Water water everywhere

If you were in church on Sunday, you'll remember how much water the average Canadian uses in a day.  For those of you who were doubting my assesment that I had on Sunday of 329 litres a day, here's the resource from environment Canada, telling you how much water we're using.  I only get my sources from the tippy top.

But how much do you pay for water?  Given that you use it every day in massive amounts, from everything to flush toilets to washing clothes, to boiling noodles to drinking, to showering every third day, and so on.  You pay almost nothing for it at all.  Yes, it costs money, but for an absolutely vital service, you pay probably a third for it as you do for cable and internet.  We are so used to water being functionally free and easy to get, that we don't think about it at all anymore.

But like with so many other things, it becomes of extreme importance when it's taken away.  It becomes absolutely vital, to the extent that you can't think about anything else, when it's taken away.  Then, all of a sudden, you dwell on that more than anything else ever.  If you don't have water, as people in Regina found out in this season of water main breaks, all the luxuries that you enjoy like cable, internet, beer, wine, spirits, they don't count for too much if you don't have water.

But the point I was trying to make, the major point from the sermon on Sunday, was that although we need water, we need water desperately, we die if we don't have it, our thirst mechanism is so thoroughly worn down that we don't even notice it anymore.  It doesn't occur to us that much that we're thirsty, and we even have a nasty habit of eating to try to satisfy our thirst reflex.  And when we get our sudden thirst on, we have a nasty habit of trying to quench our thirst with diuretics.  You know when you're out in the hot sun, and you think to yourself, 'gosh, an ice cold beer would do the trick right about now?'  Well, you may well be disappointed to find out that an ice cold beer will make you thirstier eventually.  Oh, sure, it seems at first like that'll do the trick, it certainly feels nice going down, tastes crisp, and you feel less parched, but it sucks the water right out of you.  That's what a hangover is, by the way.  Dehydration.

Now, the Gospel reading was talking about living water welling up as a spring for eternal life.  When Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman at the well, he does so by talking to her about living water.  And Jesus is quite clear about thirst quenching - there is only one thing that will do.  There is only one thing that will give us what we need, and won't give us what we don't.  The grace of God is the living water that wells up, and if we are in our baptismal grace, we will never be thirsty again.  We don't have to keep on drawing water, have to keep hauling it back and forth, have to keep on schlepping sacrifices to and from the temple.  His grace is enough, and covers all our transgressions.  It is free to us, it comes without cost, and without burden.

Isaiah 55 tells us to come, those who are thirsty, come to the waters and that we ought not to spend our money on what is not bread, nor our labour on what does not satisfy.  It tells us that there is only the grace of God that satisfies.  But you and I, we do what we do, and we seek more exciting fare.  We know we're thirsty, we know that we are reliant on God's grace, but we get bored with it.  Even though the promise is there that we need, we absolutely need God's grace for eternal life, in the same way we need water to stay alive, but we try to slake our thirst with other things.  More exciting things.  We fill ourselves full of intoxicants and diuretics, things that seem to help, but just make the problems worse.  St. Augustine of Hippo famously said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God, and sure enough, you might as well say that our hearts thirst until they are quenched by God.  We are perpetually thirsty until God's living water quenches us.

What do I mean by this?  I mean that we are desperately craving eternity.  People who don't know about God crave eternity.  Nobody is seriously approaching the vast eventual heat death of the universe we ought to last forever, that the decisions that we make matter, and that our legacy counts for something, which it wouldn't, if we just die and rot in the ground.  We have eternity written in our hearts, we have the desire for eternity inscribed on everything we do, and yet death is ever present in our world.
with the appropriate response, which is to stop doing their homework because nothing matters whatsoever.  Pretty well all of us have in mind the notion that we ought to last forever.

And so, and so, and so, everything we try to satisfy this desire for eternity with that isn't God, has the side effect of making us thirstier, it has the side effect of making us crave God all the more.  We desire him all the more the more things we try to add in the way.

But this thirst we have, the promise is that it would be satisfied.  We are built and designed with a natural thirst for God, and he has made a way to satisfy us.  When we eventually stop trying to cram other things in there, and allow God to satisfy our thirst for him, he satisfies that thirst.  He satisfies that thirst with living water, with the living water of his grace, poured out for us on the cross.  We are thirsty for his grace, and he satisfies it, pouring out water from his side on the cross as he died.

But like with water, we get lazy with it because it is free and cheap and easy to get.  Water is so easy to get that we don't feel much about it at all, we just sort of expect it whenever we want it.  And when it's not there, then it's a problem.  But water isn't free.  Call a plumber, try to buy bottled water, drill your own well, and you'll realize that water isn't free.  It's the same with God's grace.  It isn't free.  It's free to us, but that doesn't mean that it is without cost total.  It has an immense cost to God, and that's what we think about in Lent.  It's not about how much we pay for this grace, it's about what God payed for us.  In a sense, then, the water flows without cost to us, but the grace of God was purchased at the cost of his own life.

Over this next little while in Lent, be mindful of how much water you're using.  Make it a part of your lenten observation.  Think about those who don't have clean water, who would kill for clean water.  Think about all the times when you've wasted water, and thought nothing of it.  And also, think of all the times you've taken God's grace for granted.  Remember the cost of both of those things as you continue your lenten journey.

