Meat Pie Session Fundraiser Campaign 2016 Sunday October 16

Posted by Nonsequitor on Monday, October 17th, 2016 in Clerk of Session

It is a great pleasure for me to be here today.

You have heard by now that the Sustainable Finances Task Group has identified four Session sanctioned Fund-Raising adventures at St. Andrews. The impetus to change our standard budgeting and financial methods was driven by the Congregation at the Annual General Meeting. Today I’d like to tell you about the revival of the famous Meat Pie campaign.

In the recent past, Karen Nixon along with the Beth McIntosh Groups’ oversight led this magnificent legacy and literally "thousands" of meat pies were sold in short order. Karen’s skills at St. Andrews are both legendary and earned through years of dedicated hard work. Karen created a standard of performance that saw her lead numerous groups over many years. Karen had the vision to use her personal missions to be a game changer. The Beth Macintosh Group reaches farther into our past and created a heritage record of financing so many projects that it is truly amazing. Throughout the years these dedicated women invented ways to keep us functioning through their charitable work. The sum result of all these efforts was people using personal missions to change the way we do business here at St Andrews.

I would like to grasp the opportunity to congratulate us on launching these outstanding fundraising campaigns in which you can make a difference in the future of our church. Your donations, in any, amount can be the game changer we need to get ahead for years, maybe forever. The monies raised by selling meat pies, soups and tapas will go directly to offset the budget shortfall. I am honored to thank all: volunteers, sponsors, organizers and private persons, who see the need for St Andrews to endure. In short Karen Kincaid and her helpers have created a sustainable heritage at New Hope Clothing and need us to sustain the building that lets her move her mission forward. The Thursday night supper group depend on a place to feed a group of friends we see every week. The residents of Hespeler now rely on how we take care of them. In uncertain times some remarkable people have taken the chance to make a difference.

OK so here’s the details – you will have received a package outlining the program and products today or we will make sure you get a package. In early October I met two women who run Delicious and Nutritious a small business that makes meat pies, soups, tapas as well as sweet pies. Kerri Prong and Nancy Holbrook have a personal mission too; they make hand-made meat pies in Forest Ontario. Almost exclusively they create their meals to supply fundraisers throughout Ontario. They have a fair history of an enduring mission of their own. The offerings are many and multiple sizes are available as you see fit. So you’re saying “wonder what the pies are like?” Right? To answer this question two dates have been reserved to try the product and make up your own mind. Wednesday, October 19 at the Family dinner downstairs in the hall I will present a selection of pies for your tasting pleasure. On October 30 at the anniversary celebration after, worship my lovely wife Debbie and I will again present the meat pies and some soups for your evaluation.

Orders must be in by November 13^th_.You decide the pickup date for your meat pies either November 26, 27 or 28. Other arrangements can be made if you add comments to the order form in the box provided. Oh wait there are also discounts for bulk purchases – buy six 5” pies and save OR buy 6 soups and save more. I’m sure you have questions and so I will be downstairs today to try and answer if I can. Volunteers will be downstairs every Sunday from today until November 13 to help expedite your orders. You may leave your orders: with the church office during office hours, drop them on the collection plate, email them to me, or bring them to fellowship after worship. Payment will be accepted when you pick up your order – cash (exact change would help greatly) or cheques made payable to St Andrews Hespeler. It was my intention to recreate the meat pies you all know and cherish but reality is we cannot reproduce what Karen Nixon and the Beth Macintosh group created all those years ago. Roadblocks like: the costs to make pies, box, label and bag the pies, labeling requirements, allergy issues, Health and Safety concerns with surprise food inspections, the volume of volunteers required for 3 – 4 full days and the idea of doing this multiple times.

Keri and Nancy in Forest can deliver some flexibility to sell meat pies whenever we want and to scale the fundraiser in ways that are unavailable onsite in Hespeler. Relationships like this are rare and far between. I like to think that the pies are like homemade but you will be the judges.

In closing, I wish to thank all of you, our sponsors and donors, for your donations. Let’s go on building the bonds of friendship and goodness through cooperation and mutual respect. Thank you all for being with us, joining us, and supporting our beginnings.

To quote an anonymous writer; “when courage, genius, and generosity hold hands, all things are possible.”

