Tyndale Chapel Podcast

George Sweetman
Today is the 11th day of the 11th month, a day that marked the Armistice of the First World War. It was hoped that that war, World War I, would be the war to end all wars. We know that that wasn't to be. Already this morning, people across Canada have marked this day of significance by stopping in silence for two minutes about 15 minutes ago. They stopped and moved into silence to remember those who went before us, for those who never returned, and for those who continue to serve in the pursuit of peace. It's now a few minutes after 11 o'clock, but we think it's important for our community to also pause, reflect and pray together. This is our moment for remembrance now. Remembrance isn't only about a clock or a certain hour, although they are significant, but it's about who we are as people, praying people. A community that is gathered together week after week to pray and to lift our voices to our God, the King, and the Sovereign. And it is also our duty to pray, because we are the ones who serve the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, and our desire is His shalom for all and everything. As followers of Jesus, the One who is making all things new, we reflect, excuse me, today we reflect by acknowledging the gravity of what has happened before, the cost of conflict today and the hope of resurrection promise. We honor this day and moment, not to glorify war but, to look at it unblinkingly in the eye and as ambassadors of God; to remember and to recognize sacrifice and to renew our calling as people of shalom in the way of Jesus. Would you please stand with me?

George Sweetman
You can take your seats. Let's pray together. God today is a day of memory, stories of long ago and of recent days; of humanity and conflict, something as old as Abel and Cain, as new as Ukraine, Gaza, Darfur, and even within our city's borders. God, as a community, we mourn the absence of shalom; of curable diseases rampant; preventable climate change ignored; of solvable conflicts unrelenting; of abject poverty unabated; of systematic racism undiminished; of insidious greed unrelieved; of totalitarianism unrequited; of mental illnesses unanswered; of brokenness unbrokened; of death of dreams, of culture, of life. Today, of all days, we pray for our world, God. We pray for the leaders and their followers; for those who decide for conflict; for those who stand in harm's way; for those who lay down their life for the other; for those who decide a different way. We pray for truth and justice. We pray for reconciliation, restoration and peace. As your kingdom continues to break into our lives and into the world around us, we ask that our Savior, our Lord, our King, would come soon. May we live in the hope that He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes of many peoples. That they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. On this Remembrance Day 2025, God, we pray for shalom in the name of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Amen. Now as we set our sights on the wonder of Christ in song and memory, we remember today the hope we have in Jesus Christ, the one who was, who is and who will ever be. We turn our hearts now to song, message and meal. We come to remember. We come to give thanks. We come to seek peace. We come to worship Jesus, our Savior, our Healer, our Hope. Come, let us worship together.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
Reading from Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians 2, beginning at verse 11. "Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision", (which is done in the body by human hands) remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh, the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit." This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Almighty God, to You all hearts are open. All desires known, from You no secrets are hidden. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love You and worthily magnify Your holy name through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
Amanda was nervous. She was on her way to hear a famous woman, evangelist Hannah Whitall Smith, who often toured with her husband, Robert. Amanda's last name was also Smith, but they were not related. Amanda didn't normally move in their circles, and she wasn't sure how she would be received and if she'd be welcomed. The year was 1870, Philadelphia. Amanda was 32 but already two times a widow, neither of her husbands had been good men. She bore five children, but only one would survive to adulthood. She'd had a very hard life, and she barely scraped together a living as a washer woman. And she wanted to hear Hannah Whitall Smith for some time, and one day she was riding the tram, and she happened to see Hannah's husband, Robert. And he came over and he started to chat to her, because, you see, Amanda was also a budding young evangelist, not as famous as Hannah Smith, but Robert recognized her. And she was very encouraged by how warm he was and how they talked so freely as they rode along the tracks. And he encouraged her to come on Friday night to hear Hannah preach. So here she was, she's on her way, but she's uneasy. And as she gets closer to the service, she saw a couple of women she knew, and they tried to discourage her. One of them said, "You know, Amanda, that meeting is going to be very full today. There's going to be a great many wealthy women from Germantown and West Philadelphia. The meetings are especially for this class. You'd better go another day." It wasn't just that Amanda was poor, she was black. Hannah Whithall Smith was white, and Amanda knew that every person in that service would be white. And this is Philadelphia. It's not the Deep South. The Civil War is over, but still, blacks and whites at that time did not worship together. They had separate church cultures for the most part, and Amanda Smith had faced racism her entire life. In fact, she was born into slavery, but her father had been permitted to work on his own time, and he'd saved up enough money to buy the freedom of him and his family. Amanda had a total of three and a half months of formal education, but she was talented. She was intelligent, and her parents tried to educate her in the home, but she struggled to get ahead. She had many things working against her, but she went to hear Hannah Smith that night because she felt the Lord wanted her to be there. Not wanting to make a disturbance, she waited till the service had started; she just snuck into the back and sat quietly. She was really blessed by the message. And at the end of the service, many women actually came up to her, and they recognized and they said, "Oh, look, it's Amanda Smith, why didn't you come forward? Why didn't you sing for us? Why didn't you speak?" And later in life, as she looked back and she wrote about her shyness in her autobiography, she compared herself to a groundhog who always kept seeing his shadow and going back into his hole. She said, "I was not so well known then. Many people were shy of me and are yet. But I belong to royalty. I am well acquainted with the King of kings, and I am better known and better understood among the great family above than I am here on earth." I belong to royalty. It was a defiant declaration for a poor washer woman born into slavery, little regarded by the world.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
