our view of sexuality in general in very unhelpful ways.
So before I can talk about lust I feel as if I have to affirm that there is, in fact, nothing inherently sinful about sex or about sexuality. It is, in fact, a very positive thing and a gift of God. It is a drive placed into us by the God who created us and who says to humanity in Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply,” knowing full well that there ain’t but one way to do that. Sex is given for procreation but also for bringing people together in love and mutual support, of which we believe that marriage is the highest expression.
So, whatever it is, if it is sinful, lust is not an expression of the healthy sexuality that God has given us. I would, in fact, define lust in these terms: it is any violation of another person for pleasure or for passion. It is what happens when somebody is shamelessly used, taken possession of or suppressed. The helpful thing about that definition is that it makes it clear that lust is not exclusively a sexual thing. It is quite possible to violate or exploit somebody sexually, of course, and that is sadly how it is often expressed. But it is also possible to violate or exploit people in other ways. Avoiding lust is not a matter of avoiding sex as such, but it is always about respecting the honour and integrity of another person.
I think that it is important to understand this distinction because there is a certain type of person who is particularly susceptible to this sin. I think that the best way to describe such a person to you – with their strengths as well as their weaknesses – is to give you a Biblical example. There are many to chose from because many heroes of the Bible fit into this type, but the one who fits best is, perhaps, King David.
Think of what you have heard of the career of David. He started out as the youngest son of his family. A shepherd and a singer, he was never given anything. He had to have the courage to take it all for himself whether that meant challenging a giant like Goliath to one-on-one combat or fighting against the entire kingdom and army of his predecessor in the kingship: King Saul.
But David loved that kind of thing. He clearly thrived on the challenge of taking on the biggest enemies and overcoming them. He never gave up, never backed down, never surrendered. It was what gave meaning to his life and when he didn’t have that – when he didn’t have a big enemy to fight – he either created one or he got bored or depressed and that was when he made some of his biggest mistakes.
Fortunately, David’s tendency to oppose was not always in the service of his own interests. He actually had a feeling for the poor, the oppressed and the mistreated. And if anyone was able to make him see their needs or their plight he would always be quick to use his power and ability to set things right for them.
These personality traits made David the good king that he was. Sure he was a little rough around the edges and not everyone approved of his methods, but he got things done and they were usually the right things. But these personality traits are not exclusive to David alone. There have been many people down through the ages who have taken very similar traits and done great things in the world. Martin Luther King Jr. was one such person. His life was filled with a passion to oppose and destroy an evil system of racial inequality. He too thrived on the same kind of energy.
Other great examples of his type are Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton, Saddam Hussein, Barbara Walters and Roseanne Barr. All of these people were at their best when they were challenging the established system, battling clear enemies and bringing about change. We may not appreciate what they accomplished in every case, of course, but, agree or not, we cannot deny that they had a big impact on the world and on human history.
So we definitely need people of David’s type. They are the people who often lead us into the breakthroughs that the world needs. But as helpful and necessary as they are, there is a dark side that tends to go with this personality type. They are led, in all things, by their passions and by a desire to make other people bend to their will or to their vision. That means that there is a constant temptation to violate the independence or the will of other people to bend them to their passions or desires. They tend to struggle with what I have defined as the sin of lust.
To be very clear, this does not mean that they are always tempted to use people sexually. For many this problem will manifest in how they use people in other ways. We see that in the case of David himself. He did have ways of using his power and influence to exploit people and their service. He used Mephibosheth, last surviving son of his old friend, Jonathan, to consolidate control over his kingdom. He used Joab, the commander of his army, to commit murder in order to cover up his adultery with Bathsheba. But, by far, the most famous example of the time that he used somebody is the time that came before that one: his adultery with Bathsheba.
The story goes that David was out on the roof of his palace (the highest building in the city and another expression of his power) and was spying on his subjects when he spotted a woman bathing. She wasn’t, by the way, doing anything wrong. I know that popular imagination says that she was bathing on the roof as ifshe was somehow trying to attract the king’s attention but it never says that in the Bible. If anyone was in the wrong place, it was the king, not her. The king sent for her, slept with her and then created a major crisis and made Joab commit murder, trying to cover the whole thing up.
It is a textbook illustration of lust, not because it was sexual but because it was all about David violating Bathsheba’s person. She had no power to refuse him when ordered to the palace and dared not refuse his invitation to bed either. This does indeed seem to be a sin that people of David’s personality type struggle with more than any others.