Rob COS

Gird your loins

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, October 17th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 16 October, 2016 © Scott McAndless – The Jeff-a-thon

1 Kings 18:41-46, Isaiah 40:27-31, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

n Saturday, May 28 at 7:56 am, I did something that I had never imagined that I would do in all my life of my own free will. I stepped out of my front door and started to run and didn’t stop running until I had travelled about four kilometers. I ran through the arena parking lot down the streets, down the long path through woods to Queen St, I ran along Queen St. right in front of the church here, on through Forbes Park and up the trails that run through Woodland Park. And there, after about 4 kilometers as I said, and half way up what has to be one of the steepest hills in all Hespeler (that I foolishly took at a run), I stopped. My breath was ragged, I was carrying a great weight upon my chest and my legs and even (much to my surprise) my arms felt like lead. The muscles in my limbs would continue to be sore for a couple of days.

Why did I put myself through that? When I describe it like that, it really doesn’t sound like a very fun way to spend your Saturday morning. Well, I probably don’t need to tell most of you why I did it because you have already heard me say that I had made a decision that I wanted to run in the Jeff-a-thon and had set as a goal to run the full 10 km distance and do it in an hour. I’m not going to go over the reasons here today for why I felt that the Jeff-a-thon was a good enough reason for me to change what had been, up until that point, a very successful strict no running policy. You’ll have lots of chances to hear about that when you come out to Crieff Hills this afternoon.

But the process of getting from that morning back at the end of May to the place where I am now – ready and confident that I can do what I set out to do this very afternoon – has been an interesting journey to say the least and I believe that there are some spiritual lessons in that journey for all of us today.

I don’t pretend to be an amazing athlete. I don’t pretend to have a better grasp of training to run than lots of other people who could probably give you much better advice than me. But I can say that, over the last few months, I have learned how to run. I would even say that I have changed my identity from being a non-runner to being a runner because I know that this afternoon will not be my last run. I don’t know how I am going to do it through the coming winter, but I do know that I am going to continue running, that it is now a necessary part of my life. And it is something that actually gives me a new way of looking at parts of the New Testament.

As you may have noticed, there is a long tradition in Christian preaching of preachers and teachers seeking to bring out spiritual truths with analogies and metaphors related to sports. In fact, you are Canadians, I’ll bet that you have heard hundreds – maybe thousands – of sermons that are built around hockey metaphors. So many, in fact, that it might surprise you to learn that the Bible doesn’t actually say anything about hockey at all. I mean, it’s incredible – almost as if no one had ever heard of Canada’s favourite sport when the Bible was being written. So no hockey at all, but would it surprise you to learn that there is one sport that is used as an analogy of the Christian life in the New Testament not once but four times?

That sport is running. It is a metaphor used once in the Letter to Hebrews and three separate times in the writings of the Apostle Paul. I find it quite amazing that on three different occasions, Paul was looking for some image that would illustrate the kind of life that he was calling his disciples to live and each time Paul chose to write about running. It actually makes me suspect that either Paul was a runner himself or that he was a big fan of what actually was the most popular sport in the ancient Greek-speaking world.

So I thought that maybe it was about time that someone preached a sermon on the sport of running and what might have to teach us about the Christian life. I would like to think that, over the past few months, I have learned a little bit about running. What lessons are there in what I have learned that we could all apply to how we live out our lives as Christians in the modern world?

Of all the things that the Apostle Paul says about running, the one idea that he keeps coming back to is the idea of having a goal or aim in your running. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes, “Then I laid before them… the gospel… in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain.” To the Philippians he writes, “I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain.” And finally, in the passage we read this morning, he says, “I do not run aimlessly.”

Now, I think that it is very fair to say that, if you are running in a race and you do not have the slightest idea of where the finish line is, you are not going to win that race. That much is obvious when you are running. But Paul is not talking about winning a foot race in this passage but about how to conduct your life as a Christian. So what, about that, can we apply to the life of Christian faith? I think it is true that many of us (and I will readily include myself in this) do often seek to live out our Christian life without thinking too much about our aims and goals in it. It is so easy to just develop certain habits of prayer and devotion, church attendance and activities and think that to do these things is what it means to be a Christian. And it is not that these are bad activities. These are very good habits to be in, but it can be so easy for us to lose sight of why we do these things. And when that happens, we begin to make the activities themselves the goal.

Have you ever heard people in church, when challenged to explain why they do certain things in certain ways, respond like this: “Well, that’s how we have always done it”? No, I’ve never heard that in a church either! Well, if, by chance, you ever do hear it, it might just be a sign that you are not as aware of the purpose of being a church as you need to be. The purpose of the Christian life is clear (even if the question of how we achieve that purpose may adapt and change). We are here to build up the kingdom of God. We are here to proclaim good news to the world in word and in deed. Paul uses the image of the runner to remind us that we must ever keep that aim in view in everything that we do.

