Calm as a hindu cow.

Would you like to know what my first experience was with Christian art?  sure you would.  Well, I'm sure it's not my first experience, but it's my most enduring one. The one that's hardest to shake.  The black and white line drawings from the pages of the Good News Bible.

Yup, this type.  The Good News Bible was the second Bible I ever owned, after the Bible that I got for my baptism, which was too good to use.  If you want to see that one, go to my post about the King James Bible. But I went to my mother as a boy, and decided that I wanted my own Bible that was not just a New Testament, and one that I could use.  It's in my office now.  All green.  With these same line drawings in it.  It cost $5.50 back in the eighties.  Now part of the reason that these line drawings stuck with me so vividly was from a day in Sunday school, where we had a race to see who could find the ten commandments in the Scriptures first.  I won, not because I knew chapter and verse, or even book for that matter, but because I knew what the picture looked like.  A mountain with people around it, and a lot of squiggles.

These things have a way of sticking with you, and I'm sure that many of you who grew up with the Good News will be familiar with these line drawings.  And they're good line drawings.  They serve their purpose well.  But they tend to do that thing that church art does, which is to suck the actual life out of the people in the Scriptures.  It turns them into 'Bible people.'  And yes, that is different from regular people.

To use a line from the wildly popular and wildly subversive film and book 'fight club,' the folks in the Bible, whether being tortured or killed, whether meting out God's wrath or being accursed, are all as calm as Hindu cows.  That line is all about another set of line drawings, in this case, the ones in the airline safety manual, in which no matter what kind of aerial disaster people are engaged, they're all perfectly serene as they put on their life jackets, put on their oxygen masks before they assist someone else, or jump on that slide to get out of the plane.  Nobody is screaming, nobody is panicking, nobody is shoving anyone else out of the way.  Perfectly calm, perfectly serene.  And that's the treatment that John the Baptist gets in ecclesiastical art.  I could maybe picture you showing Jesus as calm and serene, but probably not John the Baptist.  People thought of him in his time as a wildman, and his statements bear witness to that.  Listen to him for a second:

"You snakes," he said [to those who had come to be 

baptized, "Who told you that you  could escape from 

the punishment God is about to send?  Do these things that will show 

that you have turned from your sins.  And don't

start saying among yourselves that Abraham is your ancestor.

I tell you that God can take these stones and make descendants

for Abraham.  The axe is ready to cut down the trees at the

roots.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut

down and thrown into the fire."

                                 Luke 3:7-9 (Good News)

He was neither calm nor placid.  His hair shirt and mouth full of locusts aside, he had a lot of harsh things to say.  And if you thought the average man didn't care for that, then holy cow, wait until you hear how those in power took it.  You see, back in the time of Jesus, the rich and powerful were expecting to get a free pass as much as the rich and powerful do now.  It's a thing that has never changed.  Anyone with any amount of wealth or authority expects to be let off pretty easy, and that the basic rules and laws of society don't apply to them.  You see it happen constantly, where the rich and powerful feel as though the laws that govern you plebs are beneath them.  Something they could take or leave.  And Herod was no different.  He'd gotten into a situation with Herod, and some nasty double dealing that went on between Herod and his new wife.  Let me tell you all about it.

For Herod had earlier ordered John's arrest, and he had him chained

and put in prison.  He had done this because of Herodias,

 his brother Philip's wife.  

For some time, John the Baptist had told Herod

"It isn't right for you to be married to Herodias."

Herod wanted to kill him, but he was afraid

of the Jewish people, because they considered John to be a prophet.

                                    Matthew 14:3-5 (Good News)

John was there, speaking the truth to power.  This particular incident, in which he pointed out that perhaps Herod would do best not to be married to his brother's wife, got John some Jail time.  And lest we chortle up our sleeves, and think 'oh good, Herod got what he deserved, someone should have told him to knock it off," what do you think John the Baptist would say if he was hanging around at your place?  The only reason his conversation with Herod got him in so much trouble was that it was Herod who had the power to arrest him!  The other people that John was talking to, that he had sometimes unsolicited advice for, those people may not have cared for his advice, but they couldn't do much about it.  Herod could.  And Herod did.  But everyone else, the rest of the gang that John referred to as a brood of vipers, or snakes, they had to hang out and listen to John rail against them.  We all think of John as a pretty great guy, but of course, how much would we feel he was if he was hanging around us, berating us for our luxury, or our sloth, or our comforts, or our cool faith.  He would be livid.  Probably not standing there just waving and saying hi.

