Objection! Relevance!

Hi all,

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

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

The Parable of the Net

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

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

I'll explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wheat, weeds, tares and tears

This last Sunday was the parable of the wheat and the weeds, and it got me thinking about the weeds we see around us all the time.

You've all had dandelions, right?  Sure you have.  It's a national epidemic, which is funny, because ultimately, the crazy thing about dandelions is the following:  They're useful, you can eat them, you can use them to make soda pop and wine, you can use them in herbal remedies, and all that tut.  And the craziest thing about all of that, is that they just grow wild.  You don't have to put in any extra effort to grow them at all, in fact less so.  Imagine if your garden suddenly and spontaneously grew up into lettuce as far as the eye could see, and if you were doing nothing but dealing with your spontaneous lettuce crop, wouldn't that be great?  To have your yard paved with lettuce?

Ah, perhaps not.  As my father (who is a biologist) said, the only difference between weeds and herbs
is that you don't have to work to get weeds.  Though dandelions may be useful and delicious (not to mention trendy right now), because we don't have to work for them, they hold no value whatsoever.

Contrast that with grass which is tough to grow, fickle, and has no use other than looking green.  And it's not easy being green.  There is no value to grass at all, which is why so many people are embracing xeriscaping, as a way of cutting down on water usage and all that.  But honestly, we should probably all consider just letting our lawns grow into wild dandelions, and solve the hunger problem that way.  Or at least make trendier salads.

But here's the juice about weeds:  While they're growing, if they're growing next to things you want to keep, you may have a devil of a time getting your growth done right.  For you see, the traditional way of dealing with weeds is to uproot them.  And you know that if you just pinch off the flowers of a dandelion, it'll be back in minutes.  You have to kill it right at the root, pull it up from where it grows and exterminate it that way.  Righty ho, simple enough.  So you get down there with a trowel, and carve out the weed, but in the process of doing so, you carve out a heck of a divot in your grass as well.  And here's the problem. If you carve out a divot out of your lawn to get the weed out, you'll carve up the grass as well.  It's unavoidable. You'll realize that grass roots, though

The roots of dandelions go down deep, sometimes down to about a foot.  A foot of horrible taproot designed to use the moisture your grass wants to use, and make that dandelion into a big muscly plant full of white seeds.  And if you pull it up, if that taproot is left, it'll send up another flower to replace that fallen soldier, leading you to feel like Hercules fighting the hydra.  You chop off heads only to have more heads grow back.  Just awful.

So let's say that you're not going to pull them up by the roots, what's the best way to deal with the dandelions that grow up?  Well, the best defense is a good offence, really. The best way to handle the inevitable weeds and seeds that drift onto your property is to have such a strong lawn that it will naturally repel, and crowd out the weeds.  The lawn, if it is properly cared for, will spread out sufficiently to cover the ground, and repel the invaders.

And this is where the story of the wheat and the weeds really goes into overdrive.  For you see, the story traditionally leads us to the understanding of the field in which we say 'how long, O Lord, must
we wait for this harvest to happen?  How long must we wait to be avenged?' We end up thinking a lot along the lines that lead us to Christian fatalism, in which we sit and we wait for God to do things on our behalf.  We wait for God to avenge us, we wait for God to bring an end to all things so that the weeds will no longer be troublesome for us. When you hear messages out there about places of Christian persecution and unrest, when you see unfairness and murder and turmoil, you're always tempted to ask God to reach in and put a stop to history, and undo what has been done.  Because we feel that we are living in the last generation, we must be! Things can't possibly get worse than this!  There are wars and rumors of wars, there are murders, there is widespread unrest, earthquakes and famines, fire and pestilence, and culture is falling apart all the time.  And so we sit, and we say 'how long, O Lord, must we wait?' But the Bible doesn't give us that message at all.

The Bible doesn't tell us that God is going to sweep into history every five seconds and purge all the evil people in the world.  The Bible tells us instead that we will be given the strength to endure the things that are to come.  Because we still have work to do.

Never forget that grain is seeds.  And whenever the Bible talks about bearing fruit as good and positive fruit trees, that fruit exists for only one reason: To make more plants.  Every single fruit that exists exists to be eaten, and for its seeds to be dropped further afield, that there may be more plants growing up from that same stock.  That's what grains and seeds are all about!  They exist to propagate their own.

Why do you think that Jesus has held off on his return until now?  Although every generation has believed, sincerely believed, that they're the final generation on earth, they've all been wrong.  The imminent return of Jesus coupled with his less than present return has given us a couple of things.  It has given us both time to work, and an urgency with which to do that work.  It's a crazy thing, in which every generation ought to behave as though they were the last, which ends up making them not lazier, but more enthusiastic.  If you think you've got more time, then you are way more likely to slack off.  If you are convinced that time is running out, then you get to work a lot quicker.

