I-Beam

I asked this question on Sunday morning, and everyone, by and large, said the same thing.  I asked those who were present on Sunday morning that, as Christians, what is the most well known, often quoted passage in the scriptures? What is it that people keep on talking about, and would consider to be the most important, relevant verse in the Bible.

Pretty much everyone said 'John 3:16.'  Good point . That's the one, right?  The one that we all know, take to heart, and have internalized.  As a Christian, even if you've memorized nothing else, you've memorized that one.  You've figured it out, you've internalized it, and you can repeat it, chapter and verse.  But that's for all the Christians in the house.  If you're a non-Christian, what is the most important verse in the Bible, perhaps the only one you've committed to memory?  Matthew 7:1.  For those who are churchy, you might not be able to pluck Matthew 7:1 out of the air, so I'm going to assist you, albeit briefly.  "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

I would say that more non-Christians, atheists, people like that, would know this verse, and would be able to pull it out of a holster fairly rapidly.  And this verse is used to hamstring any condemnation, heck, any mentioning of sin whatsoever.  If you point out sinfulness in someone else, if you point out sinfulness in the world, if you assess things and come to the conclusions that things shouldn't be going they way they are, whether in a big or small way, you will be hit with Matthew 7:1.  Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Now, that verse is used to basically silence any or all criticisms of anything ever.  If you pipe up with something, people will respond by saying 'doesn't your book say something about not judging?' And they'll treat it as though you, as a Christian, would be sinning gravely by bringing anything up.  The image presented of the perfect Christian, then, is one who would gaze upon the sins of the world with a placid, calm, and philosophical face, never seeking to curb any type of behavior, no matter how corrupt.  That sounds nice to the modern world, but unfortunately, it stumbles right away when you consider the reality of the Old Testament reading that we had on Sunday.  The Old Testament reading that we had on Sunday gives you the complete opposite conclusion.  Instead of the classic agnostic position that says that Jesus wants you to say nothing whatsoever in the face of sin, deception, destruction and desolation, we instead hear all about how you are required to speak up when you see deceit, when you see destruction, when you see sinfulness that leads to death, you are required to speak up in order that you might save the souls of your listener.  God has placed us in a position that we don't really want to be in - as watchmen on Israel's wall.  We are there to call out problems, issues, difficulties and sins as they arise.  Not only does that passage tell us that we can, it tells us that we ought to do so.  To refuse to deal with sinfulness is to shirk our duty, and to consign people to everlasting condemnation - and their blood is on our hands.  That's heavy, you know.  It's heavier than we want it to be, especially since most of us bought into the concept delivered to us that the best Christian is a mute one.

So what's a Christian to do?  Well, if you believe in what you say you believe in, then you have some circles to square.  You have some dogs to cat.  Scripture interprets scripture, in case you didn't know, and with scripture interpreting scripture, you have to believe that you are a watchman on Israel's wall, but also that Christ told you to judge not lest ye be judged.  How can both those things exist simultaneously?  Quite easily actually.

If you want to know your sinfulness, if you want to know your need for a savior and what it is that Jesus died for specifically, then I invite you to take one simple step to tell you exactly what that is.   Go thou to your brother, sister, husband, wife parent, child, whatever, and point out their sinfulness.  If you do that, I can absolutely guarantee with 100% certainty what will happen next.  They will immediately fire back at you with a sin of your own.  If you tell someone that they chew too loudly, they'll tell you that you're a cheap date.  If you tell someone that they need to load the dishwasher better, they'll tell you that you're shiftless and lazy.  There is no faster way to have your own sin pointed out to you than to point out someone else's.

It's almost as though Jesus knew what he was talking about.