"He has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place." That's the charge that got Paul arrested, Acts 21, it was a false charge. Paul had not brought Gentiles into the temple, but he'd been seen with a Gentile. And so his accusers put two and two together, and they riled up the crowd against him. And the charge was so inflammatory that it caused a riot. Paul was violently seized, and they began beating him to death. The soldiers came in and arrested him to try and restore order. Of course, Gentiles were permitted in the outer precinct of the temple, but as they approached, they would be confronted by a series of barriers which they were not allowed to cross. First, a wall of partition, a low wall or a balustrade, something like a railing, maybe something like this, except higher that surrounded a raised platform with steps leading up to where the temple was built. But if you got to the top of those steps, there was a much more imposing high wall, and this enclosed the court of women, which was as close as Jewish women could get to the temple. And then there was another partition. Beyond that, there was the court of the sons of Israel, where the men could go. But beyond that, there was another wall. Then there was the court of the priests. And of course, beyond that was the temple. But within the temple, there was that Holy of Holies, where only that one priest could go, and that only once a year. So that most holy place was surrounded by this series of barriers, partitions that were increasingly restrictive. Fewer and fewer people could approach, the closer you got, until you finally reached that place where only one could go. And Gentiles were the lowest on this spiritual hierarchy, kept far off, declared unclean, unable to enter close to God's presence. And these restrictions were treated with the utmost seriousness. Josephus reports that on that first railing, like structure, warnings were written in multiple languages, telling the Gentiles that they could not cross on pain of death. So you can see why the charge of bringing Gentiles into the temple could provoke violence.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
And as I said, it was that event that ultimately landed Paul in a Roman prison from which he is believed to have written these words, "for He himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles." Now Paul is not bringing up the hostility to lay blame. And he doesn't use the technical term that was used for the temple partition, but we can hardly think of a better picture of a wall of hostility- excluding Gentiles. He's bringing it up, though, to say that Christ has destroyed it piece by piece. But how? He says Christ has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside, in His flesh, the law with its commands and regulations. Now the translations use stronger language suggesting Jesus abolished the law. Some suggest maybe abate or abrogate would be a better word, but that's too obscure to make it into a mainstream translation of the Bible. Paul cannot mean that Jesus abolished the law in its entirety, or he would be contradicting the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus said, "I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it." In this context, Paul is talking about the law as a division of hostility between Jews and Gentiles. Law as a barrier that declared Gentiles unclean, unfit to draw near to God. He's talking about a barrier of hostility that was built upon viewing works of the law, such as circumcision as a badge of worth before God, and therefore declaring that those on the other side of that wall of hostility, those uncircumcised in the flesh, were less than, unworthy, unclean, unable to draw near to God. And Paul says, Jesus destroyed this barrier by setting aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations, in His flesh. When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, He tabernacled in our midst, the temple of His body, being the very presence of true God from true God on Earth. And when that same flesh was offered up for us, the veil of the temple was torn in two, and so those who were once far away were brought near by the blood of Christ. In Christ, nearness to God does not need to be regulated. There's no barrier to protect. It's not a matter of climbing steps to a particular place, but clinging by faith to a particular person. The person of Jesus, who is our peace in Himself, and there is no reason for hostility. "He came and preached peace," Paul says, but He didn't just preach it and then leave it to us. He made peace. He accomplished it for us by reconciling Jew and Gentile in one body through the cross, creating in Himself one new humanity. And so He is our peace in His person because of what He has done in His flesh. Paul didn't take Gentiles across the wall of partition in the temple complex in Jerusalem that day. But he had been crossing the spiritual barrier for years in his ministry, as he proclaimed that radical message, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
And we come into this place from a divided world, and we bring some of those divisions with us. We come from a culture that is increasingly fragmented. Our Scripture today provides no recipe for ending political polarization. Paul knew the violence of this world in his own flesh all too well. The Gospel does not promise an earthly utopia. We live in a world that is fundamentally broken, and we will leave this place today, and those ideological conflicts will continue. Culture wars will continue. Actual wars will continue, though we lament them. The violence will continue, but our peace in the face of such violence is found in the flesh of Christ, which He offered up for the life of the world. In that flesh, God has taken upon Himself even our violence, and He used it to secure our redemption by subjecting the Son to death on the cross. We did our worst, even the very worst act of hostility imaginable. We tried to kill God incarnate our Creator, and yet that was the means through which He killed our hostility. Now the conflict between Jew and Gentile in the first century might seem remote for us today. Walls of division and hostility, however, are found in every place, in every time, in every community. We're very good at building walls to keep others out; walls of pride; walls of cultural bigotry; walls of racial exclusion; barriers of social status and money. But this passage reminds us such walls cannot stand in the presence of Christ. Whatever walls might divide us in the world crumble and fall before Christ's broken body, because in this place, and among this people, and at this table, we are one body.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
