This is a BIG thank you for your generosity to the Session Meat Pie fundraiser. The order window is now closed as Kerri Prong and her associates are building the orders. If you missed this time we will be reopening the process again in late winter 2017.
I’d like to recap what a success this fundraiser is. There were 13 featured products available and 6 fruit pie alternatives. Many of you noticed the sweet pies were available and have already ordered them. The next order cycle will see the fruit pies featured and the meat pies still available. Featured in the merchandising trade usually means discounted prices – and yes they will be.
Here’s the early synopsis of how this will help St. Andrews achieve sustainable finances. 776 products were ordered in 71 individual orders with an estimated profit of $1,600. This goes directly to pay down the debt - 100% to the cause with 0% overhead.
In development of this fundraiser there were a number of suggestions on additions to the traditional meat pie fare. If you have any requests for additions to the menu kindly tell me and we’ll see how this can be accomplished.
From me to you I humbly thank you for your support of St Andrews and will talk to you again in the New Year.
Any donations of new toys, clothing or gift cards for this event would be appreciated. We would also like some Christmas baking for our Christmas Café, if you are able to bake something we would also appreciate that!
For any questions or if you can help in any way please contact Joni [email protected]
Thank you for your support of the meat pie, fundraiser. Your orders are placed and Nutritious and Delicious are planning/making your orders. November 26 - 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, November 27 – 11:30 am to 3:00 pm, and November 27 - 9:00 am to 3:00 pm are the designated times available for pickup. Please use the Spring St. entrance to the new kitchen when picking up. It would be appreciated if you could bring reusable bags or boxes for your order.
A special delivery and distribution to St. Luke’s’ onNovember 26th will be made. Details will be available soon.
We need help! To enable this three-day distribution 10 volunteers will be needed. 2-3 hours of time will make the difference. Please contact Rob Hodgson to make this fundraiser a reality.
I am very excited to announce that starting on November15 for 5 days, the eBook version of my book, Caesar's Census, God's Jubilee, will be available for free on Amazon website. This is a wonderful book to read right now to get a fresh perspective on the Christmas Story in the Bible.
Follow these links to download your copy before this extraordinary opportunity is gone. Make sure you share this news with others too!
Here is some more information about what the book explores:
According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus of Nazareth was born during a census that had been ordered by Caesar Augustus and, because of this census, his parents made a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, arriving just in time for his birth. It is a wonderful story that has inspired millions down through the ages, but it is also a story that has left some very puzzled.
Questions abound for many readers of the story who have any knowledge of the history of those times. Questions like:
Did Caesar really conduct a census of the whole world at once?
When did such a census take place?
When is Luke saying that Jesus was born?
Why does Luke say that all the people registered for the census in the places where their ancestors came from?
Doesn’t it make more sense to register people where they actually live?
What was the normal Roman procedure for taking censuses?
This book is an attempt to work through questions like this is a way that takes the scriptural story seriously but that also deals honestly and openly with what we know about the historical situation. It does this in two ways.
Rethinking
This book suggests that we have simply misunderstood some things about Luke’s nativity story. This is partly because we have insisted on harmonizing his story with the nativity story in the Gospel of Matthew. It also explores how the Old Testament notion of jubilee might offer a better reason for the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
Reimagining
The nativity story has been painted and drawn by some of the greatest artists who have ever lived, sung by some of the greatest singers and told by some of the greatest storytellers. A whole rich and well-populated world has grown up around the nativity story—a world so detailed that it seems very real even if much of it has little connection with the Biblical accounts. Because of this, it is not enough to just an attempt to correct a few misunderstandings about the Christmas story. New ideas would seem to attack that entire imaginative world that has grown up around the story over the centuries and would be resisted for that reason alone.
Therefore this book also includes some retelling of the Christmas story in short vignettes (called interludes) that help us to imagine the journey of Mary and Joseph within a historical setting that Luke would recognize.
