Yesterday (Thursday) was Food Bank day. We had some fun cutting the ribbon on our brand new freezer.
A BIG SHOUT OUT to Nelson Aggregates & Jonas Appliances for your generosity in providing the freezer (and delivery). This will be a huge help for us to be able to continue to reach out to our community to provide much needed help.
Over 30 families in the Hespeler community are served every other week, with more new people coming each Food Bank day.
Thank you to everyone who helped to make this possible.
Fort McMurray in northern Alberta under an evacuation notice Tuesday. Image provided by radio station CAOS91.1.
The PCC national office has heard from The Rev. Lisa Aide, minister at Faith Presbyterian Church in Fort McMurray (link to message). The people from the congregation have all made it safely out of the city, though they are scattered north and south. They are waiting to hear about the status of their homes, manse and the school where they worship.
Donations to support immediate relief and long-term rebuilding for people affected by the fires may be made to Presbyterian World Service & Development for “Alberta Fires”. Funds will be used in consultation with presbyteries and local congregations to support Presbyterian, ecumenical and other relief efforts. Watch for more updates at presbyterian.ca
Mail a cheques to PWS&D at 50 Wynford Dr. Toronto, ON M3C 1J7 Indicate the gift is for “Alberta Fires” on the cheque memo line.
Update from Faith Presbyterian Church in Fort McMurray
Thursday May 5, 2016
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers, right now everyone is safely out of Fort McMurray, but we are scattered north and south of the city, so we’re giving thanks for social media which has been a wonderful tool to help people stay in contact. We at Faith church greatly appreciate all the prayers and support that we have received via email and text messages, it is wonderful to know that we are not alone during this time of trial. We know that at least two members have lost everything to the fire, and the rest of us are still waiting on news, one way or the other. So far the manse and the school that Faith worship at seem to be safe from the flames but we won’t know until were able to return home what is waiting for us.
We are also asking for prayer for all of the first responders and everyone else who is in the city trying to save what they can, for we know that it is going to be a hard and stressful battle, so please hold these brave men and women up in prayer, for they need it most of all.
Thank you once again for all of the prayers and the support that has been shown to the people of Fort McMurray, it means a lot to know that we are being lifted up in the prayers of God’s people. The next few months are going to be hard but we know with God’s help we grow stronger, for our city is strong and we know that we are not standing alone. If anyone would like to get in contact with me please feel free to contact me via Facebook.
Thank you once again for everything. Blessings, The Rev. Lisa Aide Faith Presbyterian Church Fort McMurray
Prayer
We are deeply saddened by the fires of Fort McMurray. We cannot begin to imagine the stress and panic that many must be feeling as they sit helplessly watching these unfolding events. We are also mindful of the exhaustion firefighters on the front lines must be feeling. Our prayers are clearly with everyone facing these challenges. May God’s strength uphold all those seeking to cope with this tragedy and may the desperately needed rains come quickly.
The Rev. Karen Horst Moderator, 2015 General Assembly
he story of the creation of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis was always about much more than just the question of where the human race came from. Adam was never just supposed to be a historical figure. Even the earliest people to tell and pass down this tale knew, after all, that the name Adam meant man and that he represented humanity as a whole. They knew that his wife’s name meant living, and so they understood that this story was not about history or events that took place in the earliest mists of time so much as it was about what it meant to be human beings living in this world here and now.
For example, the particular selection of verses that we read from Genesis this morning seems to be preoccupied with one particular question about being human. The question is this: why do human beings wear clothes. I mean, think about it, the story originated in the ancient Near East which has one of the most temperate climates in the whole world. They didn’t have to deal with the extremes of a Canadian winter. Even rain was a rare event. Clothing, for them, was not a physical necessity most of the time, so they needed an explanation for why human beings, alone among all the creatures on the earth, wore clothing. So if you were going to tell a story about what it meant to be human, that mystery was something that, in their minds, you needed to tackle.
And the story makes it clear that, in the ideal world as God originally intended it, clothing was not necessary. “The man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” The need for clothing, apart from protection from the elements, is, according to this story, actually a reflection of what has gone wrong with human life in this world.
