Pentecost

Remember the great and terrible day of Pentecost? If you don't I'll take a moment here to refresh your memory, because it's a good story.   It's long, but I don't really want to cut any out.

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost

2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. ² Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues^[a] as the Spirit enabled them.

⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,^[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia,Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹² Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

¹³ Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Peter Addresses the Crowd

¹⁴ Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. ¹⁵ These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ “‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
    and they will prophesy.
¹⁹ I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood and fire and billows of smoke.
²⁰ The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood
    before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
²¹ And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved.’^[c]

²² “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. ²³ This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,^[d] put him to death by nailing him to the cross. ²⁴ But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. ²⁵ David said about him:

“‘I saw the Lord always before me.
    Because he is at my right hand,
    I will not be shaken.
²⁶ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest in hope,
²⁷ because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    you will not let your holy one see decay.
²⁸ You have made known to me the paths of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence.’^[e]

²⁹ “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. ³⁰ But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne.³¹ Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. ³² God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. ³³ Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured outwhat you now see and hear. ³⁴ For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
    “Sit at my right hand
³⁵ until I make your enemies
    a footstool for your feet.”’^[f]

³⁶ “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”

³⁷ When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

³⁸ Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.³⁹ The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

⁴⁰ With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

How lengthy!  But Pentecost has always been an important festival for us as Christians, because of the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Who is the Holy Spirit?  He's the part of God that lives in us and goes with us always.  He's the part of God that is a permanent presence in our lives.  So what's the deal with him?

  And with Pentecost?  

Well, you Christians need to be aware of the nature of Pentecost.  Because we all want to fulfill the initial pursuit of Pentecost, to know Christ and to make him known, to take his name and his word to the ends of the earth, as he commanded us to do in his own testament.  Now what we want to do is to take Christ's words, and make sure that they have access to it in Africa, and in Asia, and in those funny Australian islands where mammals lay eggs and stuff.  And how do we do that?  By replicating Pentecost, and making sure that everyone has access to God's word in their own language.  They need to have the Bible in their own tongue, so they can see God and hear him in their heart language.  

Of course, the Bible is available to 98% of the people on earth in a language they're fluent in, so really, how pressing is the need to make sure this stuff is translated?  Odds are it has been.  But what language has it been translated into in this nation?

 Well, the biggest language that the Bible has recently been translated into is 'church.' That is, the language of the scriptures, and the language of the Gospels, the good news, is now in the language of church.  

Speaking of the Gospels, have you ever asked yourself why there are four of them?  Why we have Matthew, Mark, Luke as well as John?  Couldn't we just have one?  Or perhaps two?  Granted, you'd need John, as he tells of different events than the other three, but why not just have John plus one of the others.  They weren't written in different languages, they were all written in Greek.  They weren't written at vastly different times, all within a few decades of the death of Christ.  But the reason we have

 different Gospels is because they were written for different people. This is a point that is so big that we in the church seem to have missed it quite significantly in recent years.  Think about this: the events of the life of Christ were told in the language of four men, some of whom saw the events (Matthew, Mark, John), the other of whom complied it from eyewitness accounts (Luke).  Given this, Matthew was writing to those who had an idea of Jesus as one who was foretold in the Old Testament.  Mark focuses on the deeds of Christ, his miracles and his activity. Luke's Gospel is a book of the church, written for the church and to be used by the church in a proclamation of the Gospel to the baptized and the unbaptized.  The intended audience for Luke is the church itself.  John's Gospel is the mystical book, the one that holds the divinity and humanity of Jesus closely within it.  

And yet, they're all telling the same story of the same guy, believe it or not.  They're all telling the story of Christ, the savior of the world, who came into it to teach, live, die, and rise again for everyone.  But what in the world does that mean in the big picture of everything?  It means that in addition to translating the Bible into Tagalog, or Xhosa, or Urdu, it means that we have to translate the message of the Scriptures into the languages of single parents, of working poor, of atheists and agnostics, of doctors and scientists, of university students, of teenagers, of the broken and the wounded.  And yes, I do know that's harder than translating it into Swahili.  

If you want the Bible in a foreign language, you can translate it word by word and idiom by idiom, and then just drop it off with a foreign language speaker.  But if you want the Bible to be relevant to someone who is foreign to God, that's a different matter entirely.  But that's our call as post-pentecost Christians.  We have a duty to take God and bring him to those who don't know him.  

And no, that doesn't mean dropping a Bible off with someone who doesn't go to church and assuming that it'll somehow work through osmosis.  That's what the Jehovah's witnesses do, and you and I both know you don't read the Watchtower cover to cover. It means making the Holy Scriptures, and God himself, relevant to people who don't speak church.  People who have perhaps never been to church, and who don't know what it's all about.  People who have no idea about the small or large catechisms, who have never heard of the formula of Concord, who check out churches only for Christmas, Easter, and the odd wedding.  Those are the people that you have to deal with now.  They speak English, to be sure, but they don't speak church.  