Warning: if you read this book, you just might not be able to see the old familiar Christmas story in the same way ever again.
here is a river, called the Gihon, that flows to this day in the city of Jerusalem. It is a small stream, but a vital one, flowing, as it does, in a part of the world where water is scarce and a reliable source can mean the difference between life and death. It is also an unusual river because it is fed by a spring, the Gihon Spring, that is unlike most every other spring in the world. It doesn’t flow steadily, you see. It is an intermittent spring. At regular intervals it surges up and then it stops.
The importance and uniqueness of this river probably had a lot to do with the beliefs that developed about it. And it seems that there were many such beliefs. The ancient Israelites almost certainly saw it as a holy place. This was not necessarily official doctrine, but it was a popular belief. It is, as I explained last week, identified as one of the four rivers that flowed from the original paradise. It was the place where they anointed their kings and a sign that God was with them. And there is even a story in the Gospel of John that indicates that they believed that, when the spring did periodically surge forth and fill a pool that had been constructed, the waters of the Gihon had healing power.
The evidence seems to indicate, anyways, that this river (together with the nearby temple of Solomon) was one of the key places where these people experienced the presence of their God in some powerful ways. And we all have such places, don’t we? I know that our official theology states that the God who we believe in is not limited by time or by space. And one thing that that means is that there isn’t any particular spot on this earth, or even in the vast universe, where God is not. But that is not necessarily how it works in our experience.
The truth is that those who have had significant experiences of God have generally found that such experiences are much easier to find (or to be surprised by) in particular places and at certain times. That is not to suggest that everyone has experiences of God in all the same places. For some, a beautiful church building such as this one where we find ourselves is the place where they have most consistently found God, but churches don’t necessarily work the same for everyone. I know many who would say that they are much more likely to encounter God walking in the woods or along a beach than in a church. But that does not change the fact that, for most of us, there will always be certain places in our world where God just seems to be closer.
Well, one of those places for many ancient Israelites was the Gihon River in Jerusalem – a holy place that was maybe second only to the nearby temple of the Lord. And, as I say, it is wonderful to have places like that in your life. But there is also a risk that comes with that. What happens when you lose such places? Does that mean that you lose your God?
This was not just a theoretical question for them. The time came when the City of Jerusalem was attacked and besieged by the armies of the king of Babylon and, despite the presence of the River Gihon within the strong walls of the city, the city could not hold out against the invaders. Jerusalem fell. It was sacked by the invaders and then reduced to rubble. Even the holy temple of the Lord, the home of Yahweh, was left as nothing but a pile of stones. And then the Babylonians did something worse, they took the people of the city and the surrounding countryside and forced them to march off to exile in Babylon which was like a world away.
Of course this was a disaster on so many levels – devastation and loss that might feel familiar to modern day citizens of Syrian cities like Aleppo. But one particularly terrible aspect of this was the loss of those places where they had experienced their God. When you lose such places and especially when you are forcibly removed from the entire vicinity, does that mean that you lose your God too?
This was an especially urgent question in ancient times because people tended to think of their gods in very simple ways. Most ancient gods were seen as being tied to particular places. The gods of Egypt, for example, were the gods of Egypt. It was just assumed that they had no power once you left the Nile Valley. And as far as the people of Israel knew, their God was the same – after all, the question of whether the God of Israel could be present in other lands had simply never come up before. So, as far as they knew, when they left Mount Zion and the Gihon River, they would not be cut off from their God forever.
In fact, they did find their God in Babylon when they got there which was probably a big surprise. It led them to rethink everything they knew about God and was an important step towards the understanding we have of a God who is not limited by time and space. But they didn’t know that when they left. As far as they knew, when they left the Gihon, they were leaving their God.
One of the people who lived through that dramatic experience was a man named Ezekiel. He was a prophet and he saw the disaster coming and that there was nothing that could stop it. And Ezekiel was very concerned about what it meant that the people might lose their God. He even had a vision where he saw a great cloud of glory, which represented the presence of God, depart from the temple, seemingly forever. (Ezekiel 11:22)
But, though God gave Ezekiel a heads up about what was coming, he also sent other messages his way – messages of hope and of new beginnings. Ezekiel had many visions during this difficult time but one of them has proved the most enduring and meaningful. Even as the temple was being threated and destroyed (or perhaps had already been destroyed – it is hard to establish exactly when he had his visions) Ezekiel received a vision of a new temple that included, as we read this morning, a renewed Gihon River.