The two services on Easter Sunday

To begin with, our church will be having two services on Easter Sunday morning, yes that is true.

But there will also be two services at the same time as each of the services.  And you can't really help it.

You see, the funny thing about the Christian season of lent is that participation is entirely optional.  Because the fasting is not only optional, but even if it was mandatory it is unspecified.  That is, you ask people what they are going without for lent, and you'll get a wide variety of answers, ranging from nothing whatsoever, all the way to meat, eggs and dairy.  But involvement in this process is voluntary.  That's what spurs the question of 'what are you giving up for lent,' is that we don't know, and aren't standardized.  And many of us choose to give nothing up.

Not only do many of us choose to give nothing up for Lent, but many of use choose not to observe lent at all!  Now, this may be because we don't go to church except for Christmas and Easter, or it may be because we are part of a church that doesn't really observe the Christian seasons, or whatever.  It could be any of these reasons, and honestly the reason isn't important at all.  What matters is the lenten journey, and the Easter celebration at the end of it.

For you see, at the end of the time of Lent, I will be celebrating Easter Sunday. And the church, if I can put on my magic hat of prognostication, will be fairly full.  And it will be full of people who have not been on this lenten voyage with us.  They have skipped it, and have decided to go straight past the fasting right the way to the joy and the glory.

And they will get it.

You see, you can, in the Christian experience, dash all the way past the gall, past the whipping, past the burdens, past the crucifixion, and end up with the glory of Easter Sunday.  You can do that essentially right away, with no stops on the way.  Nothing is stopping you at all.  And you will be there for the exact same service as everyone else.  Same responses, same sermon, same music, same white banners, all that.  And if you can get all that, if you can skip the grim darkness of Good Friday, if you can skip the ghastly judicial murder of Maunday Thursday, why wouldn't you?  Why wouldn't you just go to church on Christmas and Easter for the high holy days and enjoy them?

And it's more than that.  If you know your stuff, if you know your Bible, even in the bare minimum, you will know that the Bible can be condensed down to John 3:16.  It is the notion that God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, so whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  And if you know this, you know that all you need to do is believe in Jesus and then you'll go to heaven.  And that's enough.  It's absolutely enough.

If you want to find that out, look at the theif on the cross, who believe in Jesus, asked to be remembered in Jesus' kingdom, and was promised that he would go to paradise that day.  And we believe that Jesus did bring him to his kingdom.  And that was all he had to do, was a deathbed (or crossbound) confession, and then he could go to heaven, no problem.  And that's true!  So for those of you reading, those of you who want to go to heaven, you should know that if you want to get there, all you have to do is believe in Jesus, and you're all good.

So why bother with the rest of it?  Why bother with the whole church thing, the good works thing, why bother with the sacrifice, with the piety, with the fasting, with the prayer, with any of it?  Well, the best thing to do is to think about the story of Abram, which we heard in the worship service on Sunday.  He was told by God that he would have a child.  Good news so far.  And he was told that he would have a child past the age that his wife would be able to bear children naturally.  He was told this when he was 75.  He had the child when he was a hundred.  That's a 25 year age gap, as you well know.  And he managed to keep the faith for that time, and the late arrival of Isaac, the late fulfillment of the promise, it made it all the more poignant when he arrived.

So those of us, what do we do while we're here?  We're baptized, we've been promised salvation, we have a guarantee in the blood of Christ of our heavenward journey, so what do we do while we are here?  We learn and do what Jesus would have us do.

Sometimes it's not just about the destination, it's about the journey.  When the destination is locked up,

then the journey becomes important.  Or, to put it another way, you can take the greyhound if you just want to get somewhere, but you can take the train as an event.  They take almost the same time, you get to the same place, but in the one case, the journey is far far far superior.  You and I, as Christians, staring down the vast chasm of Lent, we may say to ourselves that we're not into the fasting and prayer and suffering, and Easter service will still roll around regardless, so what's the point?

It's about why Jesus came to earth in the first place.  He came so that you may have life and have it abundantly.  Does this mean you get to go to Heaven?  Yes, of course it does.  Does it also mean that your life here is supposed to be augmented, sharpened, intensified?  Yes it does.

I'm fond of saying that for a book that tells us ostensibly that nothing you do earns salvation, there sure are a lot of rules, which there are.  And they aren't there to be ignored.  In the same way as God made a promise to Abraham and then fulfilled it a quarter century later, he has made a promise of everlasting life to you, and is planning on fulfilling that too.  But what to do in the meantime?

There aren't two heavens.  There's only one.  You're not going to get into a better heaven by being a better Christian, in the same way as I'm not going to be leading two services simultaneously on Easter Sunday, one for good Christians, and the other for C&E Christians.  There's one service.  But by the time you've been through the fasting and penitence and piety of Lent, you ought to be absolutely thirsting for Easter Sunday.  You will have a hard time moving through the period of lent in its austerity, witnessing the judicial murder on Thursday and Friday of Holy Week, and not absolutely hungering and thirsting for the greatness of the Easter Sunday morning.