We see the same pattern in the life of Martin Luther King Jr. for example. He did great things and dreamt great things but somehow couldn’t escape the temptation to abuse both his wife’s trust and many other women with a long string of affairs. I hardly need to tell you that another one of my examples, Bill Clinton, has had a similar problem. I don’t know why there is a connection between this personality type and this sin but it seems to have something to do with the ability that such people have to engage people in the great schemes that they envision. The temptation to use that power to exploit other people for personal ends must seem irresistible at times.
So David fell into that trap pretty clearly in the case of Bathsheba and her husband Uriah. What’s more it is not too hard to see that it was pattern in his whole life. (Bathsheba wasn’t the first woman that he married after her husband died under questionable circumstances.) For that matter, both Bathsheba and that other woman, Abigail, were far from the first women that David married! I do not mean to excuse this kind of behaviour in anyway, of course, but I think it is fair to say that it comes from an attitude that seems to go with this particular personality type.
So there is a potential dark side to this personality, but there is a reason why David is a hero in the Bible. There is a reason why God seems so often to use people like him to do great things in the world. It is not because they are perfect and it is not because we are supposed to just overlook the things that they sometimes do in their lusts. But, while God can use them as they are (for nothing limits God’s ability), there are also things that God would like to do for them that they might be whole and complete.
In the case of David, I think we can see God working on him in our reading this morning through the agency of his friend and advisor, the Prophet Nathan. Nathan knows that David had done wrong – that he has sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah and that he has betrayed the trust of all the people in the quest to serve his own lusts and to cover up the consequences.
But Nathan is a wise man. He knows David and he knows how people like David operate. If Nathan were just to come in and confront David with what he has done, he would just respond with the classic defence mechanism of a David: denial. Imagine Bill Clinton when faced with a similar accusation. His denial, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” came to his lips so easily and so believably because he really believed that it was, in some sense, true. No one can do a denial like a David.
But Nathan’s confrontation did not go like that. Nathan came in and didn’t speak about what David had done wrong. He instead drew David into a scenario that appealed to the king’s deep commitment to justice. People of this personality type, perhaps because of their strong passions, have a strong sense of justice. When people are being mistreated, they see it and want to do something about it.
So Nathan, wisely, knowing that David has a blind spot when it comes to seeing his own lusts describes an injustice that somebody else committed that is (in a way) an analogy to what the king has done. Of course, David immediately gets angry and calls for justice to be done. That is when Nathan can reveal that he has actually been talking about the king all along.
Here, I think, Nathan has revealed to us how God likes to work in the life of someone like a David. Head on confrontation, forcing them to see their flaws, is rarely going to work. These are people who love confrontation and will only dig in when one arises. But that doesn’t mean that redemption of a David isn’t possible. God gave them their passions – including a passion for a better world. God wants to use them to create that better world and has done so often. But God also wants to use those passions, once he has broken down their defences and denials, to build a better them. God’s passion is always for us and that we might be the best people that God has created us to be.
So look beyond the associations that you might have with the idea of lust. Learn to appreciate the whole person who might struggle with this particular sin. We cannot excuse the sin and we cannot forget the damage that it can cause. God doesn’t. But part of helping people who struggle with such things is to recognize what about them actually makes them great and part of God’s plan to build a better world.
140CharacterSermon King David is an example of someone God can use to do great things. God also dealt with his dark side by challenging him.
Qoheleth: A Journey from Gluttony to Joy.
Hespeler, 19 March, 2017 © Scott McAndless
Ecclesiastes 2:1-11, 22-26, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Luke 18:18-30
“What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.” This is the rather bleak view of life that seems to lie behind much of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.
Traditionally the book was said to have been written by none other the great King Solomon himself, but most scholars who have studied it have concluded that the book never actually claims to have been written by Solomon, though it might have been dedicated to him. Instead, the book seems to have been written by somebody named Qoheleth, but even that doesn’t come across in our English Bibles because the name, “Qoheleth,” usually gets translated, wrongly, as teacher or preacher, and so the name actually only appears in a footnote in your pew Bible.
On one level it doesn’t matter who wrote the book, of course, but on another it kind of does. I mean, it doesn’t matter what the person’s name was, but it matters what kind of person he was. (I am going to assume that Qoheleth was a man but his gender is not really what matters either.) It especially matters what kind of a person he was for a book like Ecclesiastes because this book seems to come out of the very personal struggles of the writer more than almost any other book in the Bible.
