Must be Jesus!

FYI, as I may have mentioned on Sunday, the Raffi Christmas album is one of my all time favourites.  I know, I know, it's probably only a function of when I grew up and it probably doesn't hold up at all, but just look at Raffi.

If your cockles aren't warmed by now, you'd better check your pulse, because you might be dead.

But yes, Raffi's Christmas album.  It was full of all the old classics, including 'Must be Santa.'  Here is the video, with hilariously misspelled lyrics for the song.  Make sure to keep watching until the reindeer are mentioned.  But yes, this is how to recognize Santa, by the length and colour of his beard, and by his reineys.  You know, that old chestnut.  But the unfortunate side effect is that although nobody mistakes Santa for anyone else, all sorts of other men are mistaken for Santa.  

Now this could also be said about Jesus.  You know what Jesus looks like, right?  

Who's got a beard that's short and brown?

Jesus' got a beard that's short and brown!

Who wears a prickly thorny crown?

Jesus wears a prickly thorny crown!

Beard that's brown, thorny crown, 

Must be Jesus, must be Jesus,

Must be Jesus, Jesus Christ.

Who's a white guy with baby blues?

Jesus is a white guy with baby blues!

Who gives to the people the Good News?

Jesus gives our people the Good News!

Beard that's brown, prickly crown

Baby blues, gives good news,

Must be Jesus, must be Jesus,

Must be Jesus, Jesus Christ!

Now, before you rail at me for my blasphemy, is it any less blasphemous than having an instantly identifiable picture of Jesus?  Something that you can look at and say 'yep, that's Jesus,' without any idea of what he actually looked like? That's why there are hundreds of images of Jesus in bagels or on cider bottles, even though nobody knows what he looked like.  He's never described in the Bible.  We have no photographs.  And yet we feels as though his look is so distinctive that we could identify him in a rust smear.

Now, here's what you need to know about this. That image of Jesus that you have in your head, you know the one.  Let's pretend for a moment that he did look like that.

 let's pretend that he looked exactly like that (protip, he probably didn't).  Let's imagine that this is what he looked like, so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable, different from everyone else.  Looking like Jesus.  But if he did look like this, then so did everyone else.  If you think that Jesus should have looked different, that he should have been set apart, more beautiful (which unfortunately, seems to equal more white, not cool guys), with a clearer complexion, whiter teeth, a more trimmed beard, whatever, than everyone else, then you've sort of missed the point of the incarnation.

When John speaks of Jesus in the reading we had on Sunday, he does so by saying 'among you stands one you do not know.'  It's a small detail, but it's pretty important, that Jesus fits in well enough to be not immediately recognized as the divine lamb of God, more beautiful than all the rest.  He looked like all the other guys.  For good reason.

He looks like everyone else because he's a real human being.  He's not just playing divine dressup.  He's a person.  He gets slivers in the carpentry shop, he occasionally gets the flu, or eats some bad dates.  He isn't set apart from everyone else, which is the whole point of him being incarnate.  And yet, and yet, at this time of the year, at a time of year in which we are more focused than ever on Jesus, we do a lot of looking at him.  He's in every manger scene, in every creche, he's there, in the stable, looking like a very sweet baby, and we all recognize him instantly.

But here's the thing. We need to realize that by looks, Jesus isn't distinctive. He doesn't look different than everyone else ,and that's sort of the point. He looks like the other people.  So if he's not immediately identfiable, if you can't sing the 'Must be Jesus' song about him, then how will you know him?

Well, we do so by listening to him. We do so by listening to what he says, which has always been at the centre of everything.  When the voice speaks from the cloud as it does at the transfiguration, it says 'this is my son, in whom I am well pleased.  Listen to him!'  It's funny, because at this time of the year, we do a lot of looking at Jesus, but not so much listening to him.  He's all over the place, we see little baby him everywhere, but we don't listen to his words as we ought to.  And that's why John the Baptist exists, and why we hear him in Advent. He came to be the voice crying out in the wilderness, to prepare the way of the Lord, to make his paths straight!  He came as the voice pointing to Christ, to tell us about the good news of Jesus. the Good News that this man was to take our sins upon himself, and die for us, and in doing so take away even the concept of death from us.

And this is a message the world still needs to hear. Even now, the world is preparing for a celebration that they think is about something else. And the more layers you place upon yourself, the more you think that you have to be perfect, the more difficult it is.  This time of year is depressing, where people who have very little go into debt to try to provide a party.  It could be that you've lost someone to death who was very close to you, and maybe this is the first Christmas without them.  Or the second. Or the twenty-third. It never really gets easier.  And if you're living in a world of enforced glee, of mandatory fun, then you can get really down on yourself really quickly, and feel the need to hide your humanity behind a festive holiday mask.

But the time for masks is Halloween.
The time for massive festive parties is New Years.
The time for family is Family Day.
Christmas is for Christ.

It's for Christ because at this time of year, when you are weak and broken down, when the world closes in on you and you realize that you're not has happy as you feel you ought to be, when it becomes clear that you can't afford Christmas cheer, and that you can't work your way out of things, that's when you need Christ more than ever.  Christmas isn't a time for you to do more, it's a time when things were done for you, which was always the magic of Christmas, right from when you were a child.

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness still needs to be heard.  You now have a responsibility to share that freedom to the captives, to share to those who are burdened by the weight of life and celebration, that Christ, the light of the world, has come to them.  They can rejoice even in their sorrow, not because they're going to host the perfect party, or find the perfect present, but because of Christ taking their guilt, and allowing them a new birth.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Making a list and checking it twice.

The readings these days have a matter of urgency attached to them. They've got a matter of urgency when it comes to the possibility of the end of all things.  For you see, we are used to the idea of Jesus coming to earth at this time, as he does as a baby in Bethlehem, but we are prehaps less used to the notion that Jesus will be coming again.  His return is imminent.

That matter should fill us with concern, but it doesn't, not really.  The human brain is adept, remarkably adept, at putting these sorts of things out of our minds while they are not a pressing concern.  Things that are a long way away, they don't really factor in as a concern, not while they're a distance away, anyway.

I liken it to the hares that we see here in Saskatchewan.  The ones that are alternately brown if it's summer, white if it's winter, or red if they're on the highway.  If you approach them, they will dart away, but

they won't dart all the way away.  They'll just hop over to slightly out of range.  They'll hop over to where you can't reach them by grabbing them with your arms, and then they'll just sit there and look at you.  They're well within range of guns, bows, slingshots, but they feel as though they're out of range, and so you as a human being are no longer a concern.

Now, the readings at this time of year are all about the return of Jesus.  The imminent return of Jesus, the great and terrible day of the Lord.  And when John the Baptist is talking to, well, anyone who would listen, he did so by declaring loudly and forcefully that the Lord was coming.  He was coming and would soon be here.

And that's the funny thing.  At this time of the year, we're used to the arrival of someone who comes to judge the nations with righteousness and fire.  We're used to the arrival of somone who will reward the righteous, and send the wicked away empty.

At this time of year, you know that you'd better not shout, you'd better not cry, you'd better not pout, I'm telling you why.  Santa Claus is coming to town.