It is his glorious vision of the river that particularly interests me today. The river he sees is a little different from the actual Gihon River. As Ezekiel sees it, it no longer flows from near the temple mount but from the very threshold of the temple itself, but that is clearly a symbolic change and we may recognize it as the Gihon.
I believe that, if you want to understand what this vision meant to Ezekiel, you have to enter into his frame of mind. What did the loss of the temple mount and of the river – these places where he and his people had met with God – mean to him? We can’t know exactly what it felt like to him, of course, but I think that we can find some ways to sympathize. I know that many of us have felt a similar sense of loss in and through the life of the church in recent decades.
You see, one of the realities that we cannot simply avoid dealing with in the church these days is change. Across the board, churches are changing and adapting their worship and their programs and activities. Many don’t like it, I realize, but it seems to be inevitable for a number of reasons. Some churches do resist all change, of course. They’d rather die than change, they say in word and in deed. They often get what they wish for and die all the quicker as unchanged as possible, but, of course, death is a kind of change too so it really does seem that change is inescapable these days.
The fear of change has become so powerful that it is driving political change. I don’t know how to explain the events that took place in the United States this past week without understanding it in terms of huge numbers of people voting as a block to turn back the clock on change that has been taking place in society. But even such a desperate reaction and backlash will not slow the pace of change. It will overtake us all. The Babylonian army that is bringing the change of everything is outside the gate and I don’t care how high Trump builds his wall, he won’t be able to keep it out.
The big problem we have with change is the same problem that Ezekiel and his friends were dealing with. We, like they, have learned to know God in certain places and at certain times. And, of course, churches on Sunday mornings and at other key moments have traditionally been one of these places where we have encountered God. The church has been our River Gihon and Holy Temple Mount. But the pace of change means that these holy places have become strange to us and we may even have lost some of them. The natural fear is that the loss of these places will mean that we have lost God.
But Ezekiel’s vision of the Gihon, as I say, is a comfort. So what does his vision say that might be helpful to us in times of such change? Well first of all, Ezekiel’s vision of a new Gihon springs, “from below the threshold of the temple.” It is a promise of God’s ongoing presence with the people. They may destroy the temple, it might be razed to the ground, and the course of the river may be fouled, but the spring will pour forth its water again.
And notice that the river, as Ezekiel sees it, no longer has that intermittent flow that he and all the people of Jerusalem would have been used to. Now it flows steadily and without interruption. This is surely a sign to us of God’s constancy for us during times of change. Everything else may change but God remains the same.
But it is not enough for Ezekiel, or for us, that the river merely continues to exist. The more important question is, how we will continue to find God in times of change. This Ezekiel is able to discover by exploring the river. First he is taken to a place one thousand cubits from the city. (That is about a half a kilometer or this distance from here to Harvey St.) Here, Ezekiel discovers, the water of the Gihon is now flowing about ankle deep. You know, just perfect for splashing around in – refreshing, pleasant and cool.
This represents how we find God again after times of great change. Our first experience of God may be ankle deep. We may be splashing around and refreshing ourselves in the water of God’s presence with us, but, in the initial stages of dealing with change, we may not find that there is a great deal of depth to our new understandings of God.
That is okay though, because Ezekiel’s vision is not finished. And what he finds is that as he moves farther down the stream and away from the familiar places and ways that he experienced God, something surprising happens – the river flows deeper and deeper until soon its flow becomes overwhelming. God is not merely promising to be with us in times of great change here, he is promising to bring us to new depths in our understanding and meaning. If we are willing to engage with God in this journey of change with openness, God is promising to reveal himself to us in new and powerful ways.
And there is an even more exciting promise than that, for we learn that as the Gihon River flows on from there, it becomes a power that is able to transform the world. So sweet and fresh is its water, we are told, that is it able to make even the toxic waters of the Dead Sea (which Ezekiel calls the Arabah) fresh and able to support huge schools of fish. Here the promise is not only that God will be with us to refresh us but that also God will flow through us to renew the whole world.
