News Blog

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Hespeler, August 6, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 55:1-5, Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:13-21

Earlier this summer, the Southern Baptist Convention – the national body of the largest Protestant denomination in North America – made a controversial decision. The Southern Baptists voted to expel two of their congregations, one of which was their largest: Saddleback Church.

Amazingly, this did not have anything to do with the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked that denomination for the last few years. No, apparently the congregations were exiled for permitting something much, much worse. They were expelled because they had chosen to have women on staff as pastors.

And I would note that women pastors are not necessarily a new thing in such churches. Many Baptist congregations have had women employed as pastors for a very long time. In fact, one of the congregations that was expelled, Fern Creek Baptist Church of Louisville, Kentucky had had the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham as their senior pastor for three decades before being kicked out!

A Crackdown

This decision is part of a reactionary crackdown within that denomination – a retrenchment as the church reacts to a time of crisis. You see, the Southern Baptist Convention might be the largest denomination, but it is also the one that is declining the fastest. I know that lots of denominations are in decline these days, including our own, and I do not rejoice or crow over any of it. But the decline they are facing is rather stunning. The Presbyterian Church in Canada is getting smaller, but the SBC loses more members than are in the entire PCC every few months!

And so, what has happened is that a reactionary conservative group has seized power and is intent on taking the church back to a time long before the decline began – back to a time when, they might say, women knew their place and it wasn’t in leadership.

It is not a new idea. It is a very, very old idea that has been with the church for a very long time. It is the idea that certain sorts of people don’t count, not when you really want to build a church.

An Odd Ending

Haven’t you always wondered about the end of the story of the feeding of the five thousand? The story is told in all of our gospels, and it ends in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark with a count of those who ate. The counting is obviously really important. It is a way of making it clear that a great miracle has occurred.

The story ends like this in the Gospel of Mark: “The number of men who were fed was five thousand.” (Mark 6:44) But the Gospel of Matthew ends with an explicit detail found nowhere else. He puts it like this: “The number of men who ate was about five thousand, not counting the women and children.” But I have to ask the question, why not count the women and the children? If the point of this story is to show us the great wonder that Jesus performed, why exclude so many people from your accounting?

Why Would You Understate the Numbers?

Every politician, every organizer and certainly every preacher I have ever heard has always tended to overstate, not understate, the size of a crowd. Donald Trump was kind of famous for it and if ever the media tried to correct the record with a more realistic estimate, he would attack them relentlessly for it. And yet here we are told that the gospel writer could not be bothered counting part of the crowd.

Interpreters have come up with various theories for how many people would have been in the crowd if there were 5,000 adult males. Not everyone agrees, but I’ve seen some commentators who’ve made a study of the demographics of early first-century Galilee estimate that this could mean a crowd as big as 15 to 20,000 people. If you knew that the crowd was as big as that, why on earth would you not bother to count three-quarters of them?

Is it Because Certain People don’t Count?

Why indeed? I believe that it comes back to the issue that I started with – an idea that is obviously much older than the most recent meeting of the Southern Baptist Conference. The idea has long been built into the very foundation of the church that certain people don’t count, or at least don’t count the same.

The notion that women don’t count has deep roots. And I feel that I must say that I don’t believe that it is something that comes from Jesus or from God or even the true nature of the church.

Jesus’ Self-Care

We see where Jesus’ concerns lie at the beginning of this story. He is going through a very rough time. He has just learned that John the Baptist who, to a certain extent at least, seems to have been a kind of mentor to Jesus, has been murdered by Herod. Of course this is hard and of course Jesus, who Christian doctrine teaches us is utterly human no matter what else he is, feels this deeply.

And so, he needs a little bit of self-care. He heads off to a deserted place on a boat, hoping, no doubt, for a little bit of time to reflect and meditate. But his self-care is interrupted by the needs of the great mass of the people who come looking for him, even though they have to walk a great distance to find him.

Jesus’ Care for All the People

And, as much as he may need some time alone, as much as he is aware of his own needs, Jesus recognizes the need to care for the people – all of the people. When he saw them, “he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” And when he heals them and goes on to feed them, he quite clearly does not fail to count all of them. He does not simply provide for the most important or the most powerful. He certainly doesn’t feed or heal only the men. Obviously, for Jesus, the women and the children count, as do their needs.

