McPhail Baptist Church

Sunday April 19th, 2020

"The Strife is O'er, the Battle Done"

Sue Sparks

       

The strife is o’er, the battle done, 

Now is the victor’s triumph won; 

Now be the song of praise begun:

Alleluia! 

Lord, by the stripes which wounded thee,

From death’s dread sting thy servants free,

That we may live and sing to thee; 

Alleluia! 

"Lord, I Want to be a Christian"

Ernie Cox

Meditation: The Need For Mystery 

Rev. Steve Zink

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John 20:19-28,  RSV

Jesus Appears to the Disciples
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Jesus and Thomas
24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

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Believing is Seeing

Rev. Ernie Cox

                                                               

Some senior citizens were sightseeing on a bus tour through the western United States.

A rather cynical old man in their group criticized the beauty of every natural monument he saw—the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest and so on. Finally, the bus driver could take it no more. Turning to the old man he said, “Listen, sir, if you haven’t got it on the inside, you can’t see it on the outside!” 

Someone has said, “Sight is the faculty, but seeing is the gift.” The cynical man had the faculty of sight, but lacked the inner gift of seeing. 

The painter, poet and engraver William Blake,  said it best when he wrote:

                                          

We must ever believe a lie,

When we see with, not through, the eye. 

Some people who see things with their eyes have little perception beyond what they see. 

Blake believed that the real world is actually the world we cannot see, and the world as we 

see it, is just the temporary world.  And isn’t that what  the Apostle Paul tells us: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Of course this kind of spiritual insight absolutely eludes many atheistic, evolutionary biologists and scientists of today. C. S. Lewis warns us to beware of those who use the word “merely.”  The quality of love is merely a programmed response. The religious outlook is merely a primitive evolutionary hangover. Art, music and poetry is merely a chemical impulse in our brain.

There’s an illustration that comes from the Nature mystic Loren Eiseley. He writes, “We humans are like the Brazilian amphibian fish whose eyes have two lenses, one for seeing under the water and one for seeing above the water. But many of us much of the time have cataracts on our second lens.  We commonly do not perceive the world of Spirit.”

Today, there’s a huge debate amongst scientists, philosophers and theologians on the connection between the brain, the mind and consciousness. There are those who are convinced that there is nothing more to us than a brain in a body. That the idea of mind, soul, spirit or consciousness as separate from the brain is a foolish notion. The world of spirit or soul is not considered, and the mind is just some facet of the brain firing a bunch of neurons. 

Gunther Stent was a molecular biologist. He believed that the search to understand consciousness, as distinct from the brain, is a waste of time and will never be fully explained. He put the matter like this: “The human brain would have to be a great deal more simple than it is in order for us to understand it. But if the brain were simple enough for us to understand it, our brain would be too simple to understand it.”  Another scientist put it this way: “We won’t find a mind by looking in a brain, but we do require a brain to contemplate the mind.”  I’d like to think that if some scientists were to appropriate Blake’s insight of seeing through the eye, rather than just with the eye, that the study of consciousness might be seen as linked to the world of spirit. 

But where are we going with all this?  Well, our text for today is from John chapter 20,  the section where Thomas says to the other disciples, “Unless I see the nail-prints and put my hand on His wounded side, I will not believe.”  We know people like that. Unless they can see, they cannot believe. For them, seeing is believing.

Our text from John 20, tells us that Thomas refused to believe until he could see. Many today echo Thomas’s demand for proof, before belief can be considered. The credo of many is Seeing Is Believing. And from the text in John 20, Thomas has forever been known as “Doubting Thomas.” 

Actually, it’s a bit of an unfair knock against Thomas, for we remember that when Jesus said He was going to Jerusalem, and the disciples knew that if He did, He would probably be murdered, and that they might be killed as well, Thomas was the one to speak up and say, “Let us go, that we too might die with Him.” So, Thomas was brave and loyal, but we don’t remember Thomas for his courage, do we, we only remember him for the time he doubted. 

And then we remember something else about Thomas, where in John 14 when Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you.” And then Jesus said, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”  Thomas pipes up and says, “Sorry, Lord, but we don’t know where you’re going, so how can we know the way?” You see, Thomas wasn't afraid to ask questions, he had an inquiring mind, a questioning mind, a seeking mind, and the Church has always needed people like that. 

In fact, give me a "Doubting Thomas" any day over some of the American Televangelists who, mouthy with Biblical answers, talk as if there isn’t a mystery anywhere they can’t explain. But as someone has said, “If mysteries could be easily explained, they would cease to be mysteries. A mystery is not necessarily against reason, it just happens to be above reason.” Which, in part, defines the current state of the search for consciousness, and the quest to understand the brain and mind, that it’s not against reason, but appears for the moment anyway, to be above reason, and may always be above reason. 

Some people seem to think that if all mysteries could be made plain, if they could prove there is a God, then they’d believe. But if you and I could prove God or fully understand God, then God wouldn’t be worth knowing. “The God explained is the God explained away,” said Pascal. The writer Flannery O’Connor tells us that a God you and I could fully understand would be less than ourselves, and who would want a God like that? 

