The Auction is Tomorrow!

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, October 20th, 2017 in News

There’s a team of people hard at work getting ready for our Dream Silent & Live Auction! The auction is tomorrow, Saturday, October 21. Desserts, coffee, tea & viewing start at 7:00 pm (you can also start bidding on the silent auction items at that time) and the live auction starts at 7:30 pm.

The live auction will no doubt be a lot of fun with friendly bidding wars and some good natured joking.

Below is only a partial list of items for auction. There are many other items, something for everyone!

Please join us for a fun night out - bring your friends, family & neighbours!

Posted by Nonsequitor on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017 in Clerk of Session

Hello St Andrews' Just a reminder that meat pies and soups are available for order Until November 6^th.Order forms are available from the Church Office, in the Sanctuary and from me – Rob Hodgson. New lower prices and discount bulk orders for those that want.

In appreciation of the shortened order cycle I would like to offer a second order/delivery in December if sufficient support is shown. Ask me if you’d like a second opportunity to get these pies & soups.

Bright and Breach

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, October 15th, 2017 in Minister

Hespeler, October 15, 2017 © Scott McAndless – Baptism

Matthew 1:1-3, Genesis 38:27-30, Psalm 78:1-7

oday is a very meaningful day for this congregation, for Sarah and Joelle ______ and for their family. But I would like to remind us that it is not just one day. I mean, if any family decided that they wanted to share the birth of their first child (or children) with us in a celebration of baptism, that would be a wonderful gift and a day of rejoicing. But Sarah and Joelle, though they are in worship with us for the first time today, are not really among us as strangers.

For one thing, their mother has been part of the life of this congregation for her whole life which means that some of the most important and formative moments in her life have happened in this place and with people from this congregation. We have been part of the person she has become in significant ways.

Even more important, when, four years ago, she and Andrew made the most important decision of their lives and decided that they would tie their destinies together, they came here to celebrate and to make their mutual vows. I had the privilege of presiding, on your behalf, on that very special day and I particularly remember it because I was kind of inspired by Andrew’s career. His job involves building things out of concrete that is reinforced by steel rebars, so I spent some time talking about the rebars that God wanted to use to reinforce their relationship – rebars like patience, kindness and God’s unfailing love. A little corny? Maybe. But I like to think that, amongst the many things they were thinking about that day, they did hold onto some of what I said because they seem to have indeed built a strong and enduring relationship that will stand the test of time.

But if you think that their marriage four years ago changed their life, that is nothing compared to what happened to them one year and one day ago when Sarah and Joelle showed up and began to rearrange absolutely everything – especially all of their priorities. It has got to be the most significant single event in their lives up until this point and yet today they have chosen to invite us into their relationship with their children. And not just today, but on into the future as they have said that it is their intention that this congregation should be a part of their children’s life as it has been a part of Laura’s.

As I thought about this very special day, my mind turned to the stories of births in the Bible and, for some strange reason, I particularly thought of the stories of the births of twins. There are only a few twins mentioned in the Bible. All of them happen to be boys. Some of them, like Jacob and Esau, have pretty well-known stories. But as I thought of Sarah and Joelle and what their coming among us means, I remembered another set of twins who seemed to have something important to say to us today: their names are Perez and Zerah.

But before we can talk about these two very important, but somewhat obscure twins, we need to understand that the Bible comes to us out of a world that looked on children in very particular ways. For one thing, the naming of a baby always holds deep significance and meaning in the Bible. They didn’t just give their babies names because they were popular that year or because they were naming their child after some popular television character. (And, yes, I am talking about all those parents out there who gave their daughters the name Khaleesi last year.)

It didn’t work like that in Ancient Israel. Back then, the custom was for the mother to chose the name of her child (it was one of the few things in that society that women were actually given control over) and she would choose the name based on her hopes and expectations for her child or on some circumstance surrounding the birth.

Another thing that you need to understand about the ancient people of the Bible: birth order mattered a lot. The difference between being the first born and the second born was like the difference between night and day. The firstborn male got everything (and, yes, this was all about the boys; girls were not valued in the same way, but that was really their problem and their mistake). The second son got nothing. This makes the stories about the birth of twins in the Bible particularly dramatic. The question of which one will be born a few seconds before the other one becomes a near life and death struggle.