The second thing that Paul talks about in the sport of running is dedication. “Athletes exercise self-control in all things,” he says. After that he lays out in practical terms exactly what that sort of self-control looks like: “I punish my body and enslave it,”he says.

Again, this is not something that I can really say that I understood until I seriously started to train to run 10 kilometres. I have learned that it is one thing to run 3, 4 and even 5 kilometers, but that it is quite another to run 7, 8, 9 and 10. At some point you are going to hit that place where your body is going to be crying out that it can go no further and do no more and you are only going to get more out of yourself if you push beyond what your body wants, effectively making your body a slave to your will.

That level of dedication seems to be difficult for many people to find these days. One of the reasons why we find it so hard, I believe, is because of the way we turn everything into an opportunity to shop. Do you realize that there is an unprecedented interest in fitness in our society and much of it is driven by the growth of activity trackers like Fitbits, Apple Watches and other similar devices? People are collectively spending millions of dollars these days on these sorts of devices.

And the growth in the use of these devices has gotten to a point where researchers are able to study the impact that they are having on our overall health and fitness. And do you know what they are finding? They are finding that there really isn’t much correlation between the sales of fitbits and health and weight loss. It is not helping very much.

And you know why that is? It because we have fallen into this habit of thinking that the way we solve all of our problems is by buying things. And so when you want to lose weight or get healthier, you just go out and buy a gym membership or a fitbit and you’re done and everything has been taken care of. Oh it is not as if I have to actually go to the gym or walk more than a few feet is it? Haven’t I already done enough by spending my money to get healthier? Shouldn’t what I bought do all the rest?

Can you see the problem with this approach? These devices are terrific and they certainly can help you in your quest for better health, but the device itself doesn’t solve anything for you. Without some commitment and dedication, it is actually totally useless.

And we actually have the same problem with the Christian life as well. We are often tempted to replace dedication with consumerism. Here’s an example for you: did you realize that the Bible has long been one of the best selling books in the world and Bible sales have remained strong despite many other changes in society. The book sells like hotcakes. But here is another statistic: while the Bible still sells like crazy, knowledge of what the Bible actually says and contains continues to drop like a stone. It turns out that the world’s best selling book just happens to be one of the world’s least read books.

What is going on? Isn’t it obvious? People are treating Bibles like fitbits and gym memberships. When they want to get a little bit of spirituality or religion, what do they do? They go out and buy a Bible – a nice one, a special version that promises to make all kinds of applications to their life for them. They buy the Bible, bring it home and throw it on the shelf and they are done. Read it? Why would I bother reading it? Isn’t it enough that I spent so much money to get it? Once again, the Bible is a terrific tool and a great help, but without a bit of commitment and dedication it really cannot ever amount to anything.

There is one other connection that Paul makes between the sport of running and the Christian life: the reward. Runners do it, he says, “to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.” He is referring, of course, to the kinds of prizes that were commonly handed out to winners of races in the ancient world which were wreathes woven out of various kinds of foliage. The wreathes themselves had little value and were only prized because they represented the glory that came to the victor. Paul seizes on the perishability of these wreathes in order to contrast them to the prize that comes with the Christian life that we do receive here and now but that also is able to endure far beyond the confines of this world.

The rewards of physical running (even if you never win an important race like at the Olympics) are real. They can change your life in so many positive ways. How much more the rewards of a Christian life well lived, especially when those rewards endure long after an Olympic gold medal has turned to dust.

So, yes, think of your Christian life as a race. Keep the goals of that life – the finish line – ever in view. Let commitment and dedication to those goals ever keep you moving towards them. Remember the prize that is yours today but that will endure for you forever. Run the race with endurance.

#140CharacterSermon Christian life is like a race: keep goals ever clear b4 you, practice discipline and commitment, claim an eternal prize.

Sermon Video:

St Andrews meat pie, soup and tapa 2016 Fund-raiser

Posted by Nonsequitor on Saturday, October 15th, 2016 in Clerk of Session

click to enlarge

Fruit pies are available as follows: apple, cherry, raspberry and pumpkin Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

In all circumstances

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, October 10th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, October 9, 2016 © Scott McAndless – Thanksgiving

Ephesians 5:15-20, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-25, Psalm 92

was at the store the other day and there was, up in the checkout line ahead of me, one of those customers. You know the type I’m talking about. He was complaining about everything. The cashier was moving too slow. He was pretty sure that the item he was buying had been advertised at a lower price. The stock was old, the people who worked there used to be nicer and the lines moved too slow because people spent too much time talking to the cashiers. This went on for a while until he finally they arrived at his real issue. The store didn’t have his favourite brand of something. Here he was being forced – forced, I tell you! – to purchase an inferior brand and, adding insult to injury, to pay full price for it.