Think about what that means for a moment. The
Bible says that the need for clothing is a symptom of what is wrong with our humanity. There certainly is something to that idea. For nothing divides and dehumanizes us quite like clothing does. Did anyone here go to high school? We have a lot of people here who went to high school in very different time periods. So let me ask the question: when you were in high school, was there an “in” group and an “out” group? And was clothing used as a marker of whether someone was in or out? When you were at high school was the way that somebody dressed ever used as a reason to mock or exclude that person? Clothing is definitely used to separate and divide people in unhealthy and unhelpful ways.
Clothes, in the Genesis story, also seem to represent that human fear of being ourselves. When Adam and Eve are first created, the idea that they are “naked and not ashamed,” seems to symbolize a relationship were they are able to fully share themselves with each another. They don’t need to hide behind anything; they can just be themselves. That they suddenly feel uncomfortable with such nakedness after their disobedience is an indication that something has gone wrong. And, to this very day, we still struggle with just being ourselves in front of other people.
So clothes are part of the problem. But they also seem to be an undeniable necessity given the failures and the shortcomings of our human nature. We just can’t go through life letting it all hang out – not literally and not figuratively. Yes, there are exceptions to that. A few times in your life you might hope to have a relationship with somebody where you feel completely free to be yourself all the time. It can happen in a good marriage or an excellent friendship. But it is rare and most of us spend our lives hiding who we really are from the vast majority of people that we meet; afraid that, if we were to show our true selves, we would be rejected.
This is something that this story in the Book of Genesis is acutely aware of: human beings are flawed. We have our shortcomings and we have our failures. That is a part of what it means to be human. But the amazing thing that we see in the story in Genesis is that, although God is clearly angry at the failure of his humans and deeply disappointed in them, that does not prevent him from being entirely gracious to them.
When the man and the woman first awake to the realization that they are flawed and find this deep inner need to cover up those flaws, they attempt to improvise a solution to their problem: “they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” But this is, clearly, at best a temporary solution. Fig leaves are simply not the most flexible or durable material to make clothing out of but it seems to be the best that we humans can do sometimes.
But then, right at the end of the story, there is a little surprise. At the end of the story, after God has handed out all of the consequences to the woman and the man for their disobedience and to the serpent for his part in it all, there is a little side note: “And the LordGod made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.” And so we learn that, as far as the Bible is concerned, the invention of the first durable set of clothing is to be credited to God. Think of it; the Lord God was the very first person to design a line of clothing.
And I find this idea of God as the first cosmic fashion designer to be very interesting. It tells me a few very important things about God and our relationship with God as human beings.
It tells me, first of all, that we have a God who understands our weakness and failures. God clearly understands what the man that the woman are struggling with, which means that he understands the struggles of all humanity. This is rather extraordinary when you think about it for God has no experience of shame. Why should he? And yet he understands that the man and the woman need clothes not out of their physical necessity but because they feel shame for their inadequacies.
This willingness of God to deal with us where we are as opposed to where God thinks we are supposed to be is of enormous importance. Have you ever had somebody in your life who absolutely refused to deal with you the way that you were – somebody who simply would not accept that you might be fearful or shy or lacking in confidence or whatever particular problem you were dealing with? I’ll bet that each and every one of us has had to deal with someone like that at some point. Was that person helpful to you? Probably not. In order to really help you with getting where you need to be, your friends need to start with you where you are and not where they think you ought to be.
I don’t know how often I have encountered in people this notion that they are unable to access God’s grace or be part of the church or even to pray because they don’t have everything worked out in their lives. “I can’t talk to God,” they will say, “because my life is such a mess.” Well God, fortunately, doesn’t work that way. If he did, none of us would have any hope and no one would ever belong to the church. It is very helpful to know that that is where God joins us on this journey of life where we actually are and not where we are supposed to be.
The second thing I would note about this is that God’s gift of clothing is different in substance from what the man and the woman are able to create by themselves. This is obvious: Adam and Eve’s attempt to clothe themselves is plant-based; God’s gift is animal based. And one of the problems seems to be that Adam and Eve’s approach is less durable because it is plant-based than the one that God offers.