So then, the parable of the wheat and the weeds has immense importance to us here and now. No matter how close armageddon is to us, it's closer than it was to those who were living at the time of Jesus.  And yet they treated the apocalypse as though it was imminent, living as though the harvest may happen at any time.  That same urgency didn't lull them into complacency, didn't fool them into thinking that God was going to fix everything and they could slack off and wait, rather it spurred them into greater action always, knowing that if they were to take their foot of the metaphorical gas pedal, it would be too late to do anything.  The night is coming soon, when no one can work.

So what to take away from all this?  Quite simple, really.  Remember what fruit is for.  Remember what grain is for.  If you are good grain, if you are producing good fruit, your whole purpose is to make more like yourself.  Your purpose is not to hunker down and wait for the harvest.  You are to produce fruit in keeping with repentance, to produce good fruit that reproduces.  To be grain that is itself seeds, to make more of what you are.  If you are planted amongst the weeds, then you have a singular chance to bear fruit, to bear seeds, while you wait for the inevitable harvest to crowd out the weeds and to make more grain, more fruit trees, to cease the Christian fatalism that waits for and anticipates the end of the world, and instead gives thanks to God that he has extended the harvest thus far, and has given our nascent trees a chance to bear fruit, and to do the work required in his kingdom.

Blessed week as we wait for the harvest.

PJ.

Fertile myrtles

There is fertile soil in our lives.  It's all around us, really.  Fertile soil everywhere, especially here in Saskatchewan.  It's got some of the richest soil in all the world, which is why we tend to be the breadbasket of the country.  What does everyone know about this fair province?  We've got wheat.
 That might be about it.






But here's the funny thing about the province of Saskatchewan, which is that it has amazing soil, yet a very short growing season.  We can plant and grow all sorts of things, but for a limited time only.  But this province is not the whole world.  The entire world isn't this fertile, and it's getting progressively less fertile all the time.  The amount of fertile soil is running out all the time.  There's a phenomenon out there called soil erosion, which tells us that we are running out of arable soil all the time.  Through interaction with human beings, through what we do with agriculture and waste management, arable soil is reducing all the time.  We are blasting through fresh, good soil, and replacing it with desert every day without a break.  The more we deforest, the more we urbanize, the more we plant and grow, the more we erode the world out there.  The soil that is out there is continually running out of good growing ability.


All that this means is that our ability to grow requires good soil, and the amount of arable soil is decreasing, so we have to keep on going back to the same patches of ground where we expect growth to happen.  And that leads us into the parable of the sower.


The sower's parable, well, that's a wonderful thing, because it uses something we understand to talk about things we don't understand, as parables do.  And this one, the parable of the sower, teaches us about the word of God, and the work that it does.  Traditionally, the simplest way of looking at it is
that there is good soil, and unsuitable soil; the word of God will be scattered all the way through the world, yet it will not always be received well.  It may fall on thin soil, it may fall on rocky ground, or among thorns, and still some of it will end up on good soil, and will grow up.  God's word goes out into the world, yet does not always find the most suitable dwelling place.  It sometimes ends up in spaces where the devil comes and swoops in and takes the faith away, or faith grows up rapidly and without any root cannot last for long, and all sorts of things. This is how we understand this parable.



 But this understanding of the parable leads us to a pretty strange place.  Because the majority of the work that we do in evangelism is to approach existing members from other congregations, and bring them into our folds.  It's what we do, to encourage the fertile soil that we know is fertile to continue to produce.  We go over the same areas of soil, because those are going to produce for us, and we avoid the pathways, the rocky soil, the thorns, because that would be a waste of time and energy.  Just keep on plowing, fertilizing the same soil, not rotating crops, and it will keep on eroding gradually, and leaving you with less and less.

But this understanding doesn't work really well with life, or with the reading from the Old Testament for today.  Consider this: the Old Testament reading today was from Isaiah 55, and it says the following

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress,

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall make a name for the Lord,

an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Our big problem is in assuming that unfertile soil is just that, and that is what it will remain.  We get to thinking that once soil has dropped in quality, that it is just done, and will no longer be good for growth

ever again.  Gone is gone.  Dead is dead.  People who have turned their backs on Christ for whatever reason, people who have spurned the Lord their savior, people who have moved on from Jesus, people who have been spurned or burned by the faith, people who have no faith background, we figure that gone is gone.  No good is no good.  This is why we all pursue the rapidly dwindling good soil, and cast the seed only there.

