Jesus, the original communist.

Communism works on paper.  I'm glad we all agree on that.

It's a good system in theory, isnt' it? Yeah, yeah, I know we're all capitalists here, with our fancy computers and tablets, but communism works in theory.  And no, I'm not talking about Marxism, please don't conflate the two.  I'm talking about pure communism.  It works in theory.

Now there's a reason that things work in theory and not in practice, and that breakdown is normally in the human element.  That is, the reason communism doesn't work isn't because the system is bad per se, but because we are bad at implementing it.  The reason Capitalism works is that we as human beings can be trusted to follow the profit motive - we will work harder for more reward.  We will put more effort in if we expect more of a payoff for it.  If there isn't a larger payday in store for us, then there's a real lack of possibility that we will be motivated by things being just a good idea.  And so we will follow the profit motive, we will be motivated by the possibility that we might earn more, make more, by doing our jobs. And we expect that those who work hardest, who want it most, will earn the most, and rise to the top of the heap.

And capitalism, it's the basis for everything we do.  We understand the world in a capitalistic sense, and because of that, we tend to understand God in a capitalistic sense as well.  This is where works righteousness really comes from, our desire to implant capitalism onto every aspect of the universe.  Works righteousness tells us that it is our works that make us righteous in the eyes of God, that he look at what we have done, the decisions we have made, and will be swayed by the magnitude of our actions.  And although Lutheranism teaches against that, it's still something that sneaks into the minds of essentially each and every individual Christian at some point.  And it usually goes like this:  I work hard in the church, I give 10%, I observe the festivals of the church year, and I hardly ever gossip.  I'll bet that God is delighted with me and what I do.  I do it all for his glory, and thankfully, his glory ends up being my glory too, which is awfully convenient.  God has richly blessed me, his servant, with grace, and love and honesty and humility.



Indeed.  If we do things for God, he will do things for us.  If we keep his commandments, he will bless us.  If we do what he says, he will do nice things for us, and the harder we work, the more we will earn, right?  Well, not really.  This is a situation in which things don't work like that.  It's not as though if you keep God's law more, you will be more blessed, or at least by God.  Not really.   Hold on, I'll explain.

Think for a moment about the 10 commandments.  If you're Lutheran, you ought to know them already, but even if you're not, pretend that you are. And by pretending that you are, you will have the commandments in the right order (none of this graven images as commandment #2 rigamarole).  Now, commandment number four is a pretty clear one, which tells us that we should 'honor your mother and your father.'  That's good advice, kids of today.  But the commandment doesn't end there, though we think it does.  It continues, in Exodus 20:12

'Honor your father and your mother 

that your days may be long in the land

that the Lord your God is giving you.'

The book of Ephesians talks about this.  Ephesians tells us that this is the first commandment with a promise.  Now, if you're a good Lutheran, you will be already asking yourself 'what does this mean?'  Does this mean that if you keep this commandment, then God will richly bless you and make your days long on the earth?  Not really .

For you see, in the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Melancthon tells us that it isn't as though we are going to be blessed more by God if we're good, but rather that doing what God says to do carries blessings all on its own.  If you honor your mother and father, it's not as though God is going to be nicer to you on account of your works, but rather that the commandments of God were given to us partially because they're the best way to run a life.  If you plan on living long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, then the best way to do that is to obey his commandments.  If we could all do that, then we wouldn't need other laws at all!  We would be living fairly and equitably amongst each other constantly.  

But we don't do that.  We don't follow God's laws that well at all. And even when we do, we end up grumbling, saying that it isn't fair, all the things that we have to do and observe while other people seem to float along just fine paying none of it any mind at all.  We grumble, and we grumble all the more when we realize that you can get into heaven without any works at all! All your attempts at keeping commandments, all your tithes and offerings, all your keeping to God's rules whenever you could, it didn't get you anything extra at all.  Just like with the Gospel reading for today, those who had been labouring for the whole day naturally assumed that they'd get paid more if they had been working for longer.  And come the end of the day, they were wrong.  Everyone got the same wage.  No matter how long they had worked, no matter how hard they had worked, whether right away at daybreak or at an hour before the end of the day, everyone got the same wage.  And those who had been working all day were outraged, and complained.  It was unfair that everyone received the same reward!

Yes, it was unfair.  It's unfair that no matter how hard you work, you all go to the same heaven.  It's unfair that those of us who work hard, tithe regularly, do what the Bible says when we remember, it's unfair that we go to the same heaven as deathbed converts.  It's unfair because none of us deserve it.  There is none righteous, not even one.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Period, the end.  So the unfairness comes into it when we think about how unfair it is that Christ should die for us, to break the bonds of sin, and lead us to heaven.  

What we forget is that it isn't our works that justify us before God.  Keeping the commandments doesn't make God bless you any more, but it does lead to a potentially longer, more peaceful life. And that's the motivation right there.

Communist principles tell us that it should be from each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs.  And the Bible, well, it backs that up.  You're not going to earn more heaven than you're currently getting by working hard.  You're going to earn the same reward as always, which is none.  The reward is given to you freely, no matter how much you worked.  So why work? 

Because the work is there to be done.  Because your neighbor needs your good works.  Because there are a great many things to accomplish, because you were given hands and feet and a brain to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for you to do.  And it's when you fail at following through with these things, it's when you botch them up, that's when you need the ultimate communist - Jesus.

