Paul McCarntney and wings

Ah, wings.

If you're like me, and you most likely are, you love wings.  And I mean wings in all kinds of permutations, but especially the hot wings.  The hotter the better!  If they go up in the heat scale all the way up to suicide wings, then I'm happy as a clam.  There have been many evenings in which congregational members and I have gone out for blazing hot wings at a local eatery to talk about the origins of the universe, and our place in it.

Good times.  Easier times before I had kids, but good times nonetheless.  And chickens, as they go, are remarkably divisible.  I remember hearing from someone many years ago that Kentucky Fried Chicken was no longer going by that name because the birds they used were so genetically modified, that you couldn't call them chickens anymore.  So they changed their name to KFC.

Sadly, that cool story isn't true.  They changed their name to drop the connotations that go along with the word 'fried,' which is a dirty word these days.  But I mention KFC (or PFK if you're hon hon hon), uses all sorts of bits of chicken.  You can get wings, breast, thighs, drumsticks, drummettes, and if there's nothing left after that, then get a big ol' box of popcorn chicken, featuring the also rans of the cuts of meat.

But it's the wings that I find captivating, because you can go out for them.  Bars and clubs have wing nights, certain establishments prize themselves on their wings, all that.  Well, you all know what birds use their wings for, besides being delicious.  They use their wings for the purposes of flight.  for getting around.

But birds, they do something else funny with their wings.  They protect their young.  Now, this isn't a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down.......  Sorry, lost my train of thought.  No hold on.  This isn't a story all about how a swan can break a man's arm with one beat of its wings, nor a story about how a flightless ostrich can kick a lion's head clean off.  No no no.  This is a story of smaller birds.

I know on Sunday I talked about mother hens gathering their chicks under their wings so that a predator might take the mother instead of the babies.  This is behavior I've heard about, but never witnessed for myself.  I've heard about it, mainly from the Bible, about how chickens will do this, but I've never seen it.  What I have seen, though, is one of those loony birds who will pretend to have a broken wing in order to distract predators from their brood.  I saw this when I was working grounds keeping for Prince of Peace Lutheran church ,school, manor, village and harbour.  And when I was employed in that regard, the grounds were so big that we'd ride a gator from place to place.  A little john deere two seater, with space in the back to carry loads of gravel. 

And as we'd tool around, we would drive past the nest of this ridiculous bird.  And this bird would do this nutso dance, doing its best for all the world to look weak and wounded, so we'd go off and chase it instead of the clutch of eggs or whatever that were in the nest.

Now, you may very well decide to make fun of this bird.  First of all, why on earth are you laying your eggs, your precious offspring on the ground, on the earth, where they can be picked up by the first hungry predator. Secondly, why oh why are you counting on that crazy dance that you do to fool anyone? 

Well, joke's on me.  I saw that bird every day, and watched it do its song and dance routine.  And I never found the nest.  So it worked.  I was sufficiently distracted to not notice one thing about the clutch of eggs.  So, well done stupid crazy bird.

Now, our judgment that we have on that bird could well be levelled against God Almighty himself.  That silly goof, why oh why did he place his beloved children on the earth, instead of in Heaven?  Why did he put us here where temptation could strike us at any moment?  Why did he put us in a place where Satan could get at us?  And especially, what was his big plan to get us out of trouble? 

It was the same as that goofy bird's plan to get its chicks out of trouble.  It was that exact same plan.  It was the plan to appear wounded, to draw the forces of sin and death and the devil away. It was the plan to be a much bigger prize, to be a wounded prize, to be easy to get, to be simple to drag away, and then the chicks would be easy prey next. 

Well, the joke's on the devil.  As usual.  What these goofy birds do is to lure the predators away, but not actually, hopefully, become dinner themselves.  They don't want to leave their chicks defenseless.  They lead the predators away, and then, just when all seems lost, when they appear to be snacktime for a hungry fox or whatever, then all of a sudden, they reveal that the wing wasn't broken, and they take to the skies.  They leave the predator hungry and desperate, as the easy meal takes to the air, fleeing their attempt to chow down.  The predator, the foxx, the wolf, the coyote, just stands there in frustration, as the big prize, the sweet meal, flies away.

That's our Lord, if you will.  His weakness drew the devil away, his broken body lured the devil to him.  His blood and nail pierced hands diverted attention away from us.  His bloody sweat, his agony, his whipped back, and finally his death led the devil to him and only him.  And then when death was about to score its final, great victory, when the devil was about to do what he had always wanted to do, to destroy God himself, Jesus took flight, rose from the dead, and left the hungry grave open and disappointed.  He led all the attention away from us, which was where it belonged, and took that attention upon himself.  We escaped the wrath and judgment, the eternal death and separation, the hellfire and damnation, because of the wounds and apparent weakness of Christ.  Leading all this stuff away from us.  Onto himself.

Lent

Sacrifice

The Cross

The nails.

All that.

LGBT

Let's
Get
Blogging (about)
Transfiguration.

