Communion Schedule 2016
December 21st & 24th 2015
Communion
Continue reading »
Communion
I thank each of you for volunteering
| 7:30 pm | 8:00 pm |
| Dec. 21 | Dec. 24 |
| Station #1 Allison & Nancy | Station #1 Mary & Carlton |
| Station #2 Mary & Vern | Station #2 Rob & David |
| Station #3 Vern & Jean |
Communion servers for Dec. 21 & Dec. 24
News December 2015
We are very pleased to announce that a new communication channel will be available very shortly via our St. Andrews web page. Session will implement a regularly updated page to announce changes that are being implemented on a monthly basis. We hope this will become a “go-to” area where you might get some answers. Our commitment to you is that there will be ongoing, informative, and regular updates. The Blog will show archived posts as a side bar to further enhance communication from Session.
Continue reading »
Some items of note:
· The budget for 2016 is being formulated and we need your help to make some decisions for the future – consider dropping a note or email or better yet become directly involved.
· The Annual General Meeting will be February 28, 2016
· A task group of Session is evaluating and prioritizing expenditures and Session has put some projects on hold pending their detailed report.
· A walk-a-thon in memory of Rev. Jeff Veenstra is being planned at this time to be held in 2016.
· The Hespeler’s Place of New Hope Clothing is actively searching for funding and has applied for a number of grants for 2016. Help them with donations if you could for this critical mission of St. Andrews.
· Joint Deacon/Elder meetings are ongoing monthly or so and through 2016. We are resolved to provide “best in field” service to you, our congregation on how best to meet your needs. You may assume this is not an easy task and you would be right. Your prayerful thoughts are welcomed that we might discern the path to our goal.
Making Christmas Specials: Frosty the Snowman
St. Andrew's Stars Video:
Hespeler, 6 December, 2015 © Scott McAndless – Communion
I |
n 1969 the decision was made to take a silly little winter children’s song about a snowman who came to life and turn it into an animated Christmas special. It was not really a very radical idea. Five years previously producers had taken another popular Christmas song, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reinde er, and turned it into what is probably the most popular Christmas special of all time. If they could do it for Rudolph, they could surely do it for Frosty and in fact they even hired the same man, Romeo Muller, who had written the Rudolph special to expand the song’s story to fill an entire half hour.
But didn’t Romeo Muller have quite a challenge before him? How do you take a little lightweight song about what is, I guess, just about everyone’s childhood fantasy (What do you suppose it would be like if this snowman I’m making came to life?) – how do you take that and turn it into a full length drama that will engage people and speak to their hearts? But Muller did a terrific job. And to do it he drew on some deep and ancient truths. He created what I consider to be nothing less than a grand parable that communicates the gospel message.
The story already touched on the oldest mystery of all – the mystery of creation. Ever since they first started wondering about anything, people have wondered about why they are here and where they come from. And ancient people, including the ancient people of Israel , often imagined a creation process where the creator first formed people out of mud or clay and then breathed life into them. And although I think that we all assume today that the whole creation process must have been a bit more complicated than that, there is something about that simple image of God moulding us out of common clay and then breathing his own spirit into us to give us life that just offers a wonderful symbol of the
meaning behind creation – how God brought together the material body with that spark of the divine to create us as spiritual creatures.
Well, of course, that whole creation scene is re-enacted in the Frosty story except, of course, instead of mud or clay the creators use snow. Now, the original story in the original song did not have much of an actual connection with Christmas. It could have been the story of any snowman made on any winter’s day. But the producers of the Christmas special wanted to tie the story in with Christmas, so they made a point of telling us that Frosty wasn’t made out of just any snow but of Christmas snow. This becomes a very important point later on. So the Christmas snow stands in for the clay of creation. And instead of the gift of the spirit or of breath to give the snowman life we have a hat – not just any hat, but a magic hat.
And so when Frosty is brought to life it is like a parable of the creation of human life. To make this very clear in the special, Muller has Frosty himself tell us what all of this means with his very first words. “Happy Birthday,” he says. It is a moment of birth, an act of creation. But a simple story of creation, as nice as it may be, wasn’t going to fill a half hour of prime time. Muller needed to complicate the story – to introduce a little bit of tension.
He created a new character, an incompetent magician named Professor Hinkle who is the one who has lost the magic hat – who threw it away, in fact, because he thought that there was no magic in it. And when he finds out how wrong he is, he’s ready to do anything to get it back. And since, in the story, the magic hat seems to represent life or the gift of the spirit, I guess that makes Professor Hinkle into the very personification of the evil that is in this world, of those who would steal life from others to accomplish their own goals. It makes him, if you like, the devil.