In fact, there was only one person that John looked at, and said that he was doing fine.  The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.  Jesus Christ.  The one whose sandals John was not worthy to untie.  That's what it takes to get noticed by John.  Perfection itself.  

In the majority of ecclesiastical art, John is calm.  Serene.  Peaceful and meditative.

"What did you expect to see?" Jesus asked, "A blade of grass bending in the wind?

What did you go out to see?  A man dressed in fancy clothes?  People

like that live in palaces!

Tell me, what did you go out to see? A prophet?  Yes indeed,

but you saw much more than a prophet."

Matthew 11:7-9 (Good News)       

What do you expect to see in John the Baptist?  A blade of grass bending in the wind?  Probably.  A man dressed in fancy clothes?  Likely.  A holy man who will judge others that you don't like harshly, but who will tell you that you're doing great?  Probably.  But if you think any of these things, you don't know John.  He's the forerunner of Christ, Elijah who is to come.  He's full of passion and vigor and fury and power.  He says things dangerous enough for you to want to kill him over.  He's a camel-hair wearing, locust eating wildman.  And he speaks the truth.  

And he was probably never as calm as a hindu cow.  

But listen to his words.  Though he will point out your failings, which he will, with alarming accuracy, he will also point out Christ.  The Lamb of God, who must increase while John must decrease.  My prayer is that you would not get only half of John's message.  Listen to it all.  His condemnation, and his gesture to salvation.  

I sure wish there was a Lutheran term for that.

PJ.

4 real. 4 life. 4U.

So I was hanging out in my office today, and I got to thinking about who church is for.  And it isn't who I thought it was.

The first and most important thing I realized is that church isn't for me.  That is, I'm not the reason it's there.  I'n a wanderer here at this church, and always will be.  This is the congregation's church, not mine.

Okay, so is it for the congregation? Yes and no.  Yes the church is absolutely for the people who go there, who worship and pay the bills and all that.  But it's not just for them.

So is church for visitors? Yes and no.  Yes in the sense that all are welcome in God's house.  No in the sense that it's not only for them.  Typically a worship service is a little bit inacessible for someone who has just walked in off the street, because the language of the thing, its rhythm, is foreign to the world unless you grew up with it.

So who is church for?  Real people is the answer to that question.  Or at least should be.  When the Christian church is at its worst, it is horrendously artificial.  Nobody set out to make it that way.  Nobody sat down and looked at the teachings of Jesus Christ and said

"This whole Jesus thing is neat, but let's be really standoffish

and make people think that only perfect people should

go to church."

                          -The Apostle Marshal, AD 33

Nobody said that.  And why would they.  But people got a funny idea in their heads.  They got the funny idea that God doesn't like sin (not that funny of an idea), and that people, to be acceptable to God, would have to be perfect (not that funny of an idea).  So if these two ideas are not so strange, then how do things get so muddled?  Well, people rightly say that sin is bad, and that Jesus said to people that they should be perfect just as God himself is perfect.  But they have these nagging imperfections.  And they're not easy ones.  They're deadly rot that sinks into a person over the course of years.  Frightful jealousy that turns friends against each other.  Drinking to forget.  Living in seething resentment over the mess in your next door neighbor's yard.  Not talking to your family members for ten years because you can't stand what they inherited from when your parents died.  Those real sins.  If those are there, and you're a Christian, then there must be something wrong with either:

a) God

or

b) you.

Well, there can't be anything wrong with God by definition, so there must be something wrong with you.  But could you really admit actual fault?  In that room full of other people who are desperately yearning towards perfection?  No, because they will judge you with their cruel eyes and cluck their thick tongues and suggest oh so very delicately.  

But if you pretend, if you make believe that you're actually doing fine, then nobody will ever know! And they're all doing the same!  Wow!