I know, I know, our compulsion is to make sure that people are fully fluent in church before they come to our congregations, but that's a Pharisee way of thinking, really, trying to make sure that only the 

people who are already in God's good graces can get to God.  The real reality of it is that Jesus went looking for those who were so far from church, so far from respectability, that they were in some cases about to be killed for their immorality.  And yes, we say that everyone is welcome in our churches, of course, but let someone wear jeans, or have dyed hair, or be gay, and all of a sudden, the tut-tutting begins.  

So, for heaven's sake, (literally ,for the sake of Heaven), let's do our best to drag the Gospel out from where we've hidden it.  Those of us who are in Canada, it's a good idea to translate the Bible into a wide variety of languages, but it's also a heck of a good idea to translate it from church back into English.  Because it tells the most incredible story ever told.  It tells the story of a God who made everything, and who came into his own creation, lived by its rules, and died trying to make everything better.  But death itself couldn't hold him, and so he came back from the dead, promising that we all could as well, and that even the eventual heat-death of the universe won't stop us from being alive forever.  He left part of God here on earth, and that part of God lives with us always, and has promised to never leave us.  

You present that to people ,and they may not believe you, but hopefully they may see that at least there is something worth believing.  

This is most certainly true.

PJ.

Mother's day featuring exploding disciples.

If you were in church on Sunday, you would have heard me talking at great length about how silly it was that there was essentially nothing in the readings for Sunday about mothers at all.  Oh, sure, there was a little bit, but almost nothing at all. I believe at one part it mentioned that Mary is the mother of Jesus.  And yes she is.

But the readings concentrated way more on the suicide of Judas Iscariot than they did on what a blessing mothers are.  Only a passing mention of Mary, nothing on Lois or Eunice, nothing on Elizabeth, nothing on Hagar, or Sarah, or gosh, any other mother all the way through scripture.  Instead, we have Judas bursting open.  Here's a cartoon about it.

(c) Stephen Notley, used with permission.  www.angryflower.com

Yes yes yes.  It's one of those incredibly lulzy things that comes up.  Judas bursts.  But hold on there, mother's day.  What in the world are we actually talking about here?  Why all this stuff about exploding Judas? 

Well, long story short, as you would have heard on Sunday, it's about sin, really.  What is sin?  It's the collective junk our mothers passed on to us.  And our fathers, too.  You see, we have in mind this notion that sin is just some stuff we do that we shouldn't.  As in, we feel as though sin is an action.  It's like if you're committing adultery, that's sin, but if you're sleeping, that you're not a sinner for that time. And if we think about it that way, we get it all cockeyed.

Here's the juice.  I wear glasses.  Sometimes.  When I feel like it.  But my eyes require some degree of corrective vision enhancement.  I take the glasses in question off to sleep at night.  Now, that doesn't mean that my eyes are superduper whilst I sleep.  That just means that I happen to not be wearing my glasses for a time.  We all do, or perhaps all should understand that I have a genetic weakness built into me, by my mother mainly, that states that I'll be putting those glasses back on unless I want to spend my days looking like Squinty McGoo.  

It's the same thing with sin.  It's not just what you do, like the individual actions that you do.  And it's not just what you fail to do, like the stuff you should be doing but ignore.  It's a bigger issue than all that.  It's a matter of your entire will being corrupted.  You get that from your parents.  And they got it from their parents and so on and so on.  It's like a genetic deficiency that gets passed down to all the successive generations, and it is one dominant gene.  It rudely pushes everything out to one side, plops itself down, and makes itself at home.  What a hog.  

Now, apparently, the universe is about to implode or something, because I'm actually about to quote Martin Luther.  I know, I'm scared too.  

The word of God testifies that in divine matters the intellect, heart,

and will of a natural, unregenerated man is not only totally

turned away from God, but is also turned and perverted 

against God and toward all evil.  Again, that man is not only weak,

impotent, incapable, and dead to good, but also that by original sin he is 

so miserably perverted, poisoned and corrupted that by disposition

and nature he is thoroughly wicked, opposed and hostile to God,

and all to mighty, alive and active for everything which is displeasing to God

and contrary to his will.  

'the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth' (Gen 8:21)

'The heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked' that is, it is

so perverted and full of misery that no one can fathom it (Jer 17:9).

Now, you may agree with this.  You may say to me 'pastor Jim, people aren't bad people, they're all pretty much good people, they just have some minor issues that they need to work out, but they're all basically good people.'  Okay.  I understand that, I do.  But then my return question to you then is this:  If everyone is basically good, and they're nice folks then why do you lock your house, your car, your bike, your backpack, your phone, and your everything else?  You see, when we say that everyone is basically a good person, what we really mean is that we think that we're okay, but we know, not even that deep down, that everyone but me is a jerk.  And if we think that, then odds are other people think it about us.  