So, if it didn’t start with Jesus, where does it come from? Why, by the time that this gospel was written, had people stopped counting the women and the children? Well, it had everything to do with the society and culture in which the early church found itself. There is lots of evidence that shows that the early church did count women. It counted them among the leadership, with women named as apostles and leaders of churches. That is why the Apostle Paul could say things like, “There is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

A Patriarchal Society

But the early church found itself in a culture, dominated by the Roman Empire, that was extremely patriarchal. Such a culture found the very idea of counting women – or at least giving them any significance – to be offensive.

And, by the time that the Gospel of Matthew was written and by the time that some of the later letters of the New Testament were written, that attitude had begun to drift into the church as well. Basically, the church began to feel that it needed to go along to get along. And, in many ways, that attitude continued to affect the church for many centuries. And, as we see in recent decisions by the Southern Baptist Conference, among others, it hasn’t really gone away.

Who We Count

It does mean a lot to me to be part of a church, and a denomination, that has done some serious work on counting women, on truly recognizing and appreciating their contribution, over the last few decades. I also appreciate the steps that we have taken to count others who were excluded from our accounting for way too long.

But I do not think that we can or should just lean back and put our feet up and assume that the job is done. I believe we will always encounter a cultural tendency not to count certain kinds of people, and as long as we do that, we will be missing out on a true picture of what God is doing among us.

People Sitting in Pews

For example, for a very long time, the impact of a church such as ours was measured by only one metric – by the number of people sitting in pews for one particular hour on a Sunday morning. Congregations that had lots of people sitting in the right places at the right time every week were considered to be successful congregations that were having real impact.

Even back then, this was not necessarily an accurate measure of the liveliness of a church. There were lots of people who were vital to the church who were not counted – people who were teaching Sunday school, people who had some pretty good reasons for why they couldn’t be there at that time, but that were great supporters of the church in other ways.

Old Assumptions No Longer Work

So, it was never quite accurate, but these old assumptions have become even more problematic because of recent developments. Now we have people who attend our worship services online through Zoom or through Facebook Live. Others watch the videos of sermons and other elements of our worship at another time than that extra special hour that was once the only one that mattered. Some of them do that from great distances away – all over the globe, in fact. Do they count? Are they part of the life and work of our church? Of course they are, but we do not often count them.

But there is more than that. There are all kinds of people in this community for whom this church is part of their spiritual life and for whom this congregation helps to meet both their spiritual and physical needs, and yet we have never seen them during the magic hour on a Sunday morning. Maybe we never will.

Who is Part of our Church?

I’m talking, for one thing, of those who come in for a good meal, to pick up some food from the Food Bank or our Community Cupboard. I’m talking about people who need help to get decent clothing for their families. This church is their church too and it meets their needs. The very fact that they are welcomed warmly here and treated without judgement absolutely feeds their souls as well as their hungry stomachs. If you asked them what they know of the church, they will speak well of St. Andrew’s. But do we count them? We do not.

I am also talking, by the way, about the amazing army of volunteers that keeps our ministries operating. Many do not worship here but they also have formed an amazing society of mutual support and encouragement and surely that is what the church is supposed to be about. Recently, for example, one of our Hope Clothing volunteers suffered the sudden death of her spouse. I know that she found the support that she received from her fellow volunteers to be invaluable.

Undervaluing Volunteers

I was talking with the people from the Food Bank recently, and they were noting just how seriously we undervalue the contribution of such volunteers. If you were to put a dollar value on it – and they are working up some models to help to put a dollar value on it – it works out that this church is making an additional contribution of thousands of dollars every year to this community. This is the mission of the church.

These are all people who are living out the mission of the church and doing it admirably. Are you going to tell me that they don’t count because they have never sat in a pew? That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? And yet we seem to assume all the time that that is how things are.

A History of Not Counting Some

The church, sadly, has a long history of not counting certain people. For centuries women didn’t really count, even as they often did the greatest part of the work in many churches. For centuries members of certain minority racial, ethnic or language groups didn’t count.

Oh sure, we were happy enough to include them in our statistics when it made us look good, but we didn’t seem to believe that they could really contribute anything of value. Their theological reflections were often simply dismissed.

Work Yet to be done

I’m glad to say that our church today has learned better about such things. But we still do fall into the temptation of not counting certain people. We say we would love to welcome families with children, for example, but can have a hard time making space for families that don’t quite fit into the pattern of families that we are used to.

