(ginger) bread house.

What's in a name?

Good question.  I wonder what we can say about that, because the Bible really is, at least on first glance, all about names.  Part of our problem is that we read the names, and assume that these names just have to be that way just because.  Like, the town is called Bethlehem, because that's what the town is called.  In many ways, that treats this like Star Wars, where the home planet of both Luke and Anakin is Tatooine, because that's what it is.  There's no reason why it had to be there, had to be a desert planet, or had to be called Tatooine.  That name doesn't mean anything, it's just a Star Wars-y name.  You could call it something totally different, and it wouldn't change anything.  We feel that same way about the places in the Bible, like they're just Bible-y names, so that's the way it is.  And the more often we hear names, like Bethel, Bethphage, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, all those names just seep into our brains, and leave us thinking that that's just the way names are don't you know. 

But here's the thing.  Bethlehem means something.  It means, literally, house of bread. Gosh, why is this important?  Why is the pastor wasting our time with ancient place names?  What does this have to do with real life? Well, I'll tell you, because it's actually important.  Here's the thing, folks, you need to think about why Bethlehem is a big deal.  Why is it important?  Well, its importance is related to what happens there.  David and Jesus are from there.  That's it.

Bethlehem, on its own, actually isn't too interesting.  It's the bread house, to be sure, it's in a fertile area, a farming centre, nice and all, but that doesn't make it the centrepiece of history.  The thing that makes it important is because Jesus was born there, and ironically enough, he was born there precisely because it was so unimportant.  It was a nowhere nothing place, a podunk backwater (sort of like Tatooine, if there was a bright centre to the galaxy, this is the planet that it's farthest from) full of nobody people.  Not the glittering jewel of the ancient near east.  And yet, and yet, this is the place that Jesus came to, to be incarnate in.  This is the environment that Jesus appeared in, to begin his ministry from this unassuming place.

The message that he sends is obvious.  Bethlehem is a backwater nothing place.  It's a farm town in the middle of nowhere, with people in it who are just people, nothing overly special.  And if this is what Jesus can do for them, imagine what he can do for everyone else.  For you see, in the real world, we're not the highest and best.  We're average, common scrubs.  We're everyday people who eat too much, spend too much, pay our bills late, tell off colour jokes, and forget birthdays.  This is who we are.  Where would Jesus come to earth if he came to earth today?  Bethlehem?  Or Regina?  Or Winnipeg, Ogema, Frankslake, or any of the other places that God's peopel gather around word and sacrament.

And this is the other thing.  Now that Jesus has convinced you that on earth he would be surrounded by the average common people of the world, it's time for his greatest statement of all - that he elected to come to a place that even the Bible recognizes as a nowhere place.  Bethlehem is important because it's important to us, not beacause it was important to begin with.  It's important because of what God did there, marking it as important to us for all time; it definitely wasn't a vital centre of the universe for decades before that.  That space was special because Jesus was born there.  He wasn't born there because it was special.

And that brings us to church, as most things ought to do.  It brings us to church and our time there.  What is it that makes that space special?  What is it that makes church into a sacred space?  Perhaps you've never thought about it too much, perhaps it's just an arbitrary holy ground, that people just decided to put somewhere, and say 'okay, let's worship God here.'  Perhaps.  Or perhaps there's something bigger behind it.  When Jesus came to earth, he did so at Bethlehem.  At the house of bread.  And if you were ever thinking to yourself that you wish you'd been there, that you wish you'd been there to worship that newborn king at Bethlehem, to have that certainty to see and be sure of the messiah, well, I have good news.  The church is still, for you, Bethlehem.  It is a house of bread. 

What makes church special?  Because Jesus is there.  The same thing that made Bethelem special. Because Jesus was there.  The holiest part of the church is the altar, not because that block of wood is by definition special, nor does it have magic properties, but it is holy because the body and blood of Christ are actually there, in with and under the bread and wine.  This church is still a house of bread, and every time Holy Communion is celebrated, we encounter Christ again.  He is every bit as present as he was in the original Bethlehem here in this new one, and his body and blood are truly present.  If you're excited for Christmas, for the coming of the savior, then we have good news, which is that he has promised to be present where two or three are gathered together in his name, and physically present where the body and blood of Christ are. 

People miss this, you know. We talk a lot about Catechesis, about getting things right from the beginning, and folks roll their eyes, complain, and feel as though we probably spend too much time
talking about the Catechism, and Holy Communion, and the real presence, and all that.  They look at all that stuff, and say to us 'why can't we just talk about God without all that dogma?'  Ah yes. But to quote Dorothy L Sayers, the dogma is the drama.  If you thought it worth celebrating the arrival of Jesus in a house of bread two thousand years ago, then prepare to celebrate the arrival of Jesus in a house of bread today, wherever his people are gathered around the bread and wine. All Christianity is incarnational Christianity, and as such, we need to remember that the big deal about Christmas is not that a baby was born, it's what he does in life.  And what he continues to do.

It's sort of like the birth of a baby in your own family.  If you have a child in your family, your relationship doesn't stop there.  It continues onwards.  If there's a baby born into your lives, you don't just celebrate, applaud, then see them again in a year.  Birthdays are a way of marking your continuing relationship, your growing family, where you've come from, and where you're going.  It's the same here.  We celebrate Christmas not as a day in a vacuum, not as just a day, but as a reminder of how things got started, how this incarnate word came into our world, and a way of continuing to celebrate his presence, not just at a Bethlehem two thousand years ago, but at a Bethlehem very near you on a weekly basis.  Take courage and confidence in that, that the light of the world came to us, and didn't leave.

Rejoice!

Hot off the heels of repentance, comes rejoicing!  This is something that, God bless us, as human beings, we aren't really used to.  We'd like to hope that we are, of course, but we really, desperately aren't.  Joy is something that, unless you're Riley, you're not used to.  That is, we aren't used to the feeling, the experience of joy, and we try to make up for it.  We try to make up for it by making do with happiness instead.

But happyness is not joy.  You'd never know it, but that's the real deal.  Happinesss and joy are two different things, and they don't meet up always.  They're easy to mistake for one another, but as Denis
Leary says 'happiness comes in small portions.  It's a cigarette, or a chocolate chip cookie.  You smoke the butt, you eat the cookie, you go to sleep, you get up in the morning, and you go to work.  There you go.'  Cynical, but there you go.  And as such, the happiness that we seek is by definition fleeting, and it gets away from us pretty quickly.  And what we do when we substitute happiness for joy is to swap the permanent for the fleeting. No wonder we're all so frustrated!

Rejoice always, says Philippians, Again, I say rejoice!  What do we rejoice in?  We rejoice in the Lord.  We rejoice in his presence, and in his promises.  And his promises are what makes this time of year have a veneer of joy.  It's what makes this time of year a time of joy instead of a time of drudgery. 

Otherwise, it would be the opposite.  Have you ever pondered what this time of year is all about, really?  It's all about a bunch of really heavy things.  You have so much to do, and so little time.  And as the things that you have to do this year close in, you can be forgiven a distinct lack of joy in your life.  It seems unlikely that any of us can sustain happiness in the face of the responsibilities of this season.  But the pressures the difficulties, that's where we end up missing the forest for the trees.

I'll elaborate.  At this time of year, there are a great many things to do, lots of stuff to take care of, and these things that we end up doing, well, they're like the anchor, the bailing bucket, the rope, the steering wheel, the oars and the fishing rods, all of which are great as long as you're in a boat.