Let me put it to you this way.  The Gospel reading that we had for this morning was all about repentance, repent or perish being the heading for the chapter.  And we all essentially took that, glossed it over, and moved on, precisely because we genuinely can't see our own sins.  We take it for granted that we ought to examine ourselves before holy communion, we ensure that we confess our sins at the appropriate time in the service, but honestly, we don't use the ten commandments of God and the words of Christ to evaluate our thoughts, words and deeds as we ought. And so when it comes to confess our sins, we can't think of any to confess.  But when Jesus speaks, he tells us to be careful when we judge because when we do, that same measure will be applied to us.  If you point out someone else's sins, they will point yours out in no time at all.  And you're going to have the same temptation that the rest of us will, right? To explain your sins away, to pretend they're not a problem, to try to make the case that you don't really have a problem, it's not a sin when you do it, or to then snap back at the person again by pointing out their sins again.  It's your temptation the same way it is mine, of course.  But here's the deal.  Your job is to stop running, and to embrace the issue all over again.

You're a watchman on Israel's wall, but so are other people as well.  And if you've got the job of pointing out their sins, of indicating and isolating those sins, then you're going to for sure have people point out your sins as well.  And that means that you, as a Christian, have the opportunity and the duty, of living out your faith.  When someone presents your sins before you, in an attempt to get you to see that beam in your eye, your job is not to run from that, but to embrace it.  Your job is to be thankful and grateful that now you know what you have to be forgiven.  If someone, another watchman on the wall of Israel, dares to bring up your sins, to mention them, all you need to do is to quit running, and quit hiding.  You need to stand firm in what you believe, and when someone says to you 'oh yeah, well you're lazy and a drunk,' that's when you need to come clean, to cop to the charges, and to say 'yes.  And I shouldn't be.  And that is what I need to confess, for that is my sinfulness that I have to deal with, work through, and have Christ take it to the cross.'

If you can't do that, then what is Lent for? What is the purpose of the Lenten season if all it is is a vague, perfunctory statement that you're a damnable sinner who can't think of a single damned sin?  And if all you do is to make excuses, obfuscations and deflections when your sins are brought up, then congratulations, you're essentially a Pharisee.  But if, for example, you're able to look your sin straight in the eye, to embrace the call of the watchman, to understand that it is there for your benefit, then all of a sudden, the faith that you take so lightly begins to coalesce into a reality in your life.  That pain that you feel when someone points out to you even the slightest thing you do wrong, that raw scrape you feel when a nerve has been hit, that's what Christ comes to take away.  He come to forgive, to spare you from the weight of your deeds and misdeeds.

So, in summation, judge not lest ye be judged, for with the measure you use, that same measure will be applied to you.  That doesn't mean that you can't talk about sinfulness, according to the scriptures you have to.  What it does mean, though, is that you are going to open yourself up to a careful, thoughtful analysis of your own sins.  And your job is to embrace it.  Your job is to say to the world that you are not perfect, and that you have a lot to be forgiven.  So bring it on, and your sins will be revealed to you; then you can take them to Christ, and have him take them away.

Precious snowflakes

Have you ever noticed that all snowflakes are different?

This fact is often used as a short form for a number of other things, but more often than not, to discuss the uniqueness of the human person.  That is, just like no snowflake is exactly like another, so too are we all different, and individual.  This goes significantly deeper than you think it is, you know.  It goes deeper because, on a cosmic level, you have to understand that the extreme unlikeliness of you being conceived, you being born, and all of a sudden, you figure out that you are actually much more different from every other human being than snowflakes are from one another.  There are really only 35 different forms of snowflakes, they differ much more on a molecular level. So too, there's really only one way that human beings are put together (two legs, two arms, a head, etc).  Sure, there are minor differences, but you get my point.  Just like snowflakes are unique on a molecular level, though, we are all unique on a spiritual level.

So when it comes to the cost of a soul, they should fetch a pretty fine price. They should fetch a high price because each of them is a one-off.  There is only one of each, and that's all.  All economics is based on scarcity, you know.  Absolutely all of it.  Things are only expensive because they are rare.  Anything that is hyper-common has no value whatsoever, precisely because it is common.  That's why nobody can ever charge for air, for example, because it is everywhere, unless you're in a situation where it isn't.  Then it is worth a lot.

Think of it this way - There is only one of you, your soul is completely different from anyone else's, and even if you were to be cloned, as identical twins are essentially clones of one another, you would be different on a spiritual level.  You can see this with identical twins.  Although they are identical physically, they are operating on a different level emotionally, spiritually, what have you.  So given that your soul has uniqueness that even snowflakes do not, it stands to reason, from an economic sense, that it should be worth a lot.  An awful lot.