But there seems to be more than a question of durability at stake here. Here is one thing I notice: when we wear plant-based clothing, when we wear things like cotton or linen or even fabrics like wool that are harvested from animals, nothing needs to die in order for us to be warm and cover our “shame.”
Death itself doesn’t seem to be part of the plan at the beginning of the story of the Garden of Eden. At least, the way that it is described, the man and the woman and all of the animals were supposed to live together in such harmony that nothing ever needed to die. The lion and the lamb were supposed to lie down together without anyone getting eaten and even the strongest of predators were supposed to live as vegetarians. It is rather interesting that we seem to have, in this portrayal of ideal life in God’s original garden, a world where nothing has to die in order that something else may live.
But that ideal has apparently failed with the failure of the humans, and it is interesting to see that God’s very first act upon learning that his ideal vision for life in this world is not going to work out is to kill something. Some animals (it doesn’t say which ones) have to die in order to create the right kind of clothing for the humans. These are, according to Genesis, the first recorded deaths. This has to do with more than just the relative quality of plant-based and animal-based clothing.
When ancient human beings finally became aware of their place within this world, when they realized that there was a difference between them and the other animals that lived alongside them (a realization that they came to by telling stories like this one in the Book of Genesis), they discovered something kind of scary and amazing. They realized that other living beings were dying so that they could live and be strong and healthy – so that they could eat meat from time to time and so that they could have strong and durable clothing. They realized that there was something tragic about that, but they also realize that there was something sacred about it.
Almost all ancient humans of all races and cultures came to that amazing realization and many ancient cultures celebrated that sacred tragedy with a ritual called sacrifice. An ancient sacrifice was how you killed and prepared your supper in a way that acknowledged how sacred and tragic the death of that animal was. But the ritual of sacrifice also had a great benefit. Most of the sacrificial animal was eaten by the worshippers who brought it and by the priests who prepared it for them. In addition, skins were taken and turned into clothing and leather and to make other useful things.
But some parts of the animal couldn’t be used. These parts – the bones, the fat and some other bits – were burnt up on the altar as a gift to God. In this way, they believed, the sacrifice created a meal that was shared with both God and the worshippers – a shared meal that was all about rebuilding the broken relationship between God and his people.
And I believe that this action of God who slaughters some animals in order to clothe Adam and Eve is anticipating that – all of that. It is a recognition that the world is a tragic place where things die and that sometimes animals die so that you can live and become who you need to be. It is also aware of the sacredness of such an act and the potential for healing to come out of it.
Christians don’t practice sacrifice, in part because they believe that Jesus, in himself, has fulfilled everything that could ever be achieved by animal sacrifice and that he did that by offering himself up for the sake of those who fell short of what they needed to be. If that is true, then it means that God, in his first act in the garden was already anticipating both the sacrificial system and the coming of Jesus himself. It is all right there in that short line at the end of this morning’s reading.
It is about what it means to be human because it is talking about things that we all struggle with. But, even more important than that, it talks about a God who is there with us in our struggles and whose presence makes all the difference in the world.
#TodaysTweetableTruth God clothes Adam & Eve with skins reminding us that God meets us where we are with grace and of Jesus’ death for us.
For those who remember having Rev. Gentle as our minister, his widow, Margaret Gentle has passed away. Condolences can be left at Smith's Funeral Home in Burlington.
We are keeping the Gentle family in our thoughts and prayers.