Communism doesn't work in practice because we need the profit motive to stay motivated.  We require the profit motive dangled before us all the time, or we won't work.  We won't do anything unless we're being paid well for it.  But Jesus, he took it seriously: From him according to his ability.  He could do what he wanted with what he had.  He could make decisions to give us grace, to be generous and he was generous.  To us according to our needs, because in the midst of our despair, we cried out to him, knowing that we were in bondage to sin and could not free ourselves.  We needed his grace. We could not under any circumstances work our way out of the hole we'd gotten ourselves into.  

And whenever we get tempted to think that there's someone out there who seems to have gotten the same grace as us, who seems to be on the same path to heaven as us, though they don't deserve it, we need to remember that none of us deserve it.  And if working hard doesn't get you any extra reward, why work hard?

Maybe because the work is worth doing.

PJ.

Such talent! $13,513,519,237.50

If you were in church on Sunday, you will recall that I brought this scene from Star Trek up at great length, but here it is.  Kirk asking the great question of the ages.

It's a good question, Kirk.  This scene happens when Kirk is selling an antique pair of glasses to an antique dealer, and is offered a hundred dollars.  And not only is that an old form of currency, but those are 1980s dollars, and Kirk has zero frame of reference for it. In the same way that we have no frame of reference for it either!  

Do you know what a dollar could buy in 1986?  Do you remember?  There's a good chance that you don't or that you never knew.  In 1986, you could send a letter for 22 cents.  You could buy a dozen eggs for 87 cents.  Heady days.  But if I was to give you a hundred dollars for 1986, you may very well ask the same question that Kirk asked.

So, knowing that we're largely ignorant about how much things cost even three decades ago, how much could we possibly know about money from two thousand years ago?  For you see, the gospel reading from Sunday was the parable of the servant who owed ten thousand talents.  Owing ten thousand talents sure sounds like a lot.  Owing ten thousand talents seems like a lot of money, especially the way the man acts when he is asked to pay it back.  But is ten thousand talents like ten thousand dollars?  Could you consolidate that loan and pay it back in installments?  

Well, if you were paying attention on Sunday, you'll know that the odds of that man paying back that debt is just about zero.  No chance at all.  A talent of gold is roughly 75 pounds.  75 pounds of gold in today's dollars will set you back $1,351, 406.61.  That's one talent of gold.  If you owed that much debt, it would be crippling enough to wipe you out, and your children, and probably your grandchildren too.  It would take generations to get out of this debt.  But think not just about this one talent.  Think about the ten thousand talents, the ten grand of talents which, when added up, will cost an awful lot of money.  In fact, the amount of money we're talking about is so big that you can't even really picture it.  It will add up to a whopping total of $13, 513, 519, 237.50.  That's actually more than it was earlier in the week.  It crept up.  Now, this is 13 billion dollars we're talking about, and 13 billion is not as easy to come across as cookie clicker might lead you to believe.  For you see, 13 billion dollars is not too far off from the GDP of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Yes, all 65 million people in the DRC working for a year would make what that man owed.  For him to work by himself, it would take him 65 million years to pay it all off.  Do you know what happened 65 million years ago?  Sure you do. If this guy were to work every day from the time the dinosaurs died out until today, he might be able to pay this off. 

You can see that this is a preposterous amount of money.  It's an incredible amount of money to be contemplating.  You can't even picture it, it's so big.  I've done my best to make this into an amount of money in real world terms, but when you're talking 13 billion dollars, it's still too big to even contemplate.  But what you need to know, for sure for sure, is that nobody's paying this debt off by themselves.  You're not going to be consolidating that loan, you're not going to be figuring that out, the only thing that's going to happen is that you're going to be tossed into slavery.  You, and your family, and the generations that follow you for a million generations, will be enslaved on account of that debt.  That's the thing, is that the weight of what is owed is so big, it will never be payed off.  

And it is into this world that the master of the servants comes.  The one to whom all is owed.  The one who holds the purse strings that all this story is attached to.  The one who holds the balance, and holds the debt in his hands. And when it comes time for the accounts to come due, those hands have the power to free, or to enslave.  And it was this edge that the servant was walking, that he would either be freed or enslaved, crippled for lifetimes.  And so the servant, upon being told that he was going to be sold into slavery, threw himself at his master's feet, and begged for mercy.  And surprise of surprises, that mercy was given.  The debt was wiped out, eliminated.  No longer was a single cent owed, no longer did the man owe his master a penny, if we still even had those.  No debt, no slavery, 13 billion dollars wiped out in the blink of a eye.  

And the servant left 13 billion dollars to the good. and while he was on his way out, he came across a fellow servant of his, someone who owed him money this time.  And this man who had been forgiven so much, he saw his fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii.  100 denarii will clock in at about two thousand dollars in today's money.  That is not that much in comparison.  Compared to what had been forgiven, it's nothing.  Nothing at all.  But the man who had just been forgiven the ten thousand, we'll call him Simon, grabbed the other man who had owed him money, we'll call him Adrian, and choked him, saying 'pay back what you owe!'  And Simon had Adrian tossed in jail until he could pay that money back.  

This is one of those things that seems on paper like it should make total sense.  It seems obvious that in this world, if you have been forgiven much, that you too ought to forgive.  But that's the funny thing about paper, is that it doesn't always hold up too terribly well in practice.   For in honesty, we see this on paper, but it doesn't make sense when applied to our lives.  And there's a simple reason for this.  