I know change is hard for all of us. It is especially hard when we see change in an institution like the church where we have so many past experiences of the presence of God. You can resist against all that change. You can fight to keep everything the same or to put everything back the way that it was. You can even vote for Trump. You can try but, given the realities we are living with today, I don’t think that you will succeed.
But if you can find a way to move with the current of change – to embrace it and let it flow through you – I think that you might find that Ezekiel’s vision has a lot of truth in it and the further you go, the deeper and more powerful your experience of God will be.
140CharacterSermon Change is hard. We’re afraid to lose God. Ezekiel’s vision of Gihon says relationships with God can deepen in such times.
Communion December 21 & 24 for evening services. Servers, stations, and directions
The congregation is encouraged to follow the blue arrows as shown. Approach by the outside aisles and return via the centre aisles. Kindly move to an open station if a lot of people are standing on line to be served.
he second chapter of the Book of Genesis describes a garden – a place of idyllic existence where, the Bible says, humanity first came into being. This garden was perfect – the only place where all life (human and animal alike) lived together in peace and harmony. But the story goes on from there to tell us that the garden was lost and that humanity will never be able to enter it again as long as this world exists.
The loss of the garden has been a powerful idea that has possessed many people down through the ages who have sought for a way to get back to it. Some have sought to do it by questing after the tree of knowledge of good and evil – seeking to reclaim the garden by expanding human understanding. But they have not got us there yet by that route and sometimes have led us far astray.
But what if we could find it in another way – what if it were a place on the map? I mean not a literal location that you could just punch into your GPS and drive to, but what if the geographical description in Genesis was meant to point us to a metaphorical place where we can find it in this world. The garden is said to be in a very particular (if unusual) place: “A river flows out of Eden to water the garden,” it says, “and from there it divides and becomes four branches.” The four branches are given names, some of which seem familiar. They are, Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates.
Now, half of those rivers are immediately recognizable. Tigris and Euphrates are the two great rivers that flow through the land of Mesopotamia, which means the land between the two rivers. They flow today through the country of Iraq and they mark the place where archeologists tell us that human civilization first came into being at a place called Sumer.
The other two rivers are harder to recognize. Since half of the rivers would have been well known to the people who first heard this story, the assumption is that the other half would have been as well. The first river called Pishon – a name totally unknown otherwise – and we’re told that it flows in a land called Havilah which is also unknown. But then it says that, in the place the Pishon flows, there is gold, bdellium and onyx stone. Since bdellium (a precious resin) is only found in sub-Saharan Africa and onyx was a precious stone commonly used in Ancient Egypt, some have suggest that Pishon must be another name for the River Nile which starts its course in sub-Saharan Africa and flows through the rich valleys of Egypt. The Nile would fit well in the company of the Tigris and the Euphrates as Egypt was the second great civilization of the ancient world.
In fact, when you think about it that way, it suggests a very powerful symbolic meaning for this description of the Garden of Eden. The passage states that, out of the original garden and the things that happened there, there flowed the three of the great rivers of the ancient world – Tigris, Euphrates and Nile. And these three rivers were the cradle of human civilization itself in Mesopotamia and Egypt. This suggests to me that maybe the story of the garden was not intended to explain the origin of the human species so much as it was intended to explain the origin of human civilization.
Think of the symbolism of the story of Eden. The humans are expelled from the garden, an idyllic rural existence, by their choice to pursue the tree of knowledge. Civilization is marked by the quest for knowledge and calls on people to move from a rural lifestyle into the city.
Civilization has brought so many blessings, of course, but that relentless search for knowledge has also created many problems (nuclear proliferation and climate change are two that come to mind) that may destroy us in the long run. In many ways the loss of the garden, that loss of connection with the land has also been very costly. These three rivers may give us an angle on the story of the Garden of Eden that can help us to explore those very issues which are still important today as we still search for the garden that we have lost.
