Come join us on Saturday, February 24 for an afternoon of board game fun. Some games will be supplies, but feel free to bring your own favourite (family friendly) board game. Please also bring your own snacks and alcohol-free drinks.
Hespeler, February 4, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 40:21-31, Psalm 147:1-11, 20c, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23, Mark 1:29-39
Hey, do you want to hear what is wrong with the Christian church these days? I can tell you, you know. Or maybe let me rephrase that a little bit. I have people tell me all the time what they think the problem with the church is today. And they are always so sure that they are right that it must be so, right?
For example, I have been confidently assured that the problem with the church today is Sunday shopping. Yes, the real problem that the church has is that people have the possibility of going out and buying their groceries or picking up a nice new outfit to wear at some point in time between 9 am and noon on the first day of the week.
Oh, but there is more than just the hours of business at the local shopping mall. It is also sports leagues. Yes, the other problem with the church is that sports organizations schedule their games and practices and rent out their ice and fields at any hour on Sunday mornings. Can you imagine that?
Oh, but there is more to it than that. No, I can give you a whole litany of the problems with the church. It is also that people don’t want to sit on committees, and they don’t want to join the various groups in the church.
And, if I can be frank here – and remember that this is all assured data that has been fed to me consistently so I guess it must be true – it is particularly the fault of the younger generation. Yes, whereas previous generations were only too happy to come out and attend these long meetings and participate in women’s groups and bake pies and cookies and all kinds of other things to support the work of the church, apparently these younger folks today just say they don’t have the time.
Oh, and there’s more. Shall I go on? Another big problem with the church today is that people don’t like the right kinds of music. And they don’t like big wordy long prayers and they’re not even appreciative enough of hardwood benches that might be a little hard to sit on but are beautiful to look at.
That, I have been confidently told again and again, is precisely the problem with the church today. And, no, I am not saying that those are the things that people at St. Andrews are always telling me. I get it from various places and even from people who never go to church themselves.
And, yes, I probably did exaggerate what I often take to be the subtext underneath many of the comments that people make. But I am pretty sure that many of those kinds of sentiments sound somewhat familiar to you. They are part of our litany of lament as we think about some of the problems that are facing the church today.
But I wanted to reflect them back to you for a moment because I think those kinds of comments are emblematic of the way that we do think about the problems that face the church. And I want you to notice how I phrased them.
Absolutely nothing in what I just said to you was about what the church does or fails to do. Everything I said was just a complaint about what everyone else does or doesn’t do. And I suggest that that is how we tend to think of the problems that face the church today. We are usually only too happy to focus on what we see as the deficiencies of the society or the changes that we don’t like.
Now, it is not as if there is nothing to any of these laments that we raise. There is no question that society has changed in some very dramatic ways over the last few decades and that those changes have created challenges for the centuries-old institution which is the Protestant church – an institution that has not proved itself to be very good at dealing with change.
But I’m sure you can see the problem with this mode of thinking. If the root problem facing the church is that the world has changed, then the only possible cure for the church is for the world to just spontaneously decide that everything should go back to exactly how things used to be. And, even if there were some good things about how things used to be, what do you suppose is the likelihood of that happening?
That is why I find the approach of the Apostle Paul to be so refreshing. Paul dedicated his life, once he had met the risen Jesus, to building up the Christian church and to tearing down the barriers that kept people away from Jesus and his message. He pushed to include all sorts of people – people that others objected to – into the life of the church. And he seems to have been extremely successful in all of this, founding several churches all over Asia Minor and the Greek peninsula. He did this despite a great deal of opposition from fellow Christians, Jews and even many local officials.
So, I can’t help but think that we might be able to learn a few things from Paul and how he approached his work. He explains his approach in our reading from First Corinthians this morning. And do you want to know what I noticed first when I read it? I noticed that Paul spent no time at all talking about what the society around him needed to change in order to help his work.
He didn’t call on the emperor to shut down the local market or the chariot races on Sunday mornings. He also didn’t complain about people not being available to sit on committees or about how they didn’t want to listen to his sermons the way he liked to preach them.