The way the Bible talks about it, we are to seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto us, and that all sounds hopelessly backwards, doesn't it?  Doesn't it sound topsy turvy to imagine that God would ask us to seek first his kingdom, then the joy, the happiness, the family, all that will follow?  Well, that means that getting the first detail right makes all the rest of them matter.  Think of that like the boat, like the canoe, in that if you have that, then the anchor, the bailing bucket, the oars, the fishing rods, they're all wonderful helps, but without the boat, you'll just drown faster trying to hold them all.

The baby in the manger colours everything.  He changes how we feel about everything, how we relate to everything, what everything in our lives means.  It provides us with joy, the real joy that surpasses all understanding.  Christ provides us with the promise of eternity, gives us the guarantee of forever.  In him, and with him, we have the promise that we are and will be forever people.  That makes not just this holiday season, but all year round, into more meaningful, impactful times. 

As the offertory says 'grace our table with your presence and give us a foretaste of the feast to come.' That's what this time is, that's what this is all about, which is a foretaste of the feast to come, the feast everlasting.  The promise of eternity, of paradise, is what makes what we do here so meaningful, it's what changes our Christmas dinners from being a family gathering to a foretaste of heaven.  It's what changes our office gift exchange from being a fumbling awkward swap of trinkets, to the bestowal of gifts from the Magi to Christ.  It's what changes the interaction with the waitress at the fifteenth meal out this week from drudge and small talk, to talking with the saints of God.  I'm not overstating the case, either.  This is real, and it's what really happens. Once the rock of Christ has been built up on, then everything else means more.  The people you see are eternal, your decisions consequences, the gifts you give, though quickly forgotten, will be an act of eternal charity.  The meals you prepare, though tasted albeit briefly, have fed the saints of God, and no one who gives one of these little ones a cup of water in Christ's name will lose his reward.

Jesus is the reason for the season, the reason for our joy.  And like all things that bring us joy, he spills the bounds that we have set for him, and colours everything else.  All other things in our lives are made more meaningful and impactful due to his work on the cross.  Because he lives, we shall live also, baptized into his death, we are also baptized into his resurrection.  Bear that in mind when you sit down for Christmas dinner - this is but a glimpse, a foretaste, a picture of everlasting life that Christ offers.

That's what lets us rejoice.

Repent!

When you go to a buffet, no matter how good your intentions, there is a still, small voice at the back of your head that is demanding you get your money's worth.

This still small voice is a jerk.

For this still, small voice will whisper to you 'Hey, you know you paid $17.99 for this chinese food. you'll eat until you feel sick.

Don't you think you should have another egg roll? If you don't you're just throwing money away!' Thanks, small still voice for convincing me to eat more than I wanted in the first place!  Now, if you were eating at home, this wouldn't be a problem.  You could just tupperware the leftovers up, and sneak back downstairs in the middle of the night to eat more.  But if you're at the buffet, there are no doggy bags.  You can't take any of it with you.  You have to eat what you've got whilst you are there present.  And this means that if you're like me,

Yes indeed.  To quote an obscure comedian, the meal isn't over when I'm full.  It's over when I hate myself.  And if I'm at an Indian buffet, or a chinese buffet, I will assuredly be hating myself in the near future.  This is when I send my wife a text letting her know that I'm never eating again.  And she responds with an eye-roll emoji, because we both know how I ended up in this particular situation.

And that feeling, a half hour after you're done at the buffet, when you get the meat sweats, and you find it hard to move around, when you want to undo the top button of your trousers, that feeling is the best feeling I could come up with to try to communicate to the secular world the concept of repentance.

After all, what is repentance?  It's understanding that you have done what you didn't want to do, that you don't like what happened, and you're sorry for having done it.  Many is the time after a Christmas or thanksgiving dinner, when a great number of us have regretted eating what we ate, and have promised to never do it again.  Until next year.  When we repeat it all over again.  This festive indulgence is what the Christian conception of sin and repentance is all about.  And I'll illustrate it with this page from Frog and Toad.

This is the way of sin and repentance.  Even while you're in the throes of doing something you don't want to do, you're doing it.  We must stop eating cried toad as he ate another.  No truer words have ever been spoken.

I know repentance is one of those churchy words that people don't take too seriously, but really they ought to, because they are used to moving through repentance fairly regularly.  With the Christmas season approaching, most of us are going to go through probably several hangovers that we can absolutely see coming.  You know for sure that you're spending too much on Christmas, but it doesn't

sink in until the Visa bill comes in.  Then the repentance starts.  You know for sure that you shouldn't have that fourth glass of wine, but everything still seems to be going fine until the next morning.  Then the repentance starts.  You know you're not hungry anymore, but you keep on eating at Christmas dinner, and everything is going okay, that is, until you get to about an hour after Christmas dinner.  Then the repentance starts.

Regular as the tides. You know how predictable this is because unlike talking about 'sin' and 'repentance,' we can talk about the real world things you know, and how your overindulgence in the face of Christmas always leads to that moment, at least, of repentance, in which, like frog and toad, you know you need to stop, and yet you keep on going.

This is what this season is all about though.  Advent is the season of repentance.  John the Baptist says as much when the people come to be baptized by him.  When the crowds assemble, John calls them vipers, snakes, and asks who warned them to flee from the wrath to come.  He runs down with the various people what they have to do if they want to flee from the wrath that is to come, and he's heavy on the repentance.  

Repentance which, as you may have realized, is absent from most discussions about this time of the year.  But this is the time of year when we need to focus on repentance most of all.  It's all about repentance, absolutely all of it is!  This is the time of year, when the baby is to be born in the manger in Bethlehem, when we get to muse through what we are going to bring to him.  No, it's not going to be gold, frankincense or myrrh, it's not going to be the little drummer boy's song, none of that. We bring him our sin.

The angel on Christmas day echoes that same sentiment, telling the shepherds 'unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord.'  Unto you.  You who bring nothing to that manger but your sin.  Not your gold or ointments, not your performance, but the hangover of all the things that you don't want to do.  The hangover of all your bad decisions, promises broken, shame uncovered.  You bring nothing but the fruit of your repentance dragged forward through the Advent season.  For there is something amazing that happens at that manger in Bethlehem.

When someone tells you they have a newborn, or have adopted a new child into their family, you are happy for them, certainly, you enjoy said child, you are pleased because they are pleased, but it's not the same as bringing a new child into your family.  When a new neice or nephew is born into your family, when a new son or daughter is adopted into your household, there's a whole new impact that it has on you.  This is the difference that going through Advent in a spirit of repentance does. 

If you move through Advent whilst just buying and selling, baking and cleaning, you will hear the angel say 'for born this day in the city of David is Christ the Lord.'  Sure.  Jesus is born, and we are all the better for it.  But if you've been working through this season in a spirit of repentance, if you've been living in a repentant mood, and existing in repentant space, if you bring to the child in the manger your sin, then something else happens, which is that the child has come to take your sin.  Your hangover, the weight of the things you've done time after time that you'd rather not do the first time.  You know that hangover feeling, and you know that the worst possible hangover cure is the proverbial hair of the dog, right, to keep on drinking so you never sober up?  dreadful.

Your best bet is the same as all of ours.  In the hustle and bustle of this time of year, when everything is at a fever pitch, take time to repent.  Realize that you're not who you want to be, you don't behave the way you feel other people should behave.  You feel as though you should be better, and you ought to be.  So your best option moving forward to to do the work John has called you to do. Repent.  Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.  Trust not in a savior, but in your savior.  For he was born for you.

Patience

You know what's spectacular about this time of year?  How much waiting we do.