Have you ever wondered why stories about plucky underdogs always seem to do well?  Have you ever wondered how it is that stories about bullies getting their cumuppance always seem to do okay even among bullies?  Isn't it strange that everyone seems to enjoy the story of the plucky underdog, the one facing great odds, even the ones who are involved in putting the common man down? Have you ever found it to be strange that capitalists can be Christians, and not even blink when it talks about how the rich won't enter into the kingdom of Heaven.  Have you ever found it slightly odd that adulterers like King David can claim to be a follower of God, even though they are breaking his laws flagrantly?

Well, David found out, through Nathan the prophet's words, that there was more to life than that.  David had to have it explained to him, that the laws that he felt others should keep were the laws that he was in the midst of breaking.  In that same way, this parable is before us, telling us that the way we know people should behave is not the way we behave.  We have people by the throat all the time, every day, and we feel as though it's the right thing to do, that we are justifies, that no matter how much we have been forgiven, people still will owe us more. It's something that plagues us all universally. As the main characters in our own stories, nobody ought to dare ask us for much of anything.  And yet, this parable, like all good stories, shows us a test case, and forces us to agree that yes, this man ought to have forgiven.

The real juice for us ends up being that we need to dwell more on the ten thousand talents.  Instead of asking "is that a lot", we need to be mindful of how much it is. We are forgiven much so often that we lose track, and the confession of sins on Sunday morning becomes so much noise.  But being aware of your sins, instead of despair brings great joy and peace.  It's largely the same as pretending you don't have a medical problem, and evading all the symptoms instead of, you know, googling them.  And then promptly seeing a doctor.  Knowing your sins, turning them over to God, is the only way to get rid of them.  If you forget, if you instantly move on from those sins, and forget how much Christ suffered on your behalf, then grace gets very cheap. Then you get vengeful.  Then you get angry.  

But knowing your sin, and knowing the grace of Christ, makes it all the more likely that you, in the depths of your despair, will find solace and grace, Christ's love poured out for you.  And the guilt and shame and damnation will evaporate.  And once you know that, then you will know why the scriptures say the following words - "Freely you have received.  Freely give.'

Be like the boy!

Do you remember that classic simpsons episode where the whole town was told to be like Bart Simpson?  If you don't recall, here is a vital clip from it.

Yes, it's a classic episode, one in which the entire town, with the notable exception of Lisa, gets on board with the idea that they ought to be more like Bart, and do whatever they feel like.  And it starts

out okay, with people expressing themselves, doing stuff they'd always wanted to do, and so on, but gradually, it gets out of control with nobody doing their jobs, nobody enforcing rules, and the entire town of Springfield going to the dogs.

Now, this is not entirely different from the reading that we had from the Gospel today.  For in our Gospel reading, Jesus set someone aside, a child, and said to the people who were assembled around him that they all needed to be more like this child.

How old was the child?  Who knows.  Old enough to stand by himself, that's really all we know for sure.  But what we do know is that this child was placed in from of the group of probably very serious, very religious people, and they were all compared to him.  Unfavourably.  If this was the Simpsons, the matter that the nice, sophisticated people would have been told to pay attention to would be that they weren't expressive enough, and needed to get in touch with their feelings more.  But with Jesus, it goes in a different direction.

The big question that exists in our minds, is what on earth are we missing that children have?  In our lives, we grow, we mature, we get better at everything, we excel, and we develop.  And what do we leave behind?  Our baby teeth, maybe, but is there anything else that children have that we adults don't?  Well, listen to what Jesus says.  He tells us that we ought to humble ourselves like that child.  Yes.  Humility.

Humility is one of the first casualties of growing up.  We dont' take to it overly well.  We don't get more humble as time goes on, quite the opposite actually.  We get very full of ourselves. We get so full

of ourselves, that if the pastor pulled one of us up in front of the church, and said 'you know, this would be a much better congregation if we were all more like this fella/lady.'  And we would think to ourselves, 'yup, spot on.'

The more we grow, the more we learn, the more we accomplish, the more the humility leaves us.  It abandons us, and is replaced by our thoughts about how well we are doing, and how much we've done, and how neat we are.  These thoughts are semi-universal, and occupy a great deal of all of our time.  And we tend to compare all the other people we meet unfavourably to us, seeing that they rank solidly beneath us.  This is the lack of humility that Jesus was talking about.  He knew that the very respectable people who had crowded in around him were not exactly the most humble people on earth.  They were people who, like people in churches today, spent a lot of time trying to look good and to do the right things.  And it's crazy to think of, that the church is a hotbed of pride, but you best believe that it is. 

For humility, real, genuine humility, carries with it a few hallmarks. One of them is this one, where you realize that you are going to have to be given direction on your life.  Children, at least up to a certain age, do this.  They may do it reluctantly, they may mope, they may groan, but they do it.  And even if they don't do it, even if they break the rules, they at least acknowledge that you have the right to make and enforce the rules, and to tell them what to do.  But that goes away.  It goes away, and then we have a way of fighting back against our parents, and everyone else, who may or may not tell us what to do.  Nobody gets to tell us what to do.  Nobody, not anyone anywhere, gets to tell us what to do, or how to behave, or anything.  Nobody dares tell us what to do.  The cops, the government, teachers, bosses, nobody gets to tell us what to do.  And that extends over to God.  He doesn't get to tell us what to do either.  All those words in the Bible are just so much noise, all those commands in the Bible, just so much ink, as we look at that in the same way as we would advice from an aging parent.  Oh, sure, that may have worked in the time of the dinosaurs, but it's absurd now.  We roll our eyes, we push our parents out of the picture, and we have no more time for them.  We have a habit of pushing those fuddy duddy parents out of the picture, and not taking their advice in the way we used to.  