That's who we're used to hearing about at this time of year.  But it's a shame that the elf on the shelf, the Santa Claus, well, all that stuff only comes to our attention in December.  If Santa was to truly punish the wicked and reward the righteous, then we should probably think more

about him in the sort of January through September timeframe as well.  But we don't.  And here's the thing - if Santa is someone who is checking us out all year, if he's interested in keeping tabs on the entire human race, then by the time December 1st rolls around, it'll be a bit late to turn the entire ship of deeds and misdeeds around.  It's only once things become immediate, it's only once things are unavoidable that we care about doing things to try to catch up.  After it's too late.  After time is up, then we feel as though it's going to be time to catch up.  But too late, folks.

Now, insofar as the arrival of Santa is a threat, how much more so is the arrival of Jesus?  The one that John the Baptist speaks of, the one who

promises to make every hill low, and every valley high?  The one whose winnowing fork is in his hands, to gather the wheat into his barn but burn the chaff with unquenchable fire?  This is a really big deal, and it is something that we as Christians have to deal with.  John's words seem to indicate the the one who is coming, who is greater than John himself, will be coming with the Holy Spirit, and with fire.

This can, and ought to alarm us.  It should alarm us to think about Jesus as the one who is coming to cut down all the trees that do not bear good fruit, and casting them into the fire.  It should alarm us because deep down, we know that we don't bear the sort of fruit that we know we should be.  We aren't living our lives in the way we think even other people should.  And when John reminds us of that, it gives us a healthy fear, it gives us discomfort to think about how Jesus is coming with his winnowing fork in his hand, to gather the wheat into his barn, and to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Does this make you uncomfortable in the countdown to Christmas?  Does it make you uncomfortable in the countdown to realize that Jesus is coming to divide the wheat from the chaff?  That the axe is at the root of the trees?  These are John's words.  If it does make you uncomfortable, then this is what John the Baptist is there for.  Look at the people streaming to him in Judea, streaming over to him why?  For a baptism of repentance.  They are there for the repentance of sins, which John the Baptist has called to their minds.  That's what he calls to you now, through the pages of the scriptures.  He calls you to repentance as well, calls you to turn away from your sin.  That prepares you for Christ, for the coming of the infant into the world.  The deal is, that Jesus comes to take these sins away.  Without John calling their sins to their minds, they wouldn't be ready to recieve the coming Messiah.

That's the work that has to be done.  That's the hills being brought low and the valleys being raised up.  If you are comfy, if you're happy with your activity thus far, then you need to have John the Baptism lower you down.  You need to be brought low.  If you have been brought low by your sins, if you are terrified by them and their potential punishments, then you need to be raised up by Christ and his salvation promise.

Advent is a time for this.  Advent is a time for us to reflect on this, to think of John's words, to be made low by them, and to be raised up by Christ.  Mainly because this is why the king of kings showed up in the first place. He's come to free the people from their sins, and the more we know of our sins, the better that news is.

summit fever

It really is only fitting that the last Sunday in the church year tells you how much you need the upcoming savior.

This is something you miss if you go from zero to Christmas, as the world normally does, but if you have the time and the occasion to think about it, you think about how dire the situation actually is.  I'll explain.

For most of us, we have the idea that Jesus came to earth, as a little baby, to take away the sins of the whole world.   That much is sure.  And when we think about sins, we do so pretty much by the list that St. Paul gives us, telling us that the works of the flesh are evident:  Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. Things like this, and the decalogue, have a way of working on us, in which we get the impression, the very reasonable impression, that the scriptures give us a near constant idea only of what we ought not to do.  It's easy to think that, since Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, that we ought perhaps to avoid these sins, to steer clear of them and forsake them. No problem there.  And this list of things almost always comes down on the side of working out what you did.  That will be the basis of judgment, right?  If you were bad, if you committed sins, if your sins were greivous and stank to high heaven, then you'll be damned to hell for all eternity.  So the thinking goes, at any rate.

But here's the snag with our thinking - That we don't exist in a vacuum.  We aren't individuals who exist and function in nothingness.  In other words, it isn't as though our only choices are evil or neutral.

This is going to be hard for good Lutherans to hear, because we have been, for a long time, dissuaded from talking about works, believing that discussion of works would lead to us assuming that

we could, in fact, earn our salvation, which we cannot.  And so we default to the position that it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you don't do anything wrong.


This is the fatal flaw with law preaching, I suppose, is that it can, in theory, terrify the flesh, but it does little beyond paralyze you as a human being, even as a Christian, into complete inactivity.  And if we were Lutheran Christians, we would expect the image (the only image) of the last judgment that Christ paints to be specific in its nature.  We would anticipate that it would be someting that would talk only about our faith, right?  As Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, as he divides the saved from the damned, he doesn't mention faith.  I know, I know, we're delving into this territory

again, aren't we?  The territory of Christian gymnastics, in which we know the conclusion already, and so the intermediary steps have to fit that.  And so this story of the last judgment, the story in which Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, it hs to be all about the justifying faith in Christ.  It has to.  By definition.  We have already decided the conclusion that faith in Christ saves, so therefore, by default, this story, even though it isn't about that, has to be about that.  It cannot, must not, be about anything else.

Now, this is something that we accuse other church bodies of doing.  We tell the Jehovah's Witnesses that they ought not do that, that they mustn't change scripture to fit their conclusions.  They can't alter the words of the Bible to fit what they want it to say, and they need to do what we as Lutherans do, which is to let the scriptures say what they plainly say.

Now you look at this passage, and tell me it has nothing to do with works.  I dare you.  I double dare you to look at this, and claim that it has nothing to do with works at all.  Are you sure?  And how much are you willing to wager on it?  How much are you willing to gamble on this topic?  Are you willing to risk eternity on this?

The big surprise lurking for us when we look clearly in this passage from Matthew 25 is that Jesus makes no bones about what is happening in his division of the sheep from the goats.  He tells the sheep that they were good to him.  When he was hungry, they gave Him food.  When he was sick, they took care of Him.  When he was in prison, they visited Him.  These things, when they were done to the least of all people, were done to Christ himself.

In the modern church, in the modern Lutheran church, these things are downplayed. They are downplayed to the point of not being discussed at all.  We don't want to talk about works, we don't want to talk about what you should do.  We're much better at talking about what you ought not do.

But Christ, in his painting of the picture of the last judgment, he makes it fairly clear that you have not been placed here on this earth for inactivity, for selfishness, or for squandering of his gifts.  This is what the parable of the prodigal son is all about.  If you remember it, the parable of the prodigal son is about using up what God has given unto you.  It's about taking the many and various gifts that God has supplied you with, and wasting them.  Running them into the ground.  The prodigal son took all his interitance, and blew it on wine, women and song.  He used it all up until it was gone, then he had to grovel back.  It's a disastrous story for us, because, unlike the majority of scripture, it's written for us.

Look at who this passage is spoken to - It is spoken directly to his disciples.  Privately.  It isn't delivered on a mountain, it isn't delivered to the crowds, it isn't spoken from the cross.  It is spoken to his disciples in private.  And that makes sense.