We're not used to waiting, you know.  Oh, I know, you'll claim that all we do is wait, but we don't really.  Do you remember how slow the internet used to be?  We used to have to use phone lines and modems and all that noise.  And I do mean noise.  The internet was horribly, disgustingly slow, and difficult times in the mid to late nineties.
we were suffering through it.  That sounds like an exaggeration, but it really isn't, and it still sort of astonishes me how we made it through those

Now, it's a different story.  How long did it take this page to load?  Not long, I'll wager.  You're not used to waiting for the web to load, you're not used to waiting in line for things, nor for waiting in traffic if you're from Regina.  The greatest of this all, though, is that you're not used to waiting for stuff.

Throughout the year, if you want something, you typically go and buy it, yes?  This is why consumer debt is at an all time high, is because we don't wait to get things that we want.  We sort of buy it right away, and darn all dem consequences.  Now this is what is leading us into a strage period in the year,
especially strange as adults.  For as adults, if you see a pair of slacks that you want, or a handbag, or whatever, you tend to go out and buy said product, yes?  You tend to just go and grab whatever you feel like when you want it, but at Christmas time, things are a little bit different. For at Christmas, we have things that are for us, that we ostensibly want, things that are under the tree, things that we could unwrap and enjoy, but we wait.  We wait until the day of, until the 25th, to unwrap and enjoy.

What the heck, right? What a bizarre, arbitrary imposition, right?  And the children in our families aren't buying it (heck, they're not buying anything).  They want those awesome things under the tree, and they want them right away.  And you have to explain to them 'you can't have that now.  It's for Christmas.'

So the kids, and you, and everyone else, we all have to be patient.  We all have to wait.  You can't eat the entire batch of sugar cookies before the company arrives.  You can't drink all the christmas port before the merry makers arrive.  You can't unwrap the gifts until the time has come.  Until the fullness of time.

Lest you think this is a recent thing, though, this is a plague that befalls all human beings from the beginning of all things.  This is a problem that afflicts and conflicts us, because we are people who want what we want right now-ish.  And so did the people back in the day of Jesus of Nazareth.  Those people had requests too, they wanted what they wanted as well, and when it came to matters religious, they had the same sort of recommendations.  They said unto Jesus as he came into town 'Hosanna!'

Now, we say that same word frequently.  Hosanna.  We say it almost every Sunday, and it's one of those things that we say so often that we don't even think about what it means anymore, if we ever did.  When our children speak to us about it, as they may, and ask us what Hosanna means, then we respond 'it means a church word that we say in church.  Like Amen.  Or Jesus.'  Church words, spoken in churchinese.  But it's not that, not really.  When the crowd assembled on Palm Sunday, as they did, they did so calling out 'Hosanna!' Hosanna being an imperative for 'save us.'  Save us now!  This attitude about the immediacy of what you're expecting from Jesus, that informs how you look at him throughout your life.  We lack perspective, we don't really have the perspective to look on things and take a big breath and see things for how they are.  Frequently, in your life, you've said about things 'someday, we're going to look back on this and laugh.' Someday, but when the things are happening to you, that day isn't today. 

But our attitude towards Jesus is the same as the crowd on Palm Sunday.  Save us now!  Deliver us now, without delay!  Save us!  We are pushy and anxious, and desperately want things done on our time, and not on Christ's .  We want and need his action in our world, and we crave his interaction when we feel as though we're ready, not being too concerned about when he may be prepared. We know from the scriptures that he does all things for the good of those who love him, that's true, but there are many times in which we don't feel as though Jesus is moving quickly enough for us.  He should deliver us from the hands of our enemies.  He should heal those whom we love ,and rescue us from financial desperation.  This is what his job should be, and we get a bit disappointed when he doesn't do it. 

But Advent teaches us something different - it teaches us patience.  It teaches us to wait.  This season has at the end of it all the treats, all the joy, all the drinks, all the gifts, all that nonsense, but it has it all at the end.  And this is how the kids learn patience, by waiting for the arrival of that special day.  But how are you to learn patience?  You grown adult?  Well, you spend a lot of time waiting at this time of year too, you know.  You spend time waiting in lines at the grocery store, lines at the Wal Mart, lines at the toy store, lines at the liquor store, you spend time waiting in traffic, waiting to get out of a parking spot, waiting to get into a parking spot, and you tend to think of these times as an inconvenience, as they are.  You tend to think about that as time that time that is being stolen from you, a barrier to the season, a barrier to the peace and goodwill.  But it is and should be teaching you patience.

Think about the promises made to God's people back in the Old Testament, the promises of a savior who was to come to the world.  The promise that God would send salvation, in the fullness of time.  Be honest with yourself for a second.  Have you ever read the Old Testament, beginning to end?  Most of us, if we're honest, would have to say no.  We would say no not because we don't love Jesus, but because it's long, and kinda dry, and sort of dull, and repeats itself a bit.  And we're not into that.  But the people of the Old Testament had to learn patience in God, because they weren't just reading the Old Testament, they were living it.  If you think it takes far too long to read the Old Testament, imagine how long it takes to live through it, from beginning to end.  A bit of a pain, yes?

That's the issue facing us now, is that we are so used to getting things when we want them, that we transfer that over to our spriritual lives as well.  If we dont' get what we want when we want, we are tempted to take our ball, and go home, to avoid the question of Jesus altogether, to question his goodness or even his presence at all.  That's how we work, and we don't frequently think about patience.  But at this time of year, when we talk about patience, about waiting, about preparing, think about all the times in which you have to wait. Think about being stuck in traffic or waiting in line at the mall.  Think about how Mary and Joseph would have had to wait in long lines for the census, and would have been pushed to and fro as they tried to find a place to stay. Think about how long the people in the Old Testament would have had to have waited to see the coming of the king of kings and the dawn of salvation.  And think about Simeon, who had waited until he was very old to see Jesus.

Now think about how much time you're going to spend waiting at this time of year, and reflect on the fact that waiting itself can be a spiritual discipline.  You can learn a lot by waiting.  By watching, waiting, and biding your time, waiting as the people of God did, waiting for his salvation to be realized.  Hosanna indeed.  Save us, but in the fullness of time.

Christmastime

You know when it's time for Christmas.

It's a glutton of a holiday, something that starts in late October, and goes until January.  That's a quarter of a year devoted to and dedicated to one day, the twenty-fifth day of December.  Now, here's the thing about the arrival of Christmas, which is that there is a whole bunch of time and effort spent on it, and a lot of money, and the date never moves.  So why oh why is it, if the date never moves, if it's always the same, why is it that we almost always are under prepared?

It shouldn't be this way.  We all have the notion that we should prepare early, that we should get ourselves right, and figure out our lives so that we are well prepared by the time Christmas gets here.  But we end up in a panic, with gifts under-bought, wrapping paper nowhere to be seen, and tape that runs out halfway through Christmas eve.  This is why the nice people at Chrisco will try to sell you a $65 ham, because it's ostensibly worth it to have the ham for sure, delivered to your house, because, well, you'll probably be too far behind around Christmas to remember to grab it.

Thus the problem.  Christmas is a beautiful time, to be sure, but for those of us who are now struggling to prepare, we get sidetracked, behind, and can't seem to catch up.  Even with a pre-determined date.  And we are people who, when we read through the Holy Scriptures, Jesus tells us that we ought always to be ready for his return.  How are we supposed to do that!  Jesus tells us that he could return at any time, he could come back tomorrow.  The disciples certainly thought that he'd come back during their lifetime, and every generation since has been of the mind that they are living in the final generation, and Jesus will return any moment now.  We all believe that we are in the last few days, and that soon, everything will be coming to an end.  Sure enough.  But if we can't cope with the arrival of a day that arrives at the same time each year, how are we supposed to cope with the coming of the king of kings that could be at any moment?