So, with that in mind, let us take a look at the story of the Bible’s less famous twins, Perez and Zerah. Now, even though you have probably never heard their names before, they are actually very important and significant twins as far as the Bible is concerned – so important that they are named in the third verse of the New Testament – Matthew 1:3 – among the ancestors of Jesus Christ. The story of their mother, Tamar, and how she came to have them is also one of the strangest stories in the whole Bible but it never gets read in church (for reasons I’m just not going to explain to you) so you’ll just have to read it for yourselves later. (We preachers will resort to anything to get people to read the Bible for themselves.)

But the importance of these two children is something that we should pick up on here today because one of the reasons we are here is because we don’t just think that Sarah and Joelle are cute and beautiful (which they are, by the way) but also because we believe in their potential. They are only a year old. They have already started to form personalities and interests but we have no idea what they might grow up to do and to be. We don’t even have a clear idea of what the world will be like when they grow up. But we have baptized them today because we believe that God can use them and their uniqueness to bring about a better world – to establish some manifestation of the reality of the kingdom of God. That is ultimately what this is all about.

Now, as I said, birth order meant everything to the ancient people of the Bible – much more than it means to us today. And this story in Genesis plays with that ancient obsession because, of course, when you are talking about twins, that sort of obsession is exposed as ridiculousness. After all, why would you insist that a child’s destiny and inheritance must be limited by its place in the birth order when, in the case of twins, we’re only talking about a difference of a few minutes or even seconds?

But it is even more ridiculous in this case when one of the two children puts his hand out and the midwife marks him as firstborn by tying a thread around his wrist and then, in the end, it is the other one who is actually born first. By the end of it, even the author of Genesis seems confused, not really knowing which one is the eldest. (The confusion is actually even more clear in the original Hebrew text. The translators have clarified something that wasn’t very clear in the original.)

I believe that that confusion in the story is quite intentional. The Bible is reminding us – as it frequently does – that all of the systems of this world, the systems that we human beings like to set up in order to say that some people are just better or more valuable than others – are truly meaningless. We keep trying to divide people by birth order or race or wealth or status and God just seems to delight in overturning all of that. The birth of these twins is a graphic illustration of one of Jesus’ favourite sayings, “The first shall be last and that last shall be first” because God just loves turning things upside down.

That brings us, finally, to the names that are given to these Biblical twins, for their names are taken directly from the story of the contest between them to be born first. The twin who is born first (after the other twin puts out his hand and gets the bright red thread tied on it) is called Perez and Perez means breach. The meaning of this has nothing to do with what is called a breech birth which is what you call it when a child comes out of the womb feet first. This was a particularly dangerous kind of birth in the ancient world and could often be fatal for mother or child or birth. But that is not what breach means in this story. It is rather a reference to ancient warfare when a breach would be made in walls or defensive fortifications to allow an enemy army to win a battle or take a city.

The idea behind this name seems to be that Perez has made a breach in the normal ways of doing things. He has overturned the whole way that the world works by stealing the first place from his brother and maybe from all firstborns everywhere.

Wouldn’t you agree, Laura and Andrew, that breach or Perez does make a good name for a twin because I am pretty sure that you have experienced exactly that. The arrival of these two children, especially when they both have come at once, has turned everything upside down for you. They have breached every single habit, every assumption every limit you thought that you had set. They have changed everything including your living arrangements and your relationships with your families and with almost everyone else. They have changed your priorities and your anxieties. But that is what children do and they do it all the more powerfully when they come two at a time.

The other child is given the name Zerah. This is the one who first put his hand out of the womb and the midwife tied a red thread around it. The name Zerah sounds like the Hebrew word that means bright so the idea seems to be that this child is named for the bright colour of the thread.

But, wherever the name comes from, the promise that the arrival of this child brings a new brightness into the world is one that can celebrate here today. Laura and Andrew, I know that you have named your children Sarah and Joelle, but there is no question that they have brought a new brightness into your lives and into the world even as they have breached and disrupted everything. You now know a new meaning to your lives and a new purpose to your being. You now find laughter and joy in places where you never found them before – even in dirty diapers, sleepless nights and just being together. This is a precious gift and we pray that you get full enjoyment of it. And thank you today for sharing that gift of brightness with all of us.