But the parable of the sower doesn't say that at all.  It says that the sower went out and scattered seed all over the place, wherever he may be.  The seed went on the path, it went on the rocky ground, it went amongst the thorns, and it wasn't limited to where he thought it would grow.  And this is key to understanding the bigger picture of the parable.  In the parable, the seed is thrown everywhere, and it wasn't in the sower's mind to keep it to where he knew it would grow.  The sower doesn't play it safe, and just toss seed where it is likely to blossom.  Instead, the sower casts his seed wherever he is, letting it grow up or not.  

Now, you in your lives at home, you may very well be asking 'yes, but what's the point in scattering seed where we don't think it's going to grow?  Good question, I s'pose.  Isn't that wasting it?  Isn't that wasting the seeds and your time? Shouldn't you be going with just good soil and not worrying about this nonsense? Well, that depends on what you think good soil is.

If good soil for you is just where plants are already growing, then your good soil will continue to dwindle nonstop.  It will always be going down as the soil erodes, as we build things where soil once was.  If you're counting on growing only where things are already growing, then you're going to run out of availability of space.  Always going down.

But the core of the story is that where the sower cast his seed wherever, and did not worry about where the fertile soil was to be found.  He wasn't only going to cast that seed where he knew it was going to take root, he was engaged in gaining new fertile soil on the ground.  For you see, in your life, you will see example after example of this, where the ground has secrets that you'd never imagined.  The ground will yield forth growth in areas that you did not think were fertile.  Wherever the seed is massively reclaimed by nature.  Detroit is a fascinating case, in which urban areas, wholesale, are being taken back over. Places that we all thought were thoroughly controlled, that were city not country, are being swamped by greenery.  If human beings take their feet off of the proverbial accelrators for one second, the natural world can sure take over again.  Fertile soil is not always where you think it is, sometimes it is all over the place, and the plants can take over again, if they're planted and watered, even when you think it's over.

scattered and water falls, has the opportunity for growth.  If you want to see this, look outside your front door right now.  Look out there on the sidewalk, and you'll see the sidewalks cracking, and growth in the cracks.  All those cracks are green, brimming with life.  And if you leave those plants for long enough, it'll bust up the concrete, the plants will overtake the world.  If you want to see this writ large, look at pictures of Detroit, which is being currently

Why is this so important? Because you were once a stony, shallow heart.  You were once a space in which there would be no growth, and it would have been pointless sowing anything there. Jesus, in his wisdom, decided to scatter seed everywhere, no matter how fertile it would be.  He scattered seed everywhere, and gradually, concrete was broken up, windows were smashed, and ground was reclaimed.  The sower's work is to scatter seed, and for that growth to happen, and we are perpetually thankful to God that he isn't as weak and frightned as we are, who assume that once ground is gone, it's gone, and not worth considering any further.  Our Lord continues to work in his world, giving his word, frequently through us, no matter where he may be.  Every time that you're tempted to hold onto that seed, to think about it being only good for where you know it's going to grow, we have that encouragement from the parable of the sower that it's not about only choosing good soil, only playing it safe, but about scattering God's word without a thought for how fertile the ground is before you get started, but realizing that there can be fertile soil anywhere.

You never know until you plant something.

PJ.

Do what you want.

Have you had those moments where you do what you don't want to do?  Again and again?  We all have.  If you say you haven't, then you are full of lies, obviously.  We are people who do the same things again and again, returning back to what we shouldn't do.  As the Proverbs of Solomon say, 'as a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.'  Something that is strange about the massive list of rules that are in the Bible is that a great deal of them probably don't apply to you.  There's a lot in there that you're going to find that just straight up doesn't apply to you at all.  And that's okay.

What isn't okay, though, is how much time we spend worrying about the parts of the Bible that don't apply to us.  We spend time, ink, and effort worrying about the decisions involving Hobby Lobby, or
Chick Fil-A, which are businesses that we don't even get in this country.  And we spend comparatively little time thinking and looking at the truths that we get in Paul's words to the Romans, saying about himself, and about all of us as well,

I have the desire to do what is right, but not the 

ability to carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want,

but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 

Romans 7:19

This is one of those things that Christians should probably talk more about.  We should talk more about it for a couple of reasons, first of which that it affects all of us all the time, and secondly, because it's one of those things that ends up being pleasantly universally true.  If you're a Christian trying to witness to the world outside the doors of the church, you'll find a hard time unless you realize that people outside the church are sometimes looking for wisdom that is universal.  This is one of them.  Everyone on earth has this problem, that they want to do good, righteous things, and can't seem to pull them off.  We all want to do things, we want to work hard, we want to do the right, and yet we can't work that out.  It's a trait that haunts us, that we end up, five seconds after doing something, saying either internally or externally, "boy, that was stupid." Left to our own devices, we screw a lot of stuff up.  We make a ton of mistakes, and all the more mistakes the more we do what is right in our own hearts.  

