MidWeek Message (Feb 18-24)

Reflection by Pastor Shawn Bawulski:

How should we think about God and food?

Perhaps food is a place of guilt and shame, or a stress release valve. Maybe we think of it mostly in terms of convenience. Or sometimes we obsess about diets and weight loss. This has even come over into Christian circles: in America, just to provide 2 examples, recent years have seen The Daniel (Diet) Plan and What Would Jesus Eat sell more than a few copies.

Well, I think “What would Jesus eat?” might be an interesting question. I think “What should I eat?” is a better question. But I think “As a Christian, how should I eat?” is the right question.

The answer to that question is, “eat with joy!” (Much of what I say here is indebted to a book called “Eat with Joy: Redeeming God’s Gift of Food” by Rachel Marie Stone. (Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Joy-Redeeming-Gods-Gift/dp/0830836586 ) This is an excellent book!)

To begin to understand what it means to eat with joy, we need to ask why God made us as creatures that eat. Angels don’t seem to eat, but every living creature with a body does something like eating. Why? And further, why did God make eating so pleasurable? There’s more to it than metabolism and biology. There’s a nicely aged cheese, fine wine, and dark chocolate—things we eat that are just so good! When we move beyond biology to theology, we get a fuller story: as creatures, food sustains us and gives us pleasure because God does all that and much more. In a way, food is delicious because God is delicious.

The Bible seems obsessed with food, from the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden to the marriage supper of the lamb. Food was first given to us before we fell into sin and took the creation down with us, and it was good. It was abundant and not toilsome to get. God fed us, and we ate together with God. God wanted to feed humans, but instead humans stood God up and obsessed about the one food we shouldn’t have. It all goes wrong from there.

Later, Jesus says, “I am the true manna.” Bread from heaven sustained the Israelites in a land that couldn’t. But of course, those Israelites eventually died. Jesus promises something different: everyone who feasts on him will not die! (See John 6:51) We need to eat regularly to live. Without food, we die. We depend on food, and for that we depend on the creator’s hand to provide from the earth. This is a daily reminder of a spiritual reality—we depend on Christ, the bread of eternal life.

God has made us to enjoy food! When we embrace that, we declare that God is our creator and he is good. Food connects us with God. But in a fallen world, we can make it twisted. But if we’re careful and intentional, it can be a source of true enjoyment. It can be a spiritual act, where we accept food like a child—joyfully, with pleasure and thanks.

Food is also an opportunity for us to obey Jesus in loving our neighbors. Jesus makes it very clear that he cares about the hungry (see, for example, Matt: 25:31-46). So what might food justice look like today? How can we love our neighbors when it comes to food and food production? God’s intention is that all are well fed with good, nourishing food. When that’s not the case, we need to take action. Further, the food systems in many countries are stained with human abuse, exploitation, and suffering. We are right to pray before a meal that God would bless the hands that brought us this food, but we should also do what we can to ensure that those people are treated with the dignity that is fitting of being made in the image of God, as all humans are. We might need to ask ourselves challenging questions like, “where all the people involved in getting this food onto my plate treated fairly?” Too much of our food comes from a place of misery, not joy. If we are to love our neighbors, we need to work to change that. (We also need to have similar concerns about the ecological effects of farming, sustainable practices, and animal welfare and suffering.)

Another important aspect of eating with joy is eating together. Sharing food and sharing company through hospitality is a core Christian practice. In the early church, the visible witness of different types of people sharing meals and sharing life was a powerful witness to the gospel—and that’s no less true today.

The main approach to eating with joy is to understand it as a redemptive practice. God works in us in a redemptive way: he starts where we are, and moves us, step-by-step to bring us closer to being like Jesus. A Christian approach to food works this way, too: we aren’t going to change everything at once, but little by little, we work with God in obedience to the gospel to redeem the whole of our world. Including food!

MidWeek Message (Feb 11-17)

Reflection by Pastor Shawn Bawulski:

This week we are going to try something during our Sunday worship service at COGS: we’re going to sing a Psalm a cappella.  I’ve gathered that this has not been a common practice at COGS, if ever.  But I think it will be an enriching and encouraging experience for us.

I first encountered a cappella psalmity when I moved to Scotland.  Growing up in a typical North American Evangelical church tradition, I was familiar with praise bands leading the congregation in the latest hits of contemporary worship.  I was also familiar with singing hymns.  But I didn’t realize that singing Psalms during corporate worship was even an option until I started attending a Presbyterian church in St Andrews, Scotland.  It was a refreshing practice for me.

Singing the Psalms is a longstanding tradition in the last 2,000 years of Christian worship.  It was especially emphasized by some of the Protestant Reformers, who understood themselves to be returning the church back to a focus on Scripture.  So what better way to do that than to sing the Word of God?  In fact, twice in the New Testament God commands us to sing the psalms (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16).