I do hate to keep on going back to this, but it's always so much like the Vancouver riots.  You remember those, when Vancouver lost a hockey game, and their citizens decided that the smartest thing to do would be to trash the town in revenge.  In revenge for a bunch of Russians, Swedes, and Finns who are paid to play hockey in vancouver not playing as well as they could have.  

Okay, I've mentioned this before, and it's real easy for us to armchair quarterback this, but the people who are in the middle of rioting and looting don't see themselves as scumbags.  They see themselves as generally good people who make bad decisions.  Don't believe me?  Then hear from Timothy Lau, convicted Vancouver rioter.

"I wish I could turn back the time and never have joined into the shocking and shameful carousing occurring that night," wrote Lau. "Why I joined in the relentless stupidity of the mob, which was tearing apart the heart of Vancouver, is a mystery to me, but I know what I did was wrong and there is no excuse. For this I am deeply sorry."

Here we have someone coming flat out and saying 'this was dumb, it was wrong, I didn't think it was the right thing to do, and I have no idea why I did it.  I know better, so what's my deal?'  What your deal is, is that your will is corrupt, and given half the chance, unless you've really come to grips with it, you will fall right off the wagon.  That deficiency, that sinful nature that exists within you, the better you think you are, the worst you may very well be when push comes to shove.

That's the bad news.  The good news is better.  You see, my mother, who knows me better probably than any other human being, is well aware of my sinful nature.  She knows that I'm a preposterous liar, that I'm a bit of a mess, and so on, and because she knows this, she has worked as hard as possible to seek to overcome these weaknesses.  Partly by working on me temporally, as a human being, by reproving me, correcting me, and seeking to get me going the other when when I'm messing up, and partially by bringing me to God's house, Lois and Eunice style, to have my sins forgiven, and my will restored.  If my mother would have gone the entire way insisting that I'm perfect, and I have no failings, I would have turned out as more of a monster than I already am.  But because she took me to a place with some regularity where I was told I was a sinner, and asked to confess my sins, I came out all the better.  Not that I'm actually good, by no means.  But that I'm forgiven, and repentant.

Thanks, Mummy.




PJ.

Then what are you for?

The question that makes up the title of this post was a question posed during a debate between atheists and Catholics, namely Stephen Fry and the late Christopher Hitchens on one side, and Ann Widdicomb and Father Onaiyekan on the other.  Guess which side was which.  Anyhow, I've seen the entire debate, and there is one bit that seems to be the stand out soundbite for those who are watching.  I was going to describe it, but thanks to the power of the internet, here is the clip for you.  I'll discuss it after you've watched it.  Go ahead, it's not long.

Wonderful.  There's the clip.  Now Stephen Fry has I suppose a point, and a reasonably good point too.  What is the purpose of the Catholic church, or indeed any other church?  You may find that question a bit strange coming from someone like myself, who is in the business of promoting church, and you may find my answers a bit strange too.

People join churches for all kinds of reasons, and lurking in the background is frequently the desire for morals and values.  That is, you want to have someone tell you, or help you, to be a better person.  You want and need someone to impel you to do better, to be better, and all that.  This should come as no surprise, since the daytime airwaves are full of this.  It's a constant barrage of people who are telling you tips and tricks on how to live, on being moral, what to eat, what to drink, all that stuff.  No problem, basically constantly.  

And the church would have a very hard time in such a crowded marketplace.  If the church was to wade into such a situation or a scenario, into such a packed house with a whole bunch of tips and tricks from the bronze age, it would get laughed out of the room.  Strangely enough, the Bible is not crammed packed full of a whole bunch of overly moral teachings, which is odd, because you think it would be. The teachings of Jesus, weirdly enough, don't tell you a whole bunch about internet etiquette, or about dating, or about any of this stuff.  It doesn't tell you what to do when you wake up, when you go to bed, it doesn't tell you about business or driving, nada.  There is a part of the Bible that does, but you find it to be hopelessly out of date and quaint. Or, to put it another way, 'it's uh very boring.'  

So, to quote Stephen Fry, 'then what is it for?'  Once you realize that the pinnacle of moral teaching in the Bible is 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' you have to ask yourself what is the Bible for, what are the scriptures for, what is the church for, any of it.  Well, GK Chesterton, that monarch of wit, was once asked why he joined the church, and his answer sort of hit the nail on the head, really.

To get rid of my sins.

That, my friends, is why we have a church.  To get rid of our sins.  And I'll be the first to admit that it's not just atheists that get this wrong.  It's an awful lot of Christians too.  Most of them, I'll wager.  In a church building, you are not going to find better people than you do outside.  You will find people every bit as bad as on the outside.  They may pretend that they aren't, and they may only really engage in church-appropriate sins like bigotry or pride, but they're just as bad as anyone else.  So what do you get from the church?  Forgiveness.