Instead, Paul describes his strategy to us. “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to gain Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might gain those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not outside God’s law but am within Christ’s law) so that I might gain those outside the law.”
The message could not be more clear. Far from blaming other people for being where they are, Paul makes a point of meeting them there. And he does this in spite of his own sense of identity. He is willing to suspend his Jewishness and his sense of what law he is responsible to in order to meet the people exactly where they are.
But he goes even further than that. You see, the church has often fallen into the temptation of thinking that its failures are the result of other people’s weaknesses. We like to say that it is because other people lack in commitment or faith or faithfulness or just because they don’t want to do the work that the church has failed. The church, in a classic display of projection, is unwilling to see its own weakness and so it projects that weakness onto others.
Complaining about other people’s weakness can often feel satisfying and it is certainly habit forming, but Paul offers the perfect antidote: “To the weak I became weak, so that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”
Paul is telling us that whenever we are tempted to perceive someone else as weak, what we need to do is put ourselves in their position. It is like the Indigenous North American proverb that says that you must never judge another until you have walked a mile in their moccasins.
And the truth of the matter is that, once you do that, what you usually discover is that what you perceived as weakness was something very different.
When, for example, people are struggling with economic difficulties, it is often very easy just to write them off and accuse them of being lazy. “People just don’t want to work these days,” has become a common refrain. But I honestly believe that there are few who are truly lazy in that sense.
People often have some pretty good reasons for why they are not working or not working enough to cover their bills. Sometimes, wages have been set so low that people can’t actually afford to live in a place and do the work because they cannot afford the rent and cost of living. Therefore, for them to take that job would be to choose to fall even more behind economically speaking.
I think this is certainly true when it comes to the work of the church. I really do think that people are motivated to contribute to the important and meaningful work that the church is doing. They would love to be a part of spreading good news and helping people out as they face the struggles of life. What more meaningful work is there than that?
So, if people are not doing that, I don’t really think it’s because there’s something wrong with them. It’s because other barriers are in the way. It is because the church has conceived itself and its activities in a way that does not fit into people’s lives and sense of priorities.
And so if, for example, younger women aren’t interested in joining missionary groups or other similar organizations in the church, it has little to do with them not agreeing with the goals of those organizations.
It certainly has a lot to do with an economic situation that forces almost all adults to take on full-time careers in addition to taking care of substantial family needs just in order to break even. And it probably also has a great deal to do with how they order and organize their social world. But it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with a deficiency or weakness.
That is why what Paul writes to the Corinthian church ought to be emblazoned on the door of every one of our churches. “I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I might become a partner in it.” The job of the church is not to simply continue to be what it is always been and expect everyone else to conform to its way of doing things. The job of the church is to become a partner with anyone who is able to share in the good news.
For that reason, the church needs to be adapting itself to the needs of its partners rather than demanding that those partners adapt to the needs of the church. The simple recognition, for example, that families these days are often stretched to the limit could go a long way. They are on the run earning what they need to survive five or six days a week. They are on the run providing for the needs and the development of their children. They are doing the right thing.
That doesn’t mean that they don’t recognize that the church is a part of doing the right thing for their family. But it does mean that the church may not fit into their lives in the way that has worked for other generations. As the church finds ways to partner with such families where they are in their lives, we will discover new strength.
And I will confess that that is something that this church is still working on, but I do think that how we have been finding ways to allow kids to be kids in our worship service, to be a part of our worshiping life, has been a really good step in a good direction.
There are many challenges facing the church today. But whenever you are tempted to explain away all of those challenges by laying blame on the society outside of the church, you are not going to get anywhere. That is a non-committed conversation, and, as we learned last week, those will get us nowhere. It is in our commitment to meet people where they are, to love them as they are, and partner with them in a way that values them and the challenges they are dealing with, that we will find the greatest strength for the church.
Hespeler, 21 January, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Third Sunday after Epiphany
Matthew 7:7-11, Matthew 13:44-46
As many of you know, last week I was given the privilege and honour of preaching at the funeral of my father: William L. McAndless. And I know that a few of you came out to that funeral all the way over in Scarborough and some more of you watched the service online. That meant a lot to me.