In other words, why will there be two different services?  Not because the service changes, but because the audience does.  Those participating are changed by the journey.  Not saved by the journey, but being part of the life and experience that God wants them to have.  If you are around for the services, if you're around for the fasting and the piety, if you're around for the dark times and the lean times, then rounding the corner makes Easter better, and heck, makes the whole rest of the church year better.

So why do you do these things?  Why keep the law, why keep the rituals, why keep the routine, why the fasting why the piety, why the charity?  For salvation?  Nope.  For God's happiness?  Nope.  For your own good?  Bingo.

Jesus came so that you may have life, and have it abundantly.  Not just after you die, but life while you're still alive.

Blessed lent, everyone.

Snake Oil

If you were in church on Sunday, you would have heard me talk about snakes.  As I did.  And Snakes, well, we don't care for them normally.  Again, as I mentioned on Sunday, the official scientific term for fear of snakes is Ophidophobia, and it makes a lot of sense.  There's a good chance that none of you reading this today are herpetologists, and so you don't know much about snakes.  All you know about snakes is that they're all pointy at one end, and some of them can kill you with a bite.  And that's all you need to know.

But the other thing about them is that they are solidly unnerving.  Snakes, having no arms or legs, are amazingly unnerving to see moving around.  Whether swimming, sidewinding, or just sliding around, snakes are completely and wonderfully off-putting.  They're a terrifying thing to see moving around.

Now, no matter who you are, and how herpetologically inclined you may be, the movement of snakes is, well, it's a thing.  We don't like it.  It's not nice to see, and unlike almost everything else we know,with no legs, feet or limbs of any kind, we can't relate.

This is part of the general feeling of malaise with snakes, that there is something just sort of off with them.  They're just sort of off.  Almost alien.

From their forked tongues, to their lack of ears, to their cobra hoods, to their venom, to their swallowing food whole, it's as close as you can possibly imagine to something completely alien in this world.  And the serpent in the scriptures is no different, not really.

The thing about the arrival of the serpent in the Old Testament is that, well, it is something we need to consider, is that it's an encounter with something wholly alien.  The presence of the serpent in the Old Testament has been something of a bugbear for us Christians, as people have a bit of a larff at the notion of a talking snake.  'How silly,' they all say, 'to think of a talking animal.  Such nonsense!'  And yes, if we were talking about a snake, it would be rather silly.  But we aren't talking about just a snake here.

Honestly, this story turns around a couple of issues, and they're both things that we Christians get in trouble for these days - Talking animals and the devil.  The devil, he's fallen out of vogue these days.  He used to be the big boss with the hot sauce for quite a while.  For quite a period of human history, the devil has been an ever present issue, hovering in the background
of what we've been doing.  And it's worth noting that for a creature who isn't described in great detail in the Bible, we sure all know what he looks like, don't we?  Horns, pointy tail, beard, cloven hooves, all that.  And that figure has become largely a figure of fun, as kind of silly, and kind of forgettable.  And because that figure has overtaken the authentic Satan from the scriptures, well, it's been great for Satan.  He's been so thoroughly emasculated, that it is difficult to even talk about him.  We can't even have the chat, because by the time we bring him up, he's been laughed out of the room.  And that's perfect for him.  He's happy for you to laugh yourself all the way into his clutches.  In fact, for the devil, this is a way better strategy than his strategy of possession, of causing fear, of instilling paranoia, or anything else like that.  His current strategy of laying low, of letting us feel as though he either never existed, or if he did, was a bumbling goofball, that strategy works great, because then we're way less likely to recognize him when he shows up.

If you want to know what happened, and not that this is the only thing that happened, but it's part of it, our Biblical literacy dropped.  It dropped way down.  We knew far far less about the contents of the scriptures than we otherwise wanted to.  And we replaced that, by and large, with shorthand for everything.  We figured that Jesus looks like this, and Satan looks like this.

This is how we view the devil and Jesus.  All horns and red flesh on one side, and nice trimmed beard and white skin on the other side.  But there's a point behind our faith being essentially entirely verbal.  There's a point behind the injunction against the making of graven images to be worshiped.  There's a point behind the essence and core of the Scriptures being a verbal, written experience, and it goes back to the point that was made in the Transfiguration, which strangely enough, was last Sunday.

"This is my son, in whom I am well pleased" said the voice from the cloud "listen to him."

This point is so small, and yet is so frequently lost.  In our world in which we like looking at things, in this world of on demand video on a constant basis, in a world of perpetual youtube on our smartphones, it's no wonder that we're not much good at listening, and we're better at looking.  And our desire to look as a shorthand for things is hurting our spiritual growth.  We do waaaaaaay more looking than we do listening, and in doing so, we miss a lot.  The scriptures talk about this, about our words fairly significantly, partially in Matthew 7.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but 

inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will recognize

them by their fruits.  Are grapes gathered from thornbushes,

or figs from thistles?  So every healthy tree bears good fruit,

but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.  A healthy tree cannot 

bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every

tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 

Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Matthew 7:15-20.

What's the deal?  You'll be able to recognize them, and everyone else, by their words, by their fruits. There is an awful lot of listening that has to go on if you're to recognize the devil at work in the world.  He's not going to show up in front of you in red jammies, he's not going to have cloven hooves, he's not going to have a literal forked tongue, he's not going to be so completely obvious.  Except if you listen to him.   