Forgiveness in two ways.  Firstly, you bring before God all your disappointments, all your wrath, your pride, your bigotry, your racism, your laziness, your rampant pride, your weaknesses and frailties, all that, and he promises to forgive it.  Anything you confess is taken away, up to and including when you confess just being a bit of a goofball in general.  That gets taken away.  Forgiven.  But there's a second part of forgiveness that happens in a church, that is woven into the fabric of the Lord's Prayer.  When Jesus gives his disciples the Lord's Prayer when they ask how to pray, he says this:

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And in case you missed it, or in case that wasn't clear, pretty much two verses later, Jesus says this:

If you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father

will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive others their

trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

But here's the juice.  I happen to know, based on the scriptures, that the congregation, as Christians, don't get to choose whether to forgive me or not.  I get to choose whether or not I want to confess, yes. I can hold onto my sins for as long as I want.  But when Jesus says that we have to forgive our brother who sins against us seventy times seven (thank you Jacob Ulrich), and if we won't forgive then we won't be forgiven, that gives me immense confidence in going before people, laying myself bare, and telling them that I'm a bit of a goofball, I shouldn't be, and they all deserve better.

Get that? I hope so.  On Sunday, I confessed sins to the congregation.  You'd have to think that I'm nuts, right? Going in front of a room full of people who pay my salary, and tell all of them, including ones who have no idea, that I'm a goofball, that I haven't called on people I should have, that I'm a bad administrator, and a dreadful organizer.  Ordinarily, that would be a silly thing to do.

So what is the church for?  It's for us to get rid of our sins.  It's for the atoning sacrifice of Christ to be made clear, so we can come before God with confidence and joy, so we can come before others and repair our broken relationships through mutual confession and forgiveness.  Because we must forgive.  

The moral teaching of the messiah, Jesus Christ, do tend to boil down to 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' but that's not what Christianity is for.  You know it,  I know it, dogs know it.  You have known that this is a good idea for forever. You don't need the church to tell you to be nice to each other.  You need the church to pick your pieces up when you fail.  You need the church to be a safe place to come with your actual sins, confess them, and be sure of forgiveness from God, and from your fellow Christians.  Just like in a twelve step program, the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem.  If we are going to be better people, step one is to confess that we aren't as good as we would like to be, that we're bad at keeping the rules we set for ourselves.  

It's a sad fact that I would say the vast majority of Christians have forgotten what the church is for.  It's a social club, most of the time, where you can go to be around other people who have the same view as you, who hold the right opinions, who believe the right things, and who have problems, but they're approved problems.  But that's not what the church is for.  The church is for sins to be forgiven.  You see that in the reading from Revelation from Sunday, in which John gets a vision of the holy city, the new Jerusalem, and in it, there is no temple.  No church.  Because the whole reason we have a church now, the core of our church experience is to have somewhere to go, confess our sins, and be forgiven.  In heaven, no need for it.  But boy oh boy, do we need it now.  We have lots of sins, and we have lots of confession to make.  Let's try our best to remember that church isn't supposed to be a place where you go to remind yourself of how good you are, but a place to go where you can be openly and honestly imperfect, where you can sin boldly, where you can admit before God, and before each other that you're not perfect, and you have some serious problems.  And where you admit that in a room full of otherwise respectable people who are admitting the same.  And where you can be guaranteed that you will be forgiven by both God and man.  

You already know the moral law.  But you need to know what to do when you break it.  Come to church.  Have your sins forgiven.

PJ.

Yellin' like Magellan

I always feel bad when I have to yell at the congregation.

I'll rephrase that.  I always feel bad when I have to preach the law to the congregation.

We Lutherans have this awesome thing going on, which we call 'Law and Gospel.'  It was really popularized by Walther.  Put into its simplest possible terms, if you're comfortable, you should be terrified, and if you're terrified, you should be comforted.  This was the basic building block of the teaching of Jesus when he was here on earth with us.  When he was doing his teaching and preaching, what you've noticed is that he was nice to the sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the various bad eggs who were around, but he was harsh to the pharisees, the saducees, the chief priests and elders of the people.

And why was that?  The understanding these days seems to be that Jesus is the friend of the plucky underdog, that he is around as some sort of galactic socialist, designed to redistribute wealth and so on.  And the reason that we like this, is because we always view ourselves as the plucky underdogs in our own stories.  We view ourselves as facing the wind, taming whales, all that stuff.  That's how you and I see ourselves.

And because we see ourselves in that light, the modern church heads into some trouble when it comes to preaching law.  When it comes to preaching law, most people want a nice 'fire and brimstone' sermon, in which I, or a pastor like myself, preach damnation about those who aren't in our church, and probably never will be.  Honestly, I've had a few people come to me and ask for more preaching on the law, ask for a little more hellfire, ask for a little more promise of damnation, which at first caught me by surprise, until I figured out what was going on.