These children, Sarah and Joelle, are among us all as a gift from God today – a gift to their family first but also a gift to all of us. They come to disrupt us because the reality is that the church needs to have its comfortable assumptions of what its priorities are breached and disrupted. They are here as a reminder that the church needs be open to change and to breach if it is going to provide for these children and for others like them a place where they can grow up and take their own proper place in the kingdom of God.

They are also here as a gift of brightness – of new life and new beginnings. They are a sign of the hope that God is with us and will continue to renew us. Andrew and Laura, thank you for sharing these gifts of breach and bright with us today!

Sermon Video:

Pancakes anyone?

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, October 13th, 2017 in News

Thanksgiving after Harvey, Irma, Maria, Las Vegas, the Cariboo Fires, the Mexico Earthquakes, Charlottesville, the Quebec Mosque, the South Asia floods, First Nations boil water advisories, the Battle of Aleppo, Freetown Mudslide, etc. etc. etc.

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, October 8th, 2017 in Minister

Hespeler, 8 October, 2017 © Scott McAndless – Thanksgiving

Isaiah 25:1-8, Luke 7:31-35, Psalm 138:1-8

t is Thanksgiving Sunday and many people who live in the Cariboo Region of British Columbia are having a hard time knowing what to be thankful for. They have spent most of the last three months on the run. The forest fires and wildfires in that whole region have been record-breaking this year. People have had to leave behind homes and livelihoods and many have heard the word that what they left behind has been completely destroyed. They don’t have their good dishes with them. Some of their closest family members have taken shelter in communities hundreds of kilometers away. I think that it is worth asking, when they gather around the table later today, what will they find to be thankful for?

And they are not the only ones. In Northern Alberta, an extended family will likely gather this weekend, but probably not for Thanksgiving. I think they’ll be gathered for the funeral of a young mother of four who went down to Las Vegas to see a concert last week and didn’t come back.

A family gathers in Houston, Texas. Their home has been flooded and toxic mold has taken over everything. The wood is rotten, the foundation is crumbling and the insurance company doesn’t want to pay for anything. Even if they could rebuild, they are not sure that would want to. What would be the point of rebuilding on a floodplain after all? They would just get their lives back together in time to get flooded out again. So what have they to be thankful for? And, yes, I know that this weekend is not their Thanksgiving; that it is more than a month away, but do you really think that their situation will have changed significantly by then? So when will their Thanksgiving truly be?

And there are others – so many others it seems – who struggle with the same reality. The scores of Canadian First Nations communities that have been under boil water advisories for years. They are saying that it could take 30 years for Puerto Rico to recover from Hurricane Maria! Mexico is recovering from three earthquakes and counting. Huge swaths of Southeast Asia and Africa have seen unprecedented flooding and there are the other human-made disasters that are Syria, North Korea, and American race relations. The world seems a mess these days, doesn’t it? So much so that when I was trying to come up with a title for this Sunday’s sermon and I wanted to describe the setting for Canadian Thanksgiving 2017, I ended up with a bit of a run-on title.

But the question is obvious, isn’t it? How are we supposed to be thankful at such a time as this – when so much seems to be going so wrong for so many. What is there to be thankful for? Some people might suggest one answer. It is an answer that I hear a lot from the people that I visit. I often have the privilege of being there with someone who has been through a rough time. They will tell me the story of the trials that they have gone through and the long road to recovery that lies in front of them. And some of those roads are hard and it is hard to find the words that will encourage them to persevere. But then, what will they do? They will finish off the story of their struggles by saying, “But, you know, Rev. Scott, there are a lot of people out there who have it a whole lot worse than I do and I can be thankful that I don’t have to deal with what they do.”

So that is one possible answer to how we can be thankful on this particular Thanksgiving day. When, later on today, we all gather with our families around tables overloaded with bounty, we could all bow our heads and sincerely pray, “Dear Lord, thank you so much that today we are not in Houston… or Florida or Puerto Rico or Northern British Columbia or Mexico City or Syria or Liberia (where thousands recently died in mudslides) or any number of other equally horrible places right now.”

And there isn’t really anything wrong with that kind of thankfulness. It is true that we are so much better off today than so many others in the world and realizing how true that is can certainly help to keep us from falling into self-centred or self-pitying attitudes when things do not entirely go our way. But the reality is that it is not quite as simple as that. It may be true that we haven’t yet seen the kind of disasters that they have, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t or won’t. Even more important than that, I believe that thankfulness should be about more than just getting beyond our own self-centredness and self-pitying. I believe that thanksgiving is one of the forces that God wants to use to transform the world. So what kind of Thanksgiving is called for in 2017?