People, if they are being honest when they are asked, will have a couple of answers for that, but the biggest one by far is this one 'I still have so much to do.'  Ah yes, yes you do.  And that's why we are never prepared, never ready for the big day, because there will always be more to do.  It doesn't matter how much you've bought, how much you've baked, how many presents you've wrapped, your
Christmas will always be a far cry from the one that you see on the cover of the magazine.  You know which one.  The one with Michael Buble offering you a hot toddy.  And a hot boddy.  Your Christmas will never be put together like that, it will never look quite the way you want it to.  Your tree won't be themed, there will be stuff everywhere, the gifts won't be exactly what you wanted, it'll all be shoddy and thrown together, as it always is, because you won't have done enough.

Think back, if you will to the last time that you had anything resembling a perfect Christmas.  It was probably when you were little.  When the world was still full of magic.  Think back to your favourite Christmas memories, and they'll likely be a time of childlike wonder, when your list of things you had to do was incredibly small.  Wake up.  Open gifts.  That was it.

In essence, we have forgotten how to receive.  We have forgotten how to have a time in which we are doing nothing towards the celebration.  Do yourself a favor and watch the commercials at this time of year (you can't miss them, honestly).  In watching the commercials that are playing, you can see what's happening, which is that the season of peace and joy depends significantly on what you are bringing to the table.  Peace, love, all that stuff seems to depend on what you're doing to make it come about.  And what you're doing is to spend money.  Jesus makes you a promise, and his promise is that he gives peace not as the world gives, and that's good for us to know and to remember.  This season of forced merriment, this season of mandatory fun, it depends significantly on what you're bringing in and what you're doing.  Give the best gifts this year.  Win at Christmas!  Give the gifts that'll wow!  All that gubbins.  And here we are, in a situation in which your merrmient depends on its destruction.  You are told how to make Christmas perfect by emptying it of any joy you may remember.  Does it sound counter productive?  You bet it does.  Yet we are deceived into it at every moment that there is.

Go into the stores, and see the joy that the world gives.  It's a real lack of joy.  it's a real displeasure.  People are frustrated, they are angry, they are tired, and they are frustrated, and this is what happens when we do our best to manufacture the joy on our own.  The peace the world gives is a dreadful frustrating thing, and you will know it whenever you try to make it on your own.

The peace that Christ gives, though, that's a different horse altogether.  I don't ask you to think of your childhood Christmases idly, you know.  The best Christmases you can remember, those are likely times where everything didn't go perfectly, where your parents were run off their feet, where nothing was done right, but you didn't notice or care.  You showed up, the tree was decorated, there was childlike wonder and excitement, because all you had to do was receieve.  That was all.  Jesus cautions us about entrance into his kingdom, and tells us

"Whoever will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it"

There's a lot of truth in that statement, obviously, since Jesus is never wrong, and it affects not just Christmas, but Christianity.  It affects how we think about  our role to play in the faith, and what we do . What does Jesus ask you to do?  How big is your list for arrival?  If you're being honest, you're never going to be done, not done properly.  You're never going to be finished with his involvement.  You're never going to be finished the list of what Jesus wants you to do, and how perfect he wants you to be.  He tells you to be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.  Do you realize how big of a deal that is?

And yet, and yet, where does the perfection come from?  It comes from him.  Christmas is not about giving, but receiving, the gift of the baby in the manger at bethlehem.  That's the way it ought to be, and you've only forgotten it.  But take some time this year to look upon the children in your life, and see how they feel at this time of year.  Are they excited?  Are they overjoyed? Is it that they can't wait for Christmas to come?  Do you remember being that excited, so excited that you can't sleep?  Let this be part of your Advent this year, counting down the days for the arrival of Jesus, the coming of the Christ child into the world, and his gifts of life and salvation offered to you.  Remember tha this time of the year is about receiving, that in the darkness of the world, in the short days and cold nights, in the secret whispers and silence is the promise of the light of the world who says this to you.

Behold.  I make all things new.

Ozymandias

In case you don't know, I have a degree in English literature.  I bet you're wishing that some of that would spill over to my writing. But every once in a while, something comes up that is and remains useful for me to talk about.  This is one of those times.

There's a sonnet by Shelly called 'Ozymandias.'  It's a simple enough story, a story of a king from a time long past who erected a structure, a statue to his own glory, and in it, wanting the world to know of his strength and glory.  But time, as it does, bears all things away, leaving only legs, and a broken face, along with the inscription which reads 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.'  Nothing else remains.

That sonnet resonates with the readings we had for Sunday.  The readings where the disciples point out to Jesus to grandeur of the temple and everything about it.  The stones, the structure, the building project, everything that went into making that place magnificent, it's worth pointing out to Jesus.  Look at the wonderful things we have done to the glory of God!  And Jesus, as he frequently does, brings them back a bit, to remind them of priorities they really ought to have.  He may seem like a debbie downer, but that's the work of Christ, which is to do the work of both law and Gospel.  To oppose the proud and give grace to the humble.  Jesus reminds his disciples that there is going to come a day when not one of those stones is left upon another.  There is going to come a day when all these things will by necessity be gone.  Time will sweep them all away.  They will be gone.  It definitely happened to the temple, you know.  The temple, that building that the disciples pointed out to Jesus for its grandeur and majesty, that building's gone now.  Broken and smashed by the Romans on their way out of town, leaving it scattered to the wind and the desert. 

This is the temple of the Hebrew people.  Look on it, ye mighty and despair. 

Not despairing in the way that Ozymandias had in mind, but despairing for a completely different reason.  Despairing because even the works of the mighty are ultimately fruitless.  You can be as mighty as you want, you can be as in charge as you'd like, you can have it all together conceivably, but ultimately time sweeps everything away.  The great empires of the world all existed in an illusion of permanence, in that they figured that the way things were was the way they were always going to be.  They figured that their empire was the end of history, it was the last thing, the last stop on the railroad.  Egypt, Assyria, Persia, China, Russia, Great Britain, the United States, they all assume that they're the last stop.  And they're all wrong.  Look on the works of Ozymandias, and despair.  Look on the ravages of time, look on the wasteland that is all around, look upon the desert that is the only thing that remains, with everything else gone and swept away.  If you're placing your hope, your courage and confidence, in the things you've made with your own hands, then you will be sorely saddned by the lack of permanence.  Time is going to blow it all away, and there will be nothing left. 

So what to do, then?  It's a matter of alignment with the one thing that is permanent, the one permanence in a vast ocean of temporal things.  The one thing that can and will and does last forever.  Heaven and earth may pass away, says Jesus, but my words will never pass away.  Christ is above all this, above the ravages of time, above the works of the hands of men which are being borne away by time, above all the things that we believe are permanent, above everything we have Christ.  The one who was around from before the beginning of the universe, the one who rose from the dead to die no more, the one who exists outside time, the only one to whom entropy doesn't apply. 

Look on his works ye mighty and despair.

Despair of your own works.  despair of your own deeds, despair of what you have built and put together, despair of it all.  At times like this, where there are wars and rumors of wars, times when the world seems to be running down, times when nothing seems safe and everything seems dangerous, times when the things we have built for ourselves don't seem so secure, the civilization we enjoy seems less permanent.  The times when we are tempted to look upon those works and despair. 