Yeah.  What did you think I was going to talk about?  Wasn't the title totes clear enough?

It's time once again to talk about the other kind of trans, and that is transfiguration.  It only comes up once a year, right before lent, where we get to see Christ in his infinite majesty, with the veil of his humanity ever so coquettishly pulled aside (can't believe I just wrote that sentence).  You see, up on the mount of transfiguration, Jesus was transformed before the eyes of the disciples, his clothes becoming brilliantly white, his face shining like the sun, all that.  And there were Moses and Elijah with him, discussing the hot topic of the day.

The Transfiguration

²⁸ About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. ²⁹ As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. ³⁰ Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. ³¹ They spoke about his departure,^[a] which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. ³² Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. ³³ As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)
³⁴ While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. ³⁵ A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” ³⁶ When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.

Luke 9:28-36

 Ah, Peter.  Thank you for being the everyman in these situations.  We may feel a certain sense of attachment towards Peter, primarily because he is such a dope.  If you look at statues of Peter, on some he has the Keys, some he has an upside down cross, and on some he has a Rooster.  To signify the times that he denied Christ before the next day began. Peter's assessment of the situation is notable in being what we feel about the interaction between Jesus, Moses and Elijah.  He looks at what is happening on the mount of Transfiguration, and says that this is so great, and so neat, that they should stay up there for all time.

He looks at what is happening.

You see, we see Jesus all the time.  We see him in tortillas, we see him on toast, we see him in windows and in ads, we see him in water stains and in whorls of wood on the floor. We see him everywhere.  But what are we asked to do in the Bible vis-à-vis Jesus?  Or God? 

The funny thing about all this happening, is that Jesus is not only God in the flesh, he's not only the son of God, he's the word of God.  The word made flesh.  This is of such catastrophic importance that I can't possibly overstate it.  You see, the vital nature of Christ is that he should be heard. The whole notion of looking upon Jesus, of recognizing him in ads or stains, is ultimately flawed, because we don't know what he looked like... at all.  He could be a nice looking white guy with a beard and blue eyes, but he probably wasn't. He probably looked a whole lot more middle eastern.  But you know what?  It wouldn't matter anyway. 

People spend far too much time looking at Jesus, far too much observing him, looking at statues, looking at websites full of guys who 'look like Jesus', and so little time listening to him.  It's funny, because we have zero pictures of him, none.  Not a photograph, not a painting, not a sketch, not an oil painting, nothing like that.  We have no clear images of him whatsoever, but we do have a whole bunch of stuff that he said recorded. 

It's an amazing gift, to have the actual words of the word made flesh in our homes.  Do you have a Bible?  You almost certainly do, if you live in North America.  If you don't, you're one iphone app away from having one.  If you have a Bible, then you have the recorded words of Christ.  They may very well be in red.  Remember, he's the word made flesh, and knowing that he's got some important stuff to say.  Heck, even if you don't believe that he's the son of God, assume that he's got some important stuff to say, and it might be worth listening to.  Some of it is self evident.  Some of it less so.  But let's agree for a second that his words are important, and that he said what he said for a reason.

As the voice from the cloud said, this is my son, in whom I am well pleased.  Listen to him.

Strangely enough, happy lent.  No, scratch that.  A deep, meaningful, passionate lent.  Let it be a time of spiritual growth for you.

PJ.

Flatulent puffery

You know, it took me a second to catch it, and I guess I should have proofread it a little better, but I embarrassed myself on Sunday morning with the title of my sermon.  This is why, I guess, I don't frequently title my sermons.

Yes, that's right.  I accidentally said, at least on paper:  Sermon - so easy a caveman could do it.

I'm an real dunce sometimes, and it doesn't do much to increase my market value if I say "oh sure, my job is so simple a caveman could do it."

This whole thing was obviously a riff on the 'popular' geico ads, and if you don't remember them, here's a quick video hit to remind you of them.

I still hold these up as the possible gold standard for television advertising, for a few reasons:
1 - they were the first tv commercials that I could remember that generated their own tv show.  It was terrible, but it was there.
2 - The characters in the commercials had sufficient presence to pull off ads based on a very simple premise.
3 - People who were being advertised to actually went out of their way to watch these ads.  They got quiet when these things came on, shushing the room up in a way normally expected for the show that's running, not the ad.  People would go and find them on youtube (which I obviously just did).

It's really not everyday that ads come on that people will make an effort to see.  Usually, it's quite the opposite, where people will very much go out of their way to avoid seeing ads.  They'll flick through channels, they'll fast forward, they'll leave the room to make a snack, whatever.  But it's a rare ad that makes people want to see it.

Now, fast forward mentally to evangelism, if you will.  And that's a hard job.  It's possibly the hardest job in the whole church, really.  Or, I suppose, it's the job that the fewest people actually want to do.  If you go back through the Bible, you can find all sorts of folks who were willing to be part of all sorts of jobs in the church - pastors, trustees, fellowship, teachers, workers with the gifts of administration, all that.  But very few who want to be evangelists.  Very very few.