And it's the same way with God.  Back in the day, when you were in Sunday school, when you were in Confirmation class, you took it all so very seriously.  There were things you were not supposed to do.  When you were a child, you took all those directives from God, from your parents, from your school, all so very seriously.  But then after a while, you found out that you could get away with it, that nobody would stop you, but that those rules stood in the way of what you wanted to do.  So you turned your back on all of it, even if you thought it was a good idea to begin with, and especially if you think it's a good idea for other people to do.  And it was your lack of humility, your opinion of yourself, that led to you looking at all those rules that you think are a good idea for everyone, and saying that you are by no means required to observe them yourself.  The better you think you are, the less likely you are to listen to anyone who has any advice for you.  Including God.

But there is another reason that that child was set aside by Jesus for us to look upon and to emulate.  That thing that the rest of us are missing is that we refuse to let others love us.  Think about your children.  They get to that day, that special day, where they wipe the kiss from their faces, where they say 'mooooooooom!' every time a hug or kiss is offered. My own mother mentioned this to me, saying that there would come a day in which I would refuse to let her love me.   Children won't let anyone love them, least of all you.  They resist love, and they become standoffish.  And that's what we do.  We get standoffish, we walk away from love, and we avoid affection, from our spouses, from our parents, from pretty much everyone.  We become prickly pears, we become difficult, sandpaper people.  And all the while, our parents are chasing us, saying 'let me love you!'  And this is what God

the father does.  The whole Bible is a big long story of God chasing us, chasing after us, pleading with us 'let me love you!'  And how does God love us?  God so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.  And this is a kind of love that only children, and those who humble themselves like children, can understand.  Only they can understand that there is love that is shown by someone doing something for you.  By someone providing you with all that you need, the way were loved when we were children.  That kind of love, that as adults we don't really get.  We keep on saying 'stay out of the way, I can do this, I don't need help, I don't need you to do anything for me, I'm fine!'  As our parents chase us, we keep on saying the same thing.

And it is only if you are humble that you can be loved like this.  It is only if you look at the person trying to love you and understand that they are better than you at something, that you can be loved like this.  You have to be humble enough to see that, to see that you are less than them at something, and can be loved by them, in them doing things for you.  You can only really be loved by God in the all-

availing sacrifice of Jesus on the cross if you're humble enough to realize that this is God doing everything for you, because you can't do it yourself.  You can't manage righteousness, you can't manage holiness, you can't manage any of that stuff, you're still a child.  If you have that humility, then you'll be able to accept that gift. If you're insisting that you can do it all, then you will be missed.  You will be beat down by the world, by sin, that you can't possibly hope to deal with.  But humble yourself, and you will be exalted.  If you are humbled, you will be lifted up.  If you can be humble, humble like a child, then you can both be directed, and loved.  But if you insist on going your own way, you'll lose it all.  Hear the words of Christ.  Humble yourself like this child, and you will enter the kingdom of heaven.  And the most wonderful thing about humility is you can't fake it.  Pride will show itself no matter what.  And so will humility.  There's an easy test.  If the idea of anyone being shown to you, behold the man style, and being told about them being an example for you to emulate bothers you, then you still have a lot of humility to learn.  But the great relief is that that's what Jesus is all about.  Take his yoke upon you, for he is gentle and humble of heart.  For his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.  And he's the ultimate example of someone who can freely say 'do as I say, and as I do.'

PJ

Much grace. Very wow.

The Gospel reading for this Sunday was the one in which Jesus gets as close as he gets to being genuinely offensive.  He gets as close as he gets to being upsetting.  And normally, what we're used to is Jesus being offensive in a particular way, offensive to the Pharisees, calling them whitewashed tombs.  Offensive to the Chief Priests, calling them a brood of vipers.  Offensive to those who figured
that they had it all together, and that they had no real need for God even in their faith.  They figured that God had no place in their faith, which is where an awful lot of American Evangelical Christianity is headed, really. You know, when people say that the Bible is the most important book in the entire world, but have zero idea of its contents?  Yeah, that one.

And yet, in this case, Jesus talks to a nice Caananite woman who asks him for help.  And the disciples tell Jesus to send her away, to be done with her.  She's bugging them, she's in the way, she's loud, she's insistent, and she has real needs.  And the disciples say to Jesus - 'send her away!'  Get rid of this loud, yappy woman!  Send her away for she follows us and bothers us!

And so Jesus tells this woman that he has been sent to the lost sheep of Israel.  Simple statement, really.  He has not been sent to the Caananites, and tells her as much.  So she continues to pester him, continuing to say 'help me, Lord!'  And so Jesus replies that it is not right to take the children's bread, and throw it to the dogs.

Ouch.

You really can't read that a whole bunch of ways.  You can't read that and think, 'no, Jesus wasn't really calling this woman a dog.'  Wasn't he?  Are you sure?  We're part of a church that believes and confesses that, among other things 'is means is,' and yet dog doesn't mean dog?  Yes it does.  It really
does.  You can almost hear the air being sucked out of the room, when Jesus looks this woman full in the face, and tells her that she is a dog.  Oh wow.

Not nice, for a guy who is known as being meek and mild, is it?  Not nice at all.  And why oh why would he look at this woman and call her a dog?  Why would he look at her, straight at her, and call her a dog, and say, essentially, that she is unworthy of the good grace that Jesus would lavish on the people of Israel?