But, if Hinkle is the devil, who is Frosty? That is the key question! He kind of looks like a new being – one who has been created out of magic and of snow. You might even call him a new Adam. And in the Letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul says that Adam “was a pattern of the one to come.”(Romans 5:14) That is to say that when Christians look at the story of the creation of the first man, they should find something that teaches them about Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished for us.
And I would suggest that, in the television special, Frosty is very clearly a figure of Christ. When Frosty’s life is put in danger by rising temperatures, he and his friends decide that he needs to head north. And one of his friends, a girl named Karen, will not be separated from him and so she goes with him. All goes well for a while and the group has many adventures. But, at a certain point the increasing cold becomes too much for Karen and she collapses. Frosty picks Karen up and, to save her life, carries her into a heated greenhouse. Karen wakes up and realizes that Frosty is risking his own life by being in the greenhouse. She tells him that he must go but he brushes her off and says he can stand to lose a little weight. But at this point Professor Hinkle comes along – still following them and still looking to reclaim his hat – and he slams the door to the greenhouse, locking them both inside.
Trapped inside the greenhouse, Frosty melts – he dies. He gives up his life to save Karen from dying in the cold! Does that remind you of any story you’ve ever heard? Didn’t Jesus say, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) Even more important, didn’t Jesus show with his own life what such a statement really meant? And so, I think it is very clear that Frosty’s death in the greenhouse holds many echoes of the central story of the Christian gospel.
But, of course, there is more. It is at this point that Santa Claus comes into the story. He arrives at the greenhouse but is too late to save the snowman. All he finds is an old silk hat, a corncob pipe, a button, two pieces of coal, a puddle of water and Karen weeping on her knees just like Mary Magdalene wept outside Jesus’ tomb. (Coincidence? I don’t think so!) Karen is quite inconsolable in her grief but Santa Claus says that there is a reason for hope. He says that it’s because, and only because, Frosty was made out of Christmas snow and there is something special about Christmas snow – it never goes away. And then Santa flings open the door of the greenhouse and a gust of cold wind comes in and sweeps the puddle of water outside where it instantly retakes Frosty’s shape. Santa puts on the magic hat again and again Frosty comes to life with his same first words: “Happy Birthday.”
Now, if that isn’t a resurrection story, I don’t know what is. And I’m not trying to suggest here that Romeo Muller intentionally borrowed his themes from the gospel story. On the contrary, I don’t imagine that he was even aware of the connection. But somehow, and in a way that even he probably didn’t understand, his story tapped into an eternal truth – the idea that new life can only come through death and resurrection – an idea that has been around for a very long time but that was finally given its supreme demonstration in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
So this is how I see Frosty the Snowman. The story of his “creation” is a reflection of Adam. The story of his “death” and his “resurrection” is a reflection of Jesus Christ, the new Adam. Talk about serious themes! And yet, through it all, the special remains a light-hearted romp especially for kids. But I think the very simplicity of the Frosty story may allow it to bring some fundamental truths home to us.
For example, I’ve always wondered, even when I was a kid, about Frosty’s first words. Both times when the hat is placed on his head and he comes to life, Frosty greets the world with a cheery “Happy Birthday.” Now the first time, it kind of makes sense. It is like he has just been born – his own birthday. But why does he repeat it when he is brought back from the dead? Well, I don’t know what Romeo Muller was thinking when he wrote it that way, but I think I can explain it from a Christian point of view.
There is a connection, you see, between the notion of creation and of resurrection. In our understanding, they are not really two different things. Your hope and expectation for the resurrection ultimately has its foundation in your creation. The God who created you, who took inanimate matter and brought it to life – whether you think of that creation taking place in the womb or in the some primordial soup – is the same God who will raise your earthly remains up to new life after you die.
That is why the Apostle Paul makes such a close connection between Adam and Jesus Christ: “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” He means that you need to keep in mind that your hope of life after death does not really depend on you, on anything you have done or not done, or on anything that is in your nature. It depends upon God. Your hope for resurrection is based in God and God’s ability to take dead matter and bring it to life. God has shown that he can do that by creating life in the first place and even more forcefully by raising Jesus from the dead. There is really only one miracle – the miracle of life. And what you received in your earthly birth or creation is like to what you will receive in your resurrection, only it will be that much better.