“Oh how retail service has declined in Canada,” he exclaimed, “that I cannot get exactly what I want. If you people were at all a decent enterprise, you wouldn’t charge me for this item at all.” So he spoke and continued on in much the same vein while we, who stood behind him, waited with varying degrees of patience. The poor cashier who, I would note, had absolutely nothing to do with the things that had displeased him, dealt with him as much grace as any human could muster, but there was nothing that was in her power to please him. His demands were eventually escalated to a manager.

The manager, when she came, knew very well that the man was being unreasonable. You could see it in her face. But she also had little time and no appetite for conflict. So in short order, and much to the chagrin of everyone who stood behind him, the man had been given pretty much what he had wanted and, at the very least, he finally left us in peace.

But that is how it works, doesn’t it? The squeaky wheel is always the one that gets the grease. The person who raises their voice to complain is the most likely to get what they want. Many have concluded, therefore, that, if you do get a chance to complain about something, you better just go ahead and do it and get as much out of the situation as you possibly can.

After all, isn’t that what we are all here for – we’re supposed to get whatever we can out of this life. Money, possessions, satisfaction, enjoyment, affection – it’s only what I deserve. And if I’m not getting enough of that, well, it must be somebody’s fault and it is only natural that I should point that out and get them straightened out.

In such a world is there a place for thanksgiving? Well of course there is. We’ll all get together sometime later today (or maybe tomorrow) with the people that we are closest to us and we’ll probably eat too much food but it will be delicious. And then, as we sit around the table afterwards, in a turkey-induced semi-coma, we will talk about the things that we have purchased, the films and television shows we have watched and the experiences that we have collected since we last met. We may even recount those times where things didn’t quite go our way and how we complained and got satisfaction for our pains. (And, of course, if we didn’t get everything we wanted, it can also be satisfying to complain about that and get some sympathy.)

And yes, somewhere in the midst of all this we may remember to bow our heads for a few moments and saw some words of thanks for all this bounty. That’s what thanksgiving is, isn’t it?

Well, apparently not if you listen to the Apostle Paul and the people of the early church. In our two readings this morning, from the letters to the Ephesians and to the Thessalonians, we find the apostle closing his correspondence by giving a little bit of last minute advice. Think of these words as Christian life hacks – little things that you can do that make your Christian life better and easier to live out. These are not intended to be deep theological reflections so much as practical tips. So we have advice like do not get drunk on wine and instead to be filled with the Spirit, and to be patient with people especially if they are idlers, fainthearted or weak.

But there is one piece of advice that is common to both of these texts that particularly interests me today and it concerns, of course, thanksgiving. “Give thanks,”believers are admonished in Thessalonians while the Christians in Ephesus are told that it is all about “giving thanks to God the Father.” And I think that we would all agree that that is pretty good advice.

It reminds me of the lesson that were all taught by our mothers and our fathers. I think I can almost still hear my mother’s voice to this very day every time somebody offers me something that I would really like to receive. “Now, what do we say?” she would say as she held out the piece of candy and I would not get it until I managed to mumble a few words of thanks.

I know, I know, and I remember thinking it too at the time. “How can I be thankful for the candy if I haven’t actually received it yet – and won’t actually receive it at all unless I say thank you.” Is that a lesson about being truly thankful or actually a lesson in how to obtain candy? But I get why parents teach the lesson in that way and you probably could have caught me doing it with my own kids too.

The lesson, as our parents tried to teach it to us as kids at least, seemed to be that you actually will get more from people as you make your way through this world by being polite with them than you will by being rude and demanding. And that is a pretty good lesson for people to learn. If more people learned it (rather than the lesson of the checkout line which is that the best way to get what you want in this world is to complain and be insufferable until someone gives it to you) it seems to me that the world would be a nicer place to live in. But do note that it is still a lesson about getting things for yourself – really just another strategy for getting what you want. As life tips go, it is a good one but it still seems to be focussed on meeting your own individualistic needs at the heart just as so many things in our society are.

But is that the same lesson that we encounter in the advice that is offered at the end of these New Testament letters? Is Paul suggesting that these Christians ought to be thankful in order to get good stuff from God or from other people? I’m not so sure because, in both cases, he doesn’t just say, “give thanks.” In Ephesians it is, “giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything.” In Thessalonians it is, “give thanks in all circumstances.”