Amanda Smith went on to become one of the leading evangelists of her generation. She was a prominent woman evangelist at a time when women evangelists were rare and controversial. Not only that, but she was a black woman evangelist who preached to white congregations, which was unheard of. After gaining national prominence in America, she would go on to preach in England, in Europe, in Africa, even all the way to India. And yet, though she broke many barriers and defied all sorts of expectations, she continued to face prejudice, even among her Christian brothers and sisters. One day, a woman actually had the ignorance to ask her if she'd ever wish she was white, and she said, "No, we, who are the royal black, are well satisfied with His gift to us in this substantial color." She knew she belonged to royalty, and that gave her peace in the face of all those trials. The cross of Christ lays waste to all our jockeying and jostling, all our efforts to get to the front of the line, all our pushing and shoving, all our vain attempts to patrol the borders of God's kingdom. Praise God, our acceptance and our access to the Father is not determined by our vote. Our citizenship in the kingdom is not granted by the colour of our skin. Our place in the household of God is not based on our father's last name. The broken flesh of Christ destroys every pretension that we might bring into His presence. We are one body because we all share in one bread. There is no barrier that stands between us and Him, except our sin, and He has made an end of it. By His blood, He ransomed us from every tribe and language and nation. There are no insiders, there are no outsiders, there are no elites, only sinners saved by grace. Amen.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
As we come now to the Lord's table, we're going to ask you to come down the center aisle and make two lines. We'll ask you to allow the musicians to be served first and then, if you need gluten free, please come see, Lindsay, on this side of the worship space.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
Christ, our Lord invites us to His table, all who love Him, who earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another. Therefore, let us confess our sin before God and one another. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against You, in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of Your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your name, Amen.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
Almighty God, have mercy on us, forgive all our sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep us in eternal life. Amen.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
The peace of the Lord be always with you. The Lord, be with you. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right in a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give thanks to You, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. You formed us in Your image and breathed into us the breath of life. When we turned away, and our love failed, Your love remained steadfast. You delivered us from captivity, made covenant to be our sovereign God, and spoke to us through the prophets. And so, with Your people on earth and all the company of heaven we praise Your name and join their unending hymn: Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of Your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed are You. Holy are You, and blessed is Your Son Jesus Christ, You anointed Him to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to announce that the time had come when You would save Your people. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and ate with sinners. By the baptism of His suffering, and death, You gave birth to Your church, delivered us from slavery to sin and death, and made with us a new covenant by water and the Spirit. When the Lord Jesus ascended, He promised to be with us always in the power of Your Word and Holy Spirit.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
On the night in which He gave himself up for us, He took bread, gave thanks to You, broke the bread, gave it to His disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." When the supper was over, He took the cup, gave thanks to You, gave it to His disciples, and said, "Drink from this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." And so, in remembrance of these Your mighty acts in Jesus Christ, we offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ's offering for us, as we proclaim the mystery of faith. Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. And pour out Your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine. Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by His blood.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
And now, with the confidence of children of God, let us pray: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
The bread which we break is a sharing in the body of Christ. Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread. The cup over which we give thanks, is a sharing in the blood of Christ. By His blood, He ransomed us from every tribe and language and nation. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed are those who take refuge in Him.

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for welcoming us to Your table, nourishing us with the riches of Your grace, uniting us as living members of the body of Christ, and assuring us that we are heirs of Your kingdom. Empower us by Your Holy Spirit, to offer up our bodies daily as living sacrifices, made holy and acceptable in Your sight through Jesus Christ our Lord. Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever. Amen. And now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among us and remain with us always. Amen. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Thanks be to God.