It makes sense because passages like this are written to and for Christians.  It's spoken to the disciples, men who were of the inner circle, men who had been following Jesus for the duration, but more than that, men who had become comfortable, complacent, as regarded their position.  People who were, as we are in the church, comfy with the idea that Jesus has accomplished our salvation for us.

Ah yes.  But he has not done everything for us.  He has placed us within a unique position that we don't think much about for much of the time.  He has placed us in a space in which we have the opportunity to work in his service every minute of every day.  And the sad thing is how often we waste that chance.

Look around you.  All around you are the the people who make up this edict from Jesus.  The schlubs you pass at Wal-Mart, the beggars you find on the street, the scammers online, the telemarketers calling you during supper, your bigoted uncle Ted, the loudmouth in traffic, the teenagers who live down the street, all of them.  They're all an opportunity to serve Christ.  And what do we do with them?  We ignore them, we push them aside, we move past them always, and move towards something else.

When Jesus talks about the final judgment, his question to us is what did you do?  It isn't 'where did you go,' or 'what did you think?' as we would expect. Instead, it ends up being 'what did you do?'  And that's a harder question for us, as it exposes us, nakedly, as being bad stewards.  And none of us like that discussion.  When Jesus talks about the final judgment, he does so by saying to us that we have not done what we ought to have done.  This is, and always should be, unsettling to us.  We ought to be bothered by it. We ought to be perturbed. We, in the church, rarely have cause to be unsettled.  If I were to read through that list of sins earlier, then you'd likely hear me read them, and shrug your shoulders, and assume that it had nothing to do with you.  And odds are you'd be right, up to a point.

But if you were to hear the words of Christ from Matthew 25, if you were to hear Jesus speak to you directly, calling you out for your sloth, for you laziness, for your lax attitude about the poorest and most vulnerable of all people.  Do you feel uneasy?  You ought to.  In amost every way, when we look into the scriptures, we end up as

comfortable as the elder son from the prarable of the prodigal son, or like the rich young ruler, who sincerely believes that he has done all that is necessary to inherit eternal life.  And what is he reminded of by Jesus?  Not about what he has done, but about what he has left undone.

It's at this point that I end up thinking about summit fever.  Summit fever is the desire of climbers to reach the top of the mountain no matter what.  You must know by now that 1 in 6 people who sets out to climb Mount Everest will die on the mountain.  They will be swept away in avalanches, suffer from high altitude edema, fall from great height, or simply freeze to death in the heights of the world.  Now you would expect people to die in an area that dangerous, but what you might not expect is how frequently people will walk right past disasters.  People will step over the dying to get David Sharp, who froze to death most of the way up the mountain, in green boots' cave, who was passed over by 40 people on their way both up and down the mountain.  They walked right by him, almost stepping over him, and left him to die up there on the mountain.  And die he did.  David Sharp did not survive to walk down that mountain.

to the top of that mountain.  The most gripping of these stories was that of

Now, as shocked as you may be at that story, think of all the times you have walked right by someone who needed your hlep, someone who was in a bad state, someone who wanted money, or food, or heck, even your time, and you brushed them off.  You stared at the ground and kept walking, you breezed right on by, you switched your radio off, or changed the channel on the tv, you ignored the whole thing, and kept on going.  You weren't even climbing Everest, you were just trying to grab some groceries, or go shopping for Christmas presents, or whatever.  And even in that situation, you couldn't be bothered to help.  In your life, you have your own summit fever. You have your own goals, you have your own desires, your own things you want to do, and you're fine stepping over people, stepping past them, leaving them to die, as long as you get what you watned to get.  As long as you crest what you want to do, no matter how insignificant, then you're happy to step over whoever you need to.  You don't mind stomping all over the workers in the textile factories who work for basically nothing to provide us with cheap clothes, or the workers in electronics factories who live and die so that our ipads are cheaper.  We are happy to pass by those who get gobbled up by the machinery of this modern world, those who don't know how to cook, who don't have jobs, who don't have clean clothes or kitchens, any of that.  And we pass right by them on our way to our own personal summits.

As the church year draws to a close, as we enter into the last few days before Advent, we are reminded of just how much we have not done.  We are reminded of how far we have to go, how much we habitually leave undone.  As Christians, at this time of the year, we are reminded of how much we have had placed before us, and how much of it we have ignored.  And this is why we need Christmas.

We need Christmas because of the promise of that baby in Bethlehem.  We need Christmas because of our lack of activity, for our sloth, for our dereliction of duty. We need Christmas because of what we have not done, for all the times we have hardened our hearts like Pharaoh, for all the times we have passed by the needy like the Pharisees in the parable of the Good Samaritan, for all the times we have squandered our inheritance like the prodigal son, or buried our talents in the field.  We need Christmas as Christians not just for what we have done, but perhaps even more, because of what we have not done.  We knew what we should do, and we refused to do it.

The baby in the manger, the promised savior, the child being born held all that promise.  To save us from our sins, sins of omission, sins of commission.  If you read through Matthew 25 and it makes you uneasy, if you read through it and it bothers you, if it frightens and upsets you, if you read through Matthew 25 and you want to change the words in there to make it say something different, you need to stop.  Because for maybe the first time in your Christian life, you know what you have to repent of.  You know why you need Christ.  It could be that you've been going to church, listening to sermons for decades, heard the pastors denouncing this sin or that sin, and you thought to yourself, as the rich young ruler did, how great it was that you didn't have these problems.  Well now you know what problems you have.  And now you know how much you need the mercy and merits of Christ.  If someone was toe go down the list of people you have mistreated, have ignored, have passed by, you could not stand.  So if you cannot stand, you must kneel.  And seek forgiveness.  When the final judgment comes, you need to understand and to remember that none of us can stand on our own.  We all depend on the merits of Christ, and not our own.  What do you need forgiveness from?  Your sloth and apathy.  How do you get it? Through Christ's death for you.

Amen.  Come Lord Jesus.

He's so talented!

Sometimes things aren't about what we want them to be about.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  Sometimes Jesus just says what he says.

There's a term I've coined, called 'Christian Gymnastics,' in which we, as Christians, will go through insane logical loops, take great leaps of faith, to make sure that the faith fits our preconcieved notions of what we want it to be.  I know, we in the Lutheran church have 'sola scriptura' as our byline, letting the scriptures say what they plainly say, but we're as bad for it as anyone else.

Case in point, the reading that we had from Sunday.  This reading, from Matthew 25, is right smack dab in the middle of the most difficult, hardest to hear, chapter from the New Testament.  Or, at least, the most difficult one for Christians to hear.

For you see, these passages are exactly what non-Christians want to hear, both about

themselves, and about the Christian faith.  They're quite law-heavy, telling you that you have some stuff to do.  And we don't like that, especially as Lutherans.

For you see, as Lutherans, we have a built in fear of works as far as righteousness goes.  We have a fear, a trepidation of works as anything that justifies us before God.  And part of this fear is to not talk about works, really, at all.  We talk about it only just barely in passing, but we talk only about the work of Jesus, his grace, his work on our behalf, and us bringing nothing to the table.