If I was to preach a sermon on attendance, everyone who heard it would be saying 'yeah, right on!'  As well they might.  Because, by definition, if you're listening to a sermon on attendance, you're at least there to hear it!  And you can get rather smug, and think to yourself 'yes, those other goofballs out there should really go to church more.'  And yes, they probably should.  But why oh why would I bother telling the people who are there that the people who aren't should be?

This last Sunday, I preached the law on a particular hobby horse of mine.  That is, I preached about the reading from Acts regarding cornelius.  This particular passage is a passion of mine, particularly because it is related to the way our churches function in the real world.  And when I say our churches, I mean our Lutheran Church-Canada churches, legit.

The whole deal with Cornelius, in case you didn't know, is the blowing of Christianity open to the world outside.  Even though Christ our Lord had told his disciples that they were to preach his message to the ends of the earth, the disciples didn't think that Jesus actually meant it. The idea that the disciples had is that if people were going to be Christians, then they would have to be Christians like them.  In other words, the disciples kept kosher, they went to the synagogue, they spent time dealing with the temple and everything related to it.  And they kept kosher.  It's a reality so nice I said it twice, but it's important for this conversation.  When the disciples get together, they do so as Jewish Christians.  They're Christians, obviously, but they're Christians as an off-shoot of their Judaism.  And this, this is the beginning of a problem that will plague us from the first century to the present day.  The idea is that in order to be a Christian, you have to be like us first. Who is us?  It's whoever happens to be running the congregation at the time.

For us, in Lutheran Church-Canada, we happen to be overwhelmingly German.  Yes we do.  And we tend to say things like 'Lutheran last names' 'Lutheran pop', all sorts of other stuff that is entwined with German culture.  And this makes it difficult to do any kind of reasonable outreach beyond our immediate community.  Our favourite target is German catholics, but that stopped being a fertile ground about six hundred years ago.  The real fertile ground for outreach is honestly going to be either Canadian atheists, or failing that, people who don't look all that German.

And this is why I preach on the law in this manner.  The big threat facing the Christian church, the big panic, the big problem that we face down all the time is not the homosexuality, it's not the abortion, it's not the gambling, or the drug addiction, it's not murder or rape.

It's that you're a bunch of Pharisees.

That was the problem with the synagogue and the temple back in the New Testament days, and it's the problem in churches today, and don't think that it's a problem only in LC-C churches.  It's a problem with all churches, more pronounced with in churches that have a sort of National background (Anglicans, Lutherans, Dutch Reformed, etc).  Your church has a problem, in that it's not about making you more like God, it's about making other people more like you.  And if you think I'm making this up, I'm not.  This is a problem plaguing churches these days.  The idea from the beginning was that we were made in God's image, and we have taken this in later days to mean that we are supposed to make other people in our image.  When it comes time to discuss food or drink or worship times, or prayers or anything like that, we turn into Pharisees remarkably quickly, saying 'well, if you're going to be a Christian, you're going to have to go to church at 8:30 in the morning, and use p.158 out of the hymnal.'  As though Jesus, when he was walking on God's green earth, was setting up Lutheran churches, placing organs in them, and signing off on the only true hymnal, the blue hymnal.

None of that happened.  We get confused so quickly because we're so silly.  We're silly silly people.  We feel as though we are the barometer of holiness, and everyone else should be judged through our lens.  If we don't drink alcohol because we have a problem with it, we usually think that nobody else should either.  And that gives us the awesome sense of security, it lets u s look at everyone else, and say that they have a long way to go to catch up with us.  Our way is the best way, even though it is just useful for us, and has nothing to do with scripture at all.  But that was never the idea - all things are lawful, says the scripture, but not all things are profitable.  It's up to you, and what is driving a wedge between you and God.  And for most of you, I doubt very much that it's the same things as it is for me.  That's because we're all sinners, but all pulled in different directions.  We each have our own strengths and weaknesses, and that's fine.  But the big danger is when we assume that there is a simple, easy to follow standard for holiness that involves haircuts, not wearing jeans, jello salad, cabbage rolls, and German music.  Because it doesn't, and it never did.

I'm in the business of preaching law sometimes, not often, but sometimes.  And when I preach the law, what should I preach about?  The demon liquor?  The rampant adultery that is constantly happening?  The gambling addictions that tear families apart?  Maybe.  But if I was hungry, I'd talk about food.  Our churches aren't full to the brim with gambling addicts, or alcoholics, or abortion providers, or murderers, but they are full of cold, self-righteous prigs.  And if I'm going to preach the law, what do you think I'm going to preach about?  What did Jesus preach about?  It was, and always has been, about opposing the proud, and giving grace to the humble.

PJ.