Whitewashed tombs do look pretty

But the faith that we have comes from the realization that we're not as good as we think we are, or more accurately, as we'd like to be.  And as the liturgy says: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."  We're sinners.  And we have to face facts that sinners might actually show up to church.  And need to be there.  Not the people that we'd like to see, but real sinners.  Sinners like us.

It's time to be honest at church time, and to ask yourself why you're there.  Because it shouldn't be to be noticed by God for your perfection.  That's exactly what Jesus railed against.  The pharisees were always in trouble for that, being whitewashed tombs and all, pristine on the outside, and dead on the inside.  They were in trouble for cleaning the outside of the cup and yet the inside was death in the pot.

The Christian faith properly considered says this:

This whole God thing is for real.  He's a real force in the universe, and he is who he says he is.  He is who he is. He is the underlying reality behind everything, and he is seen in all creation.  All creation praises him.

Jesus came to earth so that you might have life, and have it abundantly.  He came to forgive, he came to set free.  His commands are not burdensome, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light.  All the stupid stuff that happens, he can forgive.  And replace death with life.  Not only that, but Christianity is not just for kids.  It's for you, your whole life through.  The Bible, the church, it all grows with you.  It's valid for every stage of your life, from toddler to senior.  It's a lifelong pursuit.

God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all here for you.  Not for me as a pastor, not for some visitor, not for some imaginary perfect Christian, but for you.  Ordinary backslider, average glutton, standard letch.  For you.  Not for who you wish you were, not for who you want people to think you are, but for you.  He didn't come for those who are feeling great, but for those who are sick.  He didn't come for those who are found, but for the lost.  For you.

4 real
4 life
4 you.

The changeless God in a changing world.

The wooden sculpture in Holy Redeemer

As you may know by now, I was away this last weekend.  I was in Calgary, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the church I grew up in, Prince of Peace in Calgary.  Fifty years, as I glibly joked in my sermon, is more than most marriages last.  Heck, it was twenty-five times as long as Britney Spears' marriage, which is my official benchmark.

But, here's the thing about my church, and about many churches.  We moved.  And in the move, something fairly important happened.  The church changed.  All of a sudden, there were new people there where there had just been familiar families.  The facility changed from a small residential church to a sprawling behemoth of a facility on the east end of town.  And it was sprawling.  The Prince of Peace complex is big enough to have its own water treatment plant, like wow.  Huge.  And all of a sudden, the ministry changed from Calgary family ministry, the usual Lutheran stuff, to school, seniors' housing, a village, and everything in between.  How did I feel about this?  Strange.  I drove by my old church the other day, the old building that is, and memories came flooding back.

The front doors of my school

The teeny tiny gym.

Of course, that wasnt' the only thing that happened that weekend in Calgary.  My elementary school, Holy Redeemer, was heading into its last year of being open.  This June, the doors are closing for good.  It is really strange to think about.  The school where, as our principal reminded us, we spent more time there than at home, awake anyway, is closing down.  It is slated for demolition, and away it goes.  The school, the playground, the ball diamond, the foursquare squares, the hopscotch spot, the soccer goals. Gone.
G
O
N
E.

The Old church building is now owned by nuns.  The old school will likely be torn down and replaced by condos.  My old house that I grew up in is now lived in by my grandmother.  My old bedroom is her sewing room.  All these things that seemed so permanent, that you could go back to them whenever you wanted, all due to be demolished or replaced quite soon.  This stuff moves faster than you think it does.  It isn't until you stop to think about it that you realize that everything you took for granted is in total flux.  All the houses of bricks and mortar that you lived in, worked in, went to school in, worshiped in, whatever, they're all due for demolition.  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.

And this brings me to the point that I wanted to make in the sermon that I gave on Sunday.  The church is not made of bricks and mortar, or beams and timber, or plastic and pvc.  It's made of people.  And that's what doesn't change.  Oh sure, church membership changes.  People show up, people leave, people die, people are born, and on and on and on.  But people are forever.

Everything else changes.  Always.  Faster than you think it does.  All of a sudden they stopped making pennies, and you had to take bad jobs if you're on EI.  All of a sudden, they're knocking down my school and making condos.  I blink, and things are gone.  But people stick around.  Even the ones who die.

