Sunday, November 27

Wow! We've looped right back to advent again!

For me, the seasons never fail to amaze. I am, to some extent, locked in perpetual wonder. This year, advent is  particularly meaningful because my church school class is exploring what knowledge and meaning can be gleaned from various elements within the Christmas story. Over the years, we've taken many different approaches to that story, but one that focuses on each element - lingering, asking, seeking - can be quite illuminating.

Over the course of the story, we get to ponder the various and, in some cases, multiple roles of Mary, the manger, the Magi, the star, Herod, the killing of innocents, a donkey, Egypt, the Christ-child, and so on. Of course, in a classroom, there are no fully canned approaches, no pre-determined responses. Where one student sees meaning, another seeks it, and through the sharing of perspectives, faith is deepened.

Advent is a season of hope, a season that invites us to look forward to the coming of His kingdom. As a Church, that hope is strengthened with every young mind that ponders meaning within the Christmas story, that seeks Christ within and beyond the season. Bring all those minds together, as additions to the Church, and surely as we loop back and back to this season of Emmanuel, our hope grows, advent grows, and in our time and space, His kingdom comes.

Sunday, November 20

The focus of today's worship on restorative justice resonated very clearly with the work I undertake in my life. I was very grateful in particular for a chance to reflect on the story of Jesus' healing of Jarius' daughter and of the other woman in the story. The story surprised me: it made me realize how little I know of Jesus' work on earth and how much more often I should read the Bible. There is so much in the narrative but it spoke to me in particular as a wonderful affirmation of:
1. the equal value of women to men and of people notwithstanding their social position.

2. the separation between God's law and human laws and social hierarchies: Jesus did not prioritize one person over the other dependant upon their social position; he did not see the woman as unclean or unworthy

3. the fundamentally iconoclastic and un-patriarchal relation of Jesus to the woman: she is defined as "daughter", and not, as patriarchal social structures would posit, by virtue of her relationships to powerful or powerless men. It is also un-patriarchal that she did not wait for rescue but worked her own redemption in faith and through Jesus.

4.the redemptive power of faith

5. The story speaks to the contingency of moments and the importance of self-help: Jesus did not scorn the woman for taking action. She needed to take action; faith did not involve passivity. I was also very grateful that Andrew shared the story of his maternal grandfather, which is a very sad story, but has strong and important resonances for our own times. We are always navigating, when social systems intersect with out lives, between complicity and resistance: it is not a zero sum question. Just as this man was both a member of Germany's state church under a Nazi regime and a member of a resistance to it, so do we at all times have rolese where we resist and roles where we participate in oppressive structure simultaneously.

Sunday, November 13

What a privilege it is to write a blog about worship this morning!
 It was a service filled with new things - most particularly with new members joining today and with Huda's first sermon being spoken from the pulpit.  Especially salient for me was Huda's remark about "leaving the mystery intact" with respect to the question of scientific explanations and their presence or absence to account for the story in which Jesus and then Peter both walk on water.  This touched on a fundamental point for me, in fact, precisely the point that brought me back to faith after many years of professed athiesm or at least agnosticism.  Huda quoted Descartes for the oft-cited fundamental defining proposition of rationality "I think therefore I am."  It was rationalism that led me away from my childhood's faith. For a long time, I had a great deal of difficulty reconciling the rationalist outlook of my secular education, particularly in science and social science: archaeology, anthropology and law, with a faith that could be logically compatible with rationality.


As Huda said this morning, faith is compatible even with doubt. What brought me back from years away from the church was actually Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote in his  Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

...Even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

Which is to say that, as far as I am concerned, were an archaeologist digging in the Middle East to find a mechanism proving beyond a doubt some sort of scientific explanation or even magical hoax behind Jesus walking on water, that would not explain away the mysteries of who he was, and what he said, what people heard when he was speaking, the power of God, and what that continues to mean for us in this far away land today.

The notions of mystery and journey resonated very strongly for me as our new members joined. They are each on their own journeys, as are we all, as am I.  It is for the journey and the companionship on it that I am grateful.


Rebecca

 

Sunday, November 6

Today was my first time back at service after a 3-week’s absence and how wonderful it
felt to be back worshipping and praying in our community!

As it is Remembrance Sunday, we spent some time reflecting on the sacrifice made by
so many so often to assure our freedom. This freedom from war and totalitarianism
that we enjoy in Canada was continued and expanded upon in Andrew’s sermon.

The text comes from our continuing study of the Gospel of Saint Mark – today was
chapter 5, 1-20 – the story of the Madman and Jesus’ healing. In our translation
the demon announces: “My name is Legion,” and in mine (The Message), it’s
rendered “My name is Mob. I’m a rioting mob.” This illustrates one of the reasons
that I really like The Message translation – it sounds much more immediate to my
ears.

As Andrew pointed out, this story is really all about Jesus and His power to heal, but
the other characters in the story are instructive as the reader (or at least this reader)
relates to them more easily.

I am not admitting here to multiple personality disorder, but there have been times
when I have felt like there is a rioting mob within – conflicting values, pressures,
priorities, etc. The resolution to these feelings is, of course, prayer and faith in
the healing power of Christ in our lives. Perhaps not as directly as the Madman
experienced, but the power of the everlasting means exactly this.

The other characters in the story are the farmers tending the pigs. When the demons
inhabit the pigs, freeing the Madman, they die, thus depriving the farmers of their
livelihood, or at least a part thereof. They react, to my mind, logically – they are angry
with Jesus and demand that He leave. They are afraid – of loss, of a terribly strange
occurrence, and perhaps most keenly, of having to adjust to the healed person “no
longer a walking madhouse of a man.”

The challenge that this story leaves with the reader is two-fold – how do we, after
having experienced the healing power of Christ, go forward; and how do others, in
the wake of changed circumstances, adjust. The answer in Mark is that the madman
preached and became “the talk of the town.” Mark does not provide an answer to
how the community reacted, but perhaps the answer is in Andrew’s exhortation to
generosity in all ways that we can.

It was a great day for me to return to service and I hope to work through the response
demanded by this story in the coming week.

Geoffrey

Sunday, October 30

I attended the early service this morning and I was going down the church steps as some folks were arriving for the 11am service.  I wanted to stop them and say, "Get ready, it's a great service you're in for!"  This is surprising actually, since I started the morning not feeling very worshipful - and admittedly not very focused.  But in his sermon, Andrew spoke on Mark 4, where Jesus talks about the mustard seed growing into a bush for the birds of the air to nest in, and Andrew compared it to the description of the noble cedar from Ezekiel 17.

A couple thoughts:  This morning was a reminder to me that it's not our job to make things grow, in fact all we can do is sow the seeds and let the Lord do the work.  It's not up to us to create results, but results will certainly happen.  A necessary reminder.

But a new thought for me came this morning while considering the humble mustard bush in contrast to the noble cedar.  The birds of the air were nesting in the mustard bush, just like they were in the cedar.  We plan for and expect great things, but sometimes it's the simple things that get the job done.  I think that often I get caught up in the results, looking for a giant cedar, when really I need to focus on doing my job - living my life and sowing the seeds.

Andrew told us the "birds of the air" is used as an expression in the bible to mean all the nations of the earth.  In Mark and also in Ezekiel, the birds of the air find sanctuary in the shade of the tree.  What a lovely and inclusive invitation.  I'm so thankful we have the opportunity to build our nests in the shade of His tree, and humbled by the seeds he's given us to sow.

-Maureen.

Sunday, October 23

On this commitment Sunday, I have been thinking about challenges, growth and about light.

It is a season of challenge. Fall is at its height, which means of course that winter is approaching.  Under blustery skies, we know as all Canadians do that winter is coming.  As happens so often, recent events have presented challenges to many of us.  Andrew's announcements this morning included references to several deaths and other illnesses.  Health crises, legal and political inequities surround us and the world simply does not unfold as we think it should.  Problems defy easy answers.

With its dramatic shadows, fall is a season of fascinating light. This morning, I loved how the colours of the fall, at their height in the trees, were echoed in the colours on the "flames" waved by our children as they all danced back into church. I loved the sunlight flooding through windows and doorframes, the sunshine a timeless reminder of  the warm presence of light in our lives.

Somewhat paradoxically, fall is also a season of growth. Today's bible readings referred to growth, about planting seeds in all the soil, about cultivating and nurturing seeds of knowledge. In the car on the way home, our backseat was occupied by an intense debate about whether the burning bush was actually burning or whether this was, as my seven year old said, " a trick of the light from God's voice being in the bush." Four little voices chimed in their views on the subject and those elder of us in the front seat were amused by this, our children's first theological debate. It is exciting and also a relief to see our children growing, in body and in faith, and also a wonderful thing to see the numbers of children in the congregation of St. Andrews growing too.

The growing dusk of a fall Sunday seems to me a very appropriate time for commitment. Because, when there are no challenges, commitment isn't a challenging choice. But commitment to light is seems to be the only path to growth.  And commitment is valuable precisely because it is a challenging choice to move forward on a path guided by meanings where, as Andrew noted, as Steve Jobs noticed, though he was so creatively blessed before his untimely end, things so often don't seem to go right.



Rebecca

Sunday October 16

Today is World Food Day, a worldwide day to remember that many do not have enough on their tables.  Coming so soon after Thanksgiving, I found it particularly important for me to remember that not everyone has all the blessings I'm able to enjoy.  As I listened to Andrew read the readings from Proverbs, (19:17, 22:9, 29:7) I realised it wasn't going to be a pleasant, relax-in-your-pew sort of morning.  We were going to be called to action.

But listening to Andrew speak on Mark 3, it turns out that we don't have to be pushed or guilted into change.  The truth is that we have the freedom to change.  We don't have to be trapped by the old ways of doing things, the old institutions and the old traditions.  We are free to follow the better way.  Jesus has bound the "Strong Man" and he no longer controls us.

Right away, my mind was brought to the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Now there are some people trying to change the old, unjust, unequal ways of doing things.  These are exciting times when people are recognising that being the richest is not the best and only goal.  And there's even more we can do - we've been freed, remember?  What about some personal things that we've been called to change in our own lives?  What about the gifts we've been given that we can share with those around us?  We don't have to be afraid, we can choose to walk in the new way.

From the last hymn, Lord, you give the great commission:

Lord, you show us love's true measure:
"Father, what they do, forgive."
Yet we hoard as private treasure
all that you so freely give.
May your care and mercy lead us to a just society;
with the Spirit's gifts empower us for the work of ministry.

Maureen.