That, my friends, is a whole different kind of thanksgiving than most of us practice most of the time – a very different kind from the kind that your parents taught you. It is, in fact, a kind of thanksgiving that makes no sense at all in the world that is so focussed on individualistic needs that we live in.

What does it mean? It means being thankful when you get what you need but also when you don’t get it. It means showing appreciation to people who have pleased you but also going out of your way to find things that you appreciate about people who don’t please you. Above all it means an attitude with which you approach the whole of life – an attitude which is the very opposite of this present world’s spirit which makes people focus on getting what they desire for themselves.

In fact, according to this world’s way of thinking, it is absolutely impossible to be thankful in all circumstances. I mean, sure, we can do it when all is going well or when we get at least some of what we want or need, but there is a long list of circumstances when thanks is definitely not in order. If you were a Syrian in Aleppo, would you be thankful for terrorists and bombs? If you were an abused person in a bad relationship, would you be thankful for the blows and bruises? If you were a Jew in Auschwitz, would you be thankful for Nazi propaganda and gas chambers? Of course not! There are some things in this world that we don’t just need to refuse to be thankful for but that we must reject and rage against and complain of!

So how are we supposed to apply this good advice to be thankful in all circumstances to circumstances like bombs, blows and gas chambers? Whatever we mean by being thankful in those kinds of circumstances it cannot mean that we let the terrorists or the abusers or the Nazis off the hook for the evil that they do. They must face the consequences of their crimes and we must do whatever we can to make sure that people are safe from the evil that they do.

But thanksgiving – biblical thanksgiving – isn’t about other people so much as it is about ourselves and about how we approach the world. Think about it. When we give thanks to God, for example, do we do it because God needs to hear our thanks in order to build up his own confidence and feel good about Godself? Of course not! I’m sure that God always appreciates the thanks that we offer, but God doesn’t need it and certainly doesn’t need it to know that he has done good; God is good. We offer thanks to God because we need it more than God does. We offer it because it changes us and how we interact with the world and with each other.

So, yes, when you encounter actual evil in this world, you must resist it and you are entirely permitted to complain about it because there is nothing wrong with expressing how you feel and if you don’t say anything, nothing may ever change. But being thankful in every circumstance means that you don’t need to get stuck there in the moment of the evil and you don’t need to let any resentment burn. You may have been victimized but learning to be thankful means that your identity is not limited to being a victim as can so often happen.

When, through these scriptures, God instructs you to be thankful in all circumstances, you should not think of it as another commandment to be obeyed. It is not a burden that is intended to weigh you down with responsibility. It doesn’t mean that you have to pretend to be thankful when you really don’t feel that way.

Take a good look at the people who cross your path who are the complainers – who look at everything that happens to them as another reason to complain and to demand that someone do something to satisfy them. Look at those who will take any excuse to cast themselves as the victim and who make that victimhood a part of their identity. Oh, I’ll admit it, they may sometimes get the things that they are looking for when they complain, but, over time, they also become entrapped within that identity. Victimhood becomes part of who they are. The experience of satisfaction becomes limited to them getting the things that they desire and so they become robbed of true satisfaction.

By teaching you to be thankful in all circumstances, what your God and Father wants to do for you is to set you free from that. God wants you to experience joy and a spirit of gratefulness that is not limited by the circumstances that you might encounter in life. By choosing to be thankful in all circumstances, you no longer need to be controlled by those circumstances. You are free.

I invite you, on this Thanksgiving Sunday, to experiment with this very powerful thing called thanksgiving. It may not happen today, but it will probably happen soon enough that something will not work out as you may have hoped. There will be some hiccup, some problem in your well laid plans. You will have two choices, you can seek to get whatever you can out of the situation by complaining or being miserable enough to other people to make them do what you want, or you can choose to practice a kind of thanksgiving you can make in any circumstance – the kind that sets you free from the circumstances of life by saying that they have no control over you. On this Thanksgiving Sunday, I encourage you to choose thanksgiving.

#140CharacterSermon Being thankful in all circumstances sets us free from the power of our circumstances 2 control us & define us as victims

Posted by Nonsequitor on Thursday, October 6th, 2016 in Clerk of Session

"The meat pie fundraiser that will knock your socks off"

I have received the go-ahead from Session on the plan, for at least 1,200 meat pies for pickup November 26 to 28, 2016.
Our sales marketing scheme will start on October 23rd and run until November 13th. Last time we sold pies we completed orders for 1,440 (2014). Order forms will be available @ Fellowship on the 23rd of October.