Satan is here to obstruct, to oppose, to confound, to accuse.  And if he is going to tempt you, as he attempted to do with Jesus, it's not going to be by showing up in front of you stamping his cloven hooves and muttering past his beard.  It's going to be by whispering into your ear what you want to do, and what you know you ought not to do.

So, yes, ultimately, as usual, it comes down to listening, as so much does. The Lord of Hosts probably wasn't a good looking white guy with a trimmed beard.  But guess what?  You'll know who he is by listening to him too.  The whole Bible is predicated on the notion that God speaks, and we listen.  We identify the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, by listening, by reading, by waiting and by hearing.

Lent, as I've said like ten hundred times, is a matter of slowing down.  All our sacrifices we make, all our change in lifestyle, in diet, in attitude, ought to come with a heightened sense of hearing.  Once you remove the clutter and detritus, you can listen all the more closely to what God has to say to you, and you can know him through his words.  Lent is a time to slow down, to hear, to appreciate the God you worship.  Be still, and know that he is God.  Find him in the quiet, contemplative stillness.  Don't look for him in a beard and halo, look for him in the words of his scriptures, in the Lord's Supper, and where two or three of you are gathered together.  Listen to him, especially in this time.  As you slow down and listen to the voices, think twice about everything you hear. Be quick to listen and slow to speak.  Muse through each and every single one of the voices that comes up, and know that you will know them by their fruits.  

PJ

Where does God stay when he's camping?

Where does God stay when he's camping?

In omnipo-tents.

I'll see myself out.

No no no, hold on.  Bad jokes aside, this is one of the few moments in the scriptures, the Transfiguration, in which Peter offers to get a tent for Jesus.  At the moment of Transfiguration, Peter looks at Jesus and says to him 'Lord, it is good to be here.  Let us build three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.'  And that's a good place for him to start.  You see, Peter appraised the situation the same way you or I would.  If you find a place where Jesus seems really real, if you find a spot or a moment where God seems to coalesce, you want to keep it pristine.
Have you ever noticed the rich adornment of churches?  Have you ever noticed how elaborate and ornate older churches especially are?  If you wander into ancient sanctuaries, in which the tapestries are rich, the glass stained, and the art representative, you'll be hopefully awe-struck by the beauty of it all.

But, of course, this had the opposite effect from what was desired of it.  If you've ever been to Europe, you will have se

en the massive and elaborate churches, and you will also have seen the masses of people who are clamouring to get inside.  On a weekday.  Not for prayer, mind you, but to look around.  The big, famous churches, like Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, they're crammed full of people all the time, and they're full of people who just want to have a peek around, and a look at things.  And the desire to make a tent for Jesus in which he would live, and where we could always find him, totally backfired, as people became more interested in the tent than they did in the inhabitant.

Now, this remains an issue for us today, in the here and now.  I can't tell you the number of weddings I've done for people who just wanted a nice church to get married in, or baptisms for people who

wanted something to be nice and in a church, but who don't want things to get too churchy.  And in a sense, they're right. They have in mind that they're in a tent, but they're using it as a tent, and not to meet or glad hand with the resident. And we Christians, we exascerbte this problem, as we behave differently, dress differently, and have a different attitude when we're in the tent.

But, of course, as you know from your own lives, it's not so much the tent that's important, is it?  It's the resident.  It's not just the shell that we've made for him, but it's the person who is inside.

We ought to know better, but we don't.  We tend to reduce the Christian faith to magic and sorcery.  We make crosses into talismans, we make prayers into spells, and we make churches into tents.  I had a conversation with someone the other day in which they asked if you put holy water on your bed, you wouldn't have bad dreams anymore.  It's a fair question, and one in which we as

Christians have to admit that we've done a darn fine job of presenting our faith as a matter of magic and sorcery, a matter of explaining to people that if they pray hard, good things will happen, that if they have crosses in their homes, or hanging from their rearview mirrors, then vampires will recoil from them.  We've done a great job of telling people that all they need to do is to own a Bible, to have possession of a cross, to have their children baptized, and to be nominally Christian, and then we're fine.  It's less of the faith, more of the having of things.  And it's that way with crosses, Bibles, churches, all those things.

We build tents for Jesus to keep him where he may still be found.  We build tents in all sorts of places to keep him locked up, to keep him somewhere where we can go and find him if we need to.  We can find him in the spot that we've set aside for him.  And this has the unfortunate effect of making God seem rather small.  He can be found in these buildings we've made for him, or on a mountaintop, or in a temple, or in a certain patch of land, or in a book or anywhere else like that.

God is Spirit, and the time is coming when those who worship God will not worship him in that temple or on that mountain, but in spirit and in truth.

The truth of the matter is that Jesus is not confined to any particular place where you can go and find him, and that's the real, genuine mystery of the Transfiguration.  The great mystery is that Jesus walks up onto the mountain with his disciples, is transfigured, and then walks back down the mountain with them again.  He isn't placed in a tent, he isn't put in a temple, he isn't locked in a bottle of holy water, he isn't trapped in a Bible, none of that.  He's wherever you are.  If you think about the greatness of Christ and the work that he does, the magic is only that God left heaven, and goes to where his people are.  The magic and the glory of it, is that Jesus is fully God and fully man.  That means that up on the mountaintop, he will flash like lightning, he will glow like the sun, but while you're walking around for the rest of the week, he will be approachable, proximate, and human.