The science of the lambs

Aha, sheep.  This was Good Shepherd Sunday, and what better time to be at Good Shepherd Lutheran church, than on Good Shepherd Sunday?  Well, none, really.  But with all the readings being about sheep, it was good for us to get to thinking about what on earth sheep are all about.

The point I made on Sunday (which was a grand one), is that sheep require shepherds.  They need to

have a sort of alpha ram that they will follow around.  They crave leadership, which we do as well.  The funny thing about the global (new) atheism movement is their insistence that they can live a life free of shepherds.  The claim is that you don't need anyone to tell you where to go or what to think. 

The entire movement is structured around the notion of 'freethought,' and members call themselves 'free thinkers' amongst other things.  Now, this isn't to tar all atheists with the same brush, but it does bear thinking about, when it comes time to define your worldview. 

I find it to be quite frankly astonishing how many free thinkers have the same thoughts.  It's strange how many of them come to the same conclusion, and have the same worldview on a lot of things.  It's almost as though they all read and were informed by the same book...

Now, that's not to say that you, as an atheist, have all read these books, and have abandoned your previous thoughts on the world and our place in it because of that.  Not likely.  But in the same way as most Christians haven't read the entire Bible yet have a worldview shaped and informed by it, so too do most atheists have their worldview shaped and informed by a few key texts.  And free thought leads you, as usual, to remarkably restricted thought.

Part of the breakdown with the conversation at this point is usually geared around the notion that someone like myself is tempted to say that 'atheism is just another religion,' which generally gets called a bit of a canard, and that's fine.  But I'm not going to say that today.  What I will say, though, is that free thought gets remarkably dogmatic in its liberty.  It's free, but only in incredibly restricted parameters.  You can think whatever you want, as long as it's within a very limited range of topics, pretty much.  So, it's not a religion per se, but it does speak to our desire to have shepherd who lead us and guide us.  It's a matter of which shepherd you follow.

The notion of the good shepherd is one that comes up in the Christian faith.  And once you understand and realize that you, as a sheep (and I know, you're a radical freethinker, but at least acknowledge your desire to have your worldview informed by people whom you respect), have a need for a shepherd, you can start to work out what kind you want to have. 

All shepherds do the standard 'follow me'.  If they didn't, they'd be sort of bunk shepherds.  But here's the juice.  The difference between a shepherd and a Good Shepherd is the question of do they let it go from there?  Jesus classically says to his disciples when they're out fishing 'follow me' and they do.  They leave everything they have, their boats, their nets, their everything, and follow him. 

And then they desert him . And so does everyone else.  Look at the history of Christ in the Gospels.  His disciples, his followers, go through many various stages of following him with extreme enthusiasm, and then disregarding him with frustration when he makes the outlandish claims that he
does.  But where does Jesus go after that?  He goes right back to them.  He follows them.  The irony of the call of Christ is that after he tells us to follow him, he seems to do nothing but follow us around.  The story is the one of the Good Shepherd, who leaves the 99 and goes off in search of the one who is lost.  And if you haven't understood this story, you haven't understood Christianity.

As I said on Sunday, Christianity is incarnational.  Always has been, always will be, and it's what sets Christianity apart from the majority of other worldviews, etc.  You say it in an almost breathless whisper on Christmas Eve as you turn to the person next to you, and say to them 'Christ the light of the world has come to you.'  The Good Shepherd is notable in his leaving his comfort and coming to you.

Contrast that with the dogmatism that engulfs freethought at present.  This is an older quote, but it still checks out, and was made by Virginia Woolfe on the subject of T.S. Eliot's conversion to Christianity.

"I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward.  He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality and goes to church.  I was really shocked.  A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.”











Freethought is pretty much only allowed to go in one direction.  From belief to atheism.  That's freethought.  And if, like TS Eliot, you happen to arrive at the conclusion that there is a loving God in

heaven who cares for us, calls us by name, and cherishes us, then you don't fit in with the free thinking ethos of the society.  Then you are abandoned, like a corpse, essentially.  The freedom of thought in freethought is an illusion, not actually occupying reality.  You are free to think freely as long as you come to a very set series of conclusions.  What does all this mean?  It means that our quest for a shepherd is not just a choice between two voices saying 'follow me.'  It's a journey between two voices, one saying 'follow me,' and the other saying 'let me follow you wherever you go, and be your source and strength.'

PJ.
 

Get your fish on

Many many years ago, back in a time before time, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, I played the part of James (big stretch, right), in my church's adaptation of this particular reading.  Yes, the reading in which Jesus reappeared on the beach, and asked his disciples if they had any fish.  It's a fun story, isn't it?  I know I mentioned this on Sunday, but for the benefit of those of you who weren't there on Sunday, here's the reading and my analysis.