But despair itself is temporary.  Despair itself has only the illusion of permanence.  Despair is going away.  In a little while, Jesus promises, your mourning will be turned to laughter.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  We do not grieve like the rest of men do who have no hope.  All these promises are there through the scriptures, where Jesus tells us time and time again what is actually permanent.  He tells us what it is that is forever, and it's not what we think it is.  It's not grief, or death, or separation, it's not the grave, that yawning abyss it's not any of that. It's life.  Life everlasting.  As we see wars and rumors of wars, as we see the famines and floods, as we seen nation rise against nation, as we see all of this, it reminds us that these works are receding.  And as the things of this world disappear, as the things of this world vanish and are absorbed by the wastes of time, the cross of Christ, his permanence, his eternity, stand forever.  No matter what else happens, no matter what else befalls us, we think of his words. 

Fear not, for I have overcome the world.

There's always a bigger fish.

They have another Star Wars movie coming out this year.  Did you know about that?

Merchandising is out in the stores, and it's unbelievable.  This hasn't happened since the prequels came out not too terribly long ago.  Here's a fun video about it.

Now, as the merchandising goes into full blast, as I say, it reminds me of the time when the prequels came out, and Star Wars was back in the forefront of public thought again.  And it reminds me of one of the few moments I found enjoyable about the Star Wars prequels - namely, Episode 1, the Phantom Menace.

In that particular episode, you saw Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan going through the planet core in a submarine of some kind.  I know it has a name, and I'm not interested in what that name is.  But yes, they move through the planet core, and on their way through, they get attacked by some enormous creature.  And that massive aquatic creature seems set to devour their entire submarine, until said massive creature, said Leviathan, is scooped up by some other, larger sea creature, who tears up the previously assumed massive fish as though it was nothing.  When that happens, Qui-Gon wisely says

There's always a bigger fish.

Best line of the entire prequel trilogy right there.  The absolute best one.  There is nothing in the prequel trilogy that compares to it, mainly because it's true.  It's always good to get something true out of your media, no matter what you're watching, and in this case, even though the prequels were dreadful, they have some truth to them.

Now, there is always going to be a bigger fish.  That's something that is going to plague you for your whole life, as long as you grade things on a curve.  Which we all do.  If you want to know how much you grade on a curve, think only on your time in the grocery store.  Think of how judgey you get about the content of everyone else's carts, and how you feel about what they're buying.  I know, I know, we shouldn't do it, but we all do.  If you see a cart loaded up with all sorts of tut, then it's incumbent upon you to 'tsk tsk' about it, and to rank yourself in relation to everyone else in the grocery store.  You come off looking good, even if your choices are bad, if they're next to someone else whose choices are even worse.  And that's fairly key to understanding all of this.

For you see,in this world, you are in contact with other people all the time, and being in contact with them, you either subconsciously or consciously compare yourself to them, their choices, their status, and everything else.  You compare yourself, you weigh yourself in the balance, and hopefully are not
found wanting.  In other words, you are on a curve constantly, in competition with everyone else in the arena of your own mind.

But there's a snag, which is that you, as an individual, are going to be dealing with bigger fish.  Bigger fish all the time.  There's always a bigger fish.  And this comparison between each other, this jockeying for position in the rat race in our own minds, there will always be a bigger fish. And it leads to lies.  It leads to social lies that plague us.

On a curve, you will always find a bigger fish.  There is always going to be someone bigger and better than you, someone who has it more together.  Someone who is richer than you, who has a bigger house, a newer car, a more upt to date cell phone, and all that.  As soon as you acquire something, it is worthless as far as keeping up with the Joneses, you know.  Worthless because things move on, and there will always be a bigger fish.  But in the Gospel reading, Jesus makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't grade on a curve.  Well, not really anyway.

If you know God, then you'll know that you're dealing with something that is in every way immeasurably superior to yourself.  The comparisons, the fishing, all that goes away, and goes away rapidly.  it recedes, when you try to compare yourself with the Almighty.  So that big fishing is gone right there, but when Jesus looks at you, he doesn't do so as someone among many, He looks at you as you.  He looks at you and sees your individual condition.  As though there was nobody else in the universe.  Just you.

In a sense, the Christian faith is predicated on this, that there is a bigger fish out there, bigger than all the rest, and certainly bigger than you.  Jesus Christ, our Lord, he's the one who offers up to us the one standard of correction, the one measurement by which we are all measured.  The standards and law of God, which are pefect.  That's the only thing we are measured next to, and we are found wanting.

So do yourself a favor, and drop the curve.  There isn't a curve. It doesn't exist and never did.  You think it did, but it only exists in your mind, like the spoon from the Matrix.  And if that's to esoteric, think of the way that Jesus tells you to pray.  Think of how he tells you to fast and how he tells you to give.  He tells you to do this all in secret, so your left hand won't know what your right hand is doing.  Why is that?  Partially so you'll know there isn't a curve.

Surrounded by loud, ostentatious prayers, surrounded by generous givers, you end up focusing on the curve, focusing on what other people are doing and how you stack up.  You get isolated, concentrating on what other people are doing, and your need to compete, and your need to decieve to compete.  It's almost always a bunch of lies, you know, people lying to look better, and doing a reasonable job of it, standing before each other and being proud as peacocks, and even when you try to compete, you know it's a sham.  That sort of thing can and will break you, which is why Jesus wants you, in your religious life, to bring it back to him and to you.  He wants your focus not to be on everything else that may get in the way, on the curve that doesn't exist, on the fish that can and will get in the way, and rather on him, and his relationship with you.

For Jesus knows something important that you are frequently tempted to forget.  His body and his blood were given and shed for you.  In baptism, we echo the words that tell us that the promise is for you.  This is for you, as an individual.  Not for you as a point on the curve, but you as the only one.  Even if you were the only one, Christ would have shed his blood for you.  There's no curve, and there never has been.  There has only been you, and Christ, and his love for you.  That's it.  Is there a bigger fish?  Yes, and he's called Christ.  Is there a bigger fish on the curve that you should worry about?  No, because the curve isn't there.

All Saints day

At Halloween, something interesting happens.  We dress up, we trick or treat, but we have no idea as to why we do that.  It's just something you do.  For candy.

But hold on, buckaroos, because that's not the whole story.  Have you ever wondered where the word Hallowen comes from? Or, I suppose Hallowe'en?  It's a shortened form of All Hallows Eve.

Think of those words.  You know what the word 'all' means, I assume.  But what of the other two?  You know what the word 'Eve' means, too.  Christmas Eve is what?  The day after Christmas?  And then that leaves 'Hallows.'  As in 'Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.'  Hallowed.  Be holy.  Halloween is the day before all Hallows day, or all Saints day.

What is all saints day?  It's the day that we commemorate all the saints.  Now, that doesn't mean that you're going to go through all the saints in obscure calendars, like Saint Rumbold, or Saint Longinus.  What it does mean, though, is that we end up focusing mainly on the saints that we know, and know well.  we focus on the saints whose lives matter to us, and who have touched us in tangible ways.

If you've never seen it, the movie 'Millions' is probably the best example of this.  Because it's the best movie ever.  It is the absolute best of all films that has ever been released, according to me.  Gets me right in the feels every time.  It's sweet without being horrible.  Anyhow, the story gets as close as I can recall to working out the Lutheran conception of sainthood, with saints being justified sinners, whose greatest works were accomplishing their vocations in their world.  And now I just watched the trailer.  And my eyes got sweaty again.