As I thought about that question, my mind turned to the Prophet Isaiah because that is how the mind of a preacher works. I thought of Isaiah because, of all the Biblical characters, he’s the one who lived through a time most like what we’ve been seeing over the last couple of months. Isaiah didn’t live through any major hurricanes that I know of (hurricanes don’t really make it to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea) but he did get caught in a major earthquake in Jerusalem. But worse and more destructive were the wars and invasions that Isaiah had to live through and witness. First the terribly destructive war against Samaria-Damascus and then the completely devastating Assyrian invasion.

Now the specific history of these events doesn’t necessarily matter. All you really need to know for the moment is that these events were horrible and that, in particular, they left in their wake a multitude of cities that were reduced to rubble and decimated populations of citizens. So Isaiah and his contemporaries were very familiar with the very disturbing images that we can see today of devastated cities like San Juan, Mexico City, Houston, Texas, Freeport, Liberia and the list goes on and on.

So how did Isaiah call on the people to respond to the terrible things going on in the world in his day? Well, interestingly enough, he looks at the big mess that is the world and he says this to God: “For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt.” I’m not sure which particular city he is looking at when he says this and it probably doesn’t matter. What is remarkable is who Isaiah apparently starts out blaming for all this mess. He says to God, you have done this. In fact, he even seems to be listing these ruined cities among the “wonderful things” that God has done.

I have heard this kind of talk lately as people have seen the disasters taking place in our world. There are some people who are only too happy to name God as the cause of them. Some do it because they are angry with God and really think that God (who is supposed to be all powerful after all) ought to do something to prevent these sorts of disasters. Others do it as a way of blaming the victims of these disasters for their own misery, saying that God has brought it upon them as a judgement for their wickedness and evil (whatever that might be). The worst example of that, in my mind has been the inclination to blame Puerto Rico’s present state on its heavy debt load and even on the implied laziness of its inhabitants.

So it is not too surprising that Isaiah would flirt with laying the credit for all the disasters he is seeing on God. But I believe that he turns away from that idea because something else immediately catches his attention. “Strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you,” he says to God. But why will they glorify God – that is the surprising part: “For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.” You see, Isaiah has been surprised as he watches these disasters unfold. He has been surprised to see God, but not where he expected to find God. He has not found God in the rubble, mud and destruction. He has instead found God in the acts of compassion that have been done – especially those done for the poor and for the needy.

I think I know what Isaiah is talking about. If you are like me you have probably been overwhelmed as you have watched all of these back-to-back disasters taking place. Feelings of powerlessness and despair pile up. Sometimes it is so much that we begin to suffer from compassion-fatigue. You start to feel like you just can’t care anymore.

But then God has a way of showing you another part of the story that it is easy to miss in the midst of the misery: the acts of courage and kindness – the Mayor of San Juan running around the city in hip waders actually rescuing people who are about to drown, the stranger who stays for hours by the severely wounded man lying on the ground in Las Vegas, the hordes of people moved by compassion who donate far beyond what they can really afford. And the more you look, the more of these amazing stories you can find and, if you are paying real attention, you can discover that God is very much and very powerfully present in the midst of that disaster, just not in the ways that you thought at first.

It is as Isaiah learned: God is most present in the amazing acts of selflessness and service to the poorest and weakest. This is not something that you can prove or logically demonstrate to someone else. It is a truth that comes to you through a kind of mysticism. But once you have seen it, you know that it is true and that God is miraculously present in these selfless acts. They can bring healing and hope far beyond the mere content of the gesture itself and if there is one thing for us to see and to be thankful for in this strange world where we find ourselves on this Thanksgiving Sunday 2017, I believe it is that.

But Isaiah’s vision doesn’t end there. He goes on to describe a feast. Why do we feast on Thanksgiving? We do it because we instinctively understand that one of the best ways to show how grateful we are is to actually enjoy the bounty that we have been given together with the people that we love and who mean the most to us.

But, maybe especially this year, we might ask if it is appropriate and seemly that we should enjoy this abundance of food when there are so many in the world who have so little – when people in San Juan are literally starving for example. I am sure that Isaiah asked himself that question too. But he came back with an overwhelming answer that, yes, it was a time for feasting.