Thomas became known as “Doubting Thomas.” But “Everybody doubts,” writes the great preacher, George Buttrick, whether it’s pew or pulpit. The problem with people who never allow for doubt, and are steeped in certainties, is that they are so convinced of the rightness of their religious beliefs, that they are often much convinced of the wrongness of your religious beliefs. 

We remember Mark Twain’s schoolboy who said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t true.” Of course we know that that’s not what faith is. But what if Mark Twain’s schoolboy had said: “Faith is believing what you know is true.” Would that be faith?  Let me submit to you that that’s not what faith is either. Faith is not believing what you know for certain to be true. That’s knowledge—that’s fact, not faith.

Let me illustrate it this way: Some years ago I was driving by a church in the east end of the city and I noticed these words on their church signboard: “ETERNAL LIFE: FACT OR FICTION?” Now were I to have gone to the minister of that church and said to him, “I understand from your church sign that you know for a fact that there is such a thing as Eternal Life." And were he to say that “yes” he knew for a fact there is such a thing as eternal life, in other words, life after death, why that minister would have solved the mystery of death, and the world would have beaten a path to his church door.  

A better sign out in front of the church would have read: “ETERNAL LIFE, FAITH OR FICTION?” For if we knew Eternal Life to be true for a fact, then what need for faith?  Paul Tillich in his book Dynamics of Faith encapsulates best what I’m trying to say that, “In our faith there is always an element of uncertainty. This element of uncertainty, cannot be removed. Rather, it must be accepted.” Therein lies the paradox of our faith. If we demand proof and certainty, then our faith is no longer faith, but fact, and would eliminate the need for faith. And that would eliminate a desire for God.

The 19^th century writer and Presbyterian preacher George McDonald who inspired many of C. S. Lewis’s novels writes that if it could be proven that God exists, then faith in God would no longer be required, having been replaced with facts about God. He writes, “It’s not the knowledge of God that makes a difference in our lives, rather the love of God that makes a difference in our lives.  No one was ever moved to love God and serve Him by knowing facts about Him, but by putting faith in Him,” he writes.

But let me also say that in thinking about doubt, it was Tennyson who wrote, “Cleave to the sunnier side of doubt.” And so, what we’re saying is that there’s nothing wrong with doubts, but for the Christian we need to come to the place where faith overcomes doubt, and come to a point where we doubt our doubts. That’s what happened to Thomas, he had doubts, but when he saw Jesus, he overcame his doubts.  

But what did Jesus say to Thomas? “Thomas, you have believed because you have seen, but blessed are those who believe and have not seen." We might put it this way, that when it comes to our faith, “Some things have to be believed to be seen.” Augustine in a brilliant sentence put it this way: "Faith is to believe what we do not see, but the reward is to see what we believe."

A person who commits his or her life to Christ, soon discovers that their love for Christ begins to grow. And then comes to understand, that with the Christian faith, Believing Is Seeing, and not the other way round. "I wasn’t blind, yet He gave me sight," more than one person has said of Jesus.

Jesus, risen from the dead,

With us always, as you said. 

Every day in all we do,

Help us live and love like You.

Hymns
Rev. Ernie Cox

Crown Him With Many Crowns

Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne;

Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own;

Awake, my soul and sing, of Him who died for thee,

And hail Him as thy matchless King through all eternity.

Crown Him the Lord of life, who triumphed o’er the grave,

And rose victorious in the strife for those He came to save;

His glories now we sing, who died and rose on high,

Who died eternal life to bring, and lives that death may die.

He Lives

I serve a risen Saviour, He’s in the world today;

I know that He is living, whatever others say;

I see His hand of mercy, I heard His voice of cheer,

And just the time I need Him, He’s always near. 

Refrain:   

He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today!

He walks with me, and talks with me, along life’s narrow way.

He lives, He lives, salvation to impart!

You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.

Rejoice, rejoice, O Christian, lift up your voice and sing,

Eternal hallelujahs to Jesus Christ the King!

The hope of all who seek Him, the help of all who find,

None other is so loving, so good and kind. 

Coping with the Corona Crisis

(Third in a series of responses from our McPhail congregants)

The Eady Family – Bob and Betty, Rob, Sarah, Cameron and Liam

1. All of us are confined to our homes, how are you spending your time?

Bob and Betty – Betty has been attending her regular doctor’s appointments, treatments and transfusions. Bob keeps busy with watching old hockey games. Any hockey is good hockey!

Rob – Although it’s closed to the public from entering the building, I have been at work at Centre 507 two or three days a week, helping to prepare and hand out food to the homeless. The rest of the time I’ve been more confined so that there is less chance of picking up an infection as I take my mom to all of her appointments. Netflix and Prime have been entertaining us for some time most days.