The sweet pie tasting scheduled for October 30th is now officially a savory pie tasting of our sale products. Please, sample selections available from the menu at Fellowship on the 30th or the Family Supper on the 19th.
Here what's taking place:
Assorted pies served @ Wednesday Family supper October 19th.
Invite as many people as possible to experience the quality @ fellowship on the October 30th.
Access the results and comments
Move to the sales marketing strategy as outlined.

This fundraiser is one of the four Session designated events planned to achieve sustainability of our finances.

Many of you will remember the price point from St Andrews last foray into meat pie sales in 2014. Most everyone knows that prices have increased significantly on groceries since then. Beef alone has increased at least 14% in the last year alone. As you might expect beef is the largest expense in a fundraiser like this. Every single item used has increased to some degree or other. Prices will be higher - we simply cannot match the older prices due to the new economic realities. BUT...the prices are cheaper than retail and we will raise monies to pay down the debt. The good news here is we can run this fundraiser every; month, 6 months or semi-annual and still offer you below retail costs!

Menu

· The Roasted Beef and Roasted Turkey are swimming in delicious gravy with potatoes, peas, corn and carrots.

· The Lean ground beef with mushroom and onion is encased in delectable gravy.

· The Shepherd’s Pie (no pastry) made with lean ground beef & vegetables, is blanketed with creamy seasoned potatoes.

· Crustless Quiche- delightful and filling with a choice of ham or veggie, both include -onions, broccoli, cheese.

· Turkey Tapa- 10” wood oven thin crust topped with a hearty mixture of caramelized onion, roasted turkey and tangy sauce - delicious on its own or top it with you favorite additions

· Our Fruit Pies are made the old fashioned way- with the freshest fruits and delicately sweetened to perfection all 9”

· Our selection of Home-style Soups will warm the soul with the choice of six varieties. (no details just yet)

· Meat pies are available @ 9” size

The details on how the magic happens will be a secret until you sample the menu at one of the tastings. You could be surprised!

This is the before picture.

I am very excited to announce…

Posted by Scott McAndless on Thursday, October 6th, 2016 in Minister

I am very excited to announce that this summer I took a fair bit of my vacation time to finish the second draft of a book that God laid on my heart a couple of years ago.

The book is called, "The Seven Demons of Miryam of Magdala," and it is a work of historical fiction, set in Galilee in the opening decades of the common era. It is a short book (54,000 words, 164 pages) but it is one that I hope will help people see the story of Jesus of Nazareth from some very interesting new angles.

All 164 pages, if you can make them out.

The Table of Contents

I am, at this point, looking for some colleagues to look at what I have written and give me some critical feedback. I would especially appreciate some feedback from my female colleagues (when you read the book, you'll understand why).

I am sure that, after this second draft, the text still contains some spelling, grammar and stylistic errors as well as typos but I am not necessarily looking for proofreading at this point. That will come after.

So if you would be willing to help me at this critical point, please message me privately. I will be happy to send you a copy in pdf format or any other digital format you ask for. The copy I send you is DRM free and yours to keep, but I will ask you to commit to the following:

To give me your feedback.
Not to give it to anyone else without my permission.
Not to accuse me of being a heretic yet. (Please just point out any heresy that you see and give me a chance to address it or correct it.)

This book is a labour of love and I would love to be able to share it with you and, perhaps, with the world.

Gathered into One Loaf

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, October 3rd, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 2 October, 2016 © Scott McAndless – World Communion

1 Corinthians 10:14-22, Luke 14:15-24, Psalm 104:1-15

ou are all familiar enough with the gospels and the letters and other writings that make up what we call the New Testament. This little collection of books is the most important source that we have for understanding the early Christians and how they worked out their life and faith together. This morning I would like to introduce you to one other document that you really ought to know about. It is called the Teaching of the Twelve and also goes by the name of The Didache, which is the Greek word for teaching.

The Didache is a very old document – some scholars think that parts of it may well be older than parts of the New Testament. It is also a very important document for a few reasons. It may well contain genuine traditions that go all the way back to the very words of Jesus – traditions that are independent of the gospels. It contains, for example, a version of the Lord’s Prayer that is slightly different from the one that is found in the Gospel of Matthew and from the one that is in the Gospel of Luke. It seems likely that the writers of the Didache did not get their version of The Lord’s Prayer from the Gospels but from an independent tradition passed down to them from some other source – ultimately from Jesus himself.