“On this mountain,” he declared, “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” What Isaiah was doing, in the wake of so much devastation and destruction, was calling people together – all people of God will no matter who they were and what their faith and nationality was. A feast was necessary because it would create a new alliance of people who could change the world.

“And [God] will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations;” Isaiah continues, “he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth.” Isaiah is here talking specifically about wiping away the scourge of death that has been brought on by war in the land. And that makes this promise amazing. God is promising to use gatherings of people of good will to change the conversation – to turn the world away from violence to hope.

If we could claim this promise this Thanksgiving, wouldn’t that be amazing? If, when you gather today or tomorrow with your loved ones to eat “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear,” what if you all used the opportunity not just to enjoy good food and company but to rededicate yourselves to working together for a world of changed priorities – a world where we actually take care of the broken-hearted, where we actively strategize for peace instead of ginning up divisions and enmity as seems to be happening so much lately. Isaiah’s promise is that such feasts can change the world, so let me ask you: what will you do this weekend to make your Thanksgiving feast that kind of feast?

#140CharacterSermon How to #thanksgiving in wake of many disasters? Hold a feast like in Isaiah 25. Dedicate selves to making a new approach

Announcing the Launch of my New Podcast on October 11, 2017

Posted by Scott McAndless on Saturday, October 7th, 2017 in Minister

On Wednesday, October 11, 2017, my newest personal project will go online. It will be a Podcast called "Retelling the Bible."

I really love the Bible and it is a book that I take very seriously. But I also understand that the Bible is not a history book – at least not in the modern sense of that word. It contains many stories based on historical events and set within historical settings, but the goal of the authors was not merely to recount exactly what happened because they believed that they had a far more important job to do. Their job was to convey the truth about God, the world or themselves that they had experienced. And, as any good storyteller knows, you can never let mere facts get in the way of speaking the truth.

I created this Podcast to help people to hear the Biblical stories in new ways -- hopefully in ways that are closer to what the authors originally intended for people to hear. On a weekly basis, I will tell a Bible story in a way that will help you to hear it differently.

For the first season, which will run from October 11 to December 20, I will be retelling the story of the nativity of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:26-2:20). There will be a total of eleven episodes -- a rather in-depth retelling -- but that will be what is necessary to bring out all of the references to the Old Testament and the historical context in which the birth is set that we usually miss in the story.

Another problem that we have long had with Luke story of the nativity is that we have twisted it so much to make it fit with the other Biblical story of the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew that we have lost sight of the amazing story that Luke originally told. I want to honour Luke for the gifted storyteller that he was by letting his story speak for itself without distorting it in a misguided attempt to harmonize divergent Biblical stories.

I mostly recorded this podcast on my own by setting up a little studio in my bedroom closet but I also asked my very talented daughter, Gabrielle, to help out by lending her voice for the female characters.

I hope that you can join us in this little adventure that will be the first season of "Retelling the Bible." The Podcast will be hosted at retellingthebible.podbean.com/. Once the episodes are up, you should be able to find them on iTunes or wherever else you find your podcasts. If you can't find the series on your favourite app, please let me know and I'll do my best to make sure it can happen.

If you like what you hear, please make sure you share this podcast with your friends and whoever might be interested in listening. Thank you!

Meat Pie Details

Posted by Nonsequitor on Monday, October 2nd, 2017 in Clerk of Session

The official order window is from October 1st to November 6th due to changes at our supplier. Normally we would have a longer run but in this era of changes in retail, they would like to help us but find they cannot because of their supplier changes. Please accept my apologies due to the changes but Kerri and the staff are part of a supply chain (as we are too). You may notice that the Tappa's are gone too - not a big seller. Most of the rest remains the same.

Please have your meat pie orders to me, the Church office or email me and we can work out the details.

NEW! orders will be accepted from October 1 - November 6

I cannot guarantee your order will be processed after the date shown. What I can do is create an order cycle in December if there is enough demand.

Potato Harvest Sunday

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Monday, October 2nd, 2017 in News

And the winner of the Grand Gardener contest is .......

Braydon.

Braydon grew the biggest and the smallest potato this year.

Thank you, to all of our Sunday School students, and members who grew potatoes this summer. Thursday Night Supper & Social appreciate all of the potatoes as well as the donations of non-perishable food items.