That's why we love.  That's why we love with abandon, that's how we can love each other, and live our lives with purpose, because there are no unimportant days, and there are no unimportant people.  The stuff you do here on earth has eternal consequences.  It really matters, because the people in your school, your church, your work, your family, those people are going to be around forever.  And we have confidence in that because of the God who has made promises to us. 

"See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands," God says in Isaiah, and we believe him. The entire dialogue between God and humanity in the scriptures, and in day-to-day life, is a conversation between the eternal and the temporal, and the one changes the other.  The book of James tells us that

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming 

down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

                                                      -James 1:17

The wonderful things we have are from God.  And they have that feeling of the divine, of the forever, in them.  If we spent every day thinking about how the school you go to is going to be dust, or the house you lived in is going to be condos, or how we're all going to grow old and die someday, we'd never get anything done.  We'd be sapped.  But even the people who don't believe in God live with the same purpose as those who do.  The presence of God is engraved on their hearts along with the rest of us.  That's why we all love as though we'll never lose, and cherish as though things wouldn't disappear.  And there's a caution built into all this.  Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God, and his rightousness, and then everything else will be added unto us.  If we love the divine, the changeless, even more than we love the temporal, then we will get both.  If we love what fades, if we set up treasures for ourselves where moths invade and rust destroys, then we will lose both.  It's God's eternity that makes anything worth loving.  

Because people are forever.  Forever and ever.

Amen.

Ray Bradbury. The Man.

As many of you know by now, and those who don't are about to find out, I'm a big fan of Ray Bradbury, who died today.  He passed away at 91 years old, and leaves behind himself an awful lot of stories.  Some of them are famous and well-known, like 'Farenheit 451' and 'Something Wicked this way Comes.'  It is this second book that first drew me into his world.
I was doing my best at the time (probably about 18 years old) to collect the entire works of John Wyndam, another sci-fi author, best known for 'The Day of the Triffids,' and I'd pretty well exhausted the local used bookstores.  So, my father sent away for some that I was missing, and because shipping was fairly expensive, and the books were so cheap, he added a bunch of Ray Bradbury books, for quarters each, to fill in the space.  In my university days, when I was supposed to be studying, I would go to the tenth floor of the library tower at the U of C, and read Bradbury.  How I passed all those classes, I'll never know, since the main thing I was studying was 'Something Wicked.'

Now, as I say, some of his stuff is well known, some less so.  And there are a great many short stories out there.  The short story that I want to focus on today, is 'the man,' from his collection 'The Illustrated Man.'

There are many covers,
but this is the one I have.

I'll try to find the full text, but until I do, you'll have to make do with a synopsis.  The way the story proceeds is as follows:  A rocket lands on a distant planet, and nobody cares.

The end.

Okay, there's more to it than that.  A rocket lands on a distant planet and nobody cares, because there has recently been a far more important visitor.  Someone who 'healed the sick, and comforted the poor.  He fought hypocrisy and dirty politics, and sat among the people, talking, through the day.'

That's the report from the people of the planet as to what has happened, to which the Captain of the rocket replies 'Is that so wonderful?'

Aha.  It's a good story, one of his best, precisely for this reason.  You see, the rocketmen who come to the new planet are really REALLY expecting to be taken seriously.  They want to be the big noise in the party, they really want to be the focus, they really want everyone to sit up and take notice.  Upon landing, the captain exclaims 'I don't know why we bother.  We build rockets, we go to all the trouble of crossing space, searching for them, and this is what we get.  Neglect.  Look at those idiots wander about in there.  Don't they realize how big this is?  The first space flight to touch their provincial land.  How many times does that happen?'

If you take the Bible seriously in any way, you'll know that one of the biggest problems that we, as humans have, is the sin of pride.  When CS Lewis talks about it, he does so by calling it the greatest of all sins, and certainly the most dangerous one.  And there's a lot of truth to that.  What was blinding the captain to the man who had come to town, was that he wasn't the most important thing to happen to the people that day.  The captain spends basically the entire story getting annoyed that nobody is pleased and overjoyed that he'd shown up that day.  What he wants is to be noticed.

After a while, though, the Captain becomes a bit more interested in this man, and demands from the people of this planet, to know what the man looks like.  And he is perpetually frustrated, because nobody seems to know what this man looks like.  When he asks the mayor of the city what the man looks like, the mayor responds:
"I don't believe that is important."