And, finally, there is one other way in which Frosty resembles Jesus. Even after Frosty is raised from the dead, the rising temperatures mean that he can no longer remain with his friends. He leaves to go and live at the North Pole. But he leaves with a promise – the final words of the song: “I’ll be back again someday.” But Frosty was not the first to say “I’ll be back.” (And, no, I’m not talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger.) That was also Jesus’ promise after his resurrection. And I know that, in the case of Jesus we tend to think of that return as a cataclysmic event – something that we wait for expecting that, when Jesus comes, he will set all things right. It is something that will happen at some future date but that really doesn’t affect the here and now that much.
But the Frosty special has put the idea in my mind that maybe we should think of the return of Jesus in a slightly different way. Frosty’s return, in the special, is tied to the date of Christmas – the date of his creation (for he was made of Christmas snow) and the date on which he was raised from the dead. And I think that can remind us that the resurrection of Jesus and our own resurrection which the Bible describes as happening when Jesus returns someday, is really one event. It is all tied up together. It’s all one and the same miracle. And it is a miracle that we can grab hold of here and now. You don’t have to wait until you die to start living the new life, the resurrection. Because of Jesus and the work that he has accomplished, you can enter into that reality here and now. “Happy Birthday” indeed!
So there you have it. You just thought that it was a simple little children’s story. Who’d have thought that it would turn out to be a major treatise on the meaning of creation and resurrection. Christmas truly is a season of magic.
Frosty the Snowman is a fairytale they say. Maybe it is, but it also contains much truth and children know truth when they see it. Some people say that the story of Jesus is a fairy tale too. We believe, and have reason to believe, that Jesus was a real person. Of course, I would insist that his story is even more true than Frosty’s, but there is also a sense in which both stories share a universal truth about the hope for life and new life that we find in our God.
Sermon Video:
Longest Night Service
Continue reading »
Thank you Food Basics!
A BIG shout out to Food Basics.
Food Basics helped us out when we were making up care packages for the clients of the Cambridge Self Help Food Bank and Hope Clothing.
You helped make budgets stretch and that is so important, especially at this time of year.
Thought and Prayers
Something finally broke over the last couple of days. And, as far as I'm concerned, it is about time.
In the aftermath of the latest mass shooting, which led to the death of 14 in San Bernadino in California, people began responding, as they often do, by sending out their "thoughts and prayers." It is, I would suggest, a common and generally positive response to events that are tragic and largely outside of our control. We feel so powerless in the face of tragedy and the impulse is to want to do something about it. Often enough, prayer and positive thoughts are the only things that we feel able to do.
But this time there was a strong twitter reaction against the response as people began to tweet out criticisms that sought to shame those making such statements with the hashtag #thoughtsandprayers. The criticism and shaming was not directed (at least not for the most part) towards people who were truly powerless to do anything except pray about it, but in particular at people like politicians who have had many opportunities to make changes in how things are done but have resisted doing anything. In other words, they have changed nothing and done nothing but pray and it is time to point out that such a strategy is not fixing anything. It is, as the headline on the Daily News has proclaimed:
Continue reading »
In the aftermath of the latest mass shooting, which led to the death of 14 in San Bernadino in California, people began responding, as they often do, by sending out their "thoughts and prayers." It is, I would suggest, a common and generally positive response to events that are tragic and largely outside of our control. We feel so powerless in the face of tragedy and the impulse is to want to do something about it. Often enough, prayer and positive thoughts are the only things that we feel able to do.
But this time there was a strong twitter reaction against the response as people began to tweet out criticisms that sought to shame those making such statements with the hashtag #thoughtsandprayers. The criticism and shaming was not directed (at least not for the most part) towards people who were truly powerless to do anything except pray about it, but in particular at people like politicians who have had many opportunities to make changes in how things are done but have resisted doing anything. In other words, they have changed nothing and done nothing but pray and it is time to point out that such a strategy is not fixing anything. It is, as the headline on the Daily News has proclaimed:
Ats a leader in a Christian church, I have often used the phrase, "My thoughts and prayers are with you." I have often let people who are going through some crisis know of the thoughts and prayers of the congregation and I have led the congregation in prayer in the face of various tragedies over the years. I do believe that this is an important thing to do and to say.
I never say it lightly. I always do make a point of actually praying for those people. I also think that doing so matters.
