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.