But yes, back to the topic at hand.  If you read through the words of Jesus carefully, if you think about what he says, and deal with his message, he's not all about world peace and solving world hunger and that sort of thing.  He's about you living in peace with your family, you feeding those whom you can, and so on.  Think global, act local.  Most of us are paralyzed by the idea that we should have this world of ours be perfect, but if we end up thinking about the global situation, then we can relax, and let the governments of the world look after feeding the poor and restoring peace.  But that's not your calling as Christians.  Your calling is to look after what you can look after.  Want the world to be more peaceful?  Be peaceable with your neighbors and family.  Want the world to be fed?  feed the people you see.

And our discussion of saints, all the saints, is going to end up as us thinking about the big saints, yes, but also about those whom Jesus has sanctified.  Because that's what a saint is, you know.  not someone who has lived an exemplary life, someone who has lived without sin, someone who has kept themselves unstained by the world, but someone who Jesus has sanctified with his blood and made holy.  Someone whom Jesus has saved.

This is what it means to be a saint, not to be perfect.  Being a saint isn't something for a select group of pople who have been perfect, and you can tell that from the Bible. The great thing about the people you find in the Bible is that they aren't whitewashed.  They aren't presented to us as being perfect, which is such great news for us.  Think about any saint you want, and you'll find some skeletons in their closets.  St. Paul, one of the best known saints, referred to himself as the chief of sinners, lamented at great length his inability to do what he wanted to do, talked about his struggles in his faith, and about what a dreadful person he was.

And he's a saint.

Wrong Saint Paul.

But this is the reality of who we are and what we do.  This is the reality of being a human being in the world, this side of heaven, is that we're all sinners.  We all do things wrong, we all disappoint God in our behavior, in our closed attitude towards him and each other.  We all do awful things, we are all neglectful of him and our worship and devotional time.  But this is where our sanctity comes in.  The more you learn about the saints the more you will realize that they're not holy because they lived super duper well, because they didn't.  They denied Christ, killed Christians, sought glory, doubted their faith, all the stuff that you and I do frequently.  But this is what it means to be a saint, it means that you are a sinner who has been forgiven.  Not that you are good, or great, or even passable, but you are forgiven.

When All Saints day rolls around, this is when we get to thinking about the work that Christ does.  Think about the saints not as you have conceived them, but rather as the Bible discusses them.  Think of them in the terms that Revelation uses.  'A great multitude that no one could number from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.'  It's not a select club.  It's the people of God.  Holy because Christ makes them holy.  Righteous because Christ makes them righteous.  Heaven-bound because Christ brings them to heaven. 

Reform Senators

I know, I know, the Reform Party never had any senators.  But think about the senators in this great nation of ours.  Think about them, and the scandals that they're in.

In addition to being in trouble for never doing any work, and for the work they do being meaningless, a few of them are also in trouble for other things, including but not limited to, their primary residence.  Senators in this great nation have been under fire for not living where they claim to live.  Oh, sure, they claim to live in Saskatchewan, or Prince Edward Island, but they have health care cards, drivers licenses, condos in Ontario, which is where they actually live.  That's the primary residence.

Why am I bringing this up?  No, this isn't a Political Blog, as much as it may seem like one sometimes.  No, this is about God, as usual, and about God's word.  In his word, in the Gospel reading for Sunday, we heard Jesus say 'If you abide in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'  Simple enough to hear, obviously, but hard to work through.  It's hard to work through because it has in it the notion of abiding.  Abiding in the same way the senators are supposed to.  You wouldn't think much of senators, and we don't, who claim a primary residence in one location but who never go there, and certainly don't live there.  In that same way, the disciples of Christ (which hopefully include you), are supposed to abide in God's word, knowing the truth.  But most of us abide in God's word the same way that the senators abide in Saskatchewan, which is that they have it as a residence on paper, but never go there.  They assumed that it was enough to have it, and to never deal with it ever again.  As we as Christians do too.  We assume that if we read God's word once, that we would never have to go over it again.  We don't feel as though we actually have to abide there, if we have it as our primary residence on paper.  In other words, we say that this is the most important thing in the universe to us, but we spend zero time actually living in it.

But Jesus says if we abide in his word, that we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free.  Why do we have to abide in God's word?  If it doesn't change, then why do we need to live in it as opposed to reading it once and then moving on with our lives?  Well, consider for a moment the phenomenon known as Groundhog day.  No, not the day, the movie.

In this movie, Bill Muray lives the same day over and over and over again.  The day doesn't change. It's always February 2nd, for years and years and years.  He's trapped there forever in a day that doesn't change, doesn't alter, but he himself has to .  He has to learn and grown and change, which he does over the course of the time he is trapped in that day.  Now, the late Harold Ramis
 he spoke about the meaning of this movie, and what it was actually about, and the desire of people to find their own religious, spiritual tradition in it.  Buddhists love it, Catholics love it, because they all think it's about them and their own spiritual journey.  But Ramis said that the closest thing to it being about something is about the reading of the Torah in the temple, that the Torah readings are always the same, they don't change year to year, it's the same thing every time, and yet as the readings are the same, you yourself are different, and you change. 

Now, this is why it is so vital for us to abide in God's word, to live in it.  Not because we're going to find something different in the scriptures, we aren't.  There's nothing new in there.  The Bible will be the same yesterday, today and forever.  Nothing new there.  It's not because the Bible is new, but because we are.  We are new.  We are different.  We have changed. The word of God doesn't change, but we change, and it will speak to us differently as different moments, which we will lose if we just glance at it once, and then move on with our lives.  If the last time you seriously engaged with the scriptures was when you were a child, or when you were in confirmation class, or anything like that, then you're missing out on what God has to say to you as a grown person, at this stage in your life.  To put in in a real world way that you can understand, think about the greatness that is Calvin and Hobbes.  The comic strip, not the Philosophers.

When I was young, I read Calvin and Hobbes.  I loved it.  It was fantastic.  And then I didn't read it anymore.  I moved onto other things (mainly mountaineering books now), and promptly forgot about it. But all of a sudden, I found Calvin and Hobbes again, and I saw it in a whole new light.  When I was a child, I identified with Calvin.  Now that I'm grown up, and have children of my own, I identify with Calvin's parents!

  
How did that happen?  The words didn't change, the drawings have been the same always, but I changed.  I had new experiences, and so going back to the material means that it affects me in new ways.  If that's the way with Calvin and Hobbes, how much more it is with the Holy Scriptures?  How much more is it with God's word, and what he has promised to share with us?

In that way, if we only encounter God's word as Children, then we are missing out on something incredibly important.  St. Paul tells us that when he was a child, he thought like a child, and reasoned like a child.  Now that he is a man, he put childish things away.  When you were a child, God spoke to you like a child.  He told you what you needed to know then.  You knew that the whole world was in his hands, that Jesus loved you, that you knew, that there was a floody floody and all that.  But now that you're grown, those answers, that relationship may not satisfy you anymore.

If that's the case, then you may not have encountered God's word lately.  If it seems childish, that's likely because you either haven't encountered it since you were a child, or have dealt with it as a child.  It's time to put childish things away, and to view it like a grownup.  It's time to learn the truth, and to have the truth set you free.

The great gift of the Reformation was that Luther took the scriptures, and put them in a language that everyone could understand.  He took the Bible, and made it so that we could hear it in our own language.  It wouldn't do us much good to try to abide, to live in a word that we couldn't understand, that we could never work out what it meant.  But once Luther had given us the scriptures in our language, had made it so we could hear, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, once that had happened, we could know the truth.  We could know that we have sinned.  We have done what we didn't want to do, we have avoided doing what we want to do, we have served ourselves and not our neighbors nor our family.  We have thought too much about what we want, and have broken relationships in our wake.  But we hear from God's word that we have a source for hope.  Hope even in the face of death.  There is no such thing as too late, no such thing as too far gone, or too broken, that's the work of Christ.  You learn from his word not just that you are in bondage, in slavery to sin, but also that he earnestly desires to set you free.  That's his work that he came to do, to put you right, to restore you to God and to each other. 