But I’m hoping you will indulge me in something. I’d like to preach what I preached there for you again today. I don’t want to do that merely to honour my dad, though of course I do that, but also because I think it would be a good way to give you all an insight into my own faith journey and how I came to be the kind of Christian I am today. So, with some apologies to those who have heard it before, I am going to share what I said.
I have been given the privilege and honour of speaking at many services like this for many different people over the years. And I can assure you that every single one has been special; every one has been unique. But this one, I confess, seems particularly special and particularly unique.
But in all those years of preaching at funerals, I have come to an understanding of what it is that I am here to do.
You see, I don’t believe that it is my job to proclaim the Christian gospel on these occasions. I don’t even think that is up to me to promise you anything in particular about the afterlife. That’s because there is somebody else – somebody other than me – who is in a much better position to preach to us about those things.
I believe that every individual, every single life, has important things to teach us about the kingdom of God. My job is simply to find that lesson in the life of the person we are celebrating and share it so that we can all grow a little closer to the kingdom. And in all the funerals and memorials I have ever preached, I have never failed to find that lesson in someone’s life.
I have certainly not failed when it comes to reflecting on this life.
When Jesus came among us and taught us about God, he was in the habit of referring to God in a very particular way. He liked to call God, Father. He even taught people to pray and to say, “Our Father who art in heaven…”
And while Jesus was hardly the first person to speak of God as Father, he seems to have brought a special intimacy and familiarity to how he said it. He called God Abba, an Aramaic word for father. But it wasn’t the common everyday word for the patriarchal figure recognized by society. It was the word that was only used inside the family by children of all ages to speak about their father – sort of like we use the word “Dad” in my family.
But what did Jesus mean when he called God, “Abba?” Did he mean it literally? Was he saying that God is male, or that God is a biological progenitor of all people? Of course, not. It was a metaphor, sort of a one-word parable. He was saying that, in some very important ways, God was like a very good Dad.
One day, when Jesus was trying to get people to understand God’s relationship with them, he invited his listeners to think of it in terms of their own experience of fatherhood. “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone?” he wanted to know. “Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake?” What he was saying was that God, in some sense, is like a good father who knows how to give good things to his children.
Now, I am very aware that this kind of father imagery for God doesn’t work for everyone. The sad truth is that not all fathers do know how to give good things to their children. Not all fathers are present for their children, some are too caught up in their own woundedness. Some can also be so much worse than neglectful. And so there are definitely some people who, when you call God father, can only imagine a God who is mean, vindictive or abusive. Such language does not help them and often hurts their image of God.
But what Jesus is also saying is that we, who have not seen God and have not the human language to describe God in any literal sense, are kind of stuck. We can only understand God – can only even speak of God – as extensions of what we have seen and experienced. And, yes, if calling God father does not help you to have a healthy image of God, you need to find a different metaphor.
But I just want to tell you today that I have a very good image of God. Deep down in my soul, I believe in a God who is kind, gracious, forgiving and generous. I am even able to believe in that God despite all of the problems, failures and downright evil I encounter in this world. I can see it all and still believe that God will find a way through it – that (as Martin Luther King Jr. paraphrased) “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Now, why do I believe in that God? I could give you the correct theological answer and say that it is because of what I have seen and experienced in Jesus Christ. That is true enough. But the real answer goes much deeper. I believe that because I experienced a father who knew how to give good things to his children.
He was not perfect; no human father is. But he never acted in any way that made me doubt the essential truth that there was goodness in the universe. I came to believe that God knows how to give good things to God’s people because I had a good Dad. What I came to know about God through Jesus certainly confirmed that, but I don’t mind saying that my image of God started with my Dad.
Are there some problems and issues and shortcomings that come with that? Sure. For some inexplicable reason, when I imagine God, the God that I picture, might usually be found sitting in the armchair in the living room exhaustively reading the Toronto Daily Star, because that was where I usually found my Dad when I was growing up. There probably are times when my view of God is imperfectly tainted by my experience of my Dad, but overall, I think I am very fortunate for the view of God that I grew up with.