And that's fine, I suppose.  It's good as far as preaching the gospel goes, but unfortunately for us, Jesus doesn't avoid talking about works.  He actually talks about them quite a bit.  He's quite keen on discussing works, on bringing the topic forwards, and he does this for a very good reason - he's aware of what our tendencies are.

We have a natural inclination, as Christians, to understand the severity of sin, and we know that none of our good deeds can possibly counterbalance the sins that we commit.  So knowing that we can't counterbalance the sins we've committed, we tend to concede the point, and instead of concentrating on doing good deeds, we default to just avoiding bad deeds as much as we can.  If it's all 'thou shalt not' all the time, then what are you actually supposed to do?  And all this is, to reference the reading that we had from Sunday, is burying the talent.  For fear that we might misuse the talent, for fear that we might waste it, use it improperly, for fear that we might get it wrong, or feel as though we might place our salvation in our own hands, we take the talents, and we bury them.  That way, we avoid evil, right?  It's like those three monkeys, the ones who hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil.  Sure, you can stay away from doing anything specifically evil, but that's not the same as doing anything worthwhile.

The illustration that Jesus uses isn't idle, or someting to be tossed aside.  When he talks about burying our talents, it's something we do literally, and in this case, I don't use the word literally as an intensifier.  If you'd rather your talents were physically buried in the ground, if you're seriously thinking about burying your talents deep underground where they can be returned to God in a pristine form, then don't worry about it, for they will be bruied soon enough.  You will spend far more time dead than alive.  Your talents, your skills and abilities, your likes and dislikes, your passions and joys, they'll all be buried soon enough.  No trouble there.  But the big question is what do you do with them while you still can?

The parable of the talents seems pretty clear that you were supposed to do things while you had the chance.  You were supposed to act on possibilities.  You were supposed to move on it.  You were given time and space and abilities and skills by God himself, to be used in his service, and for your fellow human beings.  The parable of the talents tells us as Christians, that it's not enough for us to be blessed by God with time, resources, space, abilities, passions, and to just let them languish.  They were given to you by God for a reason.  To be used.

The final judgment of God entails him returning, as he does in the parable of the talents, to ask what we've been doing while he has been gone.  What have you done with what God has entrusted you with.  What have you done with who you are?  Is it anything?  Or did you bury it all out of fear of you losing it, out of fear of you squandering it, out of fear of your works.  Did you take who God has made you into

and bury that, or did you use it for what he had made you for.  The scriptures tell you what that is, for they tell us, in a verse that will end up being important for these last few weeks in the church year, that you are God's workmanship, created by him to do good works, which he has created in advance for you to do.  He's extremely serious about that, and he's awfully serious about the massive sins of omission you have. The thing is, that not only do you not live up to God's standards in the Bible, but you don't live up to your own standards of how people should behave either!  You know that.  When placed next to even your own standards, your own rules, you don't meet up to what you know people should do.  And it's not just the junk you do that you ought not to do, but it's the stuff you don't do that you know you should.

As Christians, we need to wrest our minds from the idea that the perfect Christian life is akin to a coma, to a living dream. Divorce yourself from the notion that the best life for you to live is the one in which you do nothing for fear of doing something wrong.  God made you into a special, unique human being, placed you into this time and space for something.  He meant for you to be doing what he put you here for.  Not to earn your salvation, but avoiding it doesn't earn your salvation either.  You don't get holier by avoiding works, you know.  Christ died to take away your sins, your anger, your resentment, your guilt, your shame, your lust, your pride, and, if you're already a Christian, more than anything else, your horrible complacency and apathy.  His death on a cross was for your complacency and sloth, and he died to set you free from its burden.  Through his death, you have not been freed from works, but for them, not liberated for sloth, but for dynamism.

If your next question is going to be 'what then ought we to do?'  Stick around.  Next week.

PJ.

Armageddon

There was a movie that came out not too terribly long ago called 'waiting for armageddon.'  It was all about the expectation that 20 million Americans have that they are living in the end times.  They are living in the last days of the earth, and it is winding to a close.  Now, this is an interesting concept on its own, the idea of us living in the end times, but it gets further intensified by the fact that these are people who not only believe that they are living in the end

times, but that they want this to happen.  In their lifetimes.  They believe that the final battle, the end of all things, the end of history as we know it, is going to happen, and they want it to happen.  They are interested as much as they possibly can in getting this event to happen.

Why, you may ask.  Well, it's a complicated question, that isn't as complicated as we would make it out to be.  It's a simple enough question to look into things and work out why people would be wanting to live in the end times.  Part of the reason we want the end of the world to happen during in our lifetimes, is so that we can be part of the scriptures, part of the plan of God, so we can see these events, the second coming, as part of our lifetimes, ratifying our choices and making abundantly clear that we were making the right choice, and backing the right pony all along.

But the readings today divide the people of the world into two camps, and they're both off.  They're both a little off from where they should be.  You have Amos speaking out against those who want the end of the world to happen.  You have Amos asking why anyone would want the day of the Lord to come.  It would be a terrifying day, a horrible day, a day of shaking and fear.  It would be a day of trepidation, a day of terror, nothing would be safe, nothing would be nice or good.  And when God speaks about people, he does so by saying that he hates their feasts, and takes no delight in their solemn assemblies, all the things that people had used for a long time to convince themselves that God wanted, all that stuff is useless to God.  He is not interested in that.  He is interested in repentance and fear, in righteousness and justice.  Tht's what he's interested in.  And if we haven't accopmlished that, if we haven't done all those things, you'd best hope that he's not coming back any day now.  It's terrifying.  If God comes, if Jesus comes back, and we haven't done what he wants us to do, if we haven't done what we should, then his return would be a horrible thing to behold.

But contrast that with the reading from the Gospel that we have, and see that we don't just have people who are trying to force the issue, but we have five foolish virgins, who assume that it's never going to happen. They are woefully unprepared for the return of the bridegroom, whom they all knew was going to come back, but they got used to feeling that perhaps he was never going to come back.  He was never going to return, and so they got very complacent.  Very complacent, laid back, not too concerned about when that might be, and so they were unprepared for when the bridegroom came back.  And when he did come back, when the bridegroom returned, they had urn out of oil, much like the united states, and so they had to run and get more.  And by that time, it was far too late for them to get into the party, so they were shut out.

These two things are held in tension.  People who want God to come back, and people who assume that nothing is ever going to happen.  And yet, and yet, there is a middle ground, a middle ground occupied by the wise virgins, those who are prepared for the coming of the bridegroom, those who packed extra oil, those who were carrying what they needed so that no matter when Jesus showed up, they would be ready.  And this point is so unbelievably key, it's so important for us to know as far as end times prophecies go.

You see, there are a lot of end times prophecies.  There are tons of people who are speaking about the end of history, the end times, the conclusion of history and the wrapping up of everything.  The looking for signs and signals from the scriptures , to see where God is at work in the world, and will always tell you that you are living in the end times,

and that things are wrapping up.  But you were never told in the scriptures to want to hasten this day forward.  It was never supposed to be the case that we would rush to a conclusion, focused on what we will see in the hereafter.  Instead, there is a crazy thing that happens in the scriptures.