What, then, do we know about Qoheleth as a person? He leaves a number of clues in his work. The first thing we can say about him is that he is a man with some experience of pain. “For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.”These are the words of someone who knows what he is talking about when he’s talking about pain.
I suspect that, at some point in his life – at some key point in his development – Qoheleth experienced some very real, frightening and overwhelming pain. I don’t know what kind of pain. It might have been physical, but my guess is that it was emotional trauma that he went through, which can often leave even longer lasting scars.
Now pain is, as Qoheleth says, a part of life. None of us goes through life without experiencing some trauma and all of it is painful and damaging. But there are some people for whom the trauma hits at a moment when they are simply not prepared to deal with it, maybe because of their age or their developmental stage. I believe that that is what happened to Qoheleth and that it left some deep and permanent scars.
You see, there is a certain personality type that tends to arise in that circumstance – the personality type represented by Qoheleth. Certainly Qoheleth behaves in the way that people of that personality type typically do. The common response of a person who has been overwhelmed in early life by pain is to hide from any further pain. It seems the obvious thing to do. You have been hurt once and deeply so you decide that you really want to avoid any future pain no matter what you have to do.
How did Qoheleth do that? How did he try to block out the pain? Well, he tells us, doesn’t he: “I said to myself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself. ...I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine... I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks... I bought male and female slaves... I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines.” From this description it seems clear that Qoheleth is seeking to distract himself from his pain with an excess of, well, everything.
To put this in traditional Christian language, Qoheleth is distracting himself with gluttony. You may have heard of gluttony, it is one of the church’s official seven deadly sins, but you may have thought of it as only having to do with people who overindulge on food. But the meaning of the word is much larger than that.
God has given us so many good gifts in this world – things like food, drink, sexuality, dance and so many more. There is nothing wrong (and everything right) with enjoying these gifts in appropriate ways and in reasonable measure; the glutton is the one who goes overboard in indulgence in anything or perhaps in everything – so much so that it becomes harmful to themselves or to others. But please do not fall into the traditional stereotype of gluttony to think that it is always about overeating. Do not assume, for example, that people who are overweight always have this personality type. Nevertheless, this type exists and you probably know people who fit into it.
The most common underlying cause of pathological gluttony is the avoidance of pain. That part of the struggle is what I hear Qoheleth talking about in our reading this morning from the Book of Ecclesiastes. And I don’t want to be too hard on people who are like Qoheleth. In general, they are terrific people to be around. They are always fun and usually very funny. Humour is, alongside overindulgence, one of the things they use to distract from pain. Indeed, I would suggest that some of the greatest comedians of all times fit into this type of personality: Curley Howard, John Candy, John Belushi, Chris Farley, John Pinette.
There are all kinds of wonderful things about this personality type, therefore, but there is also a dark side underneath the jovial surface. In fact, all of those comedians I just named to you were not only extremely funny but also died tragically in ways related to their tendency to overindulge. Therefore, if this personality type describes you or somebody that you love, there is likely some work that needs to be done – work that God needs to do in a person’s life – in order that there might be wholeness and healing.
In many ways, I think that Qoheleth’s book, the book that we call Ecclesiastes, recounts that man’s personal journey towards wholeness with God’s help. And I believe that he found wholeness at least in certain key places in his life. One indication of that is the passage that we read together responsively. It is the best known passage in the entire book and rightly so. It lays out a profound truth that is often very hard for people of Qoheleth’s personality type to hold on to: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
You see, for people of this personality type, the strong tendency is to think that every time is a time to laugh, to dance, to gather, to love or to speak. There is, in other words, no time available to stop indulging in the gifts of life because, when you stop, you let the pain in and the last thing that a Qoheleth wants is to allow the pain to be felt. That is why this part of Qoheleth’s book is so important. In it we see the evidence that he did eventually find the balance that is a sign of wholeness for people of this personality type. The main task of such people is not to abandon the laughter, dancing and celebration that makes them such wonderful people to be around. The task is to make, alongside all of that, a time to deal with the pain of life in a healthful way.
People of this type do often try to improve and complete themselves through things like encouragement and positive thinking and reinforcement. This can be quite helpful for other types of personalities, but it has limited benefits for people like Qoheleth. They will not find the healing they need until they develop the capacity to grieve and mourn and to process the pain that they have suffered in their past and that may still be part of their present life as much as they try to ignore it. The simple fact that Qoheleth can allow himself the time to weep, to mourn, to die and to lose is an indication that he is on the road to becoming all that God created him to be.