Imagine those people who went out to find Jesus when he set off to be alone after he heard of the death of John. Those people are a picture of the whole of the church. They are gathered, as we are gathered, for one reason alone – because the compassion of Jesus met them where they were. Each one was met according to their need. Each one given a role in the ministry according to his or her ability. And they all counted. They all count. So, we must always be careful about who we don’t count.

Sunday morning worship

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Worship from this week.

From Sunday morning

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Hespeler, July 9, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 16:14-23, 18:1-11, Psalm 150, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

It’s not easy to be a musician these days. If your passion is music, it seems almost impossible to make your living playing. Employment is intermittent at best. Wages are low unless you really make it. And even if you do finally make it and actually get a hit streaming on Spotify, you are paid in pennies while the streaming service and the label takes everything else.

Tough Audiences

But if you think things are tough today, you should try being a musician in the court of King Saul. Apparently, if the audience (and in that audience only one member really mattered) didn’t like what you were playing, you might find yourself pinned to the wall with a spear. Now, I know that there is really no danger at all that the audience this morning will object in any way to the music that they hear but you never know when the people of St. Andrew’s might seek to imitate the Bible a little too closely. So let me put Martin’s mind at ease. I have taken the precaution of removing all spears from the church this morning.

But let’s look at what Saul does in that interesting little story we just read. In it, Saul is starting to get a little nervous about a young man named David who is in his service. David is the best fighter in his army and is his son-in-law. But lately Saul has been worried that David’s getting too big for his britches. Absolute rulers always worry when their servants get more popular than they are.

Music to help a Troubled Spirit

Saul was given, the Bible says, to being tormented by an evil spirit. What that likely means is that he suffered from what today we would call a mental health issue – some have thought (given that he did eventually commit suicide) that he suffered from severe clinical depression. In any case, whatever exactly afflicted him; he often had these episodes where he was quite out of his mind. And when that happened, the only thing that could break him of his evil mood was the music that David played on his harp.

Sometimes, you see, music is the gift that God gives you to help you break out of that dark mood, to see the hope in tomorrow, to leave anger or despair behind. That’s what David could do for Saul. But one day, Saul couldn’t listen to the music. He let his anger, his fear of David and his bad mood overcome him instead. The spear was cast and for Saul, that was really the beginning of the end. He began from there to lose support, to lose his army and eventually he lost his kingdom. Maybe he should have listened to the music instead.

W. A. Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756 and by the time that he died in 1791, he was an incredible musician and a fantastic composer. His personal life, by all accounts, was a mess and his finances were so bad that he was buried as a pauper, but his music was a different story. In his music, all was in incredible and perfect order. The harmony was always just so. And he apparently had the ability to put all the notes together in such order right out of his head and directly onto his manuscripts.

Mozart did things with music that nobody had done before. He pushed the forms of music that were available to him to new heights of excellence and always succeeded with his compositions. So much so, in fact, that you might have said (and perhaps some did say at the time) that no one would ever top what he had accomplished musically. Mozart had pushed the classical styles and forms of music to their extremes and there was no reason to expect that anyone would ever be able to do as much as he had done.

The World Changes

But the thing is this, in the year 1791, the year that Mozart died, the world changed. That was the year when the King of France tried to flee and was arrested by the Revolutionary Government of France. At that point, France passed a point of no return.

After 1791, France and most of Europe were completely transformed. Gone were the days when society was seen to be in perfect order and harmony – when kings and princes, commoners and peasants all knew their places and kept to the tasks and roles that they had always done.

The world was now a place of chaos, disorder and constant change and suddenly a very fearful place particularly for those who had been on top of everything in the upper classes – that is, those who were the patrons of the music. So, the world for which Mozart had written during his life – a world of order and predictability – no longer existed after his death.

Beethoven

In 1792 Ludwig van Beethoven arrived in Vienna – the city where Mozart had died the year before – and began to emerge as a musician and composer. His music was composed, therefore, for a very different world than Mozart’s and if you listen to what he wrote, you can tell.

The great works of Beethoven are more chaos than order, more discord than harmony. They are very much a reflection of their times. This does not make Beethoven’s music any less beautiful or meaningful, of course. In fact, his ability to use such things made his music far more extraordinary than anything that had been written before!

It is quite interesting, therefore, to compare Mozart to Beethoven. They were both masters, both extraordinary composers in their own right. And their music tells us so much about the worlds that they lived in – despite the fact that they lived in the same city one year apart.