A large part of that comes from what we feel about evangelism and how it is to be done.  In a way, evangelism is marketing for the church, and for God.  And most of us are hopelessly stuck in the past.  That is, we have an idea about how to get people thinking and talking about God, and most of us know that we're horribly unsuited for that task.  If you were in church on Sunday, you will recall that I talked a lot about ads the way they used to be.  Here is a classic example of an ad from David Ogilvy, whose work I referenced extensively on Sunday.

 

 

As a church member said who looked at this on Sunday morning: "you've got to be joking!  Who's going to read all this?"

 

 

Yes indeedy doo.  This is a big ol' block of text.  It's full of facts, no doubt, but who on earth has the time to get their head around this?  Ultimately, it's very much like the old question of 'if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?'  A falling tree obviously makes sound, but if nobody hears it, what was the purpose of that sound? 

 

It's the same with evangelism.  What we expect to happen is nothing short of miraculous, but the wrong kind of miraculous.  What we expect to happen is to be able to give unto someone a Bible, and expect them to instantly convert to Christianity.  We expect them to have a Bible, open it up, and read through the whole thing, believe it, and come to our church.  And heck, if you look at that Ogilvy ad above, you'll notice that even the layout is the same as a Bible.  Picture, headline, columns, all that.  Looks just like a Bible.  And what Ogilvy said about that ad is quite telling for us as Christians who seek to do evangelism. 

 

"Factual advertising like this outsells flatulent puffery. 

The more you tell, the more you sell.  Notice the

very long headline - and 719 words of copy.  All facts."

 

 

Sounds good in theory, but what the heck are we advertising in the church?  Are we advertising a Rolls Royce or car insurance?  No we are not.  We're talking about a guy who had a day job, and that day job is important to remember here. 

 

 

Jesus Christ is a carpenter.

 

 

Would you, if you had a carpenter who did genius work for you, recommend him to a friend by giving that friend a 2,507 page description of that carpenter's work?  No, you sure wouldn't. 

 

Even if it was true.

 

Even if you believe that the carpenter had done all of that.

 

 

Even if you knew all about it, almost from memory.

 

 

Ask yourself how you recommend a carpenter to someone.  Or a plumber, or an electrician, or whatever.  These guys, their bread and butter is earned not through big advertising firms like that of mr. Ogilvy, but through word of mouth.  They earn business based on the results that they give to their clients.  If you're on the computer reading this, then you've probably looked at an email, or a facebook message, or whatever, where someone has said 'hey, my whole house stinks like sewer water. Does anyone know a good plumber? Someone I can trust?"  The overall success of these trades is linked to the work they do. 

 

 

If you're going to recommend Jesus Christ to someone, and I honestly believe that you should, then you need to be able to do a couple of things.  Firstly, you have to be able and willing to talk, unlike all the Old Testament prophets.  Remember them?  The ones that I talked about on Sunday, the ones who didn't want to be bothered with speaking about God and His word for mankind?  The rogues' gallery includes Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jonah, and honestly everyone else whom God approached to get this done.  They all said, pretty much "there must be someone else.  Lord, send someone else."

 

But God said no.  He said that these people were selected by him for a very good reason.  And a large part of that reason was that God fixes broken down kitchens.  Because of carpentry.  And there's the second thing you need to be able to do.  To be able to talk about what this carpenter has done for you.  It honestly does you no good to be able to talk about what the carpenter has done in someone else's kitchen.  It does you no good to be able to talk about a carpenter who you assume does great work.  If you're going to be recommending someone, it's going to have to be someone who has done good work for you.  Some sort of before and after.

 

 

So here we go. 

 

 

Jesus, the carpenter, Jesus the savior, has done great work for me.  I'm not perfect, and the house, the temple, that he's working on, it isn't perfect either.  It's like an older house, in that it'll never really be 'done.' But with each successive job, it gets a little better.  I eat too much, and I'm too short with my family.  I tire of people far too quickly, and I'm a little bit lazy if I don't get a prodding every now and then. 

 

 

That's the before picture.  The after picture is far different.  I believe in a God who understands the human condition.  I believe in a God who has been like us, and so understands my failings.  I believe in a God who had a job to do and didn't necessarily want to do it.  And I believe in the work of Jesus Christ being redemptive at its core.  He makes all things new.  There is no such thing as too late.

 

That doesn't mean I'm perfect.  Far from it.  But it does mean that I know my faults.  I have no excuses for them.  They're not my parents' fault or my wife's fault or the fault of my children.  They're my faults.  And knowing them, I turn them over to my carpenter.  I give him my busted up kitchen, my leaking foundation, and my rattling windows.  And I say to him 'make these things new.  Because that's what you do.'

 

 

I'm a work in progress folks, but I believe that Jesus, the carpenter, fixes what I did wrong.  All the problems with my house, he fixes those up.  It's what he does.  He takes my weakness, and turns it into strength.  Because he's the one who promised to do it, who can do it, and whose work I have seen in my life.

 

Looking for a carpenter?  There's one I can recommend.

 

PJ.