Obituary for Sara "Margaret" Gentle
GENTLE, Margaret (nee Hanna) -
Passed away peacefully at Appleby Place Retirement Residence, Burlington, on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, at the age of 95. Loving wife of the Rev. Stanley W. Gentle (deceased October 1995). Predeceased by brothers; Stanley Hanna (late Mary) and Irvin Hanna (late Jean), and sister-in-law; Betty Nancekivell. Cherished aunt of nieces; the Rev'd. Canon Marni Nancekivell (Ralph Malashevsky) of Oakville along with their daughter Amanda Malashevsky, Margaret Ann Childerhose, Heather Hanna, and Norma Jean Edgecomb. Aunt of Russell Hanna (Marilyn) and Lloyd. Margaret will also be missed by cousins and other great nieces and nephews. Margaret's long life is celebrated by extended family and her many friends from Appleby Place, Burlington East Presbyterian Church and other churches where Margaret and her late husband served in ministry. The family wishes to thank Dr. Amanda Jerome and staff from Appleby Place Retirement Residence for the excellent care that was provided to her. Private cremation has taken place. Visitation will be held at Burlington East Presbyterian Church, (505 Walkers Line, Burlington), on Tuesday, May 3, 2016 from 10:00am until the time of Service of Remembrance beginning at 11:00am, with reception to follow in the church hall. Interment at Woodland Cemetery, Hamilton. If desired donations in Margaret’s memory to Sleeping Children Around the World or Burlington East Presbyterian Church Memorial Fund would be sincerely appreciated by the family. (Arrangements entrusted to SMITH’S FUNERAL HOME, BURLINGTON, 905-632-3333).
m I the only one who reads this morning’s passage from the Gospel according to Matthew and just wishes that everybody would just calm down a little bit? We have, in this passage, a parable of Jesus – a story of a dinner party. In this case, it is a wedding feast given by a king in honour of his son. The basic premise of the story is simple enough. The host of the feast wants lots of prominent guests and so he invites a large number of important people. The twist comes when none of the important people are able to attend the meal and the king kind of panics because, in that society, to give a feast and have nobody show up would reflect very negatively on the host. He ends up packing his dining hall with all sorts of undesirable people in the end.
And that is, basically, the parable that Jesus did tell to his disciples. In fact, if you were to turn over to the Gospel of Luke you would find a version of this same parable where that is all that happens. I have always preferred Luke’s version of this parable for that reason. The story is simple and straightforward without anything extra going on. I’ve always kind of avoided Matthew’s version of the parable because everybody in the story seems a little bit crazy. They all overreact.
We have, first of all, the guests who are first invited to the feast. The king sends his servants out to deliver the invitations because, of course, this was before the days of the internet when you can invite a bunch of people to your party with a few emails and Facebook messages. And the people who receive the invitations, just like in the parable in Luke’s gospel, are unable (or perhaps unwilling) to come. Now, I don’t know about you, but I was always taught that if you are invited to go someplace and you cannot attend, you politely say that you are very sorry. You return the RSVP with a friendly note that expresses your regrets. Is that what these invitees do? No they do not.
They seize the servants who bring the invitations, turture and kill them! I don’t care how much you don’t want to go to a dinner party, there is absolutely no way that murder and torture is a reasonable way to communicate that to your host. So yes, I really wish that the invitees would just calm down a little bit.
But then, as I continue reading, I’m not sure that the king’s reaction is all that much better. The king is upset at how the people he invited to his party treated his servants. That is understandable. But his reaction is very much an over-reaction. He doesn’t just punish the murderers, no. He gathers his troops, attacks the entire city where they live and burns the place to the ground. That is definitely overkill.
So we go from a bloody RSVP to an even worse response on the part of the king. After that, however, the whole thing just becomes bizarre. The king has just filled his banqueting hall with whoever the slaves could find – a crowd that is described as including “both good and bad.” It is clearly a mixed bag and he knew that when he invited them to come in. But then the king comes across one of these guests who is, in his estimation, not appropriately dressed. Well what did he expect?
Nevertheless (and we really shouldn’t be surprised at this point) the king overreacts. He kicks the inappropriately dressed guest out of his party but he’s not even content just with doing that, as excessive as that might seem. No, his instructions are, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Once again, how is this an appropriate way to respond to the minor ettiquet breach of somebody being underdressed at a party?
So there seem to be all kinds of problems specifically with how this parable is told in Matthew’s gospel. Did Jesus have two wildly different versions of this one parable – one where people acted in a fairly reasonable fashion and one where everyone acted a little crazy – that he told on different occasions? And then did Luke copy one version into his gospel while Matthew copied the other?
That’s one possibility, but it is more likely that, when Matthew wrote down his version of this parable, he was trying to help his readers by making it clear to them what his own understanding of the parable was. And Matthew, plainly, saw this parable as an allegory. An allegory is a special kind of story in which every element represents something else. So, in Matthew’s mind, the king, in this parable represents God. The people invited to the feast are the Jews whom God has invited into his kingdom. The servants are the prophets who bring God’s message to the people of Israel and so on.