This, then, is the glory of the transfiguration, is that up on the mountain, in the temple, in the church, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and Jesus seems so real, and so divine.  In the church, we pray and give thanks, we are enraptured, we are carried aloft like incense in our prayers and worship.  We see the fullness of mercy and truth in elaborate wonder and grandness.  And then we walk down off the mountain, we leave the church, and Jesus seems a lot less clear in his divinity.  He seems a lot less clear in his magnificence.  His divinity is harder to see, because Jesus looks like a regular, everyday guy.  And that's okay.  He looks like a regular guy, because you look like a regular guy.

But he still speaks like God.

The other mystery of the transfiguration is that whether Jesus is lit up like the sun, or whether he's walking around in sandals or whether he's speaking to you from the pages of the Scriptures, he's always going to be divine in his words.  It's not like it would be where he is divine part time, he's always divine.  But whether he's lit up and majestic, or earthy and human, he's still God, if you take time to listen.

This is why the end of the voice from the cloud's one bit of dialogue is so important.  Hidden in there is why Jesus always tells people not to tell about what he has done, this is why Jesus tells his disciples not to tell anyone about the vision that they have just seen, because Jesus doesn't want to be looked at.  He wants to be listened to.  And herein is the magic. That Jesus is with us always.  He understands our human condition because he's been human.  He is part of our lives in a way that a God in a tent could never be.  Look at the story of the wandering people in Exodus, and in there, you see the elders having to leave the rest of the people and go up on a mountaintop and worship Jesus there.  You see the people being separate from God, and trying to find him all over the place, but always in seclusion and in a crowd.

Throughout these forty days of lent, we have Jesus being his most human.  He works as a suffering servant, and he tirelessly tries to work with us fallen people.  And as he gets closer and closer to the cross of calvary, he becomes more and more beaten down, more bloodied, more injured, culminating with his final statements to the world on the cross.  And as he looks down, he says to those who are there: "It is finished."  My work is done.

He doesn't look lit up like the sun anymore, he doesn't look like he's flashing like lightning.  He just looks like a guy, and a dying guy at that.  But the voice from the cloud doesn't tell us to look at him.

"Listen to him."

Nowhere is this more important than during lent, in the throes of humility.

Blessed and meaningful lent to you all.

PJ.

What if Jesus means what he says?

I got disappointed this last week.

Not for the usual reasons I get disappointed, no sir.  This time, it was about something totally different
. This time it was about the notes in my study Bible.  I glanced at my notes, and I was surprised to find that I totally disagreed with them.  I disagreed with them as a Lutheran.

Now, the 'as a Lutheran' distinction is important, becasue here I am, in the position of holding up the merits of the Scriptures as completely inerrant.  This means that the Bible is literally true in what it says, and that we as Christians who read the Scriptures have to let them say what they plainly say.  Okay, great.  Now that we've established that particular rule, then here comes the hammer-blow:

WHY IS THAT SO HARD?

You and I, average Joe Luther, we get a little smug when there are churches that are blessing animals, or using juice for communion, or believing that the earth is like, really really old, guys, and we get all smug and say to them, and to everyone else, that they should just let the Bible say what it plainly says already.  We use this as our ammunition to blast away at other denominations, stating that we, as Lutherans, have the pure, undivided, unadulterated truth of the Holy Scriptures, because we let the Bible just say what it says and we don't try to insert ourselves into it.

Until we do.

Yes, Lutherans, we are as guilty of this as everyone else, just in other directions.  We are people who know what the scriptures say, and that works when we want to hear it, but it works less well when

we don't want to hear it.  Unlike other denominations, though, we're not all bent out of shape about women's ordination, or the age of the earth, but we're bent out of shape about works.  And this ends up being one of our biggest weaknesses.  You see, because of the way we approach works and grace, because of the way that we approach the operation of Christ and his work that he does.  And central to the notion of the Lutheran esthetic is the idea of Grace.

"For it is by grace that you have been saved, and not through works, lest any man should boast"

That's the scriptures saying what they plainly say, and we hold verses like this very dear.  When Jesus tells us that we did not choose him, but rather that he chose us, we hold to that strongly, and show it proudly, show it off to the other denominations that are all works focused, and we pity them for not having the pure Gospel, the pure truth of the Gospel of Christ, that tells us that we are saved by Grace alone.

And that works, until you realize that Jesus has a lot to say about works.  What Jesus has to say about works is desperately cutting, blazing through us like a torch.  What Jesus has to say about works gives us pause for fear and trepidation, it makes us concerned down to our cores in a way that perhaps we can't even articulate, because we want to run and hide from it basically constantly.  We live in perpetual fear of the reality of what Jesus Christ says about works and their place in the kingdom of God.  This is most especially pronounced in the sermon on the mount, perhaps ironically.  The sermon on the mount is part of scripture that everyone claims to like an awful lot, because it discusses people being blessed and so on.  But there is more to it than that.  It doesn't just tell you that you're blessed when people are mean to you (though it does tell you that).  It tells you that you've got some serious stuff to do.  It tells you that if someone asks you to go one mile, you should go two miles with them.  If someone strikes you on the cheek, offer them your other cheek as well.  If someone sues you for your coat, give them the shirt off your back.  And you, average Joe Luther, you have a couple of questions to ask yourself about that, which is that in this situation, will you let the Bible say what it plainly says?