This may seem strange, but it shouldn't, at least not if you know your Bible.  Your Bible will tell you that in the times of the Judges, and of the kings of Israel, the people of Israel kept on doing 'what was right in their own eyes,' ending up in all kinds of trouble, worshiping other gods and falling into all sorts of worship of Baal and Asherah and Moloch.  How are they so stupid?  It always goes the same way, back to God's punishment all over them.'

of sins.  And these are the parts of the Bible that we tend to skip over, thinking that it's all just so much blah blah blah, but it's incredibly important.  It's important because of the cycle that shows up.  If you read through the Old Testament, you'll find that it's a cycle of falling back into familiar patterns, being corrected, doing okay for a while, and then falling back into those patterns again.  And if you're reading it, it's pefectly easy to sit there, and say to yourself 'Boy, that sure is dumb that they kept on falling back into worshiping

Yes, how could they be so stupid to keep on doing the same things again and again?  It's almost as though it's our own lives writ large.  The story of the Bible is the story of human beings, and the story of human beings, is the story of you.  You have this same problem that Paul has, where there are things you want to do, and you don't do.  Just like the ancient Israelites, who knew what they ought to do, but didn't do it, you are living in a world in which you need to do things, but can't figure out how to do it.  

This is where the law of God comes into things, the law of God that tells us that there are lots of things we ought to do, how we ought to do just things, to avoid theft, adultery, murder, swindling, lying and so on.  And when those laws come up, the more we know about them, the less and less we find we are able to keep them.  How on earth do we manage to get worked over by this bunk even though we know the law and know that it is good?  It's because we have that essential flaw in our lives that is sin, the flaw that plagues us.  Sin is what makes this dissonance in our lives, though we know what we ought to do, we don't manage to do it.  

That would mean that the laws of God would get worse and worse for us.  There is nothing quite so bad in your life as the right thing that you didn't do.  Knowing what the right thing to do is, and then looking back at you not doing it, well, that's a hurtful thing.  Looking back at your past, and seeing the gulf of wasted time, missed opportunities, drumming fingers on countertops, all that.  And musing on why it was your fault to begin with, well, it's a freakout to be sure.  It's a bad feeling, to look back on blown chances, and knowing more about them, and knowing more about the good thing to do, the right thing to do, will only drive you crazy.  

There are only really two solutions to this - first, to know nothing whatsoever about the law, to avoid it, to not know what the right thing to do is, and that won't really get you anywhere.  Not knowing what right and wrong is will allow you to feel good, but won't make you any better.  The only other thing to do is to have this law fulfilled for you.  Then the law can be what it is, you can respect its goodness, yet do not have to suffer under its weight.  

This seems like it shouldn't work, but it does.  It works because of the way the law works, and the way we work.  Whether the law is required or not, we won't fulfill it because of our sin.  If the law is presented as something that we have to do to get into heaven, then we will do whatever we can to find

loopholes to get out of it.  We will do our best to fudge the laws, create loopholes, add stuff to make the stuff we do look not so bad, and generally do our best to avoid what we end up in.  But if we don't have to fulfill the law for rewards, then we are free to deal with it for what it is, rather than what we wish it it wasn't.  We are able to look at the law and say that it is good, we are able to look at the law of God, and say that it is good, right and proper, and if it isn't fulfilled by us, it's not a problem with the law, it's a problem with us.  And the law is for our good, it's not so we might not have fun.  Any of the laws that God has given us, it's so that we may have life, and have it abundantly.  Then seeing that for what it is, you understand that your sin makes you worse, then knowing about Christ is the great liberty.  The one who made the laws also keeps them on your behalf.  When you fail, it's not a time for surrender to your weaknesses, it's not a time to fudge the laws, and change the laws, but time for repentance, and a turning of our hearts.  If the law is required, then we will change the law.  If the law has been fulfilled, then we can be changed.  When we fail to fulfill a required law, then we change that law to suit what we have already done.  When we fail to meet up to a law fulfilled, then we can be honest, freed from the consequences, and follow the law of Christ out of love and walking in grace.

This is important, and relatively self evident.  When you find yourself not doing what you want to do, stop lying to yourself, stop trying to convince yourself that it's right all along, and begin a constant life of repentace, turning away from what you were doing, and give it to God.  He has fulfilled the law on your behalf, freeing you to live the law because it is good.

PJ.