It matters to them. It matters that they know that they are not alone in facing whatever they are facing -- that there are people who are sympathetic and empathetic, that there are people who care. Just knowing that you are being supported in this way can certainly help to improve outcomes. I happen to also believe that it matters to them because God answers prayers. God doesn't always answer prayers in the ways that we want or desire or expect. We may not like God's answers sometimes. But I have seen God's presence with people in various ways as they have gone through tragedy. It has mattered.
It also matters to me -- a lot. I have faced many problems and intractable difficulties in my work as a minister. I have felt overwhelmed by them far too often. Prayer has been an invaluable resource to me. It works like this:
When I am faced with a problem that seems overwhelming, I do what I can about it. I make use of what talents and skills are at my disposal. I call on assistance from people who may have talents and skills that are unavailable to me. I put the time and energy into the problem that I am able to put into it given all of my other priorities and limitations. But, often, having done all of that, I still feel overwhelmed and can be filled with anxiety and fear.
That is when I especially need to pray. I need to tell God that I have taken on as much weight in this issue as I can. I need to tell God that my shoulders are full and I cannot bear it any more. I need to tell God to take the weight from me. This is an extremely freeing prayer. It is not freeing in the sense that I don't need to act any more, but it is certainly a way of freeing me from anxiety. If I couldn't do that, I know that I couldn't continue in the work that I do.
But if all I was doing in the face of problems and tragedies was jumping to that prayer without even considering what I can and need to do about the situation, I believe that God would and should rebuke me.
Perhaps the hashtag #thoughtsandprayers is God's rebuke to some.
It is not, as the old saying goes, that "God helps those who helps themselves." That is not true. God's actions are always gracefilled.
What it is is this: Prayer is a dangerous activity. When you ask God for somethings -- something that you claim to be passionate about -- God says, "Great. I am glad to hear your passion for this. So, if you are so passionate, what are you doing about it."
If the answer is nothing (especially if it is your power to do something), God might well wonder if you are passionate at all. Why would God answer a prayer like that?
Making Christmas Specials: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
St. Andrew's Stars Episode:
Hespeler, 29 November, 205 © Scott McAndless – 1st Advent
1 Corinthians 12:12-26, Psalm 133, Matthew 20:24-28
A |
baby is born in a cave, a baby who is different from every other child who has ever been seen. And his parents look on him in wonder, not comprehending just how unique their son will be, not understanding how he will grow up to be the saviour of all his kind. That is the classic Christmas story isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about.
What? Oh, I’m not talking about that baby. For lots of people Christmas has very little to do with hisbirth. You misunderstand me. The baby I’m talking about was actually a fawn. And the parents who wondered at his birth were named Donn er and Mrs. Donner. The cave was just an ordinary reindeer cave. That’s the birth I’m talking about. It is a birth that says Christmas to a lot of people because it is the opening scene of the classic Christmas special, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and, for them, Christmas cannot really begin until they have seen that special.
Now, I know I could look at that as a negative thing. I could stand here and go on and on about how awful it is that a lot of kids seem to grow up today being a lot more familiar with the story of the birwe tell on Christmas is a lot better than the story of any reindeer, no matter what colour his nose is.
th of Rudolph than they are with the story of the birth of that other baby. Of course, that’s true. And of course I know that the story that
But, of course, it is Christmas time and I don’t want to get all negative about Christmas traditions that people love. And besides, the Rudolph Christmas Special tells a great story – a story that, as far as I am concerned, contains a great deal of truth. And not just any truth either. I find a great deal of gospel truth in this story. It is a great illustration of some key Biblical ideas; ones that we need to take to heart particularly at this time of year.
The story, in case you’re among the seven people in Canada who haven’t seen it, is all about misfits – people who don’t fit in because they are different. Rudolph is a misfit because, of a physical deformity – a big bright shiny red nose. The other main character is Hermey, an elf who doesn’t fit in with the other elves at the North Pole because he doesn’t like the lifestyle. He hates making toys, he doesn’t like singing and all the other things that the elves do. Hermey only wants to be a dentist and nobody can get behind the idea of an elf dentist.
But Rudolph and Hermey aren’t the only misfits. They run off and end up at a place called the Island of Misfit Toys
It was also, apparently, a very important question for the early Christian Church – maybe especially the church in the city of Corinth. First of all, it was a church that was made up almost entirely of misfits to start with. They were people who were looked down on and despised by just about everyone they met. Many of them were devalued and despised because they were poor or because they were slaves. They were also all rejected by general society because they had rejected the pagan religion – the worship of the ancient gods. This meant that they could not participate in the activities of an ordinary civic life because they all took place in the temples of and under the patronage of the various gods. They just didn’t belong in the general society but they found a home and a sense of belonging in the life of the church. In Jesus they found someone who loved and accepted them despite all of that.