Most of us won't.  Most of us will do our best to wrangle and to force this passage into saying what we want it to say.  And most of the time, what we wrestle it into saying is what we're already doing.  We wrestle and force this passage into making it not just say what we want it to say, we wrestle the passage into instead of it being what it plainly says, we end up wrestling it ito saying hte complete opposite.  When the Scriptures have Jesus saying 'Give to anyone who would ask of you, and do not refuse anyone who would borrow from you,' what we take that to mean is that we shouldn't give to any common rascal, but rather should save our resources for our family, and the people whom we ought to be helping.  Because surely, Jesus doesn't want you to be a doormat, and just to get walked all over by everyone else.

Doesn't he?  Then why did he say that that was exactly what he wants?

You see, we come face to face with the notion of perfection in these passages, and we don't like what we see.  We come face to face with perfection, with the nature of perfection, of what is essentially required to be perfect, and we explain it away.  We say 'Surely, Jesus doesn't want us to be used.  He doesn't want us to be used up, he doesn't want us to be drained of everything, he doesn't want us to enable those who are users, he wants us to ensure that people who work hard get to enjoy their hard work and the fruit of their labor.  Sweat ownership and all that.  But if that's the case, then, why did he tell us to give without ceasing to anyone who may ask, without stopping to question if it would be a good idea or not?

The deal is, at its core and nature, that perfection, she's a tricky mistress.  Perfection, divine perfection, it's a whole other game than we want to play.  You see, if you explain away what Jesus says in these passages as just being idealistic gas, or as exaggeration for the sake of it, then you'll be missing the larger point.  After telling all the people who are there for the sermon on the mount all that stuff, he then tells them to be perfect, as their heavenly father is perfect.  If you're trying to explain this away, if you're trying to tell me, and more accurately yourself that this is big talk and Jesus is just trying to say something completely different, then you're in trouble with who you think Jesus actually is and what he does.

All these things that Jesus talks about in the Gospel reading, these are things that he does for us.  These are things that he does for us out of his own perfection, and we don't think anything of it.  Take a good long look at what Jesus says is important, and then place it side by side with what he does.

"You have heard that it was said 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil.  If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Then, they spit in his face, and struck him, and some slapped him saying 'prophesy to us, you Christ!  Who is it who struck you?' (Matthew 26:67-68)

"If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well."

When they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe ... And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. (Matthew 27:31, 35)

"And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles"

So they took Jesus, and he went out bearing his own cross, to the palce of the skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. (John 19:17)

"Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you."

[the theif said]"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus said to him "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:42-43)

Do you see what's hapening here?  Do you see what's going on?  What Jesus is saying is not vague idealistic gas, it's not just some exaggeration that he's never planning on putting together in the first place, he is speaking real, actual, genuine words about what he is going to do.  What perfection is all about.  This is what perfection is all about ,this is where it lives, is in Christ.  If you explain away his words in Matthew as just being for exaggeration, then you have to deal with the fact that he shouldered all of it, and walked it to the cross, including, by the way his dispension of grace to a common rascal who was crucified next to him, who wasn't exactly the most deserving person in the whole world.  But Jesus is serious when it comes to perfection, and really, desperately puts it out there as the cost and weight of glory and majesty.

So look at his words, and then look at yourself.  I know you're tempted to, but don't explain his words

away, don't sweep them under the carpet, don't claim that they're about something else, because they aren't.  Let them say what they say, and then realize how far you still have to come to meet those standards.  Realize that you can't nor ought you even try, to bend those words to fit your life.  And if the scriptures won't bend for you, then you must bend for them.  Bend how, be perfect?  Not likely.  But if you won't be perfect, how best to bend yourself to these scriptures?

By meekly kneeling on your knees, and being in repentance of all the things you have not done.  Repenting of missing the mark on those standards that Christ has plainly set out for you.  Repent for all the blown chances and missed opportunities.  Because it is for this reason that Christ died.  Not just for other people in their shame and such, but for you.  For your sin, for your shame, for your inattention to the standards that Christ has set out for you, and for your justifying your sin, and smudging the words of Christ.

As before, you don't like this passage.  I don't either.  You don't want Jesus to tell you to be a dormat.  But he does.  You don't want Jesus to tell you to give and give and give to users, but he does.  He not only says it, he does it.  Becuase he is perfect.  And it is his perfection that is the only source for our life and grace and righteousness.

PJ.

Think Fast

Fish on Fridays was something I grew up knowing about.  My family was always desperately protestant, so we didn't hold to a weekly fast or anything like that, but there were people who did, and
growing up in a Catholic school, you certainly knew about it.  And as the weekly fast rolled around, it seemed curiously arbitrary.