For you see, the wise virgins are the ones who are prepared, no matter when the bridegroom may come back.  He could be back in five minutes, or five years, and they would be ready.  And that is what we are called to do.  We are called to be prepared, not to be living in the pie in the sky country, but to be at work in the kingdom always.

When God speaks in the words of Amos, he tells us that he despises feasts, that he takes no delight in burnt offerings, that he does not want burnt offerings or grain offerngs, songs or melodies.  All the things that those who seek the end times, that's what they have, that's what they bring.  And to seek the destruction of all things, to seek the fulfillment of revelation, to seek the end of all things is to turn your back on what you have been presented with for now.

Something strange about Jesus was that although he was divine, although he was focused on the work that he had to do to bring about the end of death and sin, he didn't ignore people.  Because he knew that people were what it was all about.  The justice and righteousness that are spoken to Amos, who do you think they apply to.  What do you think they're about.  Justice and righteousness don't exist in a vacuum, applied to nobody.  They are applied to real people, in real times and places.  They are applied to the poor, to the marginalized, to the people who can't help themselves.

And this comes to the heart of the end of all things.  Obviously the world is still here.  It hasn't ended since I started writing this sermon, so we're still in good shape.  And why did Jesus decide not to end the world two thousand years ago.  He did so for you.  And for everyone else on earth, all the people who are here waiting for us.  God relented in his return, and we ought to hope that he will continue to relent.  We ought to hope that he will continue to tarry, in order that we might continue to be useful, that we might continue to encourage one another, build one another up, to do something worthwhile in the here and now while we may.  Jesus tells us that we need to work while it is still day, for the night is coming when no one can work.  It will be night eventually.  There will be no more chance for work.  But that time is not today.  Not this day, not just yet.  We ought to be working in the here and now, not rushing armageddon, and not pretending that it will never happen, but being cognizant of the fact that the end of all things will happen, when God is ready.  In the meantime, we are called to that work that Amos asks us to do, to bring justice and righteousness, to be working on behalf of the people of God who are ground into the dust, to not be working for their eternal salvation while neglecting them in there here and now.  James tells us that it does nobody any good to say to them that we wish them well while they are starving.  God's desire is not for us to look for the return of Jesus while ignoring his body.

The greatest way to be prepared for the return of Jesus, honestly, is to be involved with his body now.  How do you do that, well you do it by being here.  The body of Christ is present in two ways in the here and now, firstly here in holy communion, where his body and blood literally are.  Also, he has promised to be wherever two or three are gathered.  That makes sense, and yet it seems to be almost too simple, yet here we are.  This is where the body and blood of Christ are, and his presence in the worship service is a major part of that.  Your savior is literally present here, at work in this place.  And those who want and expect the return of Jesus would do well to be not just present for his second coming at the mount in armageddon, but instead to be around where he may be in the here and now, and that place is right here.  This is where forgiveness of sins is given, life is preached, the scriptures are explored, and God is found.

And the second way to find the body of Christ is in his people.  The people of the world, the scattered, the poor, the weak, the frustrated, the crippled, the sick, the weak, the body of Christ.  How could you say that you have wanted the return of the body of Christ, if you have not cared for it at all while it was here all around you.  And this is, as Christians, a generous part of what we have to repent of, and what we have to be forgiven from, from burning though our lamps, for not being mindful of the body of Christ here present.  Jesus tells us that we will always have the poor with us, so there will always be an opportunity to work, how there will always be a chance to do things, his body will always need care.  We, as his forgiven, redeemed children, we have a role, we have a part to play.  It is incumbent on us to live our lives in a state of readiness, to be prepared to have Christ come back any day now, but to plan as though his return was thousands of years away.  To be ready for whenever he may return, but to build programs, to construct opportunities for the poor and the weak.

In other words, we have been blessed by the Lord our God with opportunity, to work in his kingdom here on earth.  We ought never to get complacent, thinking he'll never come back, nor ought we get too desirous for his return, seeking the great and terrible day of the Lord.  Rather, we need to be alert, attentive, waiting for his arrival, and more than anything else, doing the work that he has set before us to do.  The work of justice, of compassion, of repentence and of faith in him.

Beatitude Balderdash

Hi there, happy Monday, and welcome to the blog.  The blog which will have a certain Latin flair to it today.

Now, Latin, as you all know, is the basis and backbone for our language, our mother tongue.  We are entwined with Latin and it is inseprable from us.  We can't get away from the very deep Latin roots that run through everything.  A great number of english words have their roots in Latin words, which makes it rotten to play Balderdash with someone who knows Latin, which means that they can sort of cheat.

But a Latin word that you all know, if you're in church, if you have read your Bible ever, is Beatitude.  Beatitude is a Latin word for blessing, did you know that?  When Jesus begins each section of the Beatitudes, he starts out, in the Latin Vulgate by saying 'Beatis.' That's the way you say blessed in Latin.  You may have heard it in the sense of the beatification, which is the last stop on the railroad before sainthood.  If you've been beatified, then you are well on your way to becoming a saint, and you will be referred to as 'blessed Garth Huber,' or what have you.

But there's another Latin term that you're going to need to know, or rather one that you already no doubt are well aware of.  And that Latin term is quid pro quo.  That is, if you do something for me, I will do something for you, and vice versa.  And that's the basis for most of our interactions with each other.  This is what we're sort of all about, and this is what we do as humans for the most part.  Most of our relationships with other human beings are based on this principle, in which we do things for each other, and that's how it goes. And some primatologists have framed morality in this sense, that we can observe the apes as creatures who can practice this same kind of exchange with each other.  They can do this, they can scratch each other's backs, both literally and figuratively.

And we, human beings, because we operate with quid pro quo, we translate that over to everything else, as well.  Including to our relationship with God. We treat our realtionship with God in the same way, feeling as though if we do the right things for God, if we treat him well, then he will treat us well as well.  We feel as though if we do the right thing, we will be rewarded.  If we keep God's laws, if we do that for him, then he will bless us.  Blessed are we if we do what God wants us to do.  And certainly, reading through this passage from the Gospels, you can get the idea of how you ought to interact with God in the same way.  Quid Pro Quo, right?  If we are in these camps, if we are sorrowful, or if we hunger for justice, or if we are meek, then we will be rewarded by God for our efforts.  And that's how it works because that's how it has to work.  That's how all the other relationships we have work, so that's how this one has to work.

But wait a moment.  If you had a system with God worked out in which you were to do good things so that you might be blessed, well, then you'd be in a bit of a fix, wouldn't you?  Because, my friends, you are involved in yet more latin phrases.  You are involved in more latin phrases than you want to be.  You're involved with a latin phrase that affects you more than you'd want.  You're affected by a phrase in Latin that Martin Luther brought forward to describe the human condition, where he

called us 'simul justus et peccator,' at the same time sinner and saint.  And this is what drives all the misery of the earth, this is why the exchange that we would expect to get us a better place with God doesn't happen.  This is why we don't have the life we feel like we deserve, because we are simultaneously saint and sinner.  We know what we ought to do, we are well aware of what we need to do, and yet that ends up being the hardest thing to do.  We are in every way like Saint Paul, who knows what he wants to do, and yet doesn't do it.  We are people who know what the right thing to do is, we have it in our hearts and in our minds, we know how people should act, we know how we should act, and yet we don't live up to our own standards.