So that is one part of the answer to the question of what you do with the misfits – you find them a place where they belong and people who accept them for who they are. But that, in itself, is not quite a good enough answer. In the Rudolph special, there actually are a couple of characters who do accept Rudolph as he is. His mother, in particular, makes the decision to simply overlook the nose – to pretend it’s not there. And Clarice, a young doe, befriends Rudolph and doesn’t hold his nose against him. And obviously that measure of acceptance helps Rudolph. (In fact, when Clarice tells him she thinks he’s cute, it makes him fly higher than all the other young reindeer.)
But it is not a complete answer. Despite these exceptions, the main message that Rudolph gets in the first part of the special is that if he wants to be valued and loved, what he needs to do is blend in with everyone else. He needs to stop being a misfit. And so it is that Rudolph’s father, Donner, covers over Rudolph’s bright red nose with brown mud. That muddy cover is the symbol of the pressure that is present, in any group, for people to conform to the norms of that group.
In a way, it is only natural. Whenever people get together or work together they just feel more comfortable to be alongside people who are like them. So there is a natural tendency to pressure people who look different or act different to change themselves to fit in with the majority. Even more important, the majority also sets the standards for advancement. It decides what you need to do or how you need to be in order to gain honour, prestige and glory. If you’re part of a reindeer team, I suppose that would mean that those who fly fastest or highest would have the most honour while those who distract everyone else with their bright shiny noses would only be put down.
Even a society of misfits can end up doing the very same thing. That’s what happened in the group of misfits that was in the church in Corinth. There were some people in the church who had this ability, in the Spirit, of speaking in strange languages. It was, to be sure, a pretty impressive thing to be able to do. And so everyone started to look up to them – to think of them as more spiritual people. Everyone else wanted to be like them and some actually managed to do it.
But this strange speaking was not something that everyone could do. It was a spiritual gift that came from the Holy Spirit. And it didn’t take long for everyone in the church to start treating those who couldn’tdo it as misfits – as a lower class of Christians. It’s pretty bad when you think about it. They were doing to these people exactly what the general society around them had done to them – treating people who were different as less valuable. Isn’t human nature grand sometimes!
And so the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians to set them straight. He told them that the Christian church, being made up of misfits as it was, had to behave better than other groups. It had to find a way not merely to tolerate those who were different but to discover how truly valuable they were. That’s what that passage we read this morning is all about. Paul is trying to tell them that the people in the church, who don’t do this funny speaking thing, but who do have other things that they are good at, are not any less valuable than the others. His message is that each one contributes in his or her own way and that when we all do that, the church will be strong.
Now, that sounds like a pretty simple and straightforward idea. When Paul compares the church to a body, for example, and says that each part has its own strengths and contributes in its own way we all nod our heads. When he says, that a body could not function if every part were an eye or if every part were an ear, we all say, “Yes, that makes sense.” But, when it comes to practically living together with peace and understanding and working together to reach common goals, that can be a different story.
That’s why I think a story like the one in the Rudolph special can be so helpful for us. It can become a kind of parable for us. Because the Rudolph story isn’t just a story of acceptance, it is a story of value and true contribution. At the end of the story, as we all know, Rudolph doesn’t just find acceptance in the reindeer herd in spite of his deformity. His deformity actually saves everyone by making it possible for Santa to navigate in the fog. What is different and unique about Rudolph actually turns out to be absolutely essential to everyone. In addition, Hermey also saves everyone from an attack by an abominable snowman by pulling out the monster’s teeth and proves that even elves need dentists.
And that is what is so hard for us to understand in the church. That is why we need such a simple illustration as what we find in this story to get it through to us. That is what the church is about too. The church is a society of misfits. But it is not that, in the church, we are all just tolerated in spite of our own little problems and idiosyncrasies. It is not that we smile to people’s faces but then, when they turn their backs, we roll our eyes or say bad things about them. That might be good enough for a workplace situation or some other casual relationship, but it is not good enough for the church. Here we love them and value them for who they are.