Well, maybe Jesus wasn't the first one that day to treat her like a dog.

Yes, our eyes stop traditionally at the words of Jesus there, saying to this woman that she is a dog, and rightly so.  But there is more to it than that, for the disciples who were there, who saw this Caananite woman, they used words and language that they would use for someone really unimportant.  Someone who was essentially beneath them.  Sort of like a yappy dog.  They told Jesus to send this woman away, tell this dog to get lost already!  Get her out of here, and quit wasting our time, quit taking up our space.   And the disciples have done this other times too, mainly with children, telling the parents of the children to get those kids out of there, and to quit cluttering up the savior.  And Jesus responds to the children in the same way as he does with the Caananite woman, which is by showing them as an example of faith to the dismissive disciples.

Isn't that crazy.  Jesus tells her that she's a dog, which she is, according to the disciples anyway, a yappy, insignificant presence that should be shooed away while the grownups are talking, and she replies with 'yes, yes I am a dog, and yes, all I can hope for is to eat the crumbs that fall on the floor.  Which is why I'm begging.'

Great is your faith, woman!  Great is your faith as someone who has been told that she is a dog, and she responds and says that she is, and is begging at the feet of the Lord.  And it is this that so many other people fail to understand.  For in reality, the only one who deserves the bread of God's grace, the bread of heaven, the bread of salvation, is Jesus Christ himself.  He is the only one, the only son of God, who has a seat at the table.  The rest of us don't have a seat at that table.  We don't get a spot.  And when we approach the throne of God's grace, when we approach the banquet hall and jump up on the table, it's as though we are dogs, leaping up to steal the bread off the table.  The yappy, pushy, drooly dogs who steal food from the children.  And most of us fall into that category, and so too did the disciples.  They fell into that category as well, and all of us would hate to be put into that camp. We wouldn't just be offended for the woman, but also for us.  We are all collectively offended on our own behalf with the reality that it isn't right that we would be seen as begging dogs.

But we are.  We all are. The sooner you get over that, the better it will be.  The sooner you get over the fact that you don't deserve the food at the table, the easier it will be to accept the food that is given to you.  For the Caananite woman, the disciples, the Pharisees, the Saducees, the Chief Priests, the scribes, and you, you're all begging at that table.  None of you are the children who deserve the bread.  And it is only through understanding that, that any bread is given.  Any dog, cat, any type of animal who believe that they deserve a seat at the table are perpetually chased away.  The more you force your
way to that table, the less likely it will be that you will be admitted.  The disciples seem to forget that quite often, believing that they deserve a spot, and that they are the children who deserve the seat at the table.  But they forgot their real status as beggars, in the same way as the Pharisees and chief Priests did.  That was their biggest problem, was that they were so into God that they had no need for him.  They had no need for his forgiveness and love, because they had earned their reward by themselves, at least in their own minds.

But the reality of the Christian church is that we are all beggars hoping for scraps.  We are all dogs beneath the table, none of us deserve God's grace, none of us get to walk straight up to the front and sit down at the best spot.  As Jesus says at another moment that when invited to a feast, you shouldn't take the best place of honor, because you will almost certainly be moved down the bench in shame.  Instead, you ought to take the seat of least honor, so you can be moved up.  And yes, the lowest of all places is on the floor.  Begging.

We all beg from God.  We all beg because we have no health in us, we are sinful by nature and cannot redeem ourselves.  We have erred and strayed by our own fault, by our own most greivous fault.  There is nothing we can hang onto of our own merits that will bring us up to that table. So we beg.  And God gives.

Through Christ, the riches of God are poured out upon us.  We are adopted as children through Baptism, given bread and wine at the table in communion, and given forgiveness of sins through the cross.  And, to quote the book of Romans:

 'For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.  

The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, 

so you live in fear again, rather the Spirit you received brought about your

 adoption to sonship.  And by him we cry 'Abba, Father.'  

The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.  

Now if we are children, then we are heirs.  Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.'

Romans 8:14-17a

This is why we have a spot at that table.  Because we have been adopted into God's holy family through the suffering and death of Christ.  Any time that you feel as though you are offended if Jesus were to call you a beggar at the table, remember that that is exactly what you are.  A fed beggar, a satisfied beggar, an adopted beggar, but ruin comes upon you, the nation of Israel, the scribes the chief priests, the elders of the people, when they forget where they came from.  It's merit all right.  Christ's merit.

PJ.

The perfect storm

Here's the thing.

We figure that we're a pretty advanced people.  We're a pretty smart bunch, who have control over a whole bunch of things. We are able to figure stuff out, do math, have calculators and tvs, use computers and the world wide web, all that stuff is wonderful and great.  And we fall back on that stuff because we have spent
our entire lives standing on the shoulders of giants.  Every generation learns a bit more than the one before, which is why a century ago, people were mainly riding in steam locomotives, and now there are essentially none.  We have advanced to a time in which even things like fax machines are seeming to be horribly out of date, and so we have a bit of a snooty attitude about the people who lived in the past as though they were a bunch of dummies.  Which they were, obviously, but probably not any worse than the dummies who live today.  

For the thing is, that for all our science and advancement, we still haven't figured out how to make sure that storms stop when we want them to stop.  As advanced as we are, we are still subject to the whims of the weather.  We can't stop any of that nonsense.  And when it comes to that, the people who live right on the land, whose lives and livelihoods are tied to the land and the weather, they know it much better than we who are sedentary city dwellers do.  