Jesus’ Complaint

One day Jesus made this particular complaint against the people of his generation: “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” This is interesting because Jesus seems to be speaking of the popular music of his own day – the kind of music that was played by young people in the streets. The equivalent for us today might be the sight of young people standing at a street corner and dancing as they stream music from Spotify.

Jesus is speaking to the religious-minded people of his own age – the people who criticized John the Baptist and the people who are criticizing Jesus. And what is the problem that he has with them? They won’t listen to the music of their times – the music that the kids on the street corners are playing.

Jesus and John

Now, in part, of course, Jesus is comparing himself and John the Baptist to these two styles of popular music. John, who lived out in the wilderness and ate a diet of locusts and wild honey and preached fasting and repenting and was generally a downer, is the dirge.

Jesus, who was all about joy and didn’t hesitate to enjoy food and to drink with people is the music of the pipes that invites you to dance. Jesus is complaining that these people were presented with two very different kinds of ministry and managed to find fault with both of them.

Popular Music

But I am sure that it is no coincidence that Jesus chose to use images and examples of popular music to get his point across. He was always reminding his followers to keep their eyes on the “signs of the times” – to be aware of the currents and flows that were going on in society and in the wider world because these things could give you an indication of what God was doing.

Music can be a very important barometer for what is taking place in the wider society. So, don’t you think that Jesus would want us to pay attention to the music of our times?

The Church and Popular Music

Now, this can be a bit of a problem in the church which seems to be very slow to accommodate to new musical trends. Sometimes, in fact, I think we’re like King Saul and the only kind of music we can listen to is the music that is calming to our troubled souls. Certainly, there are some churches where, if anyone does try and introduce new musical styles, they are bound to have a spear chucked at them. So, we’re not exactly riding the latest musical wave. We are likely going to have to learn a bit more musical flexibility in coming years.

But even if we are slow to adopt new musical styles, that certainly doesn’t mean that we can’t be open to listening to the meaning behind the music in the society around us.

Now, a lot of the popular music today frankly doesn’t have much meaning in it. It is produced in such a way as to attract the biggest possible audience and get the most streams. But some of it really does manage to speak to some of the fears, the passions and the hopes that haunt people’s lives.

Rap and Hip Hop

Take Rap and Hip Hop music – perhaps the most popular forms of music overall today. Yes, it can be very crude, the language very objectionable and attitudes towards women and some other groups can be downright frightening. But many young people growing up in inner cities find that nothing else is able to express the things that they are feeling better.

There are real grievances, real hopes and dreams being addressed in it. That’s why those songs inspire such energy. It is, unfortunately, a kind of energy that is often directed – at best – towards making money and – at worst – towards violence and hatred. But when that kind of energy is directed in more positive and constructive ways there is no limit to what can be accomplished. When you are willing to listen to the music, those kinds of possibilities are there.

Music and our Generation

The music of Beethoven reflected the kind of chaos that existed in Europe during and following the French revolutionary times. But if you think the French Revolution stirred things up, that is nothing compared to the kind of turmoil we see in our world today! And so, music can be pretty disturbing to listen to today.

Sometimes we are rather tempted to just ignore all forms of modern music and hope it goes away. After all, we are Christians. We can just hold on to our old and familiar sacred forms of music and try and forget about everything else.

Except Jesus told us that we have to pay attention to what is happening in the society around us. “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky,” he complained one day, “but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:3) “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree:” he said on another occasion “As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.” (Matthew 24:32)

Jesus didn’t want us to just keep our heads down listening only to the things that are familiar to us or that we find pleasing or calming. He wanted us to be aware of the major movements in our world.

Encountering God in our Generation

Why was this so important to Jesus? Because he saw that it was in such things that God was at work. Jesus had a much bigger understanding of God’s power than we do. We tend to think that God can only work through our plans, our schemes and ways of doing things. Jesus knew better and that was why he was always reminding people to be on guard, to watch and to listen. God can come at you from just about anywhere, even from the music that the kids are listening to on the streets.

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Hespeler July 2, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 22:1-14, Psalm 13, Romans 6:12-23, Matthew 10:40-42

Years later, even after he had become a father himself, Isaac still had nightmares about it. And sometimes, when he was awakened suddenly by some noise in the night, he would lie in his tent, and it was as if he was back there again – back at the night when he was merely a child and he heard his father in the nearby tent.