But the book actually gives us more than just insights into the original wording of Jesus’ prayer. It also gives us a glance into the worship practices of the early church. In fact, a great deal of the book is clearly focussed directly on the worship and other customs of a certain group of churches in a certain area. Most of the scholars I have read seem to believe that they were made up of second or third generation Christians in Galilee or in nearby Syria.

I find this fascinating because it gives us what is perhaps the very first glimpse we have (outside of the Bible and not influenced by any of the Biblical writings) of how the first church actually lived and worshipped. In other words, if you want to know what the earliest Christians actually thought they were accomplishing when they ate communion or performed a baptism, the Didache may be one of the very best sources that we have.

The Didache has, for example, a prayer of thanksgiving that was to be prayed whenever the community gathered to eat what we would call the Lord’s Supper or Communion or the Eucharist, but which they seemed to call simply the Thanksgiving Meal. As these prayers are probably the oldest communion prayers in existence (and they are nice and brief) I have decided to use them as our communion prayers this morning. I think they can teach us a lot about what they thought about communion that might challenge how we think about it today.

You see, when we gather to celebrate communion, there are certain things that we say about what we are doing and there are certain images that we use. We usually say, for example, that this meal is about the death of Jesus. In particular, we associate the bread with the broken body of Jesus and the wine with the spilt blood of Jesus. The imagery we often use is the imagery of a sacrifice or an atoning death. And we also look forward to the return, someday of Christ.

I don’t know how much you pay attention to the prayers that you have heard ministers like me praying before communion services but, if you do, those are the kinds of images that we you’ll hear us use over and over again because that is what we believe that communion is about – remembering and re-enacting those things.

But if you listen to the prayers that I use today from the Didache, you will not hear any of that imagery. The prayers of those ancient Galilean or Syrian Christians speak of Jesus Christ and talk about how he reveals God to us, of course, but they do not make any reference to his death at all. There is absolutely no talk of sacrifice or atonement nor even any reference to the return of Christ.

Now, I am not suggesting that the Christian churches of the Didache community did not believe these things about Jesus and his death. Of course they did and there are references in other parts of the book to these truths. And they may well even have believed that the Thanksgiving Feasts that they shared had important connections to the meaning of the death of Jesus (though there is some evidence to suggest that this particular connection may have first been made by the Apostle Paul). You certainly cannot prove that they didn’t believe something just because they didn’t mention it in this very important prayer.

But it does suggest something. It does suggest that, when they gathered to eat this meal, they did put the emphasis in some rather different places than where we put it when we gather. And maybe we can learn something from the imagery that they used when they ate this meal.

There were two prayers that they prayed. The first one was over the cup and they prayed, “We thank You, our Father, For the Holy Vine of David Your servant, Whom You made known to us through Your Servant Jesus; May the glory be Yours forever.” That was it. The prayer is based on the image of the making of wine itself which begins with the vine and the grapes that grow upon it. For the Didache Christians the wine (and the vine that it grew on) was a symbol of their connection with their hope. It connected them with the promises made to King David of a kingdom that would last forever – promises that they believed had been fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah and the son of David. That symbolism of the connecting vine is not one that we generally use when we take the cup but it is one that I think we might learn from.

But I am particularly interested today (on this World Communion Sunday) in the prayer that they prayed over the loaf: “We thank You, our Father, For the life and knowledge Which You made known to us through Your Servant Jesus; May the glory be Yours forever. As this broken bread was scattered over the mountains, And was gathered together to become one, So let Your Church be gathered together From the ends of the earth into Your kingdom; for the glory and power are Yours through Jesus Christ forever.”

For them, the bread seemed to point to two things. First of all, it spoke to them of everything that they had learned and seen in the life and teachings of Jesus. There is no direct reference to his death (which is where we put the emphasis) but rather the focus seems to be on his life.

The second focus of their prayer, however, is on an image – the image of the creation of the loaf itself. They notice that the loaf began its life spread over the mountains. This is actually one of the things that indicates to us that the Didache may have had its origins in Galilee. The best place to grow grain in Galilee was in the hill country and many of the hills were called mountains. So this prayer evokes the image of the grain growing on the mountaintops, being harvested and ground and then baked together into one loaf.

Why is this important? Because it suggests to us what it actually meant to these earliest Christians when they gathered and shared this kind of meal together. It was not primarily, for them, a feast of the dead and resurrected Christ. I mean, yes, they believed in the importance of the death of Jesus and the truth of his resurrection, but when they ate this meal that was not the first thing that came to mind. The image of the grain harvested from many hilltops and then baked into one loaf was, for them, what it all came down to.