Sarah – I have been immersed in “distance learning”. It has been a huge learning curve but we are finding our way along. Reaching out to families to make sure they’re all okay is a big part of each day. It has been lovely to connect with my students online, as I have missed all of their smiling faces. I’ve also spent time reading and knitting as well as watching TV.  Our dog Tess is enjoying the extra walks.

Liam – is out to work at Farm Boy most days as an essential worker. He keeps busy as the Assistant Manager in the meat department at the Barrhaven store. He spends his downtime online with friends, playing games and taking it easy.

Cameron – is at home too so he spends a lot of time online chatting with friends and playing games. We hear a lot of laughter during these conversations so it’s good to know he’s staying connected.

2. How are you staying connected?

Bob and Betty – we are keeping in touch with many friends through conversations on the phone. We do appreciate all of the calls people are making to check in with us. We use email and social media to keep in touch with friends and family. At Easter, Blake, Mary and their whole family surprised us with a Zoom chat with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It was lovely to see all of them and spend some time together while we are all apart.

Rob – I’m using Zoom to stay in touch with everyone at work. We are all becoming much more tech savvy with this pandemic keeping us at home. I’ve also been on social media, email and Facetime to keep up to date on what my friends are all doing. I call my mom and dad twice a day to check in.  Wearing a mask and gloves, I see them briefly when I drop off food or groceries for them so the phone has become our lifeline.

Sarah – I have been in more Google hangouts, Zoom and Webex calls online than I can keep track of. Although, seeing all the kids from school warms the heart. I miss all my kids. It has been reassuring to do Facetime calls with my mum as her long term care home is closed to visitors. Unfortunately, we received the news this week that several staff members have tested positive for Covid19 so I would ask that you keep her and everyone at Starwood in your prayers. I’ve also been on Facetime with my family in Scotland. Technology has helped us to keep our connections with family throughout this crisis.

3. Some people have stopped following most of the Corona virus news suffering an overload of information, much of it not encouraging. How are you handling all of this news?

Bob and Betty – we are only watching the news to get updates and we are doing okay. We are focusing on day-to-day life and getting through treatments. 

Rob – At first, I was an information gatherer. I wanted to understand what we were facing so I was watching news on TV and online and reading other reports. I quickly became overwhelmed and decided this was not a healthy way to live. Since then, I’ve tried some jogging and lots of walks. It’s good to get out in the fresh air to clear my thoughts.

Sarah- Like Rob, initially I wanted to understand the corona virus. I quickly became over saturated and avoided the family room so I didn’t have to hear the news. I was reading and working on lessons to keep myself busy or putting on music just to work out some of the kinks. I find meditation relaxing and spend a few minutes deep breathing to regulate and go on with my day.

4. Have you found a silver lining in the current situation?

Bob and Betty – we have seen more of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren on Zoom. It has been wonderful to spend time with them.

Rob – I am enjoying the time I’m getting to spend with my family. Sarah and I have spent a lot of time laughing and that really helps us to get through this. We haven’t seen so much of our boys as they lead their own lives in many ways now. It’s been good to reconnect and strengthen our bonds. You learn to appreciate little things. It was great to see the smiles on my parents’ faces through the window on Easter Sunday when we all arrived with dinner and stood on the front lawn together waving and just letting them know we love them.

Sarah – I have to say that I have always had an appreciation for the health care workers who devote so much time to the care of the elderly in my mum’s long term care home. I have a whole new appreciation for these people who leave their own families to go and care for other people’s families. They have my never-ending respect for their compassion and devotion to the people they work with each day.

I also find myself just being happy when I go for a walk and I’m greeted by friendly faces who always say hello. It seems in some ways we have become much kinder and more open to other people. We have had to slow down and step out of our busy lives so we can all be safe. I hope we take what we have learned into our daily lives when this crisis is over.

And finally, I am thankful that we live in a country like Canada where all levels of government are working together to keep the country going. They are looking after essential workers, getting the needed medical supplies, ensuring families have the money they need, people’s wages, child care and so much more. 

5. What things do you especially miss?

Bob and Betty – simple things, shopping, going to a restaurant, giving someone a hug, we miss the person-to-person contact with our family and friends.

Rob – I have to say, I really miss sports. I haven’t resorted to old hockey games like my dad but you never know! I miss just being able to get out of the house and go wherever I want to go. I miss my workouts at the gym, meeting friends for coffee and I really miss hugging my mom and dad.

Sarah – I miss being able to sit with my mum and hold her hand. It’s hard not seeing her. I miss all my kids at school, their little faces, their smiles, their successes and their laughter. It feels like a long time since I last saw them. I miss meeting up with friends for dinner, although, we have had some fun on the House Party app playing trivia and laughing together. 

Did you know you can mail in your regular financial contributions to McPhail? Faith communities, along with cultural institutions and many businesses have had to close temporarily. Nevertheless, normal operational expenses continue as usual. In the light of this, do please consider continuing your support of McPhail by mailing your offering to: 249 Bronson Ave, Ottawa, ON. K1R 6H6