The legend of Faustus, being the prototype for a lot of other soul-selling narratives, has the brilliant doctor selling his soul to the devil, with Mephistopheles doing his bidding for seven years.  He wagered that in those seven years, he would be able to wring all the enjoyment out of life that he could, so that eternity in hell with Satan and all his little wizards would be tolerable.  Well, Mephistopheles had to grant him an awful lot, because Faustus, being a man of his time, understood what a human soul, his soul, was worth, and he wasn't willing to part with it easily.  It commanded a hell of a price for the devil to get, because people really weren't willing to part with immortality and paradise unless it was for a very very high price.  Now, contrast that with the going price for souls these days, and I would hope you'd agree that the bottom has fallen out of the soul market. These days, you have to wonder what it is that people are willing to essentially sell their souls for.  What price is the right price for them to lose their eternal salvation.  Is it seven years of amazing love, power and cash? Or is it upvotes?

For you see, these days, the average person doesn't want to rock the boat at all.  The average person is in no mood to stand out spiritually.  The average person doesn't want to make ripples in the water in the slightest.  And so the average person who fears the disapproval of man more than the wrath of God, will sell their souls out completely just to avoid any momentary discomfort here on earth at all.  No social anxiety, no even mild tsk-tsking, no semblance of any kind of disapproval from the masses in the slightest.  We want to go along to get along, you know, and so when push comes to shove, and the prospect of people thinking that we are operating outside the norm shows up, we pull back almost immediately.  Forget the seven years of power and prestige, all the devil needs to do now is to say 'forsake your faith, or I won't like you anymore.'  And like suckers, we go for it.

Essentially, if we had any concept of how valuable our souls were worth, how they aren't just a thing we have, they're a thing that we are, then there's no way we would sell them as cheaply as we do.  But we have either forgotten, or we never really knew, and so we are willing to give them away for nothing.  We will sell them for a mess of pottage, if you will, simply to avoid even the possibility of momentary discomfort, exactly as Esau did.  And if we're willing to sell for nothing, the devil is quite happy to pay that much.

And that brings us to the season of Lent, and to the wandering of Jesus in the wilderness.  For 40 days he fasted and prayed, for 40 days he was alone.  At the end of the 40 days, the devil arrived in the wilderness and made him some promises, by way of some temptations.  The devil showed up and said to him that he would supply all of Jesus' needs of body, safety, and prestige.  He would give to Jesus all the attention that the world would not supply, he would give to Jesus all the power that the world would deny him.  All this would be given to Jesus by the prince of this world, if Jesus would just turn aside from his quest, and follow him.  But Jesus resisted him.

Jesus was willing to pay the price.  Not just the price of being dismissed by his followers and deserted by his friends.  Jesus was willing to go further than you or I would, by giving up his clothes, his freedom, his safety and his life.  He was willing to pay the ultimate price, pay it in blood, because he knew how much this was all worth.  He knew how much your soul was worth.  And he was willing to do whatever he had to do to save it.  In many ways, the story of lent is not so much the question of whether or not we sell Jesus short, but whether we sell ourselves short.  What is your immortal soul worth? If the devil were to show up and ask you to haggle, would you demand top dollar, or would you sell it for lentils?  What is eternal salvation worth?  Would you suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it, or would you shrink away to avoid any cost at all?  Well, Jesus is well aware of how frail we are when it comes to this.  He is aware that the spirit may be willing, but the flesh is most certainly weak.  And he knows that when it comes to value, we are always tempted to ask too little for what we have.

But he is willing to outbid the devil, you know.  He is perfectly willing to pay more than the devil does.  Again, we're going to look at this in economic terms for a moment.  Think of it this way, in a capitalist way.  Your soul is on offer, but now it's not a transaction, it's an auction.  And you know how an auction works, right? In an auction, you get to figure out not how much something is worth according to its sticker price, you get to figure out how much something is truly worth.  Everything that exists is only worth what someone will pay for it.  If nobody will pay for it, then the item in question has no value whatsoever.