First of all, why do fish not count as meat?  They're an animal, aren't they?  Secondly, with the weekly fast rolling around, it wasn't as though people went meat free, it was fish on Fridays, that was the way it was presented.  Now, as a protestant growing up in a Catholic world, that was something to see.  But the other problem with the way it was presented (and I know this isn't how it was intended, before all the regular Catholic readers jump all over me) was that there was some inherant moral benefit to going without meat for a day.

Now, if you think about fasting on face value, it all seems largely arbitrary.  The idea of fasting, whether it be part of Lent, or Ramadan, or a weekly observance involving being a pescetarian for a day, it all seems a bit arbitrary.  And that arbitrary nature can be traced right the way back to the Old Testament, to a time in which the people of God were in the wilderness, and God was giving them the commandments that they were to observe.  And of the commandments that God was handing down, a generous number of them had to do with what you are or are not allowed to eat.  If you're feeling adventurous, go ahead and check this out, and it'll tell you, based on Leviticus 11, what you are or are not allowed to eat.  Yes, that's right, you don't get to eat bat.  Or owl.  Guess Amanda will be delighted.



Now, these laws were put in place by God to set his people apart, to remind them that they were called to holiness, to be a bastion for him in an unfeeling, uncaring world.  In the same way as they were essentially the only monotheists in the area, they were also the only ones to abjure from the eating of pork, to divide the meat from the dairy, and the only ones to not eat bats.  Guess Alice Cooper won't be assuming the mantle of Judaism any time soon.

But as time wore on, people started to get the idea that avoiding pork, shellfish, ostrich, whatever, was a moral act in and of itself.  As though going without was better than having just by nature.

Fast forward to the here and now, and we have the same idea.  We get to thinking that over the lenten season, going without Chocolate is by itself a moral act.  But emptied of its significance, it means nothing at all.  There are basically two reasons to go without something.  First is simple, to remind yourself of the suffering of Christ, and to be cognizant of it all the time.  it's a good discipline to get into, to be aware of Christ's suffering all through Lent, or on Friday, or what have you, and to have that be a part of your life every day.  In the same way that keeping Kosher reminds the Jewish individual every day, at every meal, heck at every snack, that they are set apart by God as chosen people.

Secondly, though, things get a bit more nebulous, and this is where we fail.  The Old Testament reading from Sunday is about fasting, and it talks about the type of fast desired by God.  The fast desired by God is not just a going without, though.  It's not just you shrugging your shoulders, and not having what you might otherwise have.  You see, the way we fast in the Protestant church is lot like the old gas boycott, which just delays our consumption of the good in question, but doesn't alter the underlying habits.  That is, if you're going without chocolate for Lent, the chocolate is still there, just hanging out in the closet.  It's in the pantry, waiting for your binge on Sunday, or on Easter, and the underlying habits are still the exact same as they always were.  But the Old Testament reading from Sunday makes clear that what is desired by God.

3 ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
    ‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
    and you have not noticed?’

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
    and exploit all your workers.
4 Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
    and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
    and expect your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
    only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
    and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

He wants your fast to have real, tangiable results in the real world.  In other words, going without is one thing, but what do you do with the thing you've given up?

For most of us, we either just hide it in the pantry, or just go without buying it for the 40 days of lent, and no harm done.  But imagine, if you will, buying the chocolate that you would have been eating, and giving it away.  I gave up ketchup a few years ago, and all I did was not buy ketchup for Lent.  It was terrible and hard, because I love Ketchup more than I love my parishoners, but I went without it.  And
in the process, I just steered clear.  I didn't use my ketchup budget to become more charitable.  And I should have.

In other words, in the Christian experience, there should be no giving up without giving out.  There ought to be no fasting without an equal and opposite charitable reaction.  when you give something up, there is no neutral space, so what do you do with that space and time that you now have?  As usual, the best guide for this is Jesus Christ himself, who committed the ultimate fast.  He fasted not just of what we fast of, chocolate, dessert, wine, ketchup, all that, he fasted first of the heavenly pleasures, then of his work, then of his friends, his clothing,his life.  And what happened to all that stuff?  It was all given away.  It was given to us.

In the fasting of Christ, nothing that he gave up was just given out to the ether, it was given to us. We were direct beneficiaries of his sacrifices, and his fasting. Whatever he was giving up, he was also giving it out.  This began with his departure from Heaven, and culminated with his suffering on the cross, in which he fasted from life itself, not just giving it up, but giving it out.  Giving it out to us.  We were beneficiaries of his sacrifices, and people who delighted in receiving what he had given up.

But you don't think of it as fasting, do you?  You don't think of the work of Christ as fasting, though you probably should.  And you don't think of your own charity as fasting, though you ought to do that as well.  Whenever you give something away, you are fasting of it.  Whenever you give something to the food bank, you are fasting from that item - you are not eating it, so someone else can.  Whenever you give up clothing, you are fasting from it, and donating it to someone else who can use it.  Whenever you contribute to charity, or buy something for someone who needs it, or give up any of your valuable resources, you are fasting.  And that's the best kind of fasting of all, because it meets the needs that God has put into place in the Old Testament.  What kind of fasting does God want?  The kind that break the yoke of the oppressed, that sets the captives free, that feeds the poor, and so on.