I know that we look down on the people of the Bible as being bottom dwelling bronze age goatherders, but honestly, the disciples would have been savvier about the weather, and related issues, than I am.  What do I do when it rains?  I go inside, and I wait for it to stop (or I ride my bike, one of the two), and that's what I do every time.  And beyond a slight scheduling inconvenience, that's as bad as it gets.  But the disciples, especially Peter, Andrew, James and John, they knew what it was to be in a storm.  They knew what it was like to be tossed by the wind and the waves.  For them, there was to be no retreating back into a house, no hopping in the car and turning on the wipers, if they were out on a boat, they were going to have to wrestle against the storm just to get safely back to shore.

This is what makes the miracle of Jesus walking on the water as important as it was.  Because it happened right before people who really knew what it would mean.  The men who were desperately rowing against the
storm knew they were in trouble, and knew, quite clearly, that they were unable to do anything to change it.  All they could do was to work within the rules that they had been given, but could do nothing to change the situation that they were in at the time.  

And there comes Jesus, walking to them upon the waves. Doing what was clearly impossible for human beings to do.  Strolling towards the boat calmly, as though nothing was wrong.  And he approached the disciples, he did so with assured, demonstrated mastery over the elements of earth.  And he walked towards the disciples, who thought he was a ghost.  

And it was at that moment that Simon Peter asked Jesus that if it was truly him, that he should command Peter to walk across the waves to him.  And Jesus commanded it.  So Peter got out of the boat.  And this is where things started to go wrong for Peter.

Peter, walking towards his Lord on the waves, when he saw the wind and the waves, and the storm, began to sink.  He began to sink because he knew, as any good sailor does, that walking on the waves is impossible.  And knowing that, he began to sink.  He took his eyes, his attention, his focus, and his faith off of Jesus, and placed all that on the waves and the wind and the sea.  And then he tried to hold himself up, eventually realizing that he couldn't.

And if you start to sink, you start to drown.  And drowning, well, it's a major problem, and a difficult thing to rescue people from.  For you see, if someone is drowning, and they start to sink, then the worst thing to do is to swim out to them and rescue them just on your own..  They'll drag you down extremely quickly, and try to use you as a life raft.  All they can think of is trying to survive, trying to take the next breath, trying to make sure they'll survive the trip to shore.  And they will grab onto whatever they possibly can, in order to use it to survive.  And this is why we can't swim out to each other!  We're all in the same sea.  We're all in the same storm, and obviouly none of us can make the storms cease just by speaking.  It's not possible for us. The best way to rescue someone from drowning is to have feet firmly planted on the ground, and toss them something that will help, something like a pole or a rope, but if they're too far away, then how on earth can you get out to them?  

Well, when Jesus was walking on the water, he was showing a couple of things.  First of all, his mastery over all the elements as the eternal God who made heaven and earth, who set the limits for the seas, and so on.  He showed himself to be the same as the God who calmed the storm in Jonah's day, the same God who parted the Red Sea, and the River Jordan, the same God who made it rain in Noah's day, and stopped that same rain after 40 days.  But he also showed that this is the God who, whether incarnate as a man or not, is
not tied up and tied down and dragged under by the storms and waves that afflict us.  This the the issue behind Jesus as a savior, is that he isn't subject to the same whims and whiles as we are as human beings.  He is the only one who can rescue us from where we are drowning in our own personal storms, because he's the only one who is not pulled under by these storms.  He comes to us, walks across the surface of the storm, walks to us above the turmoil, above the weeds that drag you down, above the riptide that drags you out, and as your strength falters and you can't take one more breath, He reaches out, plucks you out of the water, places you in the boat, and makes the storm to cease. 

And then he says something very simple.  The same thing he says to all of us.  The same thing he says to all of us when the storms seem very real, when death and disaster and calamity and fire and pestilence and unemployment and financial desperation surround us, he says something very simple.

'O you of little faith.  Why did you doubt?'

When we see the grace and strength and power of God, the power to transcend any and all storms of our lives, the power to go beyond what is making us sink and plummet, the power to go beyond what is causing us to disappear beneath the waves, the power to rise above it all, and to pull us out of it.  This is what Jesus continues to say to you now, you know.  As the storms rise all around you, as you look to the wind and the waves and begin to panic, as the water rises and it's all you can do to just keep your lips above the surface of the water, and that's when you need to keep your eyes on the one who doesn't sink.  All your struggling, all your waving of arms and tilting of your head has accomplished nothing.  That's when you absolutely have to keep your eyes on the Christ who is above it all, the only one who can save, the only one who can rescue.  He can rescue because he's not part of the same system we are, he is in the world but not of the world.  And so the wind, the waves, the turmoil, the struggle, the seaweed and death itself, no longer has any dominion over him.


PJ.

Scare-city

For those of you who don't know, my mother is a numismatist.  And as a numismatist, she would frequently have people stop by with their treasured family heirloom coins which were old as dirt, and they'd expect them to be incredibly valuable.  Unfortunately, for most of the people who bring stuff in, they find out that what they're bringing in is as common as dirt, too.  For counterintuitively, the age of a coin doesn't determine its value.  The value of coins is determined by the value of everything else - rarity.  If a coin is rare, it is worth money.  If it is common, it is essentially worthless.  For example, here is a canadian coin that is worth $253,000.  It is a penny from 1936.  And it's only worth so much because there is a tiny dot under the date.  Most of the pennies from that date don't have that dot.  Only three of them are known to exist.  That's why it's expensive.