There is one other task that a Qoheleth often has to work through, but it is not something that is easily seen in the Book of Ecclesiastes. There is one character in the New Testament, however, who seems to fit into this personality type. He is not named but is simply introduced as a rich young ruler who comes to Jesus to ask him how he can be a part of the kingdom of God. We are not told enough about him to observe his lifestyle but he is described as being extremely wealthy and so I don’t think that it is a stretch to imagine him living an extremely indulgent life.
Whatever exactly is going on in his life, Jesus seems to be able to evaluate the man instantly and to see what he needs most to reach his full potential as a human being. That is why Jesus says to him, “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” This is the most difficult but also the most redeeming thing that a Qoheleth can do. An abundance of wealth and possessions that provide the means to distract you with continual over-the-top consumption will only serve to keep you from dealing with the things that you need to deal with. Jesus is right that transformation will begin when you begin to get rid of all your stuff.
The young ruler who came to Jesus was unwilling to take that step. He left upset and angry. The price was just too high. But if only he had been willing to take that risk, I think that Jesus knew that amazing discipleship would have followed.
The greatest historical example of the potential of taking such a step is a man named Francisco who lived in Italy seven centuries ago. He was a very wealthy man who lived all his early life just like Qoheleth – a life of constant revelry, overconsumption and laughter. But one day he met a leper and heard the voice of Jesus challenging him to do the same thing that he had challenged the rich young ruler to do. Unlike the ruler, however, Francisco heeded that call and literally gave everything away. And with that act he started a movement that had a profound impact on the history of the world – an impact felt to this very day. Never underestimate what a redeemed Qoheleth can do – a redeemed Qoheleth like Francisco or, as we know him to day, Francis of Assisi.
The particular gift of a redeemed Qoheleth is joy. So long as they are tied to their diversions and hiding from their pain, the best that they can offer is humour and levity (which is fun, of course, but it has its limits). But when they have gotten in touch with their pain and let go of their dependence on consumption, a powerful joy can be released that transcends the power of even the darkest times of life to destroy us. This was the remarkable thing that everyone noticed about Francis of Assisi. Such powerful joy can set so many free.
I am so very thankful for all of the Qoheleths that I have known. They have made me laugh. They have taught me so much about enjoying life and all of God’s gifts. God loves them. And God doesn’t want to take away the things that make them who they are – especially not their enjoyment of life. God wants to make their joy complete, wants to help them to face their pain and free them from the power it has over them. If you are a Qoheleth, I pray that you would allow God to do that work in you. If you know a Qoheleth, you are blessed. Stand alongside him or her as they make that journey to discovering all that they were meant to be.
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A gesture of support for our neighbours no matter where they may have come from.
In recent times it has become all too common, it seems, for people who have recently arrived in Canada as immigrants or as refugees -- especially from certain parts of this world -- to be targeted with behaviour that is less than welcoming and loving.
At St Andrew's we wanted to do something to counteract this disturbing trend. We read this passage of scripture on Sunday:
To affirm this important and Biblical truth, the Session of St. Andrews decided to erect a sign that proclaims it in three languages: French, English and Arabic. The third language is Arabic because speakers of that language make up a group that is often targeted in subtle and not-so-subtle ways these days. Before we put up the sign we took a picture to demonstrate our solidarity with our neighbours.
And here is the sign later this morning installed in front of the church building:
If you would like to find out more about these signs and their history in nearby communities, follow this link:
CBC News article about the signs.
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At St Andrew's we wanted to do something to counteract this disturbing trend. We read this passage of scripture on Sunday:
When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:33,34)This passage reminds us that God cares how we treat people who are outsiders or marginalized for any reason. When we go through a time when there is a large number of immigrants or refugees, it will inevitably create some stresses and strains but that should never make us forget the need to treat our neighbours with love and respect, no matter where they come from.
To affirm this important and Biblical truth, the Session of St. Andrews decided to erect a sign that proclaims it in three languages: French, English and Arabic. The third language is Arabic because speakers of that language make up a group that is often targeted in subtle and not-so-subtle ways these days. Before we put up the sign we took a picture to demonstrate our solidarity with our neighbours.
And here is the sign later this morning installed in front of the church building:
If you would like to find out more about these signs and their history in nearby communities, follow this link:
CBC News article about the signs.