Look, I know how tempting it is to look at these beatitudes, and to try to see ourselves in it.  We look at these beatitudes and want to see ourselves as the meek ones, as the ones who are hungering for justice, as the ones who are long suffering and attempting to make the world a better place. We want to look at the beatitudes and say 'how long, O Lord, until I receive my reward? How long until I am given my release from this time of effort and struggle?  How long, O Lord, until you recognize how great of a job I'm doing, and bless me with your goodness?  How long indeed.  The trouble with the beatitudes is that we all see ourselves in them, we all see ourselves in the beatitudes, we all see ourselves as the meek, as the sorrowful, but we don't see ourselves as sinners.  

And this is why we're in the state we're in.  We all think we're part of the solution, and none of us believe that we're part of the problem.  We see ourselves in the beatitudes, but not as the sinners that we are.  It's always someone else's problem, and we never really figure out that the problem is most likely ours to begin with.  We have memorized the beatitudes, but we have forgotten that we are simul justus et peaccator.  And that's why the quid pro quo doesn't work.

But the Bible was never about quid pro quo to begin with.  Never was.  Sure, we thought it was.  Sure, we assumed that it was all about that, but it never really was.  The work that God did, it was never quid pro quo.  If you look at his arrangements with the people, if you look at how he does things with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, and so on, giving them blessing with nothing expected in return.  He offers them a space, a land, descendents, security and a future, and doesn't ask for anything in return.  None of God's deals require us to do the right thing to get in. The greatest of these is salvation, where we are given the forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting. And what is required of us?  Only trust in the promise.  Only belief in what Jesus says.  Only faith and trust in the words of Christ who tells us that he goes to prepare a place for us.  And we all have someone in our lives who has gone to be with God.  We all have someone in our lives who has departed this life, who has gone to be with God, and who has entered paradise.  And they did so because they had faith in God, because they clung fast to that promise.  Not because they did anything amazing, not because they stuck to God's laws so well, but because they were redeemed by God, bought by his blood, and given his grace.  They were blessed by God because he loved them, not because they had done the right thing.  They are justified sinners, which is how they have earned their place at God's side.

So, then, how do the beatitudes work? How do they work as things that seem to carry blessings alongside them?  Well, they do have blessings attached to them.  They mean what they say, when they say that the meek are blessed.  It means what it says when those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed.  Because they are.  This will seem strange, I know, because I just spent this time telling you that God doesn't bless you more because you do better things, which is true.  So how are you blessed?  You are blessed because God has told you how he wants to bless you.  He has instructed you through this book, through this misunderstood, unread book, what you should be doing.  And if you skip it, you miss the blessings that are there.

Think of it in dental terms, yes?  The dentist will tell you to floss.  The dentist will tell you that flossing is the best way to go about things, that if you don't floss, then you will have a bad time in the future with your teeth.  The dentist will still clean your teeth, will still fill holes, whether you floss or not, but the flossing isn't there for the dentist's benefit, it's for yours. That's so that you might have a more solid mouth, better health, and fewer problems.  Seems so simple, and is so rapidly conflated with other things, but here, in the beatitudes, God isn't telling you how to earn salvation, but he is instead telling you that this is how you can see his blessings. For most of our lives, we spend all our time with our hands full, with our time crammed full, and too occupied with ourselves to see God at all.  We lose sight of him, and of his blessings, because we are so occupied with ourselves, our achievements, our stuff, everything, that we can't see that God is trying to bless us all the time.  We just can't see it.

Think of those who have fallen asleep in the faith, those who have passed away, those who have died.  Think about how they are right now, which is fully and completely blessed by God, living in a space without tears, without suffering or sadness.  They

are blessed by God, have been given the grace and peace and rest that only God can give.  We find it easy to see that God blesses our loved ones who have fallen asleep in the faith with rich and abundant blessings, even in their hour of greatest weakness, but we find it hard to believe that he could bless us in our hours of weakness here on earth.  But it is no different.  Only different in your mind.  Our weakness is an opportunity for God's strength to be known to us.  We see him most clearly when we have nothing cluttering up our lives, getting in the way.  When we are meek, when we are humble, then we see God's majesty.  When we are worn down, we are picked up by God.  When we are reviled by others, we feel God's love.  In our weakness, God's strength is made known.

PJ.

Taking a year off.

Sweet liberty.  That's a concept that is at the height of our wishes for now and for the future.  We generally want nothing more than liberty, than freedom. The great nations of the world have enshrined freedom as essentailly the centerpiece of what

they're all about.  Countries live and die on the idea of freedom, of liberty, of the ability to make your own choices without being forced into something.  It's someting that countries, cities, people, sincerely believe in.

But freedom, she's hard.  Freedom is difficult, because once the shackles of requirements are gone,  you have to decide what you want to do with yourself and your time.  And honestly, that's harder than you might expect.

Think about this, when students finish high school, what do they do? Frequently, they take a year off, a year to drift, a year to float around.  For the first time since they can remember, they aren't being told where to go or what to do. For a change, with no job and no school, they are free to float around as much as they like, and have no direction built into their routines.

But here's the thing that happens in our lives, which is that we crave chains. We crave captivity, we want

someone to tell us what to do.  Think about how we are in our daily lives, think about how we are on our day to day, when we do all the things that we do.  We are people who move through the world, operating in a world in which we get people to tell us what to do, what to think, how to behave.  Even in a world of freedom, we seek a master, and we seek rules.  We want to have someone lock us down, and shackle us to a new master.  The story of the demons in the scriptures tells us that if you sweep demons out, and leave the space swept and garnished, then you will find yourself with seven worse than the one you just got rid of.  Because nature, and people, abhor vacuums.

You see, we as Christians are living with the horrible curse of liberty.  And liberty tells you that if you're going to do something, then that thing is up to you to do.  You are supposed to get to work in the way that Christ would have you do it. And the law of Christ gives you freedom, frees you from the requirements

of the law.  Christian freedom tells you that it isn't your obsevance of laws or lack thereof that will bring you heaven or hell, but faith in Christ.  And faith in Christ will essentially move you in one way or another.  No problem there.  But that means that the law of God is still there, so what do we do with those chains?

Well, my earlier mention of the student just out of high school is perfectly apt here.  I'll tell you why.  The mention of the student out of high school is a mention of a person who needs direction, who needs to be shown where to go and what to do.  Someone who doesn't have focus, who doesn't have anything to work through and so won't do much of anything.  Much like our confirmation graduates.  Well, Christians, through the refomation, climb this mountain and look around, and find the pure gospel of God, telling them that there is nothing left for anyone to do to earn their salvation.  There is nothing left to earn, no profit to be made through obedience, and now slavery to the law is gone.  You aren't going to earn your way into righteousness through what you do.  So now what? Do you just drift through life like teens drifting through Europe after high school.  You begin to figure out what this whole thing is all about.  And it isn't about keeping rules for the sake of keeping rules, it isn't about earning anything.  It's about something more than that.