When you read it as an allegory, the strange overreactions make a lot more sense. The way that the invitees abuse the messengers is so crazy because it is supposed to represent how the nation of Israel historically rejected God’s message by abusing and killing the prophets.
And by the time that Matthew wrote this gospel, the City of Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Roman army and so Matthew even states that this parable predicted that terrible event by including the destruction of a city by troops in his allegorical interpretation. Again, an event that makes little sense if it is an attack provoked by an impolite response to an invitation to a party but that makes a whole lot more sense if you see it as the consequence of an entire nation rejecting the message of God that was brought by the prophets and by Jesus the Christ himself.
So that is one thing that is going on in this passage: Matthew is turning Jesus’ parable into an allegory. But that particular allegory does not especially help us to understand the part at the end of the parable where the guest is thrown out of the party because he is not appropriately dressed, so let me point out something else about the way that Matthew tells the story. Did you notice one very particularly annoying pattern of behaviour in this parable? Did you notice, in particular, that nobody seems to be able to accept a gift or to be the recipient of generosity?
I mean, the people who are invited to the wedding feast, their invitation was essentially a gift. They were turning down nothing other than an evening of good food, entertainment and conversation. And yet they set the whole story off its rails by being unwilling to receive a free gift and doing so violently. What’s more, I would suggest to you that the man who is not wearing the wedding robe at the end of the story is essentially doing the same thing.
We do not know what all of the customs were around wedding celebrations in ancient Biblical societies, but we can be pretty sure that there were a lot of them. And some people have suggested that one of the customs at important weddings may have been for the host of the wedding to provide his guests with fancy robes to wear at the wedding. If that was the custom, then everyone who heard this story would have seen the man who is not wearing the wedding robe in a very different light.
It is not that he doesn’t have appropriate clothes to wear; he has been provided with the appropriate clothes. It is just that he has refused that gift, perhaps because he thinks that his own, dirty and everyday clothes are good enough. When you look at the parable from this angle, it seems to be all about people who have a hard time accepting generosity from others.
And you wouldn’t think that should be a problem, would you? After all, every single one of us has had times in our life when we were unable to meet all of our needs by ourselves. We all have had times when we get by with a little help from our friends. And given that that is something that literally every human being will have to deal with at some point in their life, you would think that it wouldn’t be hard for anybody to accept generosity from somebody else.
But it is. I’ll bet every single person here knows somebody who just can’t stand to receive a gift or a generosity. You all know people who, if you try to give them something or do something for them, they will drive you crazy trying to stop you. Maybe some of you are like that yourself and you just cannot stand being on the receiving end of a gift.
Why do people do that? Why do we have trouble accepting the help we need when we need it? Part of it is that we believe that we are supposed to be entirely self-sufficient in all things and that, if you are anything less than that, you must have failed in some way. Even if you find yourself in a position of need because of something that was entirely out of your control, you are still made to feel that it must, in some way, be your own fault and so you resist accepting help or, if you absolutely have to take it, you do everything that you can to cover up that fact.
If you are involved in the outreach ministry of this church, or most any church, this is something that you run into all the time. We have the privilige of being involved in giving people things – things like food, clothing, good nutritious meals, counselling – that they would not be able to get otherwise or, in some cases, they would have to give up something else that they also needed in order to obtain it.
And, I’ve got to say, it is a real privilige to be able to be involved in this kind of ministry. The people involved genuinely enjoy being able to give these things away and we also enjoy the people that we give them to. But, of course, few people enjoy havingto receive in this way. Few people want to come in and access the services that we offer. Over time, the people that we serve become our friends and they enjoy coming here because our workers and volunteers create a warm and hospitable atmosphere.
And it is good that we help people to learn to receive because I would suggest to you that none of us can ever achieve our potential as followers of Christ, or as human beings, if we do not learn to receive. We cannot even be followers of Jesus without learning to receive from Christ. Our salvation, our hope and our new life in Christ are all things that we cannot make happen for ourselves. We can only receive them as gifts from God.