Now I know that that is something that doesn’t always come easily. Sometimes there is something about another person that just rubs you the wrong way or drives you crazy. But in the church, this society of misfits, we learn that God made our brothers and sisters as they are for a reason. That God put something special in each sister and brother that allows them to contribute in a way that no one else can. And I know that you may not always see that at first, but you can take it on faith. You can believe that the God who created them was able to put something valuable in them. And from that attitude of faith you will, in time, come to see what that special thing is.
But the other side of that is even more powerful. Being part of the church – of this society of misfits – means that you come to see that value in yourself. You begin to see that you are loved and valued by your God and by your fellow misfits, not merely in spite of your little personal quirks and faults, but precisely because you are the person that those things made you. This too is an attitude of faith. It is the belief that the God who made you doesn’t make junk and that even in the things that have gone wrong for you God can have a plan for good.
The love that you can experience in God and in God’s representatives is not a grudging love – a love in spite of who you are. It is a full whole-hearted love for who you are. That doesn’t mean that you cannot strive and work to become even better than you are – to become the best that you can be – but it does mean that, wherever you are on that journey right now, you can move forward in confidence that you are loved and valued. And that is something that can make your heart fly as high as one of Santa’s reindeer.
Sermon Video:
Christmas Armistice
It is the end of November and we all know what that means: it is time for War.
Yes, every year at this time of year we are reminded that we are supposed to be at war. It is called the War on Christmas and we are apparently all conscripted as foot soldiers.
The first shots of this year’s battle have already been fired. The skirmish was fought over the holiday season cups at Starbucks. A few Christians took offence because the plain red and green cups being filled by the iconic café this year don’t have any explicit Christmasy words or symbols on them. But we all recognize that that is only the beginning and there will be many more fights to come. What will be next? Will we have to take offence at someone who says Happy Holidays? Will we need to be appalled by a lack of mangers in public squares? Where will it end?
I’ve got to say that in this particular war, I am pretty much ready to declare myself a conscientious objector. I’m not sure I want to fight it anymore – at least, not if it is a battle between the Christian idea of Christmas and our secular society’s idea of Christmas.
The fact of the matter is that I love both Christmases. I love the church’s Christmas with our focus of the story of the birth of the messiah, the candles, the sacred carols and prayers for peace on earth and good will to all. But I also love the secular Christmas that surrounds us with its lights and colourful decorations, the Christmas songs and the hustle and bustle of the malls. I will admit that I do get very tired of the materialism that seems evident everywhere you look, but I am not entirely certain whether the extreme consumerism belongs to the sacred or secular side of Christmas. After all, so many of the battles seem to be fought over what greetings are given to shoppers in stores.
I also happen to love the fact that I live in a multicultural society where people celebrate both Christmas and other religious and cultural festivals at this time of the year. There is a wonderful richness amid such diversity.
And so I really don’t want to think about what happens at this time of year as a war. I’d like to call for an armistice from our point of view at least.
And so this is what I’m going to do. Rather than going to the Bible first, this year I’m going to start my Advent sermons with the sacred texts of the secular Christmas. When I was growing up, there were four canonical Christmas stories that we had to hear every year. They were: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch stole Christmas. When I was growing up at least, Christmas just wasn’t Christmas unless you gathered together with your family and tuned your television to the CBC for every single one of these classic stories. So I am going to explore the meaning behind these classic stories.
This is not something that I would normally do. I have not been trained to seek inspiration in the secular stories of society but exclusively in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. I have long found that they are all I need. But somehow I am not too worried. Yes, there are perhaps some stories that are told by the world around us that we need to be wary of – that might lead us down a wrong path. But my sense is that we may just discover that, even if the people who wrote these great Christmas stories set out to be completely secular and to avoid all mention of the gospel Christmas story, there is something that would not allow them to stray too far from the ultimate Christmas message. My expectation is that there is a lot of truth—gospel truth—in these stories and I am going to find that they lead me back to Bible before I’m done.
And, perhaps by finding the gospel truth in these secular Christmas stories, we might find a way to bring peace between warring factions at this most blessed time of the year.
Wishing you:
Peace on Earth, Good Will to All!
Script Out Passages: Script Out Principles
Hespeler, 22 November, 2015 © Scott McAndless
2 Timothy 3:10-17, Romans 1:26-32, Psalm 19:7-14
T |
oday we come to the end of what I think is the longest series of sermons that I have ever preached. Since the beginning of September we have been looking at what I call the Script Out passages of the Bible – passages that we love to hate and often wish weren’t there in the Bible at all. I’m going to confess that I am kind of glad to bring this series to a close on this, the last Sunday in the church year. It can be a little bit difficult to spend all that time focusing on Bible passages that you don’t really like. Next week, the first week in Advent, I am going to be very happy to turn to some more traditional themes of the Christian gospel.