Later, when the captain talks to a woman of the city:

'Tell me about this wonderful man you saw yesterday.'
The woman looked steadily at the captain: 'he walked among us, and was very fine and good.'
'What color were his eyes?'
'the color of the sun, the color of the sea, the color of a flower, the color of the mountains, the color of the night.'

Nobody seems to have an idea about what this man looks like, but everyone seems to know what he did and what he said, and more importantly, who he is. The woman can tell you that he is fine and good, but she can't pin down what he looks like.  In the words of the mayor, that's not important.

For sure, this is not the man.

After a while, the first mate, Martin, finally gets to the core of what is bothering the captain when he says "I've had enough of your highhandedness.  Leave these people alone.  They've got something good and decent, and you come and foul up the nest and sneer at it.  Well, I've talked to them too.  I've gone through the city and I've seen their faces, and they've got something you'll never have; a little simple faith, and they'll move mountains with it.  You, you're boiled because someone stole your act, got here ahead, and made you unimportant."

Ah yes.  We don't want to be unimportant.  Even in the face of God himself.  Many Christians, many church workers, many pastors, don't want to be unimportant, even in the face of God.  We can't stand to be not the most important thing, we want to be the biggest and the best.  We crave attention in the most destructive way.  And the captain, wanting to be noticed and admired, wanting to have all eyes on him, couldn't bear the thought of the return of Christ, making him, his rocket, his guns, his money, seem unimportant.

Finally, though, the captain works out that Jesus has returned, the man has been there, and demands to see him.  Demands at gunpoint, demands to see this man who has worked miracles, who is important.  And as he brandishes his gun at the mayor, the mayor replies 'You're very tired.  You've traveled a long way, and you belong to a tired people who've been without faith for a long time, and you want to believe so much now that you're interfering with yourself.  You'll only make it harder if you kill.  You'll never find him that way."

The captain, when he gets no clear answer as to where the man has gone, ends up promising that he will go on chasing after the man, the most unusual thing in history.  He will go from world to world to world chasing after him, until he catches up.

The captain leaves, and half his crew stays behind on this planet.  The other half goes with the captain into space, trying to find the man, and trying to ask him for a little peace and quiet.  And after the rocket takes off, the mayor has this to say:

'He'll go on, planet after planet, seeking and seeking, and always and always he will be an hour late, or a half hour late, or ten minutes late, or a minute late.  And finally he will miss out by only a few seconds.  And when he has visited three hundred worlds and is seventy or eighty years old, he will miss out by only a fraction of a second, and then by a smaller fraction of a second.  And he will go on and on, thinking to find that very thing which he left behind here, on this planet, in this city.  "
Martin looked steadily at the mayor.
The mayor put out his hand. "Was there ever any doubt of it?" He beckoned to the others and turned, "Come along now, we mustn't keep him waiting."
They walked into the city.

The Captain wanted to be the big noise amongst the people.  Then he wanted to be noticed by the Man, on his own terms.  He wanted to be part of something huge, something notable.  And when he left, he left behind him what he was not willing to actually look for.  Ever since Darwin, as the captain says, people had lost that sense of the divine power, had lost their sense of awe and majesty.  And here they were, in the stars, looking to be the centre of attention because of what they'd accomplished, and what they'd done.  And what did they find?  Only that the God they'd left behind on earth was there amongst the stars anyway, doing what he'd always done, being fine and good.  And in the face of that, the captain had to keep looking, because he couldn't work out that what he was looking for was right there with him.  What he'd been chasing for so long, the whole reason for going to space, was right there with them, and maybe always had been.  For where two or three are gathered in His name, He is there with them.

It's a beautiful story, and one that I recommend reading.  it's in my office, if you'd like to give it a look-see, and especially in light of the author's death, I recommend it.  We, who are a faithless people, we, who look for God in all the wrong places, we who seek where he is not, and ignore where he is, it does us good to read an allegory like this, and to remind ourselves of where God actually is.  Where he's always promised to be.

PJ.

The Need for Creed

Seriously, is this not terrifying?