The robe in the parable, the robe that the guest refuses to wear, has often been seen as a symbol of those gifts from God. It is the robe of righteousness and salvation and new beginnings and we do not have the capacity of wearing such robes by providing them ourselves. We can only receive them from the hand of God. God gives these things freely but we, foolishly, often have trouble receiving them. We would like to think that we are good enough and strong enough and capable enough to achieve all of these things on our own. Like the guest at the party, we insist on wearing our own robes instead.
But the lesson of the parable is that if you do not learn to receive from God when you need to receive from God, you do not belong at the party. And I don’t actually even think God needs to cast you into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth because you have already cast yourself out of the party by a simple refusal to receive a gift freely given. It is that important to learn to receive. Our very salvation – our potential to be all that we are meant to be in this world – depends upon it. And one of the ways in which we learn to better receive from God is by practicing receiving from others.
Therefore, I would encourage you, this week, to do one simple thing to deepen your walk with God. This week, when somebody offers to give something to you or do something for you and doesn’t want anything in return, just take it. Receive that gift and do it without feeling guilty for receiving. Receive it, without it hurting your pride. Take it without plotting to pay them back in anyway. Just receive it. Just practice gratitude and say thanks. If you are unable to do this, try to get to the bottom of why you can’t. Receiving can be just as important as giving. It is an act of grace. Practice receiving grace from others and you may just find yourself able to receive more from God and starting to grow more into the person that God has called you to be.
#TodaysTweetableTruth Ask yourself why u have so much trouble receiving from others. Receiving can be just as necessary as giving sometimes.
On May 1, 2016, St. Andrew's Hespeler will be holding an election of deacons and elders for the congregation. We have been working hard this week to prepare packages for all the members to facilitate this process. Thanks to everyone for your help in preparing the elections. In particular I would single out for thanks to our temporary roll clerk, Joni Smith, who did her very best to make sure our roll was up to date and nobody was left out and Isabelle who was wounded in the line of duty with a paper cut!
id you notice that nobody asked Peter to do anything? Peter was in Lydda when a highly respected and well-loved woman named Tabitha died in the nearby town of Joppa. And people had obviously heard something about Peter. He had a certain reputation for healing and for miracles, so they sent for him with an urgent request that he come, but that was the whole content of the message. They didn’t tell him that he was supposed to heal her (it was kind of too late for that anyways). They didn’t ask him to come and doanything – just come, please, as soon as you can.
And when he came, even then, they didn’t actually ask anything of him. They just took him to an upper room where they had laid out Tabitha’s body but they don’t even seem to have pointed her out to him. No, what Peter actually saw and noticed was not her body but a room full of weeping widows. They didn’t say anything, they just wept and showed him their clothes. And that is why they didn’t need to ask him to do anything. The clothes actually spoke much louder than any words ever could have.
The story of Tabitha in the Book of Acts, makes me ask, first of all, one immediate and very important question. If you were Tabitha, what would the widows show to Peter?
I am often called upon, as you would expect, to speak at the funerals of people who have passed away. I have always found it to be true that every person’s life has something profound and beautiful to say to us at such times and I do see it as a great honour and a privilege to be the one who gets to point out some of those profound and beautiful things.
But I have also noticed that there are often things that are deeper and stronger than words at times like that. They are objects or actions that hold special symbolic meaning and they often will prove far more enduring than the words we say about someone who has died. People will cling to something that the deceased gave to them or did for them and find great comfort in that. That was what those widows were doing when Peter arrived.
Widows are, in the Bible, kind of the stereotypical poor person. They were seen as the most helpless and needy people in all of society. Of course, there are problems with that stereotype. I would never be so foolish as to think of a widow (or any woman unattached to a man) in such terms today! In fact, some of the strongest and most capable people I have ever known have been widows or other women who, by choice or by circumstance, navigate this world without a husband.
And even the ancient perception that widows were helpless actually had nothing to do with the capabilities of individual women. It was just that, in that society, women were not permitted to make their way in the world without a dominant male controlling them. They were not allowed to participate in the economy in any honourable way and so they were forced to be utterly dependant on charity.