But that brings us to the fourth river, the Gihon. It has long proven the hardest to identify. There has been a lot of speculation about the identity of the Gihon down through the centuries. Some have also associated it with the Nile River (or a branch of the Nile) as well because it is said to have flowed through the land of Cush and Cush is an ancient name for the land that we call Ethiopia. But there is another possibility that comes from the name of the river itself. The name comes from a Hebrew root that means “to burst forth,” which doesn’t sound like a good name for a river so much as for a spring which might be the source of a river.
And it just so happens that there was a spring that fed a river that was called Gihon – a spring that was very well known to the people who first heard this story in the Book of Genesis. It was a small spring that flowed from a spot very close to a mountain called Zion. This spring was extremely important to the ancient Israelites because it made that mountain into a good and defensible spot where you might build a fortress and a city. The city that they built there was called Jerusalem, the city of David and his capital.
The spring mattered because a decent water supply was so hard to come by in that part of the world. It made it possible, for example, for the city of Jerusalem to withstand many attacks and sieges over the centuries, something that is celebrated in the Psalm we read this morning (which was likely written as a national celebration when the city had survived an attack): “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved.” The river celebrated in that Psalm is none other than the Gihon and it describes the river as a sign of the presence of God in the city.
Now, traditionally, interpreters have hesitated to identify the river Gihon that is said to flow from Eden in Genesis with the Gihon that flowed in the city of Jerusalem. In fact, I cannot find any commentary that even suggests that they are intended to be the same river. You can probably guess why. People have had a hard time seeing how this tiny stream in Jerusalem belongs in the same league as mighty and historically significant rivers like Nile, Tigris and Euphrates. Jerusalem, as a centre of civilization, is also hard to compare with the much larger ancient cities of Mesopotamia and the Nile valley. If the Gihon is just a small stream in Jerusalem, it doesn’t seem to belong in the company of the other rivers of Eden.
But here is the thing: the description of the rivers of Eden never really made sense geographically speaking. Rivers simply do not work like they are described in this passage – especially with several rivers dividing off from one original river and then somehow flowing to various far-flung corners of the world. But that is okay because I don’t think that this description was ever meant to be taken as pointing to a literal geographical location.
The people who first heard and repeated this story did not hear it as a story about something that happened a long time ago in a remote geographical location. It was a story that was part of their daily lives and, if they could look over and see a stream, flowing by the streets of Jerusalem, and recognize that stream as a river that once flowed from Eden, that would have said some significant things to them about the world that God created and their place in it.
For one thing, it gave them a sense that they had a place among the great nations and empires of the earth. They looked at the great powers of the world such as Babylon (which lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates) and Egypt along the Nile and they could say, “Yeah, but look at us! We’ve got a river of Eden that flows through our city too. We too are one of the world’s great civilizations.” It was a matter of national pride and identity.
But the connection between the Gihon River that they knew and the Gihon River of Eden was about more than that. They saw it as a point of connection between their daily lives and the ideal world promised in the original story of the garden.
Here is the thing that I have noticed. The Gihon River of Jerusalem is rarely named in the Bible but there are many passages and stories about this river. The river flows right through the whole Bible though you may have never noticed it. In fact, the very last chapter of the Book of Revelations – of the whole Bible – includes a description of a river that flows from the throne of God in the new heavenly city of Jerusalem – a new Gihon. It is the final comforting image of the Bible. Isn’t it interesting to think that the Bible both begins and ends on the banks of the River Gihon?
In our reading from the Gospel of John this morning, we find ourselves at the Pool of Beth-zatha – a pool in Jerusalem that was fed, in the time of Jesus, by the spring of the River Gihon. In this story we learn that, by the time of Jesus, the people of Jerusalem had come to believe that the waters of that stream had healing and restorative powers when the spring burst forth and stirred the water. Did they come to that belief because somewhere in their ancient traditions they connected this stream in Jerusalem to the ancient waters of Eden and the wholeness that humanity had known there? Did they believe that those waters had a healing power because of that connection?
Of course, maybe that doesn’t matter because in the story in the Gospel of John, the Gihon waters prove unnecessary and Jesus himself is able to heal the invalid. Perhaps that tells us that Jesus himself is a stronger connection to the wholeness of Eden than any stream could be.