But I hope that you have picked up that, even if it is hard, I do think this kind of work is important. If we are people who believe in the Bible and take this book seriously, we have to be willing to invest the energy to struggle with those parts of the book that may make us feel uncomfortable or that we just plain don’t like. You cannot pick and choose which passages to follow.
But even more important than that, I think that we need a better general understanding of how we can approach this book that we say is so important to us. One of the reasons why I felt I had to tackle the Script Out passages of the Bible was because I was hoping to develop some basic principles that we could use to apply whenever we come across passages that challenge us or give us trouble because this
is just something that is going to keep happening and we may even find that, as times goes by, there will be more passages that we stumble over for various reasons.
A perfect example is a request that comes to us this year from the highest governing body of our denomination: the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The General Assembly has asked the congregations and sessions of our church to discuss and get back to them on a somewhat thorny social issue of our time. They want us to talk about how we include (or perhaps fail to include) LGBT people in the church. Just to be clear, LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. So it is simply a reference to a group of people who for various reasons, don’t quite fit into what might be called the traditional approach to how to live out sexuality.
But the reality is that, if we are going to be Christians who take the Bible seriously, we have to grapple with what the Bible says even if the discussion is uncomfortable. There are only a few passages that speak directly to these questions and I want to look at how we are going to approach them. I don’t mean to do this in order to tell you how you need to understand these passages or what you ought to think about the question in general. I just want to offer you some helpful approaches to keep in mind.
But before we look at any particular passages, I want to start with some basic Biblical assumptions. You have heard the argument made (seriously by some, ridiculed by others) that the Bible does not support same-sex marriage because, and I quote, “It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” There is actually a valid point in that, at least when you understand what it is saying, and we need to take it seriously.
What it is saying is that there is a certain assumption about what is normal or common in human relationships and specifically about the relationship between men and women in the Bible. This isn’t just something that we see in the creation story but an assumption that runs through much of Scripture, that the male/female relationship in marriage is normative and that it is the kind of relationship, from the perspective of Biblical society, that everyone is simply expected to engage in. And of course that was true. Everyone in Biblical times was expected to participate in so-called traditional marriage.
Of course, what they called traditional marriage (as we saw a couple of weeks ago) was a little bit different from what we are used to. It included things like arranged marriages that had nothing to do with love, polygamy, female slavery and concubinage, rape victims who were forced to marry their rapists and all kinds of other things that we would never find acceptable. But there was an expectation that, one way or another, everyone would fit into the basic male/female marriage relationship somewhere and that was really whether they wanted to or not and whether they desired that kind of relationship or not.
So it is true that the Bible takes male/female marriage relationships for granted and, indeed, as the basic foundation of society. And I see absolutely no problem with that. Even today, such relationships represent the norm in the sense that it is the kind of relationship that the majority of people will fit into in one way or another. What’s more, such relationships are very good and even foundational to society as a whole.
But just because the Bible only sees one kind of relationship and calls that relationship good, that doesn’t mean that it is the only kind of relationship possible or the only one that can be good. I mean, just because the Bible assumes that everyone wears tunics and sandals doesn’t mean that such a mode of dress is the only one that anyone should wear today. Sandals and tunics being good doesn’t mean that a suit and tie is necessarily bad.
One of the principles that we discovered during our discussions over the last few weeks had to do with something called proof texts. Proof texts are short Biblical texts that clearly lay out some Biblical policy. We saw, for example, that there are a few verses that, in former times, were regularly used to defend the practice of slavery. But the fact that there were a few verses in the Bible that clearly declared that slavery was an acceptable practice did not stop many Christians from using the Bible to argue against it. They discovered that, despite those few proof texts and despite the fact that the Bible took the institution of slavery for granted throughout the whole text, the overwhelming narrative of the Bible was about a God who was committed to bringing his people freedom from slavery and all oppression and that that story was more important than a few proof texts.
Does that principle apply to the discussion of the place of LGBT people within the church? It is true that there are a few verses that are clear proof texts against homosexuality – six verses by most people’s count. Their meaning is not really open to a great deal of interpretation though we can look at them. Does the existence of those proof texts (assuming we are correctly understanding them) mean that any sort of conversation about how to include LGBT people is already over – that there’s nothing more to say?