Now, here we get into what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about.  It's about the value of your soul.  That soul that you take very lightly, the soul that is undervalued by us.  God bless us ,we take this very lightly indeed, only truly understanding the value of a thing after it is gone and wasted.

This is the almost was situation of the prodigal son, the one who wasted his precious inheritance on wine, women and song.  The horrifying idea that you have undervalued that inheritance so powerfully, and would only want it back when it is long long gone.  

You would give that soul away, blow through that inheritance on essentially nothing.  And the devil, because he doesn't have to, will only give you what he has to.  He will take your soul for whatever bargain basement that you will offer it up for.  He'll take whatever he can, and will give you only what he has to.  And in this auction, the highest bidder will take the prize.  But the devil will only offer what he has to, in order to secure the deal.  But Christ offers the highest price, a price higher than the devil can.  The devil, even if he is trying to outbid Jesus can't do it, because Jesus offers up the highest price in creation.  There is no price higher.  If the devil was only offering you what he thought you would sell for , then you'd sell for rock bottom; likes and upvotes.  But he's not offering you a price, he's in an auction against the blood of Jesus Christ, the source of forgiveness and grace, the thing that pays the cost for the sins of the whole world.

And really, this is what lent and Easter are all about.  They're about the reality of the offer of Jesus Christ to pay for the sins of the whole world with something that cannot be outbid.  The one perfect sacrifice from the one perfect penitent.  The offering up of the blood of the Lord, the God of creation to redeem creation.  And no matter how much the devil offers, he literally can't offer up more than that.  It's always good to remember that your salvation rests not in your hands and how highly you value your soul, but in the hands of Jesus, who can pay infinitely more than any of us can.

Sticks and stones

Moses didn't get to enter the promised land, you know.  After leading the stiff-necked people of Israel through the wilderness for 40 years, Moses climbed a mountain overlooking the promised land, where he was able to drink it all in with his eyes, and it was there that he died, and was buried in an unmarked grave.  The great prophet of Israel, dead and buried.  God had made Moses a promise while he was in the wilderness, which was that because of his sin, Moses would not enter the promised land, and would die before he could enter it.  Such is the price of sin, you know.

Now, even though you may know that, part of what I wanted to impress on all of you is how small the offense was that got Moses banned forever from the promised land.  What was it that was so severe that Moses did to get him barred, and barred justly from the land that God had promised to his people?

He struck the rock with a stick.  No really, that's what he did.  Numbers 20 tells us exactly how that proceeded, where Moses is commanded by God to speak over the rock, but instead, Moses chooses to strike the rock with his staff, and water gushes forth from it, and all the people drink.  God told Moses to do something very specific, and Moses chose to do something else.  Almost as though Moses believed that he knew better than God the whole time.

For those of you paying attention, this is an absolutely common theme throughout the scriptures.  It begins with our first parents, Adam and Eve, who are absolutely real people, and who were given real instructions by the Lord their God to avoid eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  True to form as a human being, Eve, upon being tempted by the serpent, said to him, "God said we aren't even allowed to touch it," which absolutely wasn't true.  But she added more steps, as we as humans are wont to do.

We do this because we want to rationalize our decisions, and we are the only creatures that can do this.  We can rationalize our behavior by adding more steps, and dropping out earlier ones.  We can make new agreements that supersede old covenants.  We can fool ourselves into thinking that what God really wants is for us to do what we want to do, for God is a dottering old man who only wants you to be happy. He doesn't care about good or evil, right or wrong, all he wants is for you, yes you, to be happy.

But that's not true.  None of it is true.  That's not how any of this works.  When God commanded to Moses to speak over the rock but not to strike it, he was going out of his way to show his power and dominion to the Israelites, who, as discussed above, are a stiff-necked people, and who rebelled against Moses constantly.  God wanted Moses to show and demonstrate that it was God himself who was in charge of all of this, not Moses and his magical trickery.  But Moses assumed that he knew better that God himself, and decided to rap the rock twice instead of just speaking over it.  And he was barred from the promised land for it.  Moses, the great prophet, whom nobody had seen anyone like before or since in Israel, was barred from the promised land for striking a rock.