 

 

21 Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee.^[a] It happened this way: ² Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus^[b]), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. ³ “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

⁴ Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
⁵ He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”
“No,” they answered.
⁶ He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.
⁷ Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. ⁸ The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards.^{[c] 9} When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.
¹⁰ Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” ¹¹ So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. ¹² Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. ¹³ Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. ¹⁴ This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

John 21:1-14

 

As I said on Sunday, it's a nice story.  It's a story of Peter, waking up early in the morning, and going out on a fishing trip with the rest of the like-minded disciples.  No problem there, right?  Well, hold on Charlie, because there is a slight problem with this setup.  Peter, Andrew, James, John, the rest, they're all out there fishing, partially because it's a nice morning to go out on a boat, but partly because they are going back to their former lives as fishermen now that this whole Jesus thing is all wrapped up.  They followed Jesus around for a while, but then he had to go and get himself executed, and then the fun rapidly dries up. 

 

But hold on, because there Jesus is on the shore, and after they've spent an enjoyable morning catching nothing, he tells them from the shore to let down their nets.  And this mirrors pretty much exactly the calling of the first disciples from the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus tells some rather unsuccessful fishermen to let down their nets after a day of catching nothing.  See a theme there?  You should. 

 

Anyhoo, in Luke's Gospel, they let down their nets, and all of a sudden they are pulling in so many fish that the nets are strained to their breaking point, and the boats begin to sink.  Wow!  Great, right?  Well, only if you're in the business of catching fish.  Which fishermen should be. 

 

Hold on, I'll explain.  You know that they're out there to catch fish, obviously, because why on earth would you be on a fishing boat, with nets, if you didn't want to catch fish?  Why indeed.  As I said on Sunday morning, the thing about boats is that they're not all for the same thing.  They really really aren't.  A paddle boat is not a canoe, and a kayak is not a fishing boat.  Boats are all for different things, and one would assume, naturally, if you're in a fishing boat, with nets and all the trappings, that you're there to go fishing.

 

I mentioned this on Sunday, but the space that we commonly call the sanctuary in the church is also

known as the nave.  What is the nave?  I'm glad you asked, I really am.  The nave is the space in the church where everyone sits, and it's supposed to evoke, for you, the feeling of being in the hold of a boat.  And as I say many many times, nothing in a church is there by accident.  And the layout of the church is no exception.  Have you ever wondered why we have pews and not easy to move, multi-purpose single seat chairs?  Probably because you're in the nave of the church, and as such, you're not supposed to be sitting by yourself.  You're all supposed to be on the same oars, pulling in the same direction.  To what end?  Well, you have the same mission as Peter, who is told by Jesus 'follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men.'

 

The nave of the church isn't just a boat, like a generic boat.  It's a working boat.  It's a fishing boat.  It's a boat equipped with nets and rods and all that stuff.  The church is that boat, and the funny thing is, we don't really feel as though it either is or should be for about 90% of the time.  We feel as though pulling on board fish would be difficult or complicated, or that they'd be a-cluttering the place up a bit if we hauled them on board. 

 

The nave isn't a generic boat, though we may want it to be.  We want it to be all sorts of boats, a paddleboat, a canoe, usually a speedboat filled with supermodels made of champagne flutes, but usually the gist is the same for each and every single intended boat: we want it to be like most boats we would normally go onto, filled with us, and people we like.  People who are just like us.

 

But fishing boats are designed to haul fish on board.  They're going to be messy, smelly, loud, covered in guts, all that.  They're going to be awash with trouble sometimes, and smelling a little salty.  If you are on board the fishing boat, you have to work, you're not just there for a pleasant cruise.  You're there to pull fish on board.

 

You may not like that.  You may get a little bit sulky when you consider that the church may end up filled up to the brim with people whom you don't like, and who are not like you.  And any of us would be a little bit put out if someone other than our sweetheart hopped into the passenger seat of our paddleboat.  But in a fishing boat, you have work to do.  You've got a job before you.  You have work to do.  And do you know what it means when the boat gets so full that it starts to sink?  Do you know what it means when the nets are straining, and when the boats can't haul the nets on anymore?  Do you know what it means for a fishing ship to be struggling under that burden? 

 

 

It means that the fishing boat is successful.  That it's doing the right thing.  It's realizing the purpose for it existing.  When Jesus commanded the disciples to let down their nets for a catch, and they did, they brought on more fish than they could have possibly expected, and more fish probably than they wanted to bring in . But that's the deal.  You and I, as people who work on board these boats, we feel like complaining when we have fish to bring on. We feel like complaining when we have work to do, as any of us would.  Fishing boats, though, are only doing well if they're hauling fish on board.  That's why they exist.  That's partially why the church exists, for us to fulfill the great commission, for us to be part of that legacy of Peter, being fishers of men.  That's why these boats are around. 

 

It's not just that it is a boat, it's what kind of boat it might be.  And the kind of boat it is, is a fishing boat.  A working boat, a boat that you were pulled into as well, lest you forget.  You are part of what makes the boat noisy and smelly and covered with barnacles.  You are part of what makes the boat so full that it sinks, part of what strains the nets to breaking point.  But believe it or not, that's actually a remarkably good thing.  It would be bad for a paddle boat, but it's exactly why fishing boats exist. 