A Strange Conversation

It was in the darkest time of the night when he suddenly heard Abraham cry out, “Here I am.” What followed after that was a strange discourse, as if Abraham were having a conversation with someone but Isaac could only hear one side of it – only what his father said in response to unheard words.

“But, my Lord, which son do you mean? I have two.” <Silence> “But what do you mean, ‘my only son,’ I said, there are two?” <Silence> “Isaac? What do you want with Isaac?” <Silence> “Well, I do love Isaac, but of course I love Ishmael too!”

And then, after a longer pause, Isaac could hear the cold fear and dread in his father’s voice as he said “Yes, Lord, to Moriah. We will go if you show us the way.”

Isaac didn’t know what any of that meant at the time, but it did not seem good. Every time he remembered it, or even if someone spoke in a tone that reminded him of how his father spoke that night, he would begin to tremble and would sometimes be physically ill. Even when he was a strong patriarch and respected man, it always made him feel so powerless, as if he were a small child all over again.

Departure

The next morning, Abraham rose early and saddled his donkey, taking two servant boys with him. When he called Isaac over to join the group, Isaac didn’t want to come. He was filled with an unaccountable dread. But he was in no position to refuse.

As they set out, Isaac noticed that his father wouldn’t look at him – wouldn’t even meet his eyes when he glanced his way. And that he offered no explanation of where they were going or why.

After they had walked a short way, they came upon a fallen tree and Abraham stopped and split several pieces of wood with his axe and fastened them onto the back of the donkey. That, together with the pot containing a small smoldering fire that was carried by one of the boys and the special ceremonial stone knife in his father’s belt, led Isaac to assume that the purpose of this journey was to perform a sacrifice. He had so many questions about that, of course, but did not dare to speak.

The small group traveled for three days before Isaac finally looked up and saw a mountain looming in the distance.

Abraham and Isaac go on alone

At this point, Abraham told the boys to stay behind with the donkey and that he and Isaac would go on alone. He took the wood from the donkey’s back and tied it onto Isaac’s before himself taking the pot of fire, which had been carefully fed all this time so as not to go out, and carried it himself. And so it was that father and son moved on together.

When the servant boys had fallen into the distance and the two of them were completely alone, Isaac finally found the courage to ask the question that had been burning in his mind for three days. “Father!” he said. “Here I am, my son,” Abraham immediately replied. And the phrase took Isaac right back to when he had heard his father speak in the tent a few nights previous. He had a deep feeling that something was very wrong. But he still felt he needed an answer to his question. He pointed to the fire pot. “The fire is here. And so is the wood,” he added, pointing to the load on his back.

His gaze then paused for a moment on the handle of the blade that protruded from his father’s waist, but something prevented him from mentioning that. Possibly it was the same thing that, ever since, had made him shudder whenever he caught sight of such a ceremonial knife.

The pause was going on too long and Abraham automatically looked at his son. For a few agonizing seconds, their gazes met, and Isaac managed to stammer out, “b-b-but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham looked away and when he spoke, it was as if he were speaking to someone else, someone not present, “Godself will see to the lamb for a burnt offering, my son, don’t you worry about that.”

Dangerous Memory

Isaac had done his best to never remember what had happened when they finally arrived at the top of that mountain. Whenever his conscious mind seemed to drift in the general direction of the events, he forced himself to think of something else.

But it never seemed to work. The memory would come back to him when he least expected it, triggered by the oddest things. He often found himself flying off the handle, especially with his son Jacob, at the least offense because the boy looked so much like his grandfather.

And how often had he become unaccountably enraged at Rebecca, who had only been kind to him? Sometimes these days, she treated him more like an adversary than a husband and he knew it was all because, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t let go of what had happened to him on that damned mountain. It made him so angry, and she often bore the brunt of it.

On the Mountain

When they reached the top of that mountain, Isaac watched warily as Abraham gathered stones and built a makeshift altar. He then took the wood and carefully laid it out before turning towards his son.

Isaac had successfully managed to block out the next few seconds from his memory, it only came back in his nightmares. So, as he recalled it, when he dared, he suddenly found himself lying on the altar, his legs and arms trussed up just like you might do to an animal sacrifice before the slaughter. And he saw his father, holding the knife over his throat with a wild look in his eyes.

Saved!

And then, Abraham’s face changed. It went blank for a moment and then he turned and uttered for a third time the same words still haunted Isaac. “Here I am!” he said. And then Isaac heard something too – the sound of rustling in a nearby bush.