One of the great gifts of the reformation was to say to us that we are freed from the law.  We aren't freed from the law in terms of the law ceasing to exist, it's still there.  But we were freed from the requirements of the law, the weight of the law, the burdens of the law, the crushing difficulties of the

law.  Think of it in terms of high school physics.  When you were in high school, you took physics ensure that you could learn, right/ But you probably also took physics to graduate.  You took the classes to get by.  And odds are, in a lot of your classes, you did what most of us did, which was to just get through, to co-operate and graduate. You moved through your classes, and scraped by to get by.  You did what you had to do to get through the classes and move through the motions.

But after you graduate, the lessons are still there.  You can still learn physics, but what happens if you don't get it right? Nothing.  You don't fail, you don't pass, because there isn't a course.  Those results driven experiences are gone.  Instead, you have been freed up to do something becuase it is what you want to do, perhaps for the first time ever. You can read novels without being graded on them, you can do math at your own pace without failing out of class. You can learn physics from the internet or from a professor, and not worry about if you are or are not passing the classes.  And this is wonderful, because of the freedom you have found to do what you want to do.

Christian freedom is like this.  Jesus took the burden of the law upon himself, and broke it on the tree.  He took that burden, that consequence, of all the sin of the world upon himself, and nailed it to himself on the cross.  And as he died, the final exam was delivered, and Jesus passed it on your behalf.  He took that requirement from you, and smashed it, leaving you free to do what God tells you to do without the threat of pass or fail.  Jesus frees you to do what is good and proper without the schedule, without the price attached to it.

And sadly enough, that is the only time that good deeds are ever really truly good.  Only if we're not doing it to pass, only if we're not doing it to scrape by. And this is the great gift of grace, the grace of God that he gives to us through Christ. That we are free from the weight of the law.  Grace, freedom, they were such a huge idea that it took Martin

Luther wrestling with the scriptures like Jacob wrestling with the angel, to see that there was grace hidden in these pages.  Beyond the traditions of men, beyond the new shackles that we had put up, beyond the weight of the structure we had built up, grace was there, freeing us for the first time from the weight and penalty of the law, and letting us see the law, and God for the first time.  And what did we see. For the first time, we saw what our Lord had wanted for the first time.  For us to love him free of rules, laws and threats.  Just love from him to us. And that freedom is the best kind of all, freed from rules and restrictions and free from being pushed and pulled.  We're just free to love and to be loved, for Jesus Christ has fulfilled the law and paid the complete price for our sins.

PJ.

garbage day

Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and give unto God what is God's.  So goes Jesus' response to those who ask if it is lawful to pay taxes or not.  And that question for Jesus would have been a little different than it would be today.  For in Canada, the great nation where I live, we're a socialist paradise.  Taxes

pay for everything.  Schools, roads, the police, armies, the fire department, the libraries, all these things are run by our taxes.  We pay for it all though what we earn, and if we refuse to pay taxes, that is, if we all refuse to pay our taxes, then all those services go away.  Then the schools that teach our children fold, the police who protect us go home, and the army that ensures our sovereignty will disappear. 

Good so far, but we have a profound difference between us and the people of the time of Christ.  In

the time of Jesus, in Israel, if you were paying taxes, you were paying taxes to someone else's army.  An occupying army.  An army which has taken over, that rules your people and keeps you from making self-determining decisions.  In other words, you are paying the bully to keep you down.

This is why the Pharisees brought forward this question to Jesus, saying to him 'is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not'.  Can we as Hebrew people realistically pay for the occupying forces? And that question was supposed to trap Jesus in his own words, to have him lose support from one side or the other.  Jesus was supposed to, in his response, either advocate the payment of taxes, losing the support of the Hebrews, or advocate withholding taxes from Rome, and risk charges of sedition from the Roman government. 

But Jesus, as he does, avoids the simple traps that are laid, and he asks them to bring him a coin, which they do.  And when they bring the coin, Jesus asks whose name and inscription are on the coin, to

which they reply that it is Caesar's.  So, Jesus responds, give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and give unto God what is God's. Its all seems simple enough, until we get into trying to work out what it is that God has asked for.  Because honestly, that's just about the last thing that we feel like bringing to God.

What do we bring to God? We bring him our Sunday best.  We bring him an idea of what we think we should look like.  We bring to God the very thing that Caesar has asked for, which is our respectablity, our veneer of goodness.  We bring to God the things that make us look good in front of other people.  We bring our best clothes, our best attitudes, and most importantly, we hide everything else away, all the gross stuff that we don't want anyone to see, we hide it away from God too.  I know for an iron-clad fact that I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to

mention it again, that some years ago, I heard from a parishoner about a man who, when they went out drinking, would drink under a wagon.  His reasoning was that God wouldn't see him under there.

Yes, we hide our actual problems from God.  We hide it away, making sure that he can't see it, and making sure that nobody else can either.  We do this because we know that the scriptures say that we ought to be perfect, just as our heavenly father is perfect.  Are you perfect? No? Then how are you fitting into a church?

Given the gulf that exists between what we know we should do, vs where we actually are, what do we do with it? Most of us cover it up, hide it away, and head into a church service, and look nice.  We do our best to look good to each other, and to God, hoping against hope that he will be convinced, like everyone else might be, that we are as good as he wants us to be.  I know we all had a chuckle at that nice man who exclusively drank under the wagon, but how different to that are you? To parapharse the prophet Nathan 'you are the man........who drinks under the wagon!' You are the same as that man, hoping against hope that God won't discover how you actually live, even though, guess what, he's already well aware. He knows perfectly well who you are. 

This brings us to the cosmic garbage man theory that I posited on Sunday.  Yes I'm going somewhere with this.  Imagine if you were desperatly concerned with what the garbage man might think of you.  Imagine if you felt, however right or wrong, that the garbage man was judging you every time you put out your trash.  Imagine if you wanted him to think well of you, to have an opinion of you that was glowing.  You want that refuse collector to have an impression that you are a good and responsible homeowner, a tidy person who looks after themselves, and gosh, a person who doesn't even need the services of the garbage man at all. So what

would you do? If you're really trying hard to impress the garbage man, then you'll wheel out an empty garbage can every week.  You'll roll out a completely empty garbage can every time, making sure that the inside of that garbage can is sparkly clean, never used even. And what it lets you do is to look at all the other garbage cans on your street, set out for the garbage man to pick up, overflowing with trash, and thinking smugly to yourself 'thank God I don't live like that.'

Ah but you do.  You do live like that.  You churn out the same amount of trash, but you just don't want anyone to know.  So where does it go? You keep it in your home, out of sight, never seen.  You keep it hidden far away, stashed beyond the line of sight of

any human being or even of the garbage man himself. You live a life surrounded by trash and garbage to make sure that the garbage man will never see the amount of trash.