Singing the Psalms together has several benefits.  First, we sing and proclaim the Word of God.  Second, music has a special way of sticking in our minds and hearts.  Many of us can probably remember the songs we sang in church as children, even to this day.  And many of us have famous hymns permanently written into our minds (for example, finish the line: “A mighty fortress is our God, a…”).  So singing the Psalms can help us memorize and meditate on Scripture.  Third, the Psalms capture the full range of human emotion and experience.  Our worship should strive to do the same, but traditions that neglect the Psalms have a tendency to neglect experiences like doubt, lament, and wrestling with suffering.  Along these lines, the pastor, theologian, and reformer John Calvin writes that the Psalms are “An Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul; for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that it is not represented here [in the Psalms] as a mirror.”  Certainly our corporate worship should reflect the full emotional range of the life of the saints, and singing the Psalms is an excellent way to do so.

MidWeek Message (Feb 4 - Feb 10)

Reflection by Pastor Shawn Bawulski

Our New Testament reading for this Sunday is 1 Cor. 15:1-11, where Paul writes about Jesus’ resurrection.  He writes,

I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain.

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Here we have the most complete summary of the resurrection in all of Scripture.  It even contains some details not found in the gospels.  Paul reminds us that ancient prophecies speak of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  He also points out that the resurrection was a public event: it was available to be seen and Paul provides of list of witnesses.  Eye-witness testimony was the basis of the early church’s belief in the resurrection, and there were a good number of eye-witnesses that could (at that time) be directly consulted if one so desired.  Over 500!  Jesus’ resurrection was not some secret trick, not merely some interior feeling, not something done in a corner (Acts 26:26).

And Paul was not the first.  Peter proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus in the first Christian sermon in public (Acts 2:24-26), and the apostles preached the resurrection to both Jew and gentile throughout the book of Acts.  It is fundamental to apostolic preaching, an essential part of the Christian faith, and the centrepiece of Christian thought.

However, we are confronted with a problem.  I’m not an eye-witness.  Neither are you.  None of us saw it with our own eyes.  And the eye-witnesses are no longer around for cross-examination.  How do we know the truth of the resurrection if we are so far removed in history from the event?

Another problem: there were many who saw Jesus’ life and miracles, and who were even right there in the right time and place to see and touch the risen Lord, or at least interrogate the eye-witnesses—and yet they didn’t become disciples.  If simply being an eyewitness to these historical events does not turn one into a disciple, what does?

In discussing these difficulties, the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard says that only a revelation from God—an encounter with Christ—in which he reveals himself can make someone a disciple.  This encounter, this Epiphany, is available to those in Christ’s time as well as to us today.  Everyone becomes a disciple in the moment that she encounters Christ firsthand.  This moment is when God in Christ reveals himself to an individual.  There is no disciple at second hand.  Details about the historical events may be the occasion for the moment, just like being an eyewitness to Jesus may be the occasion.  But historical knowledge alone, however it is gained, does not make one a disciple.  For that, we need to encounter the living Jesus through the work of the Spirit.  For that, we need faith. 

The risen Jesus encounters Thomas in John 20:29 and he tells Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” 

MidWeek Message (January 30 - February 6)

Reflection by Pastor Shawn Bawulski

The gospel reading for this week is Luke 4:21-30, and it continues the scene of Jesus teaching in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth.  As I explained in the sermon last week on Luke 4:16-21, Jesus’ mission statement involves doing the things promised by the prophet Isaiah—in short, bringing good news to the poor.  After he spoke, those in the synagogue were amazed with him.  But then they say, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”  In other words, “hey, wait, we knew this guy when he was just a kid.  What’s so special about him?”  Jesus anticipates that they will demand that he do ‘his own work in his own backyard’ to prove his claims (this is the point of the proverb he cites, “Doctor, cure yourself!”).  In effect they are saying, “Show your stuff here, like you did in Capernaum.”

This is not exactly a warm homecoming welcome, to say the least.  And so Jesus points out that a prophet is without honour in his hometown; many of Israel’s prophets in the Old Testament were not well received by their own.  Then Jesus gets specific.  He singles out the period of Elijah and Elisha, a real low point of faith in the nation’s history (see 1Kings 17-18; 2 Kings 5:1-14).  He says that the prophets performed no work in Israel but they did heal a couple of Gentiles (verses 25-27)!  By saying this, Jesus compares that current era to Israel’s dark days during the time of Elijah and Elisha.  He also suggests that the much-disliked Gentiles were actually more worthy of ministry than they were.  Jesus is warning his audience that their reaction to him recalled some of the lowest years in Israel’s past.

Jesus challenges all sin, of course, but he has a way of poking at our more subtle sins.  The ones in our blind spots.  The ones we tend to downplay.  And that’s exactly what he does here to his fellow Jews sitting in the synagogue in his home town.  He is saying that they have a prophet—and so much more!—in their midst, and they have the opportunity to respond.  The right response would have been to acknowledge their pride and shortcomings, apologize, repent, and turn to God.  The wrong response was to get angry, run the prophet out of town, and try to kill him.  They chose the latter, and Jesus slipped away from them (in more ways than one).

The challenge for us is to respond rightly when God confronts us with our own sin.  It’s easy, natural in fact, to get angry and defensive.  It’s hard, supernatural in fact, to humbly repent and turn to God.