Abraham immediately dropped the knife and ran to the spot. He yelped with pleasure and surprise as he pulled back the undergrowth to reveal a young ram struggling there, caught by the horns.

“You see, Isaac,” he cried, “I was right. God did see to it. He is Yahweh who sees my need!”

Left Unresolved

Abraham was long dead now. Never once, before he passed, had he spoken to Isaac about what had happened on that day. Perhaps that was why Isaac never felt as if it had been resolved. It was like some horrible doom that still hung over him. And now his own children were grown, and he had never been able to talk to them about these things. Sometimes he couldn’t help but feel as if that was why Esau was so wild and why it seemed as if he had driven Jacob away. That is how it goes sometimes and perhaps that’s what it means when it says that the sins of the fathers are passed down to the sons.

Despite it all, however, Isaac still held on to faith in Yahweh, the God of his father, the God who saw. He just wasn’t convinced that it was God’s fault, all that his father had put him through. Yes, perhaps Abraham had been trying to do what he thought his God wanted, but that doesn’t mean that he was right, does it?

A Troubling Story

The story of the binding of Isaac, as it is often called, is definitely one of the most difficult in the Bible. However you understand it, it is very difficult not to see it as reflecting very negatively on God. If God really did want Abraham to literally sacrifice his son on an altar, only to change his mind at the last minute, that leaves us with an image of a God who not only demands the unacceptable but is also changeable and perhaps unreliable.

The only other option seems to be that God never really intended for Abraham to go through with it at all, that it was only a test. But I fail to see how that could be much better. To put a father and, oh, how much more, a child through such a test would not merely be cruel, it would be unquestionably immoral. Can you imagine the scars, the lifelong trauma, that such an experience would have created?

I realize, of course, that ancient people did not have the same understanding and appreciation of the potential life-long effects of post-traumatic stress that modern people do, but surely, you would think God might be able to understand the effects his stunt would have on Isaac!

What do we do with it?

So what can we do with this story? I tend to approach these questions from a somewhat different angle than most. I assume that the Bible is the record of human experience of God. As such, it is a human product, even if the overall process of its creation is inspired. Thus, it reflects a growing and changing understanding of God over time. This would naturally include understandings that were wrong or incomplete and that were corrected by new experience.

So, were there people – even early Israelite ancestors – who thought that God might want human sacrifice? Possibly. Were they right about that? Of course not!

Were there ancient Israelites who believed that God wanted them to go through cruel tests that would leave permanent scars on their children? I have no doubt that there were. But they were wrong, and I believe that their subsequent experience showed them that they were wrong. The Bible is an incredibly valuable record of that journey of discovery.

For me, this story of Abraham and Isaac is a story of Abraham discovering that God didn’t want him to behave like he thought God did.

The Dangers in Such Religion

But, because we do not always take the right approach to the Bible, a danger still persists. What happens when people take stories like this one as the end of the journey of discovery and not just a step along the way? What happens when they discover, for example, that their children are expressing themselves in ways that they do not approve of? They might react by “binding” their child – by forcing their child to conform to their understanding of what God wants, suppressing the child’s God-given self-understanding.

And that kind of thing continues to happen. Psychologists and counselors are seeing that people who grow up in or spend extended lengths of time in high control religious environments can indeed suffer from long-term post-traumatic stress.

I’m talking about the kind of religious environment (Christian or other) where the members of the community are under constant surveillance. Their speech, their thoughts and dress and appearance are ever liable to be judged and found lacking either by their family or by their church community. Living under these kinds of circumstances, being bound in this way by not being able to express yourself, can leave lasting scars on the psyche. Many have undergone extensive therapy trying to find healing.

Stems from Fear

And why do people do this to the people that they love and to the members of their spiritual communities? Because they are afraid. They are afraid of people who are different. They are afraid of divergence. And they are likely carrying around an image of a very angry God of whom they are afraid.

That’s why I don’t think we should be afraid to say that Abraham was wrong about what he thought God wanted and demanded. By the end of this horrible episode with his son, he knew better. And, yes, it would have been preferable if he had not had to put himself and his son through such a terrible ordeal to get there. But the truth of the matter is that we human beings can have the hardest time with some of the most important lessons.