So these women in Joppa may have been very strong and confident women. They may have even been practicing the freedom of the Christian gospel by choosing not to be married. But they lived in a society that did not allow them to make their own way apart from a dominant man. These women, because they broke the conventions of society, became dependent on the community of the church.
And Tabitha, had been particularly generous to them. But it obviously wasn’t just the fact that she was generous that had moved them. She had made these clothes with her own hands. Her generosity to them had been personal, caring and individual. That’s what made the common, everyday tunics and dresses and robes they were showing to Peter absolutely priceless in their minds. These tunics represent to them everything that summed up Tabitha’s kindness, goodness and love shown to them.
And I don’t know about you, but if that were me and I had died or moved on in some other way, I just think it would be really nice if, after I was gone, someone could just hold up something and point to it and say, “This is something that tells me that Scott was here and that his presence in this place mattered.” So it is a really good question to ask, “what tunics would people show to Peter after you were gone?”
But actually, I have a much more urgent question to ask here today. The story of Peter and Tabitha is a terrific story to read just after Easter because it is a story of resurrection. Maybe I should have said, “spoiler alert,” before bringing that up, but we did actually read the story and you heard how it ended. Tabitha didn’t stay dead. So it would be very easy to take this story and apply it to our post-resurrection hope as followers of Christ.
Certainly one of the reasons why the early Christians remembered and repeated this story was because it reminded them of their Easter hope in a life after death. The life after death that we hope for is not exactly what happens to Tabitha. We don’t expect Jesus to restore us to thislife again after we die, but rather to a different kind of life in a new place that we can scarcely even imagine. But what Peter does for Tabitha is a symbolic reminder of that hope for life after death.
But there is, I think, another way to read this story as a story of resurrection. After all, it is not just people who die. Groups and organizations and institutions, they can die too. And, as a matter of fact, we are living in an age when institutions are passing away more quickly than ever before. Churches and congregations, in particular are affected by this and they are passing away (or amalgamating or changing to such a degree that they are unrecognizable) at an unprecedented rate today. So would it not be a good question to ask, as believers in the power of resurrection, what is the hope for resurrection for our churches and Christian institutions?
If your church were to die (or go through a radical change that might feel like death) what would you like to leave behind from its life right now that would tell the world that it was worth being here? Now, I know that when we think of our churches and the things that make them special to us, we tend to focus on the things that have been meaningful to us personally. We talk about our beautiful buildings and sanctuaries. We talk about memorable moments in worship services and about the things we have done there with our friends. We also have a certain tendency to go on and on about past glories and to celebrate the way that things used to be.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with loving these things about our churches. But the story of Tabitha makes me wonder, when our congregations are dead (or when they are transformed in coming years) what will make people remember them as they were and believe that they were important? This story makes me think that it may not be the buildings or the activities or the musical moments. What if, in the end, what really matters are the pieces of clothing.
I can think of this quite literally because we have, in this congregation, a clothing ministry called Hope Clothing where we are regularly handing out really good quality used clothing to people simply because they need it and can make good use of it. So I do know just how meaningful such a simple act can be. I am in the church often enough when people come in and bring their donations of clothing. Just knowing that it is our intention to give it all away according to need means a great deal to people in the world today – a world where used clothing has become a big business that creates large profits for some.
I also get to hear the stories that they tell me as they bring the clothes in. Not too long ago, I had a woman come in bearing the clothes of her mother who had passed away recently. She joyfully and sorrowfully (it’s amazing how the two of them can go together sometimes) told me very sacred and holy things about her mother and her sense of style and how she dressed and some of the things she had struggled with over recent years. I know without a doubt that it was a healing moment for her to be able to share her mother’s clothes and her stories in that way. And providing that opportunity is absolutely something that will last long beyond the present state of this congregation.
Of course, I also get to be part of it when people come to take the clothes that they need. We could tell you so many stories of people finding just the right piece of clothing at the right time in order to go to a job interview or a wedding or some other really important event. We could tell you stories of the right piece of clothing showing up as a donation only minutes before someone comes looking for that very thing. It is a little shop where minor miracles happen every week. Sometimes you know you’re participating in a miracle when you are just there and ready to respond when someone comes up against an emergency – a house fire, a situation of abuse or whatever it might be.