But here's the thing.  The garbage man isn't judging you.  He isn't really interested in what content you're putting out in your trash can.  These days, the garbage man doesn't even get out of the truck to poke through what you have in your can.  His entire job is to take your trash away, so you don't have to live with it anymore.  By not putting that trash out, all that happens is that you're drowning in your own filth, and the garbage man drives by taking nothing away. 

When Jesus says to give to God what is God's, he is asking us to give to God what God has asked for.  What did God ask for?  He asked for our sins.  He asked for our garbage.  He asked for our sin and our shame, our grief and our disappointments, he asked to take our sin and divide it as far as the east is from the west from us.  That's what he asked for, from the beginning until now.  All the respectibility that we think God wants, that's what Caesar wants.  The world around you wants you to be respectable.  It wants you to behave, to look good, to keep the laws of the land, and to have all the appearance of someone who does the right thing. Caesar doesn't care how good of a person you actually are, he doesn't care about the content of your character, he just wants you to do toe the line as far as the law goes. Jesus, on the other hand, wants you not to hide your sin from him, not to hold onto it to your detriment, not to pretend that it doesn't exit, but instead to turn it over to him.  It's what he asked for, it's what he ordered, it's what he wants from you as a person, it's all he wants. Not the veneer of politeness or respectability, not the illusion of propriety, not an empty garbage can, but a garbage can loaded full of junk and filth that you turn over to him to take away. 

Be perfect, say the scriptures, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  Are you perfect? No? Then what do you do? Pretend? Or do you let the garbage man do his job? He'll drive past your house regardless, he'll pick up the garbage can regardless, whether there's anything in it or not. So why are you trying to impress him by giving him only what he didn't ask for? Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's.  Give him your pride and your self-importance.  Give him the illusion of your perfection.  Give him your law abiding respectable suburban persona.  And give give Jesus your sin, your shame, your guilt, and let him take it away.  That is, after all, what he ordered.

pj.

Giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving.

If you're in the United States, I want you to know that October is the correct time to celebrate Thanksgiving, and that celebrating such an event in the throes of November when all the Christmas decorations are out in the store is the wrong thing to do.  Maybe not morally wrong, but wrong nonetheless.

Now, on to giving thanks, because this is one of the things that we are horrendous at.  Part of the deal is that our baseline happiness is something that is subject to all sorts of problems.  I'll explain.

You mentally adjust very rapidly to a new baseline happiness.  Your baseline happiness doesn't change much, though you think it might.  You think it might vascilate, and that vascilation might be cumulative.  It isn't.  And this is the problem with a consumer culture, is that it holds happiness, permanent happiness, right out of reach.  That doesn't mean that you can't buy or afford things that are promised to give you happiness, of course you can.  It's right there, and you buy it every day.  Every day, you exchange money, and by extension hours of your life, on something

There was a time when this wasn't out of date

that is promised to bring you happiness, and every day, your baseline happiness resets and adjusts to this new level.  You think to yourself 'if only I had this new item, if only I had the iphone 6 instead of this crummy ipone 4, If only I had the 2015 Honda Fit instead of the 2009,' and so on.  And this happiness is right out of reach, because the goalposts keep on moving.  As soon as you buy the product, as soon as you eat the meal, as soon as you get the girl home, the happiness resets.  The high wears off, and you have to chase it again.  This is why we have a hard time remembering to be thankful for the many and various things in our lives, because we start to view all those things as being expected.  Of course we'd have a house and a job and security and safety and health, but let's talk about what would make us actually happy for a change.

Yes.  We have absolutely everything we need and more.  It's insane that we're living in the time of human history where, for the first time, more people are overweight than underweight.  We are living for the first time in human history in which people have to rent storage spaces because they have too much stuff.  They're not suffering

from want, they're suffering from over abundance.  People are being, in some cases, literally buried under their posessions, and yet we are all still chasing that next big high.  Until our happiness resets.  Until we start to take that new purchase for granted, and want to move on to the next high.

Now, what does the Bible have to say about this?  Well, quite simply, it tells us about where happiness comes from.  St. Augustine talked about this, when he said, of God, that 'our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.'  We were made for God, and that is where we are supposed to find our joy, and everything else pales in comparison.  The scriptures talk about this, in the book of Isaiah, asking us 'Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?' Good question, and it's usually because we are hard-wired to want to continue to satisfy ourselves with the quick and easy stuff, and we find that it doesn't satisfy after all.

Paul writes in Philippians that he has learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, of abundance and need.  He can do all things through Him who strengthens him.  What is the secret to facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want?  Well, Paul had bigger problems than we do.  As I have said earlier, you are living in a time of super abundance, unknown peace, and untold mastery of the world.  You have access to more than almost everyone who has ever lived.  You have more money, more wealth, more comfort, than even Solomon in all his grandeur. Solomon in all his glory couldn't travel 800 km in a day, or warm his temple at the touch of a button, or know instantly what was happening all over the world.  You can.  So even though you know all this, what are you upset about?  Mostly knowing that you aren't ahead of everyone else, right?  There's stuff out there that you want and you can't afford it.  James 4 tells us that 'You desire and do not have, so you murder.  You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.  You do not have, because you do not ask.  You ask and do not recieve because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.'  Yes.  You're unhappy because you want but can't have.  And it's a total bummer to think about exactly what you're missing out on. All over Facebook, people seem to have perfect lives, and you're struggling to play catch up.  People seem to have wealth and happiness, people seem to be delighted to what they have, and you're still struggling to make any progress at all.  How fair is that?  Well, you have missed Paul's secret from Philippians.

If you're the type of person who plays board games, you'll know that there's probably someone in your group of friends, or in your family, who hates to lose, and who is difficult to play with because they really take it all far too seriously.  And those people, well, you don't want to play with them, because they seem to have missed something rather important.  After you're done playing, all the pieces go back in the box.  All the bits go back in the box, and it doesn't matter who has the houses and hotels, because none of them were real in the first place.  It didn't matter who was in jail, who was in free parking, who had all the money, who was broke, because all the pieces go back in the box when the game is over.  And this is what we forget, and why we find it so hard to be thankful for all we have.  Our baseline happiness doesn't get reset with this, because it has to do with the swallowing up of death, with the elimination of death itself, and our separation from God.  The work of Christ is what stops us from falling apart, from collapsing into despair, because it's the thing that supports everything else.  There can be no real true happiness if everything else is all going to run out someday.  The true happiness, the true thankfulness that we all want to experience, is most often found there, in Christ our Lord, who swallowed up death, who broke suffering, who destroyed the vacuum between us and God.  And knowing that, being aware of it, trusting in that promise, gives you so much to be thankful for.  Not just for the work of Christ, but for everything that the work of Christ touches.  The work of Jesus means that not only can we appreciate life everlasting, but we are also in better shape to appreciate the life we have here, appreciating our family because they too are eternal, appreciating our life because our decisions matter.  We love because he loved us.  We seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and then all these things will be added unto us. Knowing Christ's work to restore us to God means that we can face hunger and abundance, plenty and want, through him who strengthens us.

PJ.

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.