High-control religion can absolutely be dangerous. It causes trauma. I am certain that it is not what pleases God. In the end, this story in Genesis is a story about a God who sees. That is what the name, Yahweh Yireh that Abraham gives to God at the end means. It is about a God who sees the damage that is done, who sees to what we need to survive it. The real question though, is what do we see and what are we going to do about it?

Today we celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism.

https://youtu.be/pQmiVFSOx2Q

Hespeler, June 25, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

As I think most of you have realized by now, there are two things that I am committed to doing in my preaching that may sometimes clash with one another. First of all, I have committed myself to preach every week from the lectionary, a 3-year-long cycle of readings that are used in many churches.

But I am also committed to our practice of when we celebrate an infant or child baptism here at St. Andrews, we focus all of our worship on that day on that very important and blessed event. That means that I want to preach, in this case, about Oliver and his family and the important spiritual step that they have taken here among us today. This is actually my favourite thing about baptism Sundays, and I always look forward to it when the occasion arises.

But I am sure that you can see where the problem might come from. The people who choose the lectionary passages don’t know and don’t much care about when we celebrate a baptism. So, there’s really no way of making sure that the passage we read on a given Sunday is going to have anything to do with what we are doing during the service.

A Promising Start

So, it was with much trepidation that I opened up the readings for this Sunday, wondering how they might help us to talk about what we have done here this morning. And I read the first few opening words and I breathed a big sigh of relief. “The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.”

I mean, isn’t that just perfect? The passage opens with almost the exact situation we are celebrating today. A child has reached a certain age – and it is probably about exactly the age the Oliver is today because they would have weaned their children at a somewhat later age than is common today. And obviously, in that culture, that was considered to be the perfect moment to gather friends and relations and the whole community and just celebrate the birth and the early life of this young child.

That is so much like what it is that we have come together to do today. We are celebrating Oliver, this wonderful symbol of new life and hope for the future. We are celebrating all of his potential and lifting up our prayers for his future. I am quite sure that was almost exactly what Abraham and Sarah were doing for Isaac on that wonderful occasion that they had organized.

It All Falls Apart

But, if I was thrilled with the first sentence of our passage this morning, my enthusiasm soon waned. Because, after just one sentence of the best intentions and the most wonderful of celebrations, it all falls apart, doesn’t it? That’s all we get, just one sentence. After that, almost everything about this seemingly perfect family that could possibly go wrong does.

Isaac has an older half sibling named Ishmael. And Isaac’s mother sees the two boys playing together and she kind of freaks out. Now, whether her concerns are valid and Ishmael had been playing inappropriately with the boy, we are not told. I don’t know whether Ishmael has done anything wrong, but we certainly do know that things sometimes happen between siblings – maybe especially half siblings – that create great stress within families.

But, as is often the case, it is not what the kids do, it is how the parents overreact that creates the real crisis and problem. Sarah is so upset that she demands that Ishmael and his mother be thrown out of the family altogether! Now, I know very well that mothers are protective of their children. Her knee-jerk reaction of kicking Ishmael out is just wrong, but in her anger she could just not be thinking straight. She is just human, after all.

Parents are just human – that is a radical thought and just hold onto it for a moment.

Can Abraham Save the Day?

So, Sarah has a bad reaction. This would obviously be a wonderful opportunity for her husband, Abraham, to step in and maybe calm her down and help her direct her anger in a more helpful direction for everyone. But, of course, it is at this point that Abraham fails, in my mind, even more tragically than his wife.

We are told this about Abraham’s reaction: “The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.” So, Abraham knew it was the wrong response. He was distressed about it. And I want to say, first of all, poor Abraham, right? Poor, poor Abraham! Don’t you feel bad for him? He started out this day ready to celebrate and now it has turned out like the worst day ever and he is all distressed!

But wait a minute, who cares about Abraham’s feelings? What are they compared to a mother and son who are just about to be turned out into the desert with nothing more than a loaf of bread and a skin of water? But, of course, Abraham is the hero of the whole story. I guess we just have to focus on his feelings.

So, while Abraham absolutely has the power to do something about the tragedy that is about to unfold, he doesn’t do it. I guess you might say that he just sends his thoughts and prayers without actually doing anything other than gathering the skin of water and loaf of bread.

Parental Failure

In case you haven’t picked this up from my comments so far, I am trying to say that I’m not overly impressed with the actions of the parents in this story. Sarah fails. Abraham fails. The only one who stands up and does the best she can for her child is the most powerless among them, Hagar. But such are the limitations of her power to do anything at all, that she gives in to despair and practically gives up hope. I can’t really blame her for that either.