After the service on Sunday, I'd like to point you towards the writing of a quite brilliant woman: Dorothy L Sayers. Her writing on the creed is some of the best I've ever seen.  Dorothy Sayers is known primarily for her mystery fiction that she wrote, which is how I first came into contact with her.  My mother had a pretty serious collection of Lord Peter Wimsey murder mysteries in our basement, with cover art that scared the stuffing out of young me.  Dead bodies in coffins and all that. But just like CS Lewis is more known for his imaginative fiction than his apologetics, Dorothy Sayers is known more for her detective fiction than her apologetics.  The two of them were well acquainted, and read each others' works.

Now good apologetics, like that of Chesterton and Sayers and Lewis, is of a timeless stuff, just like the material they talk about.  It's usually a bit of a shame when people make apologetics relevant for their time and their time only, and then when that time has passed, so too have their words.  Good apologetics, naturally, deal with the universal truths of humanity and theology, and where they intersect. Just like the source material of the Bible, which, despite being thousands of years old, still manages to be relevant to everyday life.  Funny that.

Yup, the problem for missionaries
was somewhere else

Anyhow, when Sayers talks about the creed, we would do well to listen, because her words are more applicable now than ever.  We may think of her time as a sort of 'golden time' for Christian faith, a time in which people were comfortably Christian, when the mission field was one guy in your town, and the continent of Africa, when you could confidently say that the real work of the gospel was to be done 'over there.'  But in that golden time, there were seeds of trouble being sown, seeds that would help to bring about the current climate of those who are 'spiritual but not religious.'  You see, Sayers understood the importance of the creeds, especially in an age like hers (and ours), that saw little use for them.

                                                        Christ, in His Divine innocence, said to 

the Woman of Samaria, "Ye worship ye 

know not what" — being apparently under 

the impression that it might be desirable, 

on the whole, to know what one was worshipping. 

He thus showed Himself sadly out of touch with the 

twentieth-century mind, for the cry today is: 

"Away with the tendentious complexities of dogma — let 

us have the simple spirit of worship; just worship, 

no matter of what!" The only drawback to this demand for a 

generalized and undirected worship is the practical 

difficulty of arousing any sort of enthusiasm for the worship of nothing 

in particular. 

                                                       (Creed or Chaos?, 19)

Can you believe that in Sayers' time, this was happening?  We thought that the Christian faith in the 30s and 40s was pretty secure, that people were confident in their beliefs, and that things were pretty well regimented.  Well, wrong-o.  Things were beginning to collapse back then.  It's a question that we get from the youth every once in a while, as to why they have to go through and memorize the tedious old Apostles' Creed, the thing that seems the most removed from real life.  After all, the commandments are a curb, rule, and guide to your life, and the Lord's Prayer is the prayer that Jesus himself told his disciples to pray, but where does the creed fit in?  

Well, as you heard on Sunday, the creed informs everything else.  There's a good scene from the movie "Dogma," in which the character of Bethany opines 'it doesn't matter what you have faith in, all that matters is that you have faith.'  It's sure a popular sentiment, and one that Christians tend to find problematic.  Because there's nothing new under the sun, and because people have always been the same no matter what, Dorothy Sayers was able to articulate what the problem actually was.  The faith of Christianity, unchanged through the centuries, was able to remain unchanged because it dealt with a simple problem, that of sinful, fallen humanity and its relationship with God and each other.  As time wore on though, people became more in the business of conforming Christ to men, than men to Christ.  The idea of being perfect as God himself is perfect, is a difficult, undesired one.  We don't want that kind of pressure, nor that kind of perfection.  But God, in his infinite wisdom, has promised to make us perfect, as he is perfect.  He has promised to make us into a fit dwelling place for himself.  That doesn;t mean that we'll be good enough, but that we'll be good.  

Sayers got that the majority of Christian thinking on the subject of faith and the object of faith hinges on the creed.  Yes, the term 'organized religion' has become a little bit of a dirty word these days, but the Christian faith tells you what it believes in from the get-go.  There are a great many mysteries in what we believe, such as the sacraments, such as how Jesus turns water into wine, such as how God created everything in just a week, but the mystery is not 'which God do you believe in?'  That one is clear.

PJ.