I don’t know if Eden in the Book of Genesis was ever intended to be understood as a literal place that once existed. I don’t know if the events that we are told took place there were meant to be taken literally or symbolically. But I do know this: the story of Eden is true because it tells me so much about what it means to be human in this world. One thing it speaks to me about is that sense of what we have lost as humans on this planet. I believe that we should be able to live together in peace and harmony. I believe that there is no good reason why everyone in this world should not have enough to get by. I know that war and all of the destruction it brings shouldn’t happen – it doesn’t make sense. And there is this disconnect between how I think the world should be and how it actually is. I long for Eden – that perfect picture of what it should be – and I do not find it. I’ve never seen the garden and yet I miss it.
Traditionally, Christians have thought of Eden as totally cut off from the present world. It is a garden found in the remote past at the beginning of the world or in a remote future (a garden restored) at the end. But I am beginning to suspect that the Israelites didn’t see it that way. They walked through the streets of Jerusalem and saw, right there, a stream that was, for them, a river of Eden. The garden wasn’t remote for them, it was right there.
What might change, do you think, if we began to think in the same way? What if we could look out the door here, at the Speed River that flows just over there, and see it as a river of Eden. It might give us some hope that the dysfunction of this world isn’t fated to be, that Eden is just over there.
What if every river is a river of Eden? What if we all could find our way there by following them back? It is an intriguing idea and one that I hope to continue to explore as we continue this journey to the biblical Gihon next Sunday.
#140CharacterSermon Gihon River means #Paradise isn’t remote in time or place. It is near if we choose to believe in #peace & understanding.
On Sunday, November 6, St. Andrew's Hespeler will be celebrating Remembrance Sunday. This service will include prayers for peace among the nations and a celebration of the commitment, service and personal sacrifice of those who have served our country in times of great need. We will observe two minutes of silence, highlight those members of the congregation who have served in the military and celebrate our nation with the singing of the national anthem.
There are number of other things that will make this service meaningful and memorable:
The Youth Band will be performing a medley of Peace Like a River and Kum Ba Yah
The choir and music director have prepared music based on the themes of peace and of rivers.
The minister will present the first of a two-part sermon on the River Gihon in the Bible. Here is a short introduction to the series.
Oh, and one more thing. We are certainly eager for you to join us Sunday and to bring your friends too, but you don't necessarily need to show up a whole hour early so....
This Sunday, October 30, the congregation of St. Andrew's Hespeler will gather to celebrate our 161st Anniversary. There will be many things to make this gathering special:
Our very special anniversary preacher will be the Rev. Linda Ashfield. Linda is minister at Knox Waterloo Presbyterian Church where she is in a team ministry together with her husband, Brooke. In fact, Brooke and Linda have the distinction of being the first couple in the Presbyterian Church in Canada to be ordained together.
Linda has a ministry that inspires and instructs many. Over the years, Linda served the church on the Board of Ministry, Board of Congregational Life and the Board of World Mission. She helped create Youth in Mission and worked as YIM’s National Co-ordinator. Linda was the Canadian National Co-ordinator for the Presbyterian Church in Canada for Youth Triennium (86), working on the Design Team and organizing the Canadian delegation as well as Internationals from 12 countries. In 1992 she was the Canadian preacher at Triennium. She gave leadership at four Youth Trienniums held at Purdue University as well as four Canada Youth events, preaching the closing service at Canada Youth 2012. We look forward to what Linda has to share with us as she preaches about "What's essential?"
Our special Musical Guest will be Dan Amorim, a talented and gifted organist. His presence with us will enhance our worship in too many ways to count!
Our own musical groups will be putting out their very best for us. That includes our Senior Choir, Youth Choir, Youth Band and Joyful Sound (Men's Chorus).
Following worship our fellowship time will include a tasting of meat pies from our fundraiser.
Fellowship time will also include the dramatic conclusion of our exciting pie in the face contest! Would anyone like to know what it takes to get the honour of throwing a pie in the minister's face?