So, here I am with this Bible passage that starts out wonderfully reminding us of what we are celebrating today, but then quickly devolves into a tale about a deeply, and I mean deeply, dysfunctional family. How on earth can this offer me anything constructive to say to Oliver and his family today?

Well, I am very aware of all of the stresses and strains that are on families these days. You all have these amazing expectations being piled on you. You have to be these perfect parents. If you are like most parents – if you are like I was as a parent of young children – you put that expectation on yourself as well.

Failed Expectations

Every time that you don’t react like you think you should, every time you discipline too harshly or not firmly enough, every time something bad happens to your child and you can dream up some obscure way that you could have stopped it from happening, you just won’t forgive yourself. And of course, it is even worse when you have people all around you telling you what they think you are doing wrong, which is often the case these days.

So, if you ever feel bad about your parenting or other choices in life, this story in Genesis stands as a wonderful reminder that parents are just human, and they all make mistakes. And, in fact, no matter what you get wrong as a parent, chances are that its effects will be nowhere near as bad as the mess that Abraham and Sarah, those great biblical examples of parents, made of their family.

There is Grace

But there is more than that going on in this story – something that should give encouragement to us all. There is grace. Hagar and her son Ishmael are treated terribly in this story. But despite that, Ishmael does alright. “God was with the boy,” it says, “and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.”

So, despite all that was done to him, Ishmael is able to find his way in the world. Now, should Abraham and Sarah be given credit for Ishmael’s success in life? I don’t think so. If he succeeded, he obviously succeeded in spite of them. And I hardly think that, later in life, he looked back fondly at that skin of water and loaf of bread that he received from his father thinking that it gave him a good start. But he came through despite a lack of his father’s support and despite the fact that his mother Hagar had so little to work with.

But that is the nature of God’s grace. Whenever we fall short or fail to live up to our best intentions, God has a way of bringing about good results in spite of us. That is the good news that every single one of us needs to hold onto whenever we feel as if we fail or fall short. God does have a way of taking even our worst mistakes and bringing something good out of them. I can’t tell you how often that has given me comfort when I look back at the mistakes I made as a parent, in my work and in the advice I have given.

A Caution

But there is one caution that I would put on that truth. While it is always good to trust in God’s grace, we must never use it as an excuse to walk away from our commitments and responsibilities. And that is exactly what I see Abraham doing in this story.

We are told that God actually spoke to Abraham saying, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”

I don’t know about you, but I am always suspicious when I hear somebody claim that God told them to do something that really only benefited themselves or was just the easiest and most trouble-free course for them. In my experience, people who do that have always misunderstood or taken the promises of God out of context.

Sure, Abraham knew that his God was committed to his family and his offspring and that that included Ishmael.  Of course God would take care of the boy. Of course God would make a great nation of him. That was the fundamental truth that Abraham heard from God.

I don’t necessarily mean, by the way, that Abraham actually heard the voice of God reverberating from heaven. The Bible is quite clear that God speaks in various ways, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be audible. But however he received the message, Abraham heard correctly; God’s commitment to the boy was unshakable.

But I don’t believe that Abraham correctly heard the implications of that truth. It was just easier for him to believe that it let him off the hook and that he didn’t need to resist the evil thing that Sarah wanted him to do.

Getting Advice

Lisa and Steve, we are so thrilled to be able to celebrate you and your family today. We honour your choice to raise children at a time when lots of young couples are finding that it is too expensive or too challenging. We know that the path that lies before you will not always be easy, but it will always be worthwhile because your family is an expression of your love.

I know from personal experience that in the years to come you will be surrounded by people who are going to want to tell you how to raise your children. Some of that advice will no doubt be wise and helpful. Some of it will, frankly, just be somebody trying to make themselves feel good by trying to convince you that you’re doing everything wrong.

I understand that most people mean well when they try and give advice to parents, but the honest truth is that they often only manage to make parents feel as if they’re wrong no matter what they do.

So, I’m not going to try and give you any advice today. Just follow your instincts. Follow the love that I know you carry in your hearts. Will you always get it right? Of course not. Nobody does. But love will take you so far. And above all, take comfort in the truth that we have affirmed here today. God is committed to your child. God has some amazing plans for him, plans that you can’t even dream of yet. So, trust in that. God’s grace will meet you and your family where you need it most.

Our family playlist for this week.