Now coins, as I said, are like everything else.  They're like everything else in that cost is based on scarcity.  If something is common enough.  If it is rare, it is expensive.  So something like water, or air, is tough to market, since it is all over the place all the time, and therefore is incredibly thrifty.  The only time that changes is when you enter into a marketplace in which that item is limited, and hard to find.  Then scarcity dictates that the cost goes way up.  Think for a moment about the disastrous Woodstock '99, in which the scarcity of things like pizza and water made the cost balloon up to $12 for pizza and $4 for a half litre of water.  In 1999 dollars.  This sort of price gouging is only possible if
there is relative scarcity, which dictates that the thing you wouldn't pay a penny for at a restaurant now

suddenly makes sense at Woodstock.  And of course, we all know the most flagrant offender, which is movie theatre snacks.  The sign up at the movie theatre says that you can't bring any outside food or drink into the theatre, which makes sense, because if you could, then nobody would ever buy movie theatre popcorn or drinks.  Because they're incredibly expensive.  They cost about 12 times what they're worth, and the only way you could possibly get away with charging that much money for them is if you had no other choice, which is exactly the point.   If you want a reasonable snack available from the movie theater, then you're going to have to sneak stuff in, by strapping it to yourself, or by putting it illicitly in your purse, or whatever.  The staff and owners know that if they give you the choice, you're going to buy a two litre bottle of pepsi from the supermarket, instead of the small pepsi from the movie theatre, probably for a comprable price.

This notion of scarcity is what drove the Gospel reading from Sunday.  The reading in which Jesus feeds the five thousand.  And he feeds them in a very specific area.  He feeds them in a desolate place where he had retreated to after hearing about the death of his cousin, John the Baptist.  Upon hearing that his cousin had been slain by Herod, Jesus retreated in sadness into a desolate place, but the crowds followed him.  And what do you know about desolate places?  Well, what do you know about Woodstock '99?  You know that there was scarcity, it was a desolate place, and therefore people could charge insane, absurd amounts for their products, and people had to pay it.  And after the crowd had been with Jesus all day, they were hungry.  And Jesus was faced with a famished crowd, and a desolate environment in which to feed them.  And then, upon asking if there was any food around, he was informed that they had five loaves and two fish.

The food that they had, at that point, was extremely scarce.  Five loaves, two fish, for a crowd of five thousand men, plus women and children.  There were that many people to feed with this amount of food, and given all that, it would be incredibly easy to sell the loaves and the fish to the highest bidder, to sell them for max money, and make a reasonably generous profit.  And for the disciples as well, men
who made their living selling fish, men who wanted the highest value for the fish they brought in, Peter, Andrew, James and John would have spent their entire lives waiting for a situation like this, in which they could sell a relatively meager catch for big bucks.

But what Jesus does is not to feed himself, not to feed his closest companions, what Jesus does is to essentially put an end to scarcity itself.  He takes a limited resource, a finite resource, something that does not have enough to go around, and makes it unlimited.  The loaves and fish which would have commanded a hefty price moments ago, now were without price, without cost, because they had been so successfully multiplied.  It wasn't just as though the people were fed, but they managed to collect basket after basket of leftovers afterwards.  There was no scarcity, there was no want.

This echoes the sentiment found in the Old Testament reading, that we ought to come to the land that God has prepared, that we ought to go to a land that is overflowing with milk and honey, that is brimming with abundance.  The reading tells us to come and buy without price, and without cost, to not spend our work on what does not satisfy.  And most importantly, it tells us to partake of what has been prepared for us from before the foundation of the world.  Not just in terms of food to be eaten, but to suggest to us that for the first time ever, since the creation of everything, that scarcity itself could be beaten.

Scarcity governs everything we do in this modern world.  We live and die by it.  We spend our lives working with dwindling resources, we spend our days thinking about and pondering the fact that our resources are running out.  We are running out of oil, food, water, aerable land, and all sorts of other resources that are vanishing before our eyes.  And the greatest resource of all, time, is similarly running out.  We are running out of time to do things.  Our lives are goverened by the clock, by the calendar, by birthdays which come and go and leave us with a sense of lethargic depression as time ebbs on, and as we run out of it.  There is more sand in the bottom of the hourglass than at the top.  But the presence of Christ at the feeding of the five thousand reminds us that what he came to beat was scarcity itself.  When he says to us that he came so we may have life, and have it abundantly, he isn't joking.  He came that the whole concept of things running out, of there not being enough, that great curse laid upon the world when Adam and Eve sinned, that they would not have enough and would have to work to stay alive, all that was flipped upside down with the presence of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who takes limited resources, and multiplies them abundantly, beyond what anyone could possibly consume.

It's good news for us.  Good news for us who live in a finite world that is running down.  Good news for us who are people who are habitually running out of time, who get to the end of the paycheque before the end of the month, who find themselves worked into a corner and who never have enough of

anything to go around, who are squabbling over oil and water, who have to sneak food into movie theatres, who have to scrounge and fight for what remains, it's good news to ponder that we worship a God whose idea of paradise involves a removal not just of scarcity, but of the concept of scarcity.