It was a feast, first and foremost, of the unity of the church. I believe that that was at the very foundation of the feast. Even the Apostle Paul – who may have been the first one to make the connection between communion and the death of Christ – tells us that, before anything else, it is about our unity with one another. Since the authentic letters of Paul are actually the first written books of the New Testament (they were almost certainly written before any of the gospels), Paul was the first person to give us a written account of the Last Supper and to say what it meant. Yes, he said that he received that account from others who had told it to him, but he was the first one to set it down in a form that endured. So he was the one who first told us, in the eleventh chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians, that Jesus said that the meaning of the bread was, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

But before Paul ever told us that, he told us in the tenth chapter of the same letter, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”So even before Paul proclaimed that the bread was the body of Christ, he also declared that the loaf was the body of the church and that eating it together was a sign of our unity. He knew that the unity came first. The experience of the resurrection was the centrepiece of Christian faith, but Paul knew that he believers would never experience the power of the resurrection until they had found unity with one another.

What that means, my sisters and my brothers, is this: this feast is the feast of the resurrected Christ. When we eat this bread and drink this cup we do proclaim the death of Christ until he comes. It is also true that, when we eat and drink this sacred meal, the risen Jesus has promised to be present with us in it – truly present. But here is the problem: none of us can know that and none of us can experience that until we are united in one body as a church. Unity comes first.

So before this bread is broken like this body of Jesus was broken on the cross, you need to understand something about it. Before this bread becomes, for us, the body of Christ, it has to become the body of the church. You are the church – all of you. You make the church not because you are all the same but precisely because you are all so different.

We are those grains who start out spread far and wide over the mountaintops. We all sprouted where we were. We all grew into faith in our own way because of our unique circumstances and experiences. Some of you brought wounds and hurts into the life of the church. Some of you brought strengths and wonderful gifts. Most of us brought a mixture of both the positives and negatives. We came as we were and we remain as we are.

But though we started out in life spread far and wide over the hills and dales, we are all ground together into one bag of flour and then we have all been baked into one loaf. All of us come from different backgrounds and life experiences and here we have come together to be one. As you can imagine, that naturally leads to problems and clashes. We sometimes fail to understand one another because we are speaking out of our very different backgrounds and experiences and hurts. We sometime fail to appreciate one another because we are all so different. But we are only the church when we become that one loaf – when we finally realize that our differences make us stronger and tastier. The diversity among us makes this loaf delicious and full of good nutrients.

When we finally realize that and embrace one another despite being all so different, we are finally ready to experience the fullness of Christ among us. That kind of unity doesn’t come naturally to us. We often have to work at valuing people for who they are rather than for the things about them that are convenient to us. We often have to work at listening and truly hearing one another. The promise is that, when we do that, the presence of the risen Jesus will always be made clear.

That is what it means as we take this loaf, that was once spread far and wide over the mountaintops but has now come together as one loaf and is become the church. Only when we become that church, can the bread become the body of Christ who is present with us when we break it.

#140CharacterSermon When we take #communion, we become united, despite our differences, in 1 loaf so that 1 loaf can become Christ among us.

Sermon Video:

October 2, World Communion Sunday at St. Andrew’s Hespeler

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, September 30th, 2016 in News

As usual, there are lots of good reasons to be at St. Andrew's Hespeler on a Sunday morning. October 2 will be no exception. Here are some highlights:

We will be celebrating World Communion Sunday with a very special celebration of the Sacrament based on one of the most ancient written Christian liturgies ever found -- from a book called The Didache or The Teaching of the Twelve. We will learn a few things about what the very first Christians believed happened when they celebrated the Lord's Supper together.
The Youth Band will be playing for the first time this fall: Remembrance (The Communion Song) (Matt Maher and Matt Redman)
Special music of the day will include: Menuet en Rondeau & Air pour Zéphire (Jean-Phillipe Rameau), Thy Table I Approach (Jan Bender), Let Us Break Bread Together (Arr. Carol Tornquist) and Christ is Made the Sure Foundation (Henry Purcell, Arr. Cindy Berry)
We will have a chance to speed our runners and walkers who are preparing for the "Jeff-a-thon" on their way.
We'll update the standings on the "Pie in the Face" race for Anniversary Sunday.
Our sermon will explore some alternative and additional meanings hiding in our celebration of Communion.
Sermon Title: