Many Faiths

As we are all staying at home during COVID-19, Knox is providing podcast services. Not everyone can access these, though, so we are also posting my sermons on our Knox Talks blog. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.

— (Rev) Andrew Jensen

Many Faiths

Scripture Reading: Acts 17:22-31

Recently in a sermon I made passing reference to the exclusive claims Christianity sometimes makes to having the truth. We’re not the only religion that does this, but it’s challenging in an age that claims to be tolerant and wants all religious faiths to get along with each other.

That’s why I find this week’s reading from Acts to be so very helpful in establishing a good attitude.

Paul addressed the Athenians at the Areopagus (by invitation, it should be noted: he had been debating with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers and they wanted to hear him in the traditional place where new ideas were presented and debated).

Paul was no stranger to the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses. He came from Tarsus, the capital of a province in what is now Turkey, with a pagan temple that was famous in the Roman empire. So, when he went to Athens, he wasn’t a wide-eyed tourist or a naive monotheist Jew facing all those idols for the first time. He was accustomed to rubbing elbows with pagans. He knew already how to live and let live; he was quite sophisticated.

And what he did was clever, even sort of funny: “You know that god you worship as unknown? Well, let me introduce you!”

And you can see what he thinks about religions in general in his very words: I would put it as “all religion is a response to God”. People reaching for the One who made them.

And Paul wasn’t being totally exclusive, either. He wasn’t insisting on having the exclusive path to salvation. He acknowledged that some of this reaching does succeed in connecting people to God.

At the same time, his words also reveal a strong perspective shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims: a rejection of idols. He didn’t condemn them as happens in the Hebrew scriptures. After all, the Hebrew scriptures were aimed at the Hebrews and the laws of Moses forbade idols. They were being ordered to behave.

In Athens, Paul was speaking to gentiles who were not under the Mosaic law. Idols weren’t banned for them, so Paul had to be persuasive. He was in no position to give orders.

Rather, he made the point that I touched on a couple of weeks ago: the gods and goddesses represented by so many of the idols were like flawed humans writ large: superheroes, who were often jealous and unfaithful and petty; self-centred and prone to violence; far from perfect.

And Paul contrasted all of that with the Jewish vision of a transcendent God: one for whom no mere image would ever be enough; one who is the source of everything; who needs nothing from us; but who chooses to love us and engage with us. The God who chooses to relate to us.

Paul concluded with what we might find to be a startling point, but which reveals his motivation for his tireless travels and evangelistic work: his conviction that judgment day was immanent.

Paul’s vision of Judgment Day doesn’t contain a lot of detail, but what he does say is actually quite reassuring:

First: the judgment would be righteous.

That is important: the image of righteousness in the Hebrew scriptures is pretty clear. Righteous people love justice, showing no preference for the rich and powerful. They are charitable to the poor, ensuring that no one starves or freezes. In other words, the righteous of scripture love their neighbours, have the best interests of the community in mind and are not self-centred or unfair in their dealings.

To be judged by this standard may not be easy for everyone but it’s not like sending someone to Hell because they believed in false gods.

Paul wasn’t actually asking people to change their faith; he was asking them to change their ways.

The second point Paul makes is: Jesus is to be the judge appointed to that position by God.

This is also reassuring. Consider: the Athenians were accustomed to gods who were quite callous toward humans. We were like play-things to the gods, like dolls, or maybe pawns on a chessboard.

Paul had just presented a vision of God that could have made God seem even more remote, even less sympathetic. After all, a totally self-sufficient creator has no need for us, as Paul just said. So what do we have to offer God? What can we bargain with?

With Jesus as judge, that’s not an issue. Jesus is human, with his own experience of human life. To be fair, there are lots of humans I wouldn’t want judging me, but consider what people expected in the first century: judgment by petty, bickering pagan gods or the prospect of an all-powerful creator who is so amazing as to be almost unknowable. Jesus instantly makes a reassuring candidate.

So what does all of that say to us today?

We know that judgment day didn’t happen 2000 years ago, but we also know that we will each face a time, when we leave this life, and it is fair to ask what kind of a life we’ve lived.

It is also a concern as we live in a world that still has many faiths, to think that if some versions of Christianity are correct, then most people are condemned to eternal suffering, just for believing the wrong things.

Paul’s words to the Athenians give us a very different picture. He understands that all religion is a response to God and that all people are groping towards a better understanding of the source of all life and good. And he makes it clear that God cares less about the brand of your faith and more about how you live.

Are you righteous? Do you make ethical choices and treat others as you would wish to be treated? Do you avoid selfishness? Do you care for others? Do you work for a world where everyone is respected and loved?

Those are what Paul sees as the issues on judgment day. Those are the things we should be concerned with.

And like Paul, we shouldn’t be shy about sharing our faith. Not because we’re out to convert people, but because what we believe is really Good News. God, who is superior to all things, and who doesn’t need us, loves us, and wants a relationship with us.

God isn’t out to get us. God isn’t judgmental and nasty. In fact, God gave Jesus the job of connecting us even better with our creator and teaching us how to live the kinds of lives that reflect God’s values.

That is good news, and should help us in this multi-faith world; to live lives that every religion will recognize as good.

Amen.

Witness and Being

As we are all staying at home during COVID-19, Knox is providing podcast services. Not everyone can access these, though, so we are also posting my sermons on our Knox Talks blog. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.

— (Rev) Andrew Jensen

Witness and Being

Scripture Readings:

Acts 7:55-60

1 Peter 2:1-10

The Stoning of Stephen is a dramatic story from the early days of Christianity. This young deacon, an assistant to the apostles whose job was to make sure that the widows were fed, proclaimed his faith and ended up being stoned to death.

Commentators regularly note that those who cast the stones laid their coats at the feet of Saul – who would become Paul the Apostle eventually – evidence of how hostile he was at first to the followers of Jesus.

Some have even noted the unusual aspect of Stephen’s vision; that Jesus was standing at the right hand of God, not sitting, which would be normal and proper. The suggestion is that standing is a sign of welcome, a sign of honour: Jesus is ready to receive Stephen into God’s presence. No wonder the hearers were further enraged, they had already decided he was blasphemous – this added a level of extra blasphemy.

And we usually recall that the stoning of a blasphemer is recorded in the laws of Moses as the appropriate punishment for such a crime against God.

But there are details we forget too. The proper process under Jewish law would have been a trial. The elders or judges at the gate of Jerusalem would rule, and once the sentence was passed the stoning would have been ordered, with every man in the community required to cast at least one stone so that the execution was shared by the community, which makes you wonder why Saul merely watched the coats.

Saul would have known that this wasn’t normal process. Jerusalem was under Roman law, not Jewish; elders and judges were not permitted to hold trials and stonings were banned. This was illegal from start to finish. It was the equivalent of a lynching; it was mob violence and it gave us our first martyr.

Another thing we regularly forget is that the word “martyr” simply means “witness” in Greek. The extra meaning we have given it is to say that someone has witnessed by giving their life.

This became an obsession with some in the early church. People thought it was a direct way to be with God. New converts who hadn’t had a chance to be baptized were said, if they died for the faith, to be literally baptized in blood: the shedding of their own blood.

It became such a problem that leaders had to issue warnings on multiple occasions that Christianity wasn’t about suicide. If you went looking to be killed by the Romans it was self-serving; it wasn’t really martyrdom.

Two thousand years later this is much less of a problem. We don’t have very many people looking to become martyrs. I’m grateful that I’ve never had to talk anyone out of doing something ridiculous and dangerous as a sign of their faith.

But at the same time, I can understand the attraction of the grand gesture; the great, dramatic event that proves your faithfulness and gets you into a secure place in eternity without any doubts or questions. Yes, I can see the attraction.

As attractive as it might be, the grand gesture is not what our faith is about. Our calling to is not to die for God, but to live for God.

Our lesson from 1 Peter puts it well: he describes us as “living stones”; a part of an eternal spiritual structure being built by God with Jesus as the cornerstone, the foundation.

Living for God isn’t as dramatic, is it? It involves small acts of kindness and love and sometimes big ones, too. It is made up of daily interactions that build relationships: practical examples of love and care in the ways we live our lives.

In this pandemic, it’s hard to know how some of those work; we’re sorting out new ways of connecting as we keep our distance. So it’s good that we put our minds to this challenge: how to care every day for others.

It might involve a lot of phoning, Skyping and Zooming, maybe picking up groceries for someone who can’t get out, or simply caring by being careful, keeping safe distances and simply smiling during these times when people feel extra stressed.

Today is Mother’s Day. A lot of people traditionally associate these values of caring and sharing with mothers.

We always run risks when we make broad assumptions about genders. The good side of this is that it can remind us that God is our Mother, and not just our Father. That’s still an image that we are slow to embrace, even after decades of talking about the nature of God being both mother and father.

A bad side is that traditional assumptions can let guys off the hook! If we put the caring roles primarily on women we are being unjust to everyone. This call to be living stones is a call to everyone. It is the call to live out God’s love, to lift up the weak and heal the broken, to bring the last to the front and to love those faces only a mother could love. (There are so many gender-based assumptions tied up in our language!)

People complain about toxic masculinity these days but a better way to frame it might be to object to people who won’t care; who won’t make the effort to be kind; who insist on putting themselves ahead of everyone else; who choose control and even violence over love and support.

There is a macho image that society buys back into fairly regularly which pushes men away from being caring and nurturing. This is foolish and destructive, because men can love as much as mothers. Even more: if we listen to the teachings of Jesus we should realize that it is an important part of our calling.

We would do well to remember this as we struggle with the challenges of COVID-19. Some people are starting to revert to wartime language now:

the language of struggle, of sacrifice, of heroes. And while so far it seems to be applied pretty equally across genders, we have to be sure we don’t fall into old patterns and talk about women caring and men being brave without recognizing that all people can do both.

And in the midst of the challenges we face and the sacrifices people are making, we need to remember that while some will be dramatic – like what happened with the stoning of Stephen – most sacrifices will happen quietly, every day: acts of caring and kindness, people reaching out in love to family, to friends, to strangers. All of these simple sacrifices matter, all of them help, and make a difference.

We are called to live, to connect, to become a strong community built on a secure foundation. We are called to become God’s people, put together from a disconnected diaspora into a loving family of faith.

Every one of us is touched by this call. Our job is to become witnesses, not in the sense of martyrdom, but in the sense of living out God’s love, showing it in the way we touch each other’s lives.

We are called to witness with our lives so when people look at us, they can see God at work: sharing, loving, caring; healing, creating; bringing justice, peace and hope even in the most difficult of times.

Thanks be to God that we can share in this important work.

Amen.

Ask Andrew 2 (2020): Harry’s Question about Creation

Ask Andrew #2: Harry’s Question about Creation

I’m always happy when one of the children of Knox asks a question for my Ask Andrew series. Normally I would share the answer during the “Children’s Time” on Sunday, but the Pandemic has changed the way we do things, so we created a special podcast, just for this question, and now this KnoxTalks version. If any other children have Ask Andrew questions, please e-mail them to the church, or leave them on the church answering machine, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Harry’s question is: How many years did it take God to create the earth?

Well, Harry, you’ve asked me a simple question. The answer may be a bit complicated, though.

The Bible gives us two stories about God creating the earth, in the first chapters of Genesis.

Chapter 1 talks about God creating everything in six days, and then resting on the seventh. Something different was created on each day, in a specific order. So that would be one week! Really fast.

Starting in Chapter 2, the other story changes the order, and even though it doesn’t say exactly how long things took, it is obvious it took a lot longer than a week.

So why are these stories different? Because they are teaching us different things about God and about our world. The first story gives us a sense of order. The second story is really different, and shows God giving us humans a job as part of creating the world. The first person was given the job of creating names for all the animals God was making. God wanted people to help create the world.

Neither story is supposed to be a science book. So what does science say?

The best calculation is that the creation of the universe started more than 13 billion years ago. That’s such a big number that my head can’t hold it. It would be like trying to count every grain of sand on the beach, and when you ran out, you still wouldn’t have enough for all the years.

But you didn’t ask about the universe, you asked about the earth. What does science say about that?

The best calculation is that the earth is 4.54 billion years old. That’s another huge number! But it only tells us when God started to make the earth. How long did the job take? When did God finish?

That’s the cool part: God isn’t finished yet. The earth is still being created. Continents are moving around, new volcanoes show up from time to time, and everything is changing. We’re still doing our job too: we keep finding new plants and animals, and we are still creating new names for them.

So here’s my final answer: God is still creating the earth, with us on it. We have the job of helping God, which means we have to discover things, create names for them, and take good care of this planet and all the animals and plants we discover.

Thank you, Harry, for asking this question.

The Good Shepherd, the Gate, the “I Am” (εγϖ ειμι)

As we are all staying at home during COVID-19, Knox is providing podcast services. Not everyone can access these, though, so we are also posting my sermons on our Knox Talks blog. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.

— (Rev) Andrew Jensen

The Good Shepherd, the Gate, the “I Am” (εγϖ ειμι)

Readings: Exodus 3:1-17

John 10:1-10

When I talked last week about one of the titles we give Jesus, I had not intended to be discussing another so soon. But the lectionary had other ideas!

The recommended reading from John’s gospel gives us not one, but two images of Jesus to consider.

Before we can look at them, we have to understand John’s perspective. Each gospel writer brings a particular point of view, and has an audience in mind.

John’s audience is clearly mostly gentiles – converts from paganism or other religions. Otherwise John would not use the phrase “the Jews” so often and so painstakingly provide translations for words like “rabbi”. He does have knowledge of Jewish history but clearly a lot of his audience isn’t Jewish.

John’s perspective has what we would call the highest Christology of all the contributors to the New Testament. In other words, John makes the most clearly stated case for Jesus being divine.

All the gospel writers see Jesus as the Son of God to some degree, at least from the perspective of Jesus’ baptism. In Mark’s gospel where God says: “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”, only Jesus hears these words. In Matthew and Luke, others hear at least something. All that leaves a certain amount of room for interpretation about what it means for Jesus and his nature.

But John’s gospel starts with the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Clearly, John portrays Jesus as existing before creation and being an intimate part of God’s nature and work. Everything in John’s gospel reflects this understanding.

An important aspect of this is the way Jesus says “I am” in John’s gospel. This wording is John’s choice. Jesus spoke in Aramaic; John wrote in Greek.

In the title of my sermon above, the last two words you see there are Koine Greek: εγϖ ειμι. The first word is where we get the word ego: it simply means “I”. But the second word, ειμι, means “I am” without needing the word ego at all. To use both words is to add emphasis.

More than that, it evokes the scene from our first lesson: Moses meeting God at the burning bush; where we learn that God’s name is “I am”; where we find the same two words in the Greek translation of Exodus. (Strictly speaking, the ancient Greek translation of Exodus has the “I AM” part of this passage translated as “the Being”, but the full phrase is translated as “I AM the Being”, with εγϖ ειμι used again).

This was an early lesson we learned in first year Greek at McGill, as we translated John’s gospel. Jesus says “I Am” a lot in that book and he always says it that emphatic way: each time John has him declaring that he is God in the flesh.

Today’s lesson from John is one of those sayings and it’s a bit of a strange and complicated one: we are presented with a mixed metaphor.

In the first half we get the clear picture of Jesus the Good Shepherd, the one the sheep can trust: they know him & recognize his voice. This is a very reassuring passage, a reminder that Jesus, who is intimately connected to God, is there to care for us, protect us, guard us and lead us to green pastures and provide for our needs.

But suddenly, in the second half the metaphor shifts, and Jesus suddenly becomes the gate. Of course we can imagine someone with multiple roles. Gates are there to protect, just like shepherds.

But here there is an added claim of exclusivity: don’t trust anyone who doesn’t enter by the gate. Only through Jesus will we be safe. Those who jump the walls or climb in don’t have our best interests at heart, which explicitly includes those who came before.

If we remember that John’s audience is a group of people who converted from other religions, then it is clear that he is referring to those other gods that people used to worship.

And in some ways, the contrast is an easy one to make. If you’ve ever read the stories of the old Greek and Roman gods, very few of them had our best interests in mind. They tended to be self-absorbed; humans were as likely to get caught in the cross-fire as have anything good happen.

Contrast that with the image of the Good Shepherd, the idea of God reaching out to us through Jesus to protect us, to help us, to provide for us, and you can see the difference clearly.

No doubt there was always a concern in the early church about backsliding. Giving up your family’s religion would be awkward and you’d get a lot of pressure from your parents to come home for traditional pagan feast days. Besides, refusing to worship the emperor was considered treason and became the basis for deadly persecution of both Christians and Jews.

John is calling for exclusivity here just like where he quotes Jesus as saying:

“I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life,

no one comes to the Father except by me.”

There’s nothing new about an exclusive claim; in the Hebrew scriptures God is constantly reminding the people, sometimes quite harshly, not to go chasing after other gods.

Unfortunately, many people have interpreted this new dimension of having to come to God through Jesus the Gate, Jesus the Way as excluding the Jewish people themselves. And some of these passages of John’s gospel have been used to justify antisemitism over the centuries.

I don’t believe that the historical Jesus ever intended anything like that. Yes, he challenged his own people to come to a new understanding of God and of God’s ways, but he clearly believed that there was an existing relationship that needed restoring and repairing. It was not that God rejected everyone who didn’t do things Jesus’ way.

By the time this last gospel was written, there was an intense rivalry between Christianity & traditional Judaism. Both groups were separating from each other and each was trying to distinguish itself and claimed to know God better, to stake a higher claim to the truth.

I believe that in John’s gospel we hear echoes of this rivalry, and we should keep it in mind as we read these passages.

Look at the shift in our lesson: the image of the Good Shepherd shows us a loving and personal God who knows us, and whom we come to know and trust. The image of the Gate is presented as an interpretation of the first image for confused disciples. But it really is a new message: warning us not to mess around; not to trust anyone else.

In these 21st century days of religious tolerance, messages of exclusivity have to be considered carefully. I could devote an entire sermon to that topic and I will, before too long.

For today: let’s consider what John’s community was going through with its rivalry with Judaism and the pressure on converts, including official death threats, to switch back to Paganism. Those calls to exclusivity make a great deal of sense, as the church was entering a time of severe persecution.

I would also consider John’s audience, Gentile Christians, for whom the idea of Jesus as God in human flesh would make a great deal of sense, unlike Matthew’s audience, Jewish Christians, who would consider it blasphemy. We haven’t resolved that Christological issue in 2000 years and I don’t propose to settle it now.

But for today, I would suggest that the lesson we can draw from this is that reassuring first image: the Good Shepherd, the God who knows us, loves us, leads us, protects us and provides for us; presented to us so clearly by Jesus in his life and in his teachings.

That image of God is trustworthy; it goes at least as far back as King David and the 23rd Psalm and has withstood the test of time over thousands of years.

God is our good shepherd and we can rely on God,

even in these very difficult times.

Amen.

Ask Andrew 1 (2020): The Son of Man

“Ask Andrew” is an annual opportunity for members of Knox to ask questions of faith and religion. Andrew answers them in the Sunday morning service, and now in this blog. Enjoy!

Thanks again to Shelley Rose for preparing this manuscript for the blog.

Ask Andrew 1 (2020):

What Is the Meaning of “the Son of Man” and

Is it Relevant Today?

Q: There seem to be quite a few names for Jesus; Lord, Messiah, Son of God, Lamb of God, Christ to name just a few.  The name ‘Son of man’ seems incongruous.

What is the meaning of this name?  It appears to be associated with the apocalyptic immanent ‘Coming of the Kingdom of Heaven’ and has antecedents in the Book of Daniel, chapter 7.  But what is the relevance of this name to us today?

Readings: Daniel 7:13-14

Matthew 24: 29-31, 36-44

Thank you for this question.

I will address some of the other names we call Jesus in another sermon, but “The Son of Man” is the most obscure name for modern Christians and I think it is particularly relevant today.

At any other time, I might have answered today’s question by saying that the name “Son of Man” was relevant simply because Jesus used it so often and that it supplies us with a mystery to pursue.

But in the midst of COVID-19, which has stripped our society of it’s smug self-assurance and challenged us to discover the basics of life, I think we have a chance to re-discover the spiritual meaning of Jesus’ identity as “the Son of Man”.

The phrase “a son of man” appears many times in the Hebrew Bible in both Hebrew and Aramaic. Daniel 7 is written in Aramaic as a kind of code that the writer was looking to the future, since Aramaic had replaced Hebrew as the common language of the Jewish people. It was the first language of Jesus and his disciples.

Usually, it is simply a poetic (and sexist) way of saying “a human”.

In the Greek writings of our New Testament it has been changed from “A Son of Man” to “The Son of Man” and it is almost always Jesus who uses it. The only place it appears outside the gospels in in Acts, which was written by the author of Luke’s gospel.

Scholars are clear that adding “the” started with the gospels, but they can’t agree on what it means.

It does seem to tie in to the apocalyptic Daniel 7 reading. Most of these references in the Gospels seem to show Jesus referring to himself as the Son of Man. However, there are a few that don’t – where he seems to be talking about someone else.

Most “Son of Man” verses have to do with endings: either Jesus’ upcoming suffering and crucifixion, or some future, apocalyptic return of the Son of Man that looks more like the Daniel reading than Jesus’ own life did.

Traditional interpretations use this phrase to balance the idea of the Son of God; to emphasize the humanity of Jesus. In the early church, the nature of Christ was an issue. In the year 481 it led to something called the Chalcedonian Definition where the church declared that Jesus was fully human at the same time as being fully divine, rather than being exclusively one or the other, or some kind of hybrid. And if you didn’t accept this definition, you were condemned as a Monophysite heretic.

We have a lot of Monophysite heretics in the United Church of Canada because we are actively encouraged to explore who Jesus was and what he really did. His humanity is not in question, and the idea of a need to declare it feels outdated.

I don’t believe that the gospel writers were declaring it either. That became an issue a century later or so. They had another issue on their minds: what Jesus said about the end of the world.

That’s another thing we get a bit uncomfortable with today: the idea of the end of the world. We associate it with a kind of radical Christianity which we distrust, and we get upset with the way people twist scripture as they try to predict the end times. Sort of the religious equivalent to wearing a tin-foil hat.

Which is too bad. “The end of the world“ can represent different things, and what we are living through now is one of them: “It’s the end of the world as we know it” (to quote the rock group R.E.M.). Others are making this connection too: there are a HUGE number of COVID comments on the YouTube listing for this song.

We are facing such radical stress on our lives, on our ways of relating, that we can’t be sure what things will look like when it’s all over. What will be changed? What will be gone? What new things will exist?

We have a bit of a bad attitude towards eschatology: the study of the end of the world. What we forget is that Jesus was referring to a good thing when he talked about the coming of the Son of Man.

The world would be rescued & redeemed by God’s representative: the Son of Man, a human sent by heaven. Yes, Jesus predicted some dangerous stuff in some of these passages, but these were warnings to people to smarten up and live better, which has always been the basic message of a prophet.

That’s at the core, you see: talking about the end of the world isn’t about the end of the world, it’s about how we are living right now.

Jesus was calling, challenging people to consider what would happen if God’s transformation of this place to a righteous world were to happen tomorrow.

Would we fit?

Are we doing the things God would like to find? Are we living, right now, so that we could actually welcome a new world order where the first will be last, and the weak will be strong?

Jesus is inviting his listeners to re-examine their own lives; to embrace a new perspective: God’s perspective. To consider what is really important and whether we give that priority.

In this time of enforced isolation, we have an unprecedented opportunity to do exactly that: to examine our own lives, to consider our values, and to consider whether we are living up to them.

It’s not easy to spend so much time in our own company. That’s why alcohol sales are up right now: to give people a means of escape from themselves, from their own realities and often from their circumstances.

Let’s not waste this opportunity by trying to escape. Let’s consider what the Son of Man is inviting us to do: to ask ourselves the question: if we were to meet our maker tomorrow, would we be comfortable presenting ourselves to God? Would we be able to present our lives with clear consciences?

I’m not talking about doctrines of sin, of guilt, of human imperfection shrivelling in the face of our perfect creator.

I’m talking about our choices, our priorities. I’m talking about striving, despite mistakes, to live just and loving lives. Especially when it can be so much easier just to follow the crowd and live without thinking too critically about the values that surround us.

The end of the world isn’t about seas of blood or rains of fire; it isn’t about four horsemen riding out or angels blowing trumpets and emptying bowls.

Realistically, the world will end for each of us when we leave it. And if this crisis has taught us anything it’s that it could happen at any time, to any one of us.

So let’s use this time. Let’s take the opportunity to be contemplative in our solitude.

Time alone can be a spiritual gift, at least partly because it lets us see ourselves without all the distractions that allow us to duck and dodge the uncomfortable bits.

We have that time now, even if it’s not our choice. It’s a gift: let’s use it well.

Amen.

Back from the Dead — Easter Sunday

As we are all staying at home during COVID-19, Knox is providing podcast services. Not everyone can access these, though, so we are also posting my sermons on our Knox Talks blog. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog. — (Rev) Andrew Jensen

Back from the Dead

Reading: Matthew 28:1-10

When you look at the resurrection in the gospels, it is amazing the differences you encounter.

Mark was the first gospel writer. He wrote like he was always in a hurry: everything was “immediately this” and “immediately that”. His gospel is only 16 chapters long and ends with the disciples hiding in fear because of the empty tomb. They had the promise that Jesus would meet them in Galilee, but Mark leaves us wondering whether they’ll gather up the courage to set out on that road.

Today’s reading is from Matthew, who copied a lot of what Mark had written word for word and often expanded on it with all kinds of extra information.

But in the discovery of the empty tomb, it is really shortened. First, the women – Mary Magdalene and the Other Mary. Matthew’s shortened the list: The Other Mary is the mother of James. Also, Mark mentions Salome, who disappears from Matthew’s version.

In Mark, the stone is already rolled away when the women arrive, and the angel is simply a man in a white robe.

When Luke writes it, there are two men and their clothes are shining.

Matthew shows us the action: an angel descends, terrifies the guards into unconsciousness, rolls open the stone and then sits on it.

This is wonderful imagery: God’s messenger overcoming the power of the civil authorities and sitting rudely on the symbol of death. The angel (remember: the word “angel” means “messenger”) tells the women that Jesus will meet them in Galilee, just like Mark tells us.

But in this version, while the women are still on the road to tell Peter and the others, Jesus himself appears to them to confirm the message. He makes it personal – never mind that terribly impressive angel – this is Jesus whom they know and love, talking to them personally!

The other disciples will have to travel for days, for miles before they encounter the risen Christ, but these women see him right at the beginning of their journey.

Why them?

Maybe because:

— It was the women who were faithful right up to the cross while the men hid in fear of their lives. This was a legitimate fear, but it pulled them away from what Jesus was doing.

— It was the women who went to the tomb while the men were still in hiding.

— Jesus had given women more of a place in his ministry than anyone we know of in that time. They were with him from the beginning and had important roles in his work. And in the end, they were the ones he could count on.

Matthew and Mark show us Jesus leading his disciples back to Galilee; back to the place where his ministry began. In contrast: Luke and John show us Jesus working in Jerusalem from the Resurrection onwards.

According to Luke, the first people to see the risen Christ are two disciples leaving Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus on the day of the resurrection. Jesus meets them on the road.

Luke is the only one who takes away the first meeting from the women; he also is the one who insists in Acts that the replacement apostle for Judas had to be one of the men. (Luke clearly had issues with women.)

And of course in John’s gospel, the first one to encounter Jesus is Mary Magdalene, who had already gone to tell the disciples He had come back and was again turning away from the empty tomb to go to find out where someone had put Jesus’ body, when Jesus meets her.

This is such a rich source of information about early Christianity that I took an entire course on Resurrection appearance texts. I was quite startled to learn that the oldest text, the first one written down where someone sees the risen Christ, is when Paul writes about his personal experience on the road to Damascus where he has his vision of Jesus that converts him from a violent foe of Christianity to the faith’s most passionate Evangelist.

We shouldn’t worry too much about the differences. After all, as soon as we take into account human nature and the way we emphasize what we consider important, including the communities we know best, it’s not hard to see how differences creep into the stories.

Now, let’s look at the similarities.

All the writers agree that God raised Jesus from the dead. Paul sees this in totally spiritual terms. He has no sense of a physical resurrection. John makes it clear he believes it was physical, while still showing Jesus appearing mysteriously inside locked rooms.

Matthew, Mark and Luke let you wonder how it worked while making it clear that the tomb was empty and Jesus was alive again, somehow, even though his followers didn’t recognize him until he wanted them to.

But look how often the followers of Jesus meet his risen form as part of a journey. They have to travel somewhere. Sure, there are some appearances of Jesus in locked rooms where the disciples are hiding, but the purpose of those visits is to get them out, to get them back into their journeys, their lives, outside of their fearful self-imposed prisons.

All the gospel writers bring this same message: of hope beyond hope, life after the worst death a person could experience, a new existence after the greatest power in the world had killed you. Free from any worries about mere human power ever again.

And the thing that has always inspired me the most is the immediate effect of that message: the transformation that we see in Jesus’ followers. These fearful people with limited educations – most of them couldn’t even read – who were hiding from the authorities. They became confident, powerful messengers of Jesus’ teachings. Most of them died bringing their message to others, because they were no longer afraid of death.

They had experienced the risen Christ; they knew the truth of Easter.

They didn’t get everything right, if they had, the women who were so central to Jesus’ ministry would have had a place in the structures of the church right from the beginning. It has taken 2000 years to start correcting that error.

But we have learned patience; we have learned that God can see us through the challenges of the day, or the century.

So here we are in 2020 and all kinds of assumptions are being turned on their heads. Life will be forever changed by this Pandemic and we don’t really know how, yet.

We would love to get out of our rooms and start on the road to Emmaus, or Damascus, or Galilee or anywhere! Just let us out!

But for now, while physical roads are denied to us, we still have the spiritual road God provides.

Is our community more spiritual than physical right now? God can handle that! We are the ones that need to adjust.

Does death threaten us in the form of disease and invisible infection that makes us wary of every person we see? We should remember that God has defeated death already.

Of course, we want this life to continue. God has given us so many blessings; why would we want it to stop?

But right now, we are reminded that there are bigger questions. We have to face the fact that we aren’t in control of everything; we can’t know whether we will be fine and stay healthy, or have a struggle with our health and maybe even face death.

These are questions that every generation has had to face, sooner or later, and it’s always hard when it happens.

But like countless generations of Christians that have come before us, we also have the knowledge that God has already handled it.

In the resurrection of Jesus, God has shown us that we are all safe, and loved, and protected: in this life, and the next.

Thanks Be to God.

Less Is More

As we are all staying at home during COVID-19, Knox is providing podcast services. Not everyone can access these, though, so we are also posting my sermons on our Knox Talks blog. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog. — (Rev) Andrew Jensen

Less Is More

Readings: Matthew 21:1-11

Philippians 2:5-11

I chose the title “Less Is More” advisedly.

Sometimes you just want more.

I personally want more time: time to dive into the week between Palm Sunday – the Triumphal Entry and Easter, seven days later.

Jesus packed so much into that week.

First, he rode into Jerusalem in a manner designed to make people remember prophesies and frankly, designed to catch the attention of the Romans.

Later that day he cleared the temple in a manner worthy of the most bad-tempered prophet and stirred up a nest of resentment in the religious authorities; especially those who worried Romans might disrupt the temple if too much unrest were allowed to happen.

Then Jesus left town while people whispered about who he was and what he might be doing.

The next few days were filled with profound teachings and memorable lessons. And to cap it all off there is Passover, and Jesus arranges what we now call the Last Supper while plans are already moving to betray him, to arrest him.

Jesus ends up at the garden of Gethsemane where he suffers an agony in prayer, wondering if he can go through with his plan. His closest friends fall asleep; he is arrested, then interrogated, then tortured. Not for information, but to warn witnesses that this is what Rome does to troublemakers. Then he is denied by Peter, his most impulsive, boastful follower and he is abandoned by the others.

And then put on the cross to die.

And he does die. And it’s only Friday of that amazing week. Ultimately, he is raised from death on the Sunday – a miracle witnessed first by the women who were his friends, because the men were all in hiding.

Yes, I want more. There is so much to explore here!

Jesus carried a particular message into this week. He started with the triumphal entry itself and that message is “Less Is More”. Not as some kind of Marie Kondo decluttering mantra, but as a deep message to cap what he had said all along.

In Matthew’s gospel we have the Sermon on the Mount, a marvellous summary of Jesus’ teachings. He starts with the beatitudes; explaining how the first will be last and those considered the most pitiful are actually the most blessed.

He proclaims this over and over. With the Triumphal Entry, he puts his money where his mouth is! He rides into town as a king but he rides a donkey, not a war horse. He chooses a method that will be recognized by people familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures – there will be no mistaking his claim of kingship. He comes empty handed: no treasures; no weapons; no army. He doesn’t even own the donkey -it’s borrowed!

Jesus is very clever. And he expects the people who watch his prophetic message unfold to be clever too. He expects them to see the contrasts; the irony of a king coming in weakness. Proclaiming in an authoritative voice what God wants. And bringing no means to enforce it.

NO POWER.

And what follows is an unfolding of this same message:

Jesus does things that get attention; that bring a real public focus on what he says and does. And then he confronts the power of Imperial Rome and the convoluted politics of Jerusalem’s rulers and priests – with NOTHING.

He is alone, utterly vulnerable, and his message doesn’t change at all: the power of this world is nothing to God. God can use weakness to overcome power.

And Jesus dies a shameful death on the cross to prove it.

It’s like he left them with no choice. In the walking of the donkey and the waving of the branches; in the shouts of Hosanna! Save Us! The powers that be had to respond. And they responded in the only way they knew how: with brutality.

Jesus set this up so that his ultimate lesson could not be missed. He did what some of God’s best prophets had already done. He turned his own life into the message – and his death became his most powerful moment.

It didn’t stop there – even his grave was borrowed.

He challenged the idea that God helps those who help themselves. Instead of self-centredness, he offered up self-sacrifice. Instead of the complications of wisdom, he offered the simplicity of a child. Instead of a rigid set of laws and rules, he offered the law of love.

Jesus did all of this 2000 years ago. And we are still sorting out what it all means, and how it all works.

And I want more. But Jesus calls me to embrace less.

It’s not exactly simplicity. There’s nothing simple about that king riding a donkey claiming the right to the throne of David. Claiming the legacy of Israel’s most celebrated king without any way to enforce that claim.

There’s nothing simple about that at all. And Jesus knew it. He knew what he was doing as he started the events of his last week into motion on Palm Sunday.

As we go into this next week, with more time on our hands than we would like and more constraints on our lives than are comfortable, let us consider, in our newly discovered vulnerability, the truth of Jesus’ message: the way he was able to use weakness to change the world, transforming people’s hearts more effectively than any army ever could.

Let us find in our weakness, new strength. Perhaps coming in unexpected ways: in the people who reach out to us, in the people we try to touch while remaining at a safe distance.

It’s a familiar sounding irony and it challenges us, which is good. Because it is when we are challenged that we discover truths we might not have seen any other way.

Jesus challenged the world, riding on a donkey all the way to the cross. And finally, to resurrection. He challenged us all to a new understanding of how God works.

May we be open, during the challenges we face this Spring, to discover truths about God and how God works through us and others.

Truths that help us grow into better people.

Amen.

Can These Bones Live Again?

As we are all staying at home during COVID-19, Knox is providing podcast services. Not everyone can access these, though, so we are also posting my sermons on our Knox Talks blog. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog. — (Rev) Andrew Jensen

Can these Bones Live Again?

Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:6-11

Today’s lesson resonates with most people as a fun song for kids: “Dem Bones”. It’s kind of like an anatomy lesson. I remember it being presented that way to me when I was small.

It bothers me that we have turned this into a children’s song. I have no objection to Sharon, Lois and Bram but it’s sad that we, as a society have relegated all this powerful Biblical storytelling into something that we treat as light-hearted and, in the process, push aside the experiences of the African-American culture who created this song and the message of the scripture itself.

One thing we should remember as we consider today’s lessons is that in every Biblical language – Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek – the words for breath, wind and spirit are identical: they are the same word.

Our challenge comes through English which insists on borrowing words from every language under the sun and then assigning specific interpretations to each word. It is great for being precise, but it does mess up our understanding of other languages where nuances and subtleties require us to consider which meaning a word might have.

To consider the breath of God blowing like the wind, becoming the spirit that gives us life is not that hard to imagine, but it’s not the way we think.

It does help us understand the traditional Jewish understanding that life begins at birth instead of conception, because when does the first breath happen? At birth! It is, of course, more complex than that but it helps us understand.

That’s the kind of understanding that informed Ezekiel and even Paul in our second lesson. That gives us that wonderful image of the very breath of God being inside of us giving us life and inspiration.

Even the word “inspiration” supports this. It means: the spirit or breath entering us. There’s your linguistic lesson for today!

Consider, now the situation of God’s people when Ezekiel was at work.

Ezekiel was around when the Babylonians conquered Judah and entered Jerusalem destroying the temple, the palaces and taking the people into exile for 70 years. Although they had no idea it would be for that long, they thought it was forever as had already happened to the northern kingdom of Israel.

Ezekiel was around at the same time as Jeremiah and some suggest that Jeremiah was father of Ezekiel. So, when Ezekiel had this vision of a valley of dry bones and he was sent to prophesy to the people of Israel, they were really depressed since they were likely already in exile by this point.

They had lost their identity as a nation. They had lost their ability to go to the temple to worship. They had lost everything which in those days was understood to mean that your god had been defeated along with your nation.

How depressing can you get?

Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? Like in that movie, the ark of the covenant was taken from the temple, but not to Egypt. It was taken to Babylon and placed at the feet of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, as a sign of the triumph of the Babylonian god over the God of Judah.

This was a traditional practise in that whole region. Even the Romans did that kind of thing over 5 centuries later during Jesus’ life.

So, the people were discouraged; they were distraught; they were really bummed out!

They felt like they were beyond redemption. How could anything save them?

And Ezekiel is prompted to give them this vision of a valley of dried bones. So dead that there’s not even any moisture left. So abandoned and alone that there’s no one left to bury them. No one to even remember them.

Ezekiel’s not stupid. When God asks if these bones can live again, he knows that the obvious answer – “no” – will probably trip him up. So, he replies: You know. And God shows him, in disturbing detail, how the flesh is regenerated on the bones and the bodies are re-formed.

I’ve seen enough CSI type shows to imagine how gross this would be as a vision. You’d never forget it!! That’s why it was so vivid for Ezekiel and his people. They all knew death; they had all seen decaying animals; they knew what this would look like, even in reverse.

And even with this unforgettable physical revival – it’s not enough. All these bodies in the valley need more: they need the breath, the wind, the spirit of God to return to life.

This reminded the people in exile that physical reality isn’t everything. That even without a temple, a palace, a place to call home, God could still be with them, God could still inspire them.

And there are some scholars who suggest that the idea of the synagogue, the congregation, began there in exile as a way of being the people of God in a new way: cut off from home; still faithful, still connected, still God’s people.

In our present challenging times as we self-isolate, as we socially distance ourselves, as we try not to get sick, and still remain connected, we can take a great deal of comfort from this passage.

The people who first heard about the dry bones had no way of knowing that after 70 years they would be able to return home. But they were.

History has shown us that this message was fulfilled. God restored the people to life and health; not only as a nation, but as a people able to deal with existential challenges. This time in history has served the Jewish people very well. They have since survived multiple exiles and many terrible persecutions

Our present pandemic pales in comparison to some of the historical challenges people have overcome, including people alive today who remember the Great Depression and WWII.

It is hard for us to remember that, when we face the restrictions of our own lives. But let’s take comfort in the knowledge that, over and over, God has helped people through some incredible problems, overcome remarkable obstacles and has inspired us to learn new things from the challenges we have faced.

In this situation, we are so much better off than our ancestors! We have tools of communication that they could only dream of; we have ways of connecting that may not be totally comfortable, but allow us to make sure that being alone only needs to be a physical reality. Our spiritual reality is that we can be connected; we can be loving and helpful; we can be supportive and caring. Every day, even in isolation.

It’s not perfect but it won’t last forever, either. God is there, active and breathing life into the dry bones of our crisis. So we can live, and be part of the whole people of God.

Amen.

The Challenge of the Atheist Minister

Earlier in November, the United Church of Canada announced that it had reached a “confidential settlement” with Gretta Vosper, the United Church minister who is a publicly self-declared Atheist, allowing her to remain as minister in her Toronto congregation.

This has generated a great deal of conversation and soul-searching among United Church members here at Knox, and across the country. On November 25th, I preached a sermon that attempted to address the two questions I had heard most often: How could she do this? And how could the church allow this?

This is what I said:

How could she do this?

Truthfully, I can’t read Gretta’s mind. None of us can. I could only speculate, which is always risky. It appears that she believes what she teaches, so I am not inclined to challenge her honesty.

In interviews, we have heard that Gretta started off believing in God. When she was ordained, she was able to give “Essential Agreement” to the statements of faith of the United Church, which include many statements about God which do not leave a lot of room for Atheism.

Gretta first became notorious a number of years ago when her congregation rejected “God Talk” on the basis that our language about God has become loaded over time with unhelpful images from past centuries: exclusive masculine terms, God being portrayed as violent, judgmental, and so forth. Under Gretta’s leadership, they chose to seek the truth about God by discarding all our baggage about God, including all traditional language.

Gretta was embraced by a group within the Progressive Christianity movement for the way she challenged traditional thought. It was at such a conference hosted by Snowstar that I heard her speak.

Throughout her process, I would suggest that Gretta moved from theism to non-theism. In modern jargon a Theist refers to someone who thinks of God as a Person (with lots of room for variety of how to interpret that), while a Non-Theist is someone who believes in God not as a person but as something else: an impersonal power or a force in the universe, or maybe something we just haven’t defined yet.

Ultimately, Gretta declared that she had become an Atheist: that she did not believe in God at all. She said that she would lead her church as a community which welcomes all, and emphasizes human spirituality without the need for God.

Having read a number of articles and interviews, it appears to me that Gretta feels prophetic: that she sees herself as challenging the status quo of the church; leading the church into a new era with a re-defined version of Christianity.

In contrast to this vision are those who criticize her by suggesting that the large amount of publicity Gretta is generating is self-serving and maybe even creating a personality cult within the United Church of Canada.

I don’t think I could do what Gretta is doing: continuing to minister in a Christian church while holding an Atheist position. I left the Presbyterian church when I realized that I was in serious disagreement with its position on ordaining openly gay people, and when it became clear to me that the Presbyterians weren’t about to change to my point of view anytime quickly. Leaving felt like the honest thing to do. On that basis, I am very uncomfortable with what Gretta Vosper is doing.

How Could the Church Allow This?

Again, I don’t know! The terms of the confidential agreement really are being kept confidential. While a respect for confidentiality is vital to the work of the church, this lack of openness and accountability about such a public and potentially defining matter is distressing. This agreement has led to public challenges to the credibility and the relevance of the United Church of Canada, which, in turn, has led to all the questions and discussion in our local congregations. That’s why it is important to try to address this, even without the information we should have.

The United Church still believes in God. Our various statements of faith, expanded in recent years, have not suddenly vanished.

It is important for us to recognize that right from the start there has been a broad range of belief about God within the United Church. This was built in from the very start, so that we could include three founding denominations with a range of theologies.

It took 25 years of negotiation to create the United Church, and an almost miraculous level of tolerance for theological differences to make it succeed. The Methodists and Presbyterians were quite different in their theologies and their church cultures. The Congregationalists, while similar theologically to the Presbyterians, had a radically different way of organizing their church. The fact that the United Church of Canada exists at all is a testament to a shared determination to accept diversity, even if that isn’t the language we used in 1925.

We have never required our clergy to swear to every part of any statement of faith. Rather, we followed the lead of the Congregationalists to ask for “Essential Agreement,” thus creating an environment which encouraged a wide range for interpretation.

In this case, as many have pointed out, the existence of God is essential. But the point I am making is that we’ve always encouraged diverse theological positions in our pews and pulpits, and that diversity has ranged more and more broadly over the decades.

In the service on Nov. 25th, we read three passages revealing three very different views of God in the Bible. The oldest, from Exodus 24:9-11, comes close to a physical description, which is remarkable for a religion that always forbade any images of God. The second, from Isaiah 6:1-5, is a prophetic one: visionary and intense. The third, from John 4:21-24, is terribly Greek in its understanding: it defines God as Spirit, which raises a question about the need for a separate name for the Holy Spirit. We have a diversity of views of God within our own scriptures!

Christians have always explored different understandings of God. Starting with the creation of statements of orthodox beliefs under Roman Emperor Constantine, church authorities tried to prevent any but the narrowest explorations. Eventually this led to the creation of heresy trials.

The United Church deliberately encourages an atmosphere of exploration and questioning. We have offered to the world a welcoming space where people could gather without judgment to explore matters of faith and spirituality. The whole idea of prosecuting someone for having the wrong beliefs feels like a betrayal of what the United Church has stood for for decades.

And frankly, if Gretta Vosper weren’t a minister, the question never would have arisen.

But Gretta is ordained, which makes her responsible not only for her own faith but for faith leadership in the church. So the church started an unfamiliar process: preparing for a heresy trial. We have always had rules for the discipline of church ministers, but the ones around heresy are rarely addressed. So just recently, after years of debate, false starts and appeals to determine whether the process was legal and which court had jurisdiction, the way had been cleared and the trial was supposed to start. Then this settlement was announced, ending the process.

In doing this, the United Church has been revealed as a body that is prepared to tolerate an astonishing level of theological diversity.

How was this decision reached? What were the motivations on the part of the church authorities to agree to this? The lack of transparency here is distressing.

There is a part of me that would like to hear some clear declaration that Atheism is not a position we accept in our faith leaders. Like many people, I might find it reassuring to have someone declare that this case is an exception, and not a signal that the United Church is abandoning God.

But I also recognize that our position has been clear all along: all our statements of faith are based on having a relationship with God, even if we can’t agree on exactly how to talk about God. So I have to acknowledge that the issue here is not our belief in God. The issue is about how we deal with a leader who has taken an extreme position.

There is a danger when we use our authority to enforce a theological position. We’re not talking about burning someone at the stake, as in the past (that’s still the first image that comes to mind when many people think about heresy trials). However, there is coercion involved: we would be in a position to force someone out of ministry on the basis of belief. Many in the United Church recoil from that strongly, even where it might be the wisest action from the perspective of church discipline.

I am also aware of the risk of driving the congregation which supports Gretta’s position out of the United Church. If we did that, we would be criticized for being much less tolerant and united than we proclaim. From the perspective of public opinion, we cannot get out this without being criticized.

This issue, with its often over-simplified publicity, makes us feel like our integrity has been damaged. Certainly in some people’s eyes, it has. More importantly, though, it has challenged us to consider what it means to be a family of faith.

For all the distress, we are not in any danger from this. We can deal with publicity. We can address questions about who we are and what we believe. We can be clear that our church has not abandoned God. We can state that Gretta Vosper and her congregation do not speak for us. And at the same time, we can still affirm what we have claimed for a long time: that all people are welcome here, whether they believe in God as a person, as a spiritual force, as an open question, or as not existing at all. All are welcome.

If that’s how we define the United Church, I can live with that.

As I conclude, I would like to make a personal faith statement:

I value the Progressive Christianity movement. It offers a rigorous examination of our scriptures and history, and it demands truth about who we are and what we stand for. The insights it offers have shaped my ministry and my preaching in many ways. An intelligent and informed approach to Christianity is important to me.

I can understand the positions of non-theists & atheists, but I am not convinced by them. I believe in God, and that God is both within and beyond creation. That’s an approach that doesn’t fit within the restrictions of scientific study, which must consider only that which can be measured and observed. Philosophers and theologians, on the other hand, have no trouble with it.

I believe that God is a Person, not an impersonal force. I see personality in people, and the cats and dogs I know, and in the squirrels and ravens that shout rude things at me as I walk the dogs in the woods.

I consider it to be the height of hubris for humans to presume that an impersonal force has developed creation so that this wonderful gift of self-awareness and personality has developed without including the creative force which engendered it. To me that’s just another way for us to claim to be superior in the universe, and I cannot trust any logic that leads to that kind of conclusion. It’s too self-serving.

I believe that as we develop our human spirituality we need something or someone outside ourselves to act as a guide and yardstick, so that we don’t end up making our own selves the measure of the universe.

And I believe that our Creator loves us, and wants us to be loving too. The more I study scripture, the more I realize that this is the core of what Jesus taught. My experience of life makes it worth believing.

Ask Andrew 6 (2018): The Meaning of Jerusalem

“Ask Andrew” is an annual opportunity for members of Knox to ask questions of faith and religion. Andrew answers them in the Sunday morning service, and now in this blog. Enjoy!

Q: Talk about the history of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel: reference to Trump and Evangelical push for this to happen.

There is so much tied up in the symbolism of Jerusalem that it is good to know something of the real history before we try to untangle some of the meaning of this city.

A brief overview of 6000 years of history:

Archaeological evidence suggests that there has been habitation there for about 6000 yrs! The first written reference to the city in Egyptian documents called it Rusalimum about 4000 years ago. The root word for Jerusalem is “SLM”, which refers to Peace (Shalom in Hebrew, Salaam in Arabic). Some have also suggested it might be a reference to Shalim, the Canaanite god of dusk. Personally, I don’t believe the two are incompatible: you have to stop fighting at dusk when you have limited technology: dusk is a natural time for peace to settle.

The Hebrews who escaped from Egypt in the Exodus were not so much farmers as herders: they followed their flocks and had few cities. They had no capital city for the longest time, even under king Saul. It was King David who conquered Jerusalem (the Bible says it was called Jebus then). The Bible calls the inhabitants Jebusites – in contrast to the Archaeological evidence about Rusalimum above.

David’s conquest was in 1000 BCE, about 3000 years ago. David brought in the Ark of the Covenant from Bethel, one of the places of worship out in the countryside, to focus the worship life of Israel in Jerusalem. David was working hard to centralize his nation.

King Solomon, David’s son, built the first temple in Jerusalem, and discouraged the worship centres at Bethel and Shiloh, which served to make the city more and more the heart of the nation’s worship. For both of these kings, this was a political thing: they were making Jerusalem the centre of worship and the nation.

When the kingdom split after Solomon died, the 10 northern tribes, called Israel, declared Sechem to be their capital city. Jerusalem became the capital of Judah, the southern kingdom. This was still a hot political and religious issue in Jesus’ day. Remember the Samaritan woman at the well in John’s gospel? She objected to the way the Jews said that people should worship at Jerusalem. Even today the remaining Samaritan community still worships at Mt. Horeb, as they have been for over 3000 years.

But for the Jews, who take their name from the tribe of Judah, Jerusalem became the focus of dreams and hopes. The promise of return from the Babylonian Captivity was focused on Zion: the other name for Jerusalem. There are many passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that focus on this same idea: the return of God’s people to Jerusalem.

The city has been ruled by many empires over the years. By Jesus’ day, the Romans were in charge after a few centuries of Jewish independence. In 70 AD Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome. The temple was demolished except for one wall, now known as the wailing wall. The city walls were pulled down and the inhabitants slaughtered: Jews and Christians alike.

It became illegal for any Jew to live in Jerusalem for centuries. To live there they had to pay the “Jewish tax.” Even Constantine, the Emperor who made Christianity the religion of the Roman empire, kept this law going. Eventually it was Emperor Hadrian who finally rebuilt parts of the ruined city and allowed Jews to return.

Christianity, as an organized religion, didn’t care much about having Jews in Jerusalem. Many Christians felt that we had replaced the Jews as the people of God. Besides, after the destruction of Jerusalem, a symbolic New Jerusalem appeared in the Book of Revelations. This was taken as a symbol of Heaven by many, so the actual city of Jerusalem was left as a wonderful tourist destination with lots of pilgrimage opportunities, but without a divine future.

The rise of Islam changed things. Jerusalem was fought over between Muslim armies and Crusaders repeatedly. There was a Christian kingdom of Jerusalem for a couple of centuries, various Muslim rulers, and even a time when the Benedictine Monks were in charge.

Ultimately it became part of the Ottoman empire, and remained there until the end of WW1. In large part it was neglected: some Muslim holy sites were constructed and revered, but there was not a lot of other investment. The Ottoman Turks encouraged Christians to come as tourists too. Frankly, Muslim rulers throughout history have tended to be more compassionate to Jews in Jerusalem than Christians ever were.

The development of modern Evangelical Christian beliefs about Jerusalem:

About 500 years ago, the Protestant Reformation happened. The Reformers rejected the centuries of tradition that had developed in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, and chose to emphasize the authority of the Bible. In doing so, the Reformers re-discovered all those passages that talk about the return of Jews of Zion, and started to associate that with the idea of the Second Coming of Jesus.

In England, this didn’t go smoothly. The Anglican Hierarchy swung between Reformed and Catholic influences at different periods. Note one of the most popular Anglican hymns is “Jerusalem”, written in 1804 by William Blake. It is practically a second national anthem for England, and it carries with it the image of a New Jerusalem being built in England.

The Puritans, who resisted Anglican understandings of many things, carried that same idea into the New World colonies they established. As Bruce Cockburn remarks wryly in one of his songs:

“Let’s give a laugh for the man of the world, who thinks he can make things work: tried to build a New Jerusalem, and ended up with New York”

The Puritans really believed they could build a kind of New Jerusalem: a nation with a strong faith core that would lead the world in morality and establish the Kingdom of God in the world.

Along with that grew the understanding that the Jewish people would have to return to the Old Jerusalem, as declared in the Hebrew Scriptures, for God’s plan to be completed.

At the same time in Europe, for centuries, the existence of the Jews as a nation without a land led to all kinds of challenges, and contributed to serious anti-Semitism. There were even a series of international conferences about how to solve “the Jewish problem.”

Many “solutions” were attempted, sometimes by Jewish leaders acting independently, sometimes at the urging of various colonial governments who had distant lands to offer:

from 1818-48 New York Jewish leaders tried to establish a Jewish homeland on Grand Island

just near Niagara Falls

1903-05 tried to create a settlement in Uasin Gishu, East Africa

1907-14 tried in Angola (Uganda proposed, but no settlement made)

1933-42 tried Madagascar

1940-45 tried Tasmania

1838-45 tried Surinam (South America)

Each of these efforts had at least some Jewish support. Throughout these efforts, though, a group called the Zionists grew stronger. They were demanding return to lands of the Bible, and to Jerusalem itself.

Just before the end of World War 1 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, supporting the idea of creating a Jewish homeland in the region of Palestine. Just after the war ended Britain was given a mandate by the League of Nations to rule Palestine.

The British had mixed feelings, which slowed down the process. Some took the Evangelical view of wanting the Jews back in Jerusalem as a fulfillment of Biblical prophesy. Others, including most in power, had a more pragmatic view of the politics of the world, and if they had religious views at all, likely preferred the New Jerusalem interpretation that made a modern state of Israel irrelevant (from a religious perspective).

When the Jewish people took matters into their own hands and created the modern state of Israel in 1947, Jerusalem was supposed to become an international City, within the bounds of Jordan and ruled by the United Nations. In 1948, during the Jewish-Arab war, Jerusalem was partitioned between Israel and Jordan. West Jerusalem included the traditional Christian and Jewish Quarters, while East Jerusalem was the traditional Muslim Quarter. In reality lots of people were forcibly removed from both sections.

In 1967 Israel captured East Jerusalem during the 6 day war and has held it ever since.

Evangelical Christianity has embraced the creation of the modern state of Israel as a sign of Christ’s return. One version had Christ returning within a generation of this event, which would have required Jesus to come back by 1988, since the standard Biblical generation is 40 years. Obviously that didn’t happen. Neither did most of the predictions in the book The Late Great Planet Earth, but that didn’t stop the basic ideas from staying popular.

Evangelical Christians support the expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian areas, so that modern Israel might re-claim all the ancient biblical lands and so prepare the way for Jesus to return. In addition to raising a great deal of money being raised for this, there is a political agenda: the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Palestine, of course, still wants East Jerusalem as their capital, which is why most countries won’t do it. Joe Clark, elected Canadian Prime Minister in 1979, promised it, and then backed off quickly when his experienced diplomats explained the reality of the situation.

Donald Trump has recognized Jerusalem in this way. I personally don’t think Trump believes anything particularly Christian, Evangelical or otherwise, but he knows his support base, and he has pleased many Evangelicals who think this will speed up the return of Jesus and the end of the world.

The Jewish leadership of Israel, of course, considers this Evangelical Christian interpretation to be nonsense, but they are happy for the support and encourage this connection with American Evangelicals

Their vision is that Israel is a place needed to defend the Jewish people, as we were reminded recently in the hate attack on the Synagogue in Pittsburgh. In that situation, the Israeli Prime Minister dispatched a government minister to go to the Synagogue and offer the support of the nation of Israel.

In Canada, this kind of Evangelical theology exists, but it is a fainter echo of the American version. We don’t start with the same vision of our nation as a fulfillment of prophesy the way many Americans do.

In America, the three churches that are closest to the United Church of Canada: the Presbyterians, the Methodists and the Congregationalists, have all issued criticisms of the theology that claims that modern Israel is predicted in scripture or is a precursor to the second coming of Christ. We haven’t done that. Rather, a few years ago we adopted a pro-Palestinian Justice approach that caused some serious friction, including formal protests from Knox.

What fascinates me is that politics have always been part of Jerusalem, at least since David conquered it 3000 years ago. Its religious status as a holy city has always served someone’s political agenda, and it saddens me that this is still going on today.

David wanted to centralize worship and his fractured nation. The southern kingdom of Judah wanted to be more authentic than Israel, initially, and eventually the Samaritans. The Maccabees wanted a rallying point, and over the centuries it was used that way again by both Christians and Muslims, back and forth. Now there is a religious cooperation between Christian Evangelicals and Israeli hard-liners.

I believe the best we can do is recognize what is going on, and refuse to play the game. We can refuse to treat modern events as the fulfillment of prophesy, whether it be Christian, Jewish or Muslim.

Jerusalem is a place of historical significance to three world religions. Our challenge is to find a way to celebrate that without causing injustice to any of the people who consider it important.

The call to pray for the peace of Jerusalem is ancient, and it is as significant today as it has ever been in the past.

May God grant us all the wisdom to achieve this peace.