Does it seem harsh? Maybe, I suppose.  But here's the thing - disobedience to God is enough to get you barred from the promised land, barred from paradise, barred from the whole Scheer.  We constantly think about how good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell, right? We keep thinking about how Hitler is in hell forever, and that the rest of us are basically okay, without realizing that disobedience to God's word is sufficient, it is enough, it is plenty to cast Adam and Eve out of paradise, Moses out of the promised land, and you out of heaven.  And if God's command to speak over a rock is disobeyed by Moses striking it, what on earth do you expect God is going to do with a people who change his laws and commands far far more than that.

The modern church, as you know, is as corrupt as you please.  I'm sure this isn't news to you, but think about it for a second.  God's word is clear, it is not hard to figure out or to work through.  It's not as though God's laws are needlessly complex, but we do like to rationalize them away.  We do like to look at God's laws as though they were complex, and needed our big brains to sort them out.  We like to look at God's laws about human sexuality, life and death, theft, robbery, obedience, and to say that these things are holdovers from a time in which people weren't so smart, and needed to be protected from themselves.  Now that we're here, and we're so smart, and we don't need God to tell us what to do anymore.  And I ask you, with God as your witness, who is more likely to be giving you that advice? God, who said his word wouldn't change, and who said he would be the same yesterday, today and forever, or someone else?

Moses changed God's rules in a very tiny way, and that was enough to keep him from the promised land.  What do you think there is waiting for us when we change God's laws in a big way? What is waiting for us when we take God's very clear words, and change them in a quite monstrous way? What is waiting for us when we disregard, dismiss, or otherwise discard the clear commandments of God in favor of what we feel like doing, and assume that God will back those decisions up?  Could God justly bar us from paradise?  Absolutely.

But this last Sunday was the Sunday of the transfiguration. And with it being the Sunday of the transfiguration, it's easy to miss a lot of details when you see Christ transfigured to be bright like the sun, dazzling white like lightning.  It's easy to miss all the other details when your savior is revealed in his glory. But a detail that I don't want you to miss is that in that moment, Moses is standing there, with Jesus and Elijah, in the promised land.  He finally made it.  After being justly barred from the promised land, he is finally there.  His story didn't end with his death, after his skin had been destroyed, yet with his eyes, he beheld Christ, and stood in the promised land.  What a redemption story!  Justly barred from the promised land, after having led Israel through the wilderness for 40 years, Moses finally stands in the promised land, and stands there with Christ. The law bringing stands in that space with the law keeper.  I want you to think about the people from the scriptures who want to find their way back to paradise, to regain it, if you will.  People whose sin and disobedience has kept them away, far away, from paradise. Think about why they are kept from paradise, and how much effort they expend into trying to make their decisions good and God pleasing, when in reality they are neither.  And think about how we behave, you and I.  Think about what we do, how we conduct ourselves, and how desperate we are to convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing, and that our actions in the real world are just a slight, minor deviation from what God has commanded.  And then think about Moses, who stood on the mount of transfiguration alongside Jesus.  

Standing there alongside Jesus is the most important part.  What was it that Jesus said to the oft-misunderstood thief on the cross?  'I tell you the truth, today you will be with Me in paradise.'  Emphasis mine, but hopefully you'll get the picture here, that you will be with Christ.  Where he is.  For only Christ is able to break death, only Christ is able to ascend into heaven, only Christ is able to be an heir of the permanent promised land, and Moses's presence with him at the mount of transfiguration is a wonderful testimony to the forgiveness of sins and righteousness that Christ provides.  This isn't a theoretical or an abstract for you to muse over, rather it is a practical moment.  Practical feet on the practical ground.  A few sets of them, too.  Elijah, who was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind, Jesus who is the son of God, and Moses, barred from the promised land now standing in it. Because of Jesus.  That's what forgiveness and justification look like, you know.  It looks like people who had sinned, who had added to or subtracted from God's command, people who are justly barred from the promised land standing in it.  

And that's one of the best things to be revealed at the mount of Transfiguration.