In other words, the type of fasting that God wants, is the fasting that he himself did in the person of Christ.  And thanks be to him that he fasted of his life, and instead of giving it up, gave it out.  To us.

PJ.

The temptation of our Ford.

Why can't I have nice things?

That's a question that dogs us, isn't it?  Most of us have things that look nice, but aren't.  What I talked about at great length on Sunday was the fact that it's easy enough to get things that look okay from a distance, but up close, they're cheap and nasty.  Furniture is a good one.  Most furniture looks okay, it looks alright from a distance, but up close, well, things get a bit more disastrous.  Most furniture today is composed of compressed sawdust and faux leather.  It looks the same as real good furniture.  It doesn't have the same weight or heft, it chips a lot easier, it falls apart a lot faster, but it looks the same as the expensive stuff.

Now, this is an issue for each of us, because we all, almost by nature, want to upgrade our stuff.  Why do you think DIY network and HGTV do so well?  They do well because we all want something a little better than what we have. We all want to get one step ahead of what we're currently looking at.  All our stuff is almost by definition going to be middle of the road.  Because we're middle class.


Yup, if you're reading this on a computer, you're middle class, pretty much.  You have enough to get by.  But you don't have nice things.  Now, here's the deal.  Your middle of the road lifestyle, where the nice stuff in creation is just a little out of reach, that's a lot like the second of the twelve days of Christmas.

You know that song, right, the 12 days of Christmas?  The one that has a partridge in a pear tree?  Well, the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two turtle doves.  But what you may not know about turtle doves is that they were what Jesus' family offered up for his purification at the prescribed day.

22 And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” 

Luke 2:22-24

Now, what you may not know about turtle doves is that they were not the only thing prescribed for the purification.  The book of Leviticus informs new mothers as to what they are to bring forth for their purification - a lamb, or if they can't afford a lamb, a turtledove.  Now, do you see why this is important?

It's important because the family of Jesus, they didn't have everything.  They weren't in luxury.  They weren't given to wealth and excess.  They instead had enough to get by, but not the nicest stuff.  Now, you and I, we're like that too.  We're not starving, we're not living moment to moment, we have enough to keep the wolf from the door.  But we don't have the nicest stuff.  We don't have the best of the best.  We buy cheap vodka, we buy compressed sawdust for furniture, we buy the mugs that chip, the plumbing that leaks, the entry-level cars, and we make do.  And we live in a world in near constant temptation, where the stuff that is genuinely nice, it's just out of reach.  Juuuust out of reach.  We can afford entry level things, but not the nice things.  And so we are in a state of near constant temptation, perpeturally staring at what is nice and high quality, and not being able to afford any of it.

This is the life of Christ, in which he had mid range stuff, but he didn't have the nice stuff.  He had enough to get by, he wasn't starving, but he wasn't living in pronounced luxury.

Now we think about the temptation of Jesus in pretty narrow terms.  We think about his temptation in

terms only of the temptation in the wilderness.  We think about his time with Satan in the wilderness, where Satan told him to turn stones into bread, and Jesus rebuffed him, and would not be tempted into it.  But the temptation of Jesus didn't end there.  If he did work in his father's shop, if he was a carpenter, then he would have been tempted just like you are, with nice things that are just outside of reach.  He would have lived an entire lifetime, his whole professional career, not being able to afford nice things.  And every day would have been a temptation in that regard, especially at the start of his ministry.  You forget, as I do, that he went from being middle class, able to afford some things, but not everything, to being unemployed.  He was engaged in full time ministry, he roamed around from place to place, he promised his disciples that the son of man had no place to lay his head, he was leaving behind any and all comfort that could have existed, and the nice things of this world went from being just out of reach, to being forever out of reach.  And as his ministry wore on, it wasn't about having nice things, it was about losing what little he had.  It went from him being reasonably middle class, or at the very least working poor, to losing his carpentry practice, his friends, his clothes, his life.

All of it.

He knew what it was like to be tempted by nice things.  He knew what it was like to want and to not have, he knew what it was like to desire, and be unable to fulfill that desire.  In other words, he knew

what it was like to be you.  He knew what it was like to be young and powerless, he knew what it was like to care for aging parents, he knew what it was like to work for a living, to have friends die, to have a parent die, everything.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like them,[k] fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Hebrews 2:14-18

You know that your savior was like you in terms of having arms and legs and a head, but you forget that he was like his brothers in every respect, including economically.  He went through scarcity, and at the time in his life when he should have been expanding his business and getting more comfortable, that was when he walked away from it all.  Not that he wasn't tempted to go back to it, either.  In fact, some of his greatest temptations must have come from the promise of returning back to his family and his hometown, which he did after his ministry began.  However, he never stayed.  All the temptations of comfort, of acquisition, of expansion and ease, those were temptations that he left behind.  He left it all because he was like us in every respect but one.



He had no sin.

So all your temptations, all the times when you have craved nice things, all the times when you have looked at what is good and pleasant to the eye, all those times that you've caved and lived well outside your means, those are things that Jesus died for.  He knew temptation but did not go for it.  You know temptation and go for it. And it is the work of Christ, his resistance to temptation, that gives you salvation.

PJ.