So, my Dad gave me an amazing starting image of God. And here is what he has to teach all of us today about the kingdom of God.
Jesus seems to have spent almost all of his time talking about this thing that he called the kingdom of God. But, curiously, he never quite said what it was. It’s kind of the same thing when it comes to describing Godself. We really don’t have the human words to describe what the kingdom of God is, and so all Jesus could do was say what it was like. And he did that, mostly, by telling stories and parables.
And one of the stories that he told went like this. The kingdom of God, he said, is like what happens when this guy, let’s call him Bill, is walking along one day. He is crossing a strange field, a field that belongs to somebody else, when he stumbles across an amazing discovery. There, hidden in the field where nobody has ever seen it before, he discovers buried treasure of immense value.
What an amazing thing! But no sooner does he discover this treasure than he realizes the problem that comes with it. He doesn’t own the field, so how can he claim the treasure?
The obvious solution, of course, is to just buy the field, but he hasn’t got the money. And so, Bill comes up with a plan. He sells everything that he owns, divests himself of absolutely every possession until he has nothing left. And he goes out and pays an absolutely ridiculous price to buy that field from the poor sod who owns it and has no idea what is buried in it.
And Jesus said that that is what the kingdom of God is like. What on earth is that supposed to mean? How is that supposed to illustrate to us what God’s kingdom is like?
We could struggle to answer that question for a long time, but we don’t need to. We don’t need to because this man that we celebrate today has demonstrated so clearly what Jesus was trying to say.
Bill McAndless was a man who recognized real treasure. He knew what was really valuable. And, despite being a banker for so very long, he knew that the truly valuable treasure of this world was not to be found in bank vaults.
He recognized the treasure that was hidden, and that other people might have walked by a thousand times and never even noticed. When he met a young woman named Doris May Heron, my Mom, he knew that here he had found a pearl of great price – a treasure of unsurpassed value.
But, even more important than that, he knew what to do when he discovered such treasure. He decided to give up everything he had and everything that he was in order to share his life with that incredible woman of great value. He would not let anything stand in his way – not even the odd beetle hiding under the meringue.
Okay, that’s a bit of a story from family lore. The first time my Dad came over to my maternal grandparents house, my mother’s little sisters told him that my mother had created the entire supper. It wasn’t true, but they were trying to fix him up with her. The dessert was lemon meringue pie. My father’s favourite! But, in my father’s piece of pie, there was a giant dead beetle hiding underneath the meringue. My father, ever the wise man, simply put the beetle aside and kept on eating. That’s what I mean when I say that he understood what was more important.
And fortunately, of course, Doris made the same discovery of hidden treasure in him – hidden even in things like his silence on their first date – and made the same decision to give up everything she had and everything she was to share her life with him.
But, more than that, this was not just a one-time thing in my Dad’s life. It was a pattern that he continued to repeat over and over again. When his children came along – when we came along – he absolutely saw the unique value and treasure that was in each one of us. We all know deep down inside that we matter, that we have value because he recognized that value in us and gave everything that he had and everything that he was for our sake.
And, of course, he did that with his grandchildren as well and his great grandchildren when they came. And I’m willing to bet that every single one of us can say that we know we have worth and value because we learned that from this incredible man.
And of course, that was not limited to his family (though we always came first). He did the same thing with his mother, his sisters and brother, with friends. And he knew the great value that was in his church community and joyfully gave his all to support that as well.
And Jesus said that, if you can do that, if you can recognize what is truly valuable and give your all for the sake of that, you have understood the kingdom of God. That is why I can boldly declare that my father understood the kingdom of God and may have understood at least some aspects of it better than many a theologian or preacher.
He lived that kingdom and it showed in every aspect of his life. And if he knew God’s kingdom here and now, as we all can, we can certainly take great comfort today in the knowledge that he has entered into the fullness of that kingdom and that he is with his Lord in an existence that we can scarce imagine or dream of.
This, for me is the sermon that my father’s life has preached to us, and I am honoured to be the one who gets to reflect that back to you today.