 

PJ.



The first rule of Good Friday is do not talk about Good Friday!

...............

And then there was life.  Oh goodness me.  The real deal about Easter is and always has been life.  It is, to my knowledge, the most life-affirming celebration that there is on the planet.  It is the affirmation of, the celebration of life itself, of promise, of future, of potential, of possibility, of eternal, well, possibility.  Sorry if I'm getting too technical. 

Now, the reason that Easter is such a big deal is that it undercuts the entire understanding that we have about each and every single day that there is.  We have an idea about time as being essentially
linear - each day you wake up, and each night you go to bed, and there's some stuff in the middle, but time only progresses in one direction.  To quote Tyler Durden from Fight Club:

This is your life.  Good to the last drop. 

It doesn't get any better than this.

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

 

 

When Fight Club came out, oh WOW was it ever a big deal.  It was a big deal because it said, maybe for the first time out loud, the truth that we all secretly knew about the way the world worked, and about the futility of all of our lives.  Yes, we all lived each and every single day like this, but nobody ever TALKED about it.  And there it was, on the big screen (or in novel form), and you had this stuff confirmed.  The growing, gnawing unease that there was in your life, you were finally getting it writ large for you.  It was a serious issue.  You'd spent your life filling it with Swedish furniture, and khakis, and coffee and routine, but it was all to do with trying to forget that you were dying one minute at a time.  And Tyler Durden rudely reminded you of that.  And with every tooth that fell out, with every punch thrown, it was a desperate attempt to reclaim life.

 

 

But here's the problem.  You can eschew the khakis, the swedish furniture, the coffee, the cancer meetings, all of it, and what are you left with? Beating each other up, anarchy, death, and war.  Just insane, impotent rage, dedicated at overthrowing the government, the banks, the businesses, making soap, all that, anarchy reigning, but not really getting you anywhere.  You're just replacing Khakis with soap, but not getting at the core issue, which is that this is your life, and it's ending on minute at a time. 

 

Now, on the internet, as I usually do, I've been seeing lots of pictures about the pagan origins of Easter.  This is the picture I've been seeing:

 

 

 



Yes, this is the issue

 

 

 

 

 

Easter's pagan origins.  But this too, doesn't really get to the heart of what we're talking about as Christians, not really.  Sex and fertility are good things, don't get me wrong, but it's more replacement.  It's more replacing Swedish furniture and khakis with sex and fertility.  You're dying, your life is running out, so let's make requests to the gods to give us sex and many children and all this.  And when you look at Easter as celebrated by Christians, you may get a little bit suspicious.  Hey wait a minute, we might say, what's the deal with the bunnies and the eggs and all that. 

 

My answer?  Nothing at all.

 

G.K. Chesterton, with whom you might disagree with quite a bit, said something remarkably astute about the various faiths, and I'll included this paganism business here too.  He said that according to the world, the various faiths all say the same thing, but differ in terms of their robes, their rituals, their various trappings and so on. 

 

But the world is wrong on that.  The various faiths are remarkably similar in their rituals, in their trappings, in their robes, all that, but they differ remarkably in what they actually say.  And this is where the Christian faith in their greatest celebration, in their biggest day of the year, differs so vastly from the pagan celebration.  You may have eggs at home (but not at church), you may have bunnies at home (but not at church), but what is the celebration about?

 

It's not about fertility.

 

It's not about sex.

 

It's not about bunnies or eggs, or anything like that.  It's about life.  It's about real life.  Life that undercuts the assumption that you've had for the entirety of it that things only go in one direction.  Life to death.  Intact to broken.  You've thought your entire life that the second law of thermodynamics was in effect, and that things, including the universe, were running down over time.  And that everything is just going to run out and break own over time, and will fall apart.

 

 

Including you.

 

But the Christian celebration of Easter, the real one, takes all that, and breaks it.  It shows you, in the person of Jesus Christ, that this is not the end.  That life is not going in one direction, to destruction and death and that's it.  In the person of Jesus Christ, for the first time, but not for the last, there could be life.  And not just fertility, not generations, not more children on this planet that will eventually die.  Not more khakis, not more Swedish furniture, not more chaos not more fights.  But more life. 

 

Part of the way through Fight Club, Tyler Durden informs his disciples that they have to give up, and they have to realize that they too will die.  Until then, they are nothing.  Sure enough.  But the overall question that we as Christians have, is that once you realize that you too will die, once you realize that you will die, so will your children, your parents, your pets, everyone you ever cared about, and everyone ever, then what?  Where is any confidence at all?

It's in Christ.  It's in the empty tomb.  It's in the promise of life, even in the face of death, even as the world spins to destruction. 

It's in life.

 

 

 

PJ.