Hespeler Rocks!

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Monday, October 2nd, 2017 in News

Our Holy Sherlocks class painted some of their own "Hespeler Rocks". Yesterday they hid them outside after worship. Can you find and re-hide any?

Who’s my neighbour?

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, October 1st, 2017 in Minister

Luke 10:25-36, Psalm 36:1-12, Isaiah 2:1-5

t wasn’t like you probably think. It was not like he thought that he was better than everyone else. It was that he actually tried to do his best. He was earnest. He wanted to live without displeasing God or anybody else. He recycled and separated his compost from his garbage religiously. He always brought his bags with him when he went grocery shopping. Even more important, he tried to respect people and accept them as they were. He was a lawyer and he tried to use his profession to make up for the injustices of the world.

And he was not stuck up about it either; he never boasted about any of his own good deeds. It really bothered him that other people never even seemed to try to be good, but he was still patient with them. He was just a good person. There wasn’t a soul who would say otherwise.

So what was he expecting when he came to the teacher and asked him what he needed to do to inherit eternal life? Was he just thinking that he’d be given a nice pat on the back and sent on his way with the assurance that eternal life was his? Maybe. In any case, I don’t think he was expecting a quiz on why, exactly, he conducted his life in the way that he did: “What is written in the law?” he was asked, “What do you read there?” But even there he was ready with an answer: he lived the way he did because he wanted to do his best to love God and love his neighbour.

But that did raise a question, didn’t it? Who was his neighbour anyways? Who did he have the obligation to look out for, to help, to take care of? There were so many needs out there in the world – so much he could do to make things better – but where should he start? Who did he really need to take care of? So he asked.

In response, I am sure, Jesus raised his eyes to the heavens and heaved a deep sigh. Would these people never understand? And he told a story. And in my mind, Jesus was probably about the best storyteller who has ever lived. Others may have told longer stories with more well-developed characters, but Jesus clearly had a way of getting people really engaged in what he was telling. So I don’t think that the man heard that story so much as he lived it.

It was him. It was late one night, well after dark, and for some reason he was down in North Galt walking along Ainslie St. when all of a sudden the motorcycle came out of nowhere. It just clipped him as it went by. It’s possible that the driver didn’t even know that it happened (though I doubt it). But whether he did or not, the result was the same. The lawyer ended up at the side of the road, bleeding rather too much from his head and slipping in and out of consciousness. It was probably while he was in one of those unconscious states that his wallet, identification and cell phone mysteriously disappeared.

He was, to put it simply, not in good shape. And he really didn’t have any way to pull himself together or sort himself out either. He needed help or he simply was not going to get out of this situation.

You see, that is what we often don’t get about the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan. It is natural, when you hear a good story, to find some character that you identify with. And you hear this story and figure that there are only three people that you could identify with: you either see yourself as the priest, as the Levite or as the Samaritan. These are the three actors in the story the ones who are deciding whether or not they will act like a neighbour to the man who is in need. And, of course, since the other two get it wrong, you are likely to at least want to see yourself as the Good Samaritan.

But I am not so sure that that is how Jesus intended for us to hear this story. I believe that, if Jesus really invited that lawyer into that story, he was more likely to invite him into it like this:

The lawyer lay in the muck and in the filth at the side of the road. He had lost a fair bit of blood and had a bigger headache than he ever imagined anybody could have. He had no phone, no papers, certainly no money and when he just tried to sit up a little bit, the pain that hit him was so bad that it threatened to suck him back down into unconsciousness again.

“Who is my neighbour,” he muttered to himself. Surely there is someone who is passing by who will take pity on me. Heaven knows I have taken pity on many others.

Before long, he heard some footsteps approaching. Just from the sound of them, he could tell that he was hearing some well-heeled feet – someone was wearing quality shoes and had a step that was full of confidence. Surely, he thought to himself, this will be someone who has the ability to help me. Here is someone who probably has a lot to spare and it won’t even hurt them a little bit to help somebody out. And so, as the footsteps came nearer, he strained his eyes to see who it might be, his saviour in the night. And, to his delight, as the shadowy figure came into his sight, he realized that he recognized the person. It was an old friend and ally with whom he had worked on some charitable campaigns. He smiled as he waited for him to draw near and then tried to call out his name.