Well, I would say, given where we stand on slavery, we cannot possibly say that. We can never say that a proof text is the end of a conversation. Of course, that doesn’t answer the question of what the overall narrative of the scriptures is. Is it one of including outsiders or is it one of judgment of people who don’t fit in. That is another discussion and one that you need to decide on for yourself as you read the Bible.
Now, turning to those so-called proof texts, the clearest one is found in Leviticus chapter 20: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” It is, like many proof texts, a passage that doesn’t seem to leave much room for interpretation and many would point to it as the clearest Biblical rejection of LGBT people.
But here again, another of our Script Out principles does apply. Way back when we started this series and looked at the Biblical prohibition against people getting tattoos, we noted that that law really doesn’t apply to today because it was part of a particular law code that was intended to set the people of Israel apart from their neighbours by forcing them to have a distinct culture.
And when we looked at that ancient law against tattooing, I made this note: “We have to be consistent. If we don’t worry about one verse that we don’t like for a good reason, but then find another verse that we maybe do like that has a lot in common from the verse we rejected, be can’t just choose to dump one and keep the other. We have to think it all through critically.”
The law against tattooing and the law against men lying with men are only one chapter apart in the Book of Leviticus. The two laws have a great deal in common and seem to have the intention of setting the people of Israel apart from their neighbours culturally. The tattooing law seems to reject the funerary practice of the Israelite’s neighbours and the law against men lying with men is likely rejecting the cultic prostitution practices of their neighbours but neither one is really reacting to cultural practices that are part of the world today. This leaves the question of whether either one really applies today at all open.
There are only a few passages in the New Testament that touch on the question at hand. There is nothing at all in the Gospels. Jesus himself never said anything on the subject, possibly because the issue just never came up for him. At the very least, this seems to indicate that the matter wasn’t really a big concern for him. We have said before, in connection with some of the other Script Out passages, that Christian doctrine teaches us that God’s ultimate revelation of Godself to the world is not in a book like the Bible but is to be found in the living person of Jesus the Christ. Jesus’ lack of attention to this issue may be an indication of where it lies on God’s priorities. Something to keep in mind.
The issue does come up in the letters of the New Testament: in Romans, in 1 Corinthians, in 1 Timothy and in Jude. We don’t have the time to go through those passages one by one now. People have certainly differed down through the centuries over exactly what they mean. And I am not going to tell you what you ought to do with them. You are smart people. You have seen some of the various principles that I have been talking about that help us to deal with those parts of the Bible that we don’t like or that we often avoid. I would like you to encourage you to apply them for yourself. We will also offer an opportunity in the New Year to study these passages and the larger issues in discussion.
But I want to be clear here – I’m not trying to tell you what you should think of these passages. I’m trusting you to come to your own conclusions and understandings. I do expect that, though we will agree on some things, we will not agree about it all. But I think that is okay. In the history of the church it has happened too often that a majority (or sometimes a powerful minority) have imposed their thinking or their Biblical interpretations on everyone else. It is past time for that to stop.
I don’t know exactly where this whole discussion will lead us in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. My hope and prayer, though, is that we find a way to create an environment where everyone feels the freedom to act according to their understanding and convictions and where we can respect the understandings and convictions of each other.
In the Second Letter to Timothy, we are told that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” If we really believe that – that all scripture (both the parts that we like and the parts that we don’t like) are given to us by God for our good, we will not be afraid to struggle with the scriptures, to question them and find some way to embrace them. What is at stake in these discussions and in other difficult discussions that may come is that we are a people who take all scriptures as a gift of God – sometimes especially the parts that we struggle with.
Passages referred to in the sermon:
Leviticus 18:22, 29; 20:13
Romans 1:26-27
1 Corinthians 6:9;
1 Timothy 1:10;
Jude 7.
Script Out principles:
- Be consistent. You can’t just pick and choose which verses you like. Apply the same critical thinking to them all.
- Pay attention to what is actually being said.
- God never intended for us to turn our minds off and just take our moral truths from proof texts. You must never take your eyes off of the overall narrative of scripture.
- God knew that the Bible would always be limited by the humans who transmitted it. So God chose to reveal himself in a way that could not be corrupted by human transmission. God revealed himself in a person: in Jesus the Christ. The living revelation of God in Christ always comes first.
- Is this God’s final word on this subject or does the Bible have more to say elsewhere?
- Understand the intentions of the people who first used this story.
- Understand what the underlying assumptions are.