And let me tell you, if someday our congregation should cease to exist and the Apostle Peter were to drop by and ask me what really mattered about St. Andrew’s Hespeler, I think we could do a lot worse than to show him those pieces of clothing that were shared and the impacts they had on people’s lives. I know he would be moved by that. And of course, it is not always literally clothing but it is the acts of kindness that manifest themselves in concrete things that are shared with others.
For example, last week I preached this sermon at St. Andrew’s Church in Guelph and they don’t have a clothing ministry. They are, however working diligently towards welcoming a refugee family into Canada. I promised them that the concrete things that they do for that family will be of eternal value and will indeed endure beyond the present life of their congregation.
So I hope that this story of Tabitha might make us re-evaluate the things that we feel are really important about our churches and ask ourselves what we really need to spend our time and energy investing in as congregation. Maybe it is time for some of those priorities to change.
But remember that I said that this is a post Easter story. It is a story of the power of Christ’s resurrection and what it can do for us in our churches today. And I do see us living in an age where death is a real possibility for our congregations. Please understand, however, that I am not, in any way, predicting the death of St. Andrew’s Guelph or St. Andrew’s Hespeler. In neither case do I see that as a likely possibility and I am not here as a prophet of doom today.
But I will tell you this: we are living in days of great change for the church. We have a Lord who will not abandon his church in these days. Christ will be with his church through whatever change may come. That’s the good news. The somewhat more troubling news is this: Christ has a particular strategy for renewal in his church and in his people’s lives. And it is not a strategy of incremental change that never makes us feel uncomfortable. Christ’s favourite strategy for change is death and resurrection.
For me that means that maybe even many of our strongest and liveliest churches may be heading for a Tabitha moment – for a time when it may just feel like we have been washed and laid out in a room upstairs and that we are done. I fully expect many of our congregations to deal with moments like that in coming years.
Why would God allow us to go through such painful moments of loss? Not because he has abandoned us. He will send for Peter to come and raise us up again to new life and new beginnings. Christ will not abandon his church. So why would he put us through that?
Well maybe, just maybe, it’s because he wants us – like those widows in Joppa – to realize what really matters about who we are and what we do as a church together.
#TodaysTweetableTruth The widows showed Peter Tabitha’s tunics proving she had mattered. What would they show him after yr church was gone?
Hope Clothing is a key ministry at St. Andrew’s Hespeler and a wonderful resource for our community. Open three days a week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, we are there to give out clothes, accessories and footwear to every member of the family. We carry a wide range of sizes for babies, children, men & women. If we don’t have something in stock we do our best to find whatever is needed. In the winter we have a good selection of winter coats and boots.
One of the things that makes Hope Clothing great is that it is not a work that stands alone. It is a part of a much larger circle of hope and care that provides a powerful way for us to Live in Christ and Share His Love. This circle includes:
The Thursday Night Supper and Social: From mid-October to the beginning of April, every Thursday evening, we serve a wonderful, nutritious, home made meal to anyone in the community who would like to enjoy some good food and a safe place to visit with friends. This meal helps people in our community stretch their budget while enjoying a friendly and supportive time of fellowship.
The Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank: St. Andrew’s Hespeler hosts the food bank on every second Thursday. Recently the Food Bank did a survey of its services and the Hespeler site received an extremely high rating because of the ways in which Hope Clothing and the other ministries at St. Andrew’s work in synergy with that service. Thanks to this excellent review, the Hespeler site will be receiving more resources to better meet the growing needs of our community.
A-A, Al-Anon, Al-Ateen: St. Andrew’s is the only site in Cambridge where all three groups meet together which offers another wonderful mutually supportive circle.
Cambridge and North Dumfries Counselling: Being able to provide professional counselling to those in need of it one day a week is a wonderful addition to this all-around ministry.
Hope Clothing is maintained with a minimal budget and is not directly supported from the general funds of St. Andrew’s Hespeler. We are definitely on the lookout for ways to continue to support this work, financially and otherwise, to maintain its viability into the future.
Visit standrewshespeler.ca for more information about Hope Clothing and Hespeler's Place of New Hope and to find out how you can help to sustain it.