But his voice wasn’t working; all that came out was a croak which only serve to startle the approaching man. He recoiled. What he saw seemed appalling to him. For all he knew, the heap of humanity that he saw in the gutter was all that was left of an addict who had gone too far, who had maybe even overdosed on something awful like Fentanyl. That kind of thing had been happening more and more in the city and he had heard horror stories about how the drug could become airborne and if someone just came too close they could overdose too. He quickly crossed to the other side of the street and proceeded to pretend that he hadn’t seen anything at all.

That was the first disappointment that the lawyer in the gutter suffered. It was not the last. Others passed by: fine upstanding citizens, community leaders, even old friends who obviously could not recognize him in his deplorable state. Every one of them allowed their fear of his state or their distaste or judgement for what they thought they saw to overcome any human compassion they might feel. They all passed by on the other side of the road.

It was only when he had completely given up hope – when he had actually decided that he was going to die there in that gutter – that he heard one final set of footprints. He looked up with a momentary flutter of hope and then his head dropped as he gave a mighty moan. This was definitely not someone who would help him. It was a young woman, an immigrant probably. She was all wrapped up in a hijab. In his eyes, at that moment, she was a victim. He didn’t understand how women are treated in Islamic cultures. He certainly didn’t understand how it is that they accept the lower positions to which they seem to be relegated. On another day, perhaps, he would have pitied her and tried to help her. But today – right now – he had no pity left for anybody but himself. He sank down in despair and finally just gave up completely.

That was when he felt the hand on his cheek. He opened his eyes to see that it was the young woman and that she knelt beside him. Her touch was cool and soothing. Her gentle voice calmed him and lifted his spirit though he didn’t understand her language. He suddenly knew that he was going to be alright. So in the end it was she who called for a cab and went with him to the hospital. It was she who managed to understand, from his ramblings, what his name was and figured out how to get in touch with his family. It was she who saved him.

The people who first heard this parable would have never identified with a Samaritan. They hated Samaritans, despised them, perhaps pitied them for their failure to be Jews. If they heard a story about a Samaritan, they would have expected the character to be the villain or the victim, never the hero.

And Jesus understood that. He understood that they’d never put themselves in the place of the Samaritan. He expected them to put themselves in the place of the man who lay at the side of the road.

This was a parable about what it means to be a neighbour and Jesus knew that it is one thing to be a neighbour when you are in a position of strength – when everything has gone your way and you can use the blessings you have received to help those who are less fortunate. It is quite another thing to be a neighbour when you are at your weakest point – when you are the one who needs a hand.

This is especially true, I think, when you have the same kind of situation in our communities today as existed in the Galilee of Jesus’ time. We live (as was also true in Jesus’ Galilee) in an incredibly diverse society where people come from all over the world to live next to each other – live with different customs, faiths and practices. In some ways it is easy for us to be neighbours to such people when we are the ones who are letting them in, welcoming them or helping them because that is what we are used to. We are used to being the majority – to being the ones who are in control and who, out of the goodness of our own hearts, let others in and allow them to be our neighbours.

That has often been our attitude but it has not always been the most helpful attitude as it can make us patronizing and paternalistic to others. I don’t really think that that is the kind of neighbouring that Jesus is calling on us to practice. He is calling us to embrace our weakness and vulnerability. He is calling us to learn to be a neighbour from the ditch at the side of the road too.

As many of you will know, we here at St. Andrew’s are about to get some new neighbours – that a group of Hindu worshippers have purchased the Lutheran Church building across the street and are planning to move in soon. I don’t know about you, but I am kind of excited about that. I hope that we can be good neighbours to them – to make them feel welcome and assist them as we can. I’ve already begun to think of ways that we can do that and I know that others have as well. But what if Jesus is calling us to experience being a different kind of neighbour to them – calling us to learn to need them, to allow them to help us, to learn from them? Now wouldn’t that be an adventure?

The Bible teaches us to love our neighbours as ourselves and Jesus told a story that seems to indicate that such love might just include learning from and growing with those neighbours wherever they might have come from. Maybe he was teaching that being a neighbour means actually needing the people who are different from you, who have different ways of thinking and different priorities. Maybe he was showing us how much we really need all our neighbours.

#140CharacterSermon Who does Jesus want you to identify with in parable of #GoodSamaritan? What if it's the guy in the ditch? #Neighbours

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