The child's version of these stories are to tell you that God loves you.  The adult version is to tell you that he loves you to death.

He looked at him and loved him.

There's a lot about this guy to love.

Not me, you understand, but the rich young man from the Gospel reading from Sunday.  He comes bounding over to Jesus, and kneels before him, and loudly asks 'Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'  There's a lot to love about him.  There's a lot to love about him because he seems so like us, so relateable.  He seems like an ordinary human being. 

If you haven't read them, there's a series of books called 'Bruno and Boots' about a Canadian boarding school called MacDonald Hall.  In this series, Bruno and Melvin (Nicknamed Boots, obviously), engage in hilarious misadventures and harebrained schemes.  MacDonald Hall is located conveniently across the highway from Miss Scrimmage's finishing school for young ladies, and the
girls are frequently involved in the schemes in some way or another.  During one of these schemes, when the girls do something particularly amazing, Bruno remarks breathlessly 'those girls.... they remind me of us.'  It was the highest compliment he could pay.

That line has always stuck with me, because truly, one of the highest compliments one could pay to someone else is that they remind you of yourself.  In your own eyes, you are the hero of your own story, and so to be like you is to be fantastic.  To be like you is to attain as close as possible to perfection this side of heaven.  And this is why I love this rich young man - because he's like us. 

When he bounds over to Jesus, and kneels before him, he doesn't embark on any of the complicated ethical questions that others have asked Jesus.  When the lawyers and scribes test Jesus, they do so by asking questions about whether it's okay to pay taxes or not, or if it's lawful to get divorced, and Jesus responds.  They ask him by what authority Jesus does miracles, or why his disciples don't wash their hands at an appropriate time.  All sorts of questions that seem important to the doctors and merchants and lawyers.  But they're not questions that plague you, I'll bet. 

If you were to be able to ask Jesus only one question, if you could sit him down and ask only one question, it would likely be the same one as this rich young man does - how do I get into heaven.  There we go.  No fanciness, no beating around the bush, just straight into the solar plexus, what do I have to do to get into heaven.  That's what I want to know.  Nothing else. 

And Jesus replies truthfully, which is to say 'you know the commandments: Don't steal, don't commit adultery, don't kill, dont' defraud, honor your mother and father.'  Success!  This is what the young

man wanted to hear.  Heck, it's what we all want to hear! If we were to ask Jesus how to get into heaven, the answer we want to hear is 'be a good person.'  We want to hear that answer because, as mentioned earlier, we are the heroes of our own story.  To get through the day, we have essentially convinced ourselves that we are not just good people, but the best people.  We are good and upright.  We do things well.  We are the people here on Earth who get it right and do things well almost always.  Our problems that we encounter are the fault of other people who get in our way and bust us up.  We don't make mistakes.  That's not us.  And so the best answer that Jesus can possibly give to us is to 'be a good person' because that's what we believe that we're already doing.

This rich young ruler, same thing.  He hears the pronouncement from Jesus and responds joyfully, saying 'I've done all this from my youth!'  Be a good person?  I'm already a good person!  Sweet sassie.  So when the young man says to Jesus 'fantastic, I've done all this my whole life,' Jesus looks at him and loves him.

That's ordinarily where the story would end, right?  That's where the story wraps up, at least in our own minds.  'How do I get into heaven?' 'Be a good person.'  'I'm a good person.' 'Outstanding.'  But the story doesn't end there, because upon looking at him, Jesus loves him.  And love is a terrible, dangerous thing. 

Most of us don't want to be loved, we want to be liked.  We want to be liked, because like doesn't require much of anything.  it doesn't require change or painful growth.  When someone says 'I like you,' they're saying that they appreciate who you are right now, they like what they are currently seeing.  When someone says 'I love you,' they're saying 'I like what I have right now, and I want it to grow and develop, to be better tomorrow than it is today.'  And that's a painful thing. 

It's a difficult thing to be loved, much easier to be liked.  You can be liked by your buddies who will encourage you to drink too much and fight some guy in a bar.  You can be loved by your wife who will encourage you not to drink, and to save your liver.  This is what love is, you understand, is wanting the best for the object of your love.

We've all encountered this love, you know.  The friends who remind you that you're not happy with your new boyfriend, your granny who helpfully points out that you've gained weight, your parents who continue to remind you of your marks in school and how they could be better if you were working to your potential - this is the kind of love we don't want.  The love that bends us and breaks us and makes us into something that we weren't before.  Because that person loves us.

It is this love that compelled Jesus to speak to this young man, to tell him 'okay, so you've told me how you've kept all the commandments your whole life?  Well and good.  But I'm not here to congratulate you for your successes.  I'm here to fix your failings.'

How would you feel about a dentist who congratulated you for your mouth full of healthy teeth, but ignored the one that was placing you in agony?  Or a doctor who praised your breathing while ignoring your broken leg that made you unable to walk out of the waiting room?  What would you think of parents that shrugged their shoulders as you went to your death, or teachers who just plain didn't care if you did your homework or not?  I know we want to be liked, but sometimes we are loved, and love is a dangerous thing.  Jesus has in mind for us to be perfect, just as God himself is perfect. That's the rule and the standard - there is no other.  And when this rich young ruler comes before Jesus and says to him 'I'm a good person,' Jesus essentially responds by saying 'I don't want you to be a good person in your own eyes.  I want you to be perfect.'  Or, to put it another way, 'You may think you are good, but nobody is good but God.'

So Jesus points out his failings.  Even after going through all his strengths, Jesus points out his failings, telling him that it is good that he is doing the work he has been doing so far, but he still has a long way to go.  He needs to be perfect as God is perfect.  If he isn't, then that's why he needs Jesus.

For Jesus looked at him, and loved him.  And he looks at us, and loves us.  And his love requires our perfection.  So where do we go with this love?  Well, Jesus helpfully articulates what his love for us is.  He looks at you, and loves you, and tells you this: No man has greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends.' 

That there is the good news of the Gospel.  Not that you're a good person, because you aren't. Sometimes it takes consulting with God to see how far you have still to go, even if you think you keep the commandments perfectly.  Even if you kept them all but one, there would still be room to go and room to grow - you still wouldn't be perfect as God would demand.  So if you're not going to be perfect on your own, then Jesus will remind you of your need for him.  He will be your savior.  His pointing out of your weaknesses will show you just how far you still have to go, further than you can go in your entire life.  Jesus doesn't tell you this to dishearten you, nor to make you feel bad, but to remind you of your need for him.  He does this to tell you that as good as you think you are, you aren't perfect.  But he is.  And he has come to die for you.

The young man leaves disheartened, because he has many posessions.  He has just been reminded of what he has that is keeping him from God, and he is disheartened because of it.  Perhaps his heart has been hardened, perhaps he is not thrilled about being informed of this, or perhaps he is angry that Jesus has dared to point out that he is less than perfect.  What is he going to do from this point on?  Who can say?  He may sell his posessions, but likely not.  Odds are instead that he will go back to his home, and pretend that Jesus doesn't say what he says. 