For heaven is a place where all tears are wiped away, and there will be no more suffering.  How can there be no sin in heaven and yet we have free will?  If there is no scarcity.  No want.  If there is no division created between us by what we have vs what we want.  If you will, it's a lot like that movie 'the gods must be crazy,' in which things were fine until a coke bottle fell out of the sky, and then all of a sudden, there was something that only one person could have.  It was a very useful thing, but very limited.  And everyone wanted it.  Before that, there was no scarcity.  After that, there was.  And so the plot of the film revolved around the attempt to be rid of the 'evil thing' forever.  To return to a time before scarcity.  A time in which there was nothing to desire, because there was nothing that was not abundant.  The only thing they were lacking was an abundance of time, eternity.  And that is what Christ gives us through his work on the cross.  He redresses scarcity, shows us that there is a promise of abundance, and finally gives us an abundance of life, life everlasting.  Each of these miracles that he performs shows us the same thing - that he is working to undo the curses which brought shortages, of life, of time of food and drink, and gives us his abundant grace, an abundance of resources, an abolishment of want, and eternity with which to enjoy it.


PJ.

Objection! Relevance!

Hi all,

Today, we talk about parables.  And parables are vitally important to the Chirstian experience.  They're vitally important to the Christian experience because of how Jesus uses them.  For you see, in the experience of being a Christian and being attentive to what Jesus has to say, he spends most of his time teaching in parables.

Now, this is done for a key reason, and it's not too terribly hard to figure out.  All you have to do is to look at the audience that Jesus is speaking to.  In this particular circumstance, from thsi last Sunday, we had the following parable:

The Parable of the Net

47 “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Parables like this are super useful for us understanding what Jesus is all about in his teachings.  For his teachings are based almost exclusively on relevance.  

I'll explain.

This parable was told by Jesus, obviously, but the pericope cuts off the content of who Jesus is talking to.  And that's as important as anything else.  Unlike the previous few parables which were told by Jesus from a boat because there were so many people around, this one was told in private, with only a few people around.  Matthew 13:36 says that '[Jesus] left the crowd and went into the house.  His deiciples came to him...'  He left the people who were crowding around him, and went to his disciples, and it was at that moment that he decided to tell them this parable.  And there's a great reason that Jesus told the parable about fish.  Consider the audience.  

Who in the disciples would know much about fishing?  Oh, only about a third of them.  Andrew, Peter, James and John were all fishermen, who had made their living before running into Jesus as fishermen, with Zebedee and family.  And when Jesus was telling them this parable, he was telling this parable to men who knew what fishing was all about, who knew about good fish and bad fish, who knew about nets and boats.  And lest you think that it was just the four of those men who knew about fish, we need to talk about the end of the book of John, which tells us that Simon Peter went out fishing with Thomas, Nathanael, James and John and two others.  These were mostly all guys who would at bare minimum knw their way around a boat.

And this, this is what is intended by Jesus in the teaching by parables.  He has in mind to make the kingdom of God, the unchanging kingdom of God, relevant to any and all who may be prepared to listen to the word contained therein.  The parables told by Jesus to his closest followers is followed up by him saying : 'Every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.'

The incarnation of Christ is something that cannot be overstated in terms of its importance.  Because the words that echo through the ministry of Christ, and in the lives of Christians, is that he makes all things new.  In making all things new, he presents the truth of the kingdom of God to his people with fresh eyes, a way of looking at the God of the universe as though for the first time.  Peeling back the layers of time, peeling back all the tradition and layers of humanity that were placed there over a great deal of time, and showing it to his disciples with an enormous amount of relevance.  Showing his disciples what the kingdom of God is all about perhaps for the first time, in a way they could understand it.

The story of Peter Hitchens is one that bears close examination in this capacity, because he was someone who assumed that the God of the Bible was buried under thick layers of irrelevancy, who was

isolated and locked away beneath the trappings of centuries ago.  And he had never had to consider that it was something that could be relevant to his time.  But when he saw Rogier van der Weyden's painting of the Last Judgment, he was shocked to see that the people in that image looked like people that he knew.  Although he had heard about the last judgment many times, though he had doubtlessly been raised at least in a nominally Christian milieu, he had never had to consdier that this stuff might very well be relevant in the here and now, just just locked away in a middle eastern sanctuary somewhere.

This essential, core aspect to teaching through parables, is what makes the Christian faith as flexible and malleable, able to be presented to an unbelieving world without forcing it into a particular place and time.  And, as usual, this all comes back to the incarnation, as everything does.  Jesus was manifested not in a cartoon world, not in a stained glass window, not in a watercolour painting, but in a real world, full of real people, who told dirty jokes, who ate too much, who didn't listen to their parents, who were lazy or undisciplined, who had real jobs, who worked hard for a living and enjoyed their snacks.  People exactly like today. People who need to hear the word of God anew.

But Jesus doesn't change the teachings of God when he presents it to people.  He just finds a new way to explain the old eternal truths about God and his kingdom.  That he calls us to repentace, that he loves us and actively seeks us out, that he wants to gather the grain, the good fish, into his good kingdom.  These old eternal teachings are not sacrificed, nor are they stilted.  They are kept, and refreshed.  

This is our task as well.  The more acquainted we are with the scriptures, the more we are familiar with the kingdom of heaven, the more we have to walk that fine tightrope line, to work out how to bring the old and the new out of there.  The more we have to help the world outside to see the truth of the scriptures, without the added layers, without the extra content, without the ages, without the time, without the stuff we've added to it, and present it to them with new, fresh, relevant eyes.

As Dorothy Sayers said, if you present this to the unbelievers, they may not believe it, but at least they may see that there is something that is worth believing.