But Jesus does say what he says.  He says it and means it.  And he tells anyone who will listen that they have a long way to go, an interminably long way to go.  They'll never get there. Which is why Jesus has to come to them.  Don't harden your heart, don't listen only to the first half of the love of Christ, listen to it all.  Not just his desire for you to be improved, but his willingness to accomplish it for you.

The great divorce

Great meaning large or immense, we use it in the pejorative sense.

That's right, the teachings from Jesus on divorce.  This is unpopular, isn't it?  I mentioned that I wasn't really looking forward to the readings for Sunday, and I asked my wife to guess what they could possibly be, and she guessed that it was 'wives submit to your husbands.'  Very close.  It was
actually the teachings, obviously from Jesus about divorce, and they're much harsher than we would expect. Especially today.

For you see, these days, folks get divorced at an alarming rate.  That is, they get divorced at the rate of about 50%.  That's not an accurate number, you understand.  That number is purely hearsay, but it's out there now, and we're going to have to deal with it.  Anyhow, let's go conservative, and say that the number is hovering around 40%.  Fine.  The big surprise for us is that the Christian population doesn't show any appreciable increase in marriage survival rate over the outside population.  That is, you're not looking at a massive increase in either marital fidelity, or marital survival over the vast heathen hordes.  And these are people who believe sincerely that Jesus really REALLY doesn't want you to get divorced.  He's quite opposed to it, to the point that he calls remarriage after divorce adultery. 

But you don't see Christians protesting outside courthouses that allow divorces.  You don't see them holding signs saying 'one life, one wife!' or 'Get your patrimony off my matrimony!'  Why on earth
don't you see those same signs in the same way you'd be seeing protests associated with same-sex marriage or abortion clinics?  Probably because unlike those, the people who are protesting might very well be protesting themselves.  Why did furor about divorce die off?  Because people got divorced.  And if a lot of people get divorced, then all of a sudden nobody wants to talk about divorce anymore.

If I've imparted nothing else to you, and I haven't, your one take-away from all of my ramblings should be that everything is a democracy, even when it isn't.  Everything happening in Iraq, Syria, all those places, well, they're all democracies, even if they're dictatorships.  If enough people in the country decide they want Bashar Al-Asad gone, he'd be gone.  Ask how Khadaffi is doing these days.  If you get enough people deciding something, hitting critical mass, then things become that.  The only thing that isn't, and can't be a democracy, is God's word.  We don't get to take parts out based on them being unpopular.

But we want to.  Because so many of us get divorced, we want to edit Jesus, and make it so his requirements on us aren't so high.  We get to thinking that what he demands is impossible, and so knowing that, our job is just to make what he says easier.  Less complicated.  We take his words, and fudge them around, making sure that he doesn't actually put holes in what we do.  We want to make sure that he's not going to bust us up, that he'll turn his attention elsewhere.

But it's not a democracy.  If Jesus says something that gets under your skin, your job isn't to strike out those words.  It's to hear them, and if you need to be made uncomfortable by them, then to be made uncomfortable by them.  If Jesus tells you that you have something to change, don't react to it by changing him.  And if we look at those words of Jesus about divorce, and claim that they're too hard, then that should tell you why you need Jesus.

To be honest, everything he says is too hard.  Have you ever noticed that?  It's not a plan that he gives you that is easy or straightforward.  When Jesus talks to his people, he tells them to be perfect, just as God is perfect.  That's a tall order, and not one that we can realistically attain.  Obviously.  Nobody's perfect. 

But on this issue, we complain and get mad, and when we read the firm, inflexible words of Jesus, we get upset, saying to him 'No, you don't understand!  You don't know what it's like to live with someone who hurts you.  You don't know what it's like to fall out of love, to find out your spouse is unfaithful.  You don't know what it's like to lose your faith and fellowship in someone.  You don't know.'

And to that, Jesus responds by saying 'don't I?'  He's in a relationship with us.  We, as the church, are called the bride of Christ, and we're an unfaithful bride.  A bride who is interested in other gods.  A bride who wants attention from elsewhere.  An unsatisfied bride, who takes and never gives.  We end up not talking to each other for long periods, not visiting, not spending time together.  We end up, essentially, as strangers.  There has been a major breakdown in our relationship over time, and it's on our shoulders.  If there was ever a reason for someone to want to get out of a relationship, Jesus would have plenty of reasons to get out of his relationship with us. 

Here's where the Bible matters though.  Even though we understand that we are a long way away from perfection, this is where Jesus shines.  He's not in the business of telling you what to do, giving you a moral lesson, and then just letting you get on with it, he's in the business of two things
1 - fulfilling the law on your behalf, and
2 - forgiving you when you don't measure up.

Maybe for the first and only time ever, you have time and space in church to quit pretending.  You have time and space in that worship service to say to God 'I haven't done everything right.  My marriage is a shambles that nobody knows about, I'm just barely holding on, I don't think we're going to last even though I post on facebook constantly about how in love we are.  What am I going to do?'  That's what Jesus is all about.  You bring him your weakness, you leave with his strength.  Maybe your marriage is failing, perhaps it's already fallen apart.  That doesn't mean that we need to look at Jesus' words and delete them, or to pretend that he never said them, but to look at them and realize that level of commitment is not just good, it's divine.  And that's the level of commitment that God through Christ has promised to us.  Throughout the Bible, he tells us 'If it were not so, would I have told you?'  In other words, he's been trustworthy and true this whole time.  We believe him because he tells us the truth. 

When he says things that upset us, because he forbids things we do, we have a couple of choices.  We can walk away, saying 'This is a hard teaching, who can understand it?' or we can say with some degree of confidence 'Lord, where else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!'  Essentially, it's not your job to be perfect but to be made perfect.  It is your job to have your sins forgiven, to not hide them or stash them away or to pretend Jesus doesn't say what he says.  He does say it.  He does mean it.  And our faith in his power to forgive, cleanse, and make whole, rests in his promise.  He told us he would draw us to himself, he told us he would forgive and make all things new.  We believe in him as children believe in their parents.

Because they promise.

Cut it out!

So, why does Jesus say what he says? 

That seems like an obvious question, but it isn't.  It's not actually as straightforward as you might expect. Why do any of us say things, really?  It's not why we think we do.  We think we say things in order that we might be heard and observed, in order that we might communicate and further human discourse.  But then there are times when we say things to 'make conversation.'  You know, when we say things just to fill the mental space that is not currently being used for anything else.  Nobody's saying anything, so we figure we might as well add something to the mix.  And so we say stuff just for the sake of saying it.  'Reading the newspaper?' 'Watching TV and playing on your phone?'  Stating and restating the obvious, just for the sake of having something to say. To 'make conversation.'  Only problem is that we don't make conversation when we do that, not really.  We just fill space with words. 

But Jesus doesn't do that.  How are we so sure that he doesn't do that?  Well, if you get right the way to the end of the Gospel of John, it'll tell you all about it.  There are many other things that Jesus did that aren't recorded in this book, but these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.  All simple and above board, certainly.  Or so we'd think. 

But then we get to passages about cutting off limbs.  And when we get to passages that talk about cutting off limbs, we are far more tempted to think that Jesus is just making conversation.  Oh, sure, he's talking about amputations, but he's just exaggerating for effect.  He doesn't actually mean it, does he?  Or does he?

There's a movement out there that is called 'red letter Christianity.'  I won't bore you with the details, but essentially what we're looking at is that the letters of Jesus that show up in the Bible (often helpfully in red ink) are incredibly important, and matter.  Now, we won't get into the discussion as to whether all scriptures is God-Breathed (it is), or if scripture interprets scripture (it does).  Instead, we're going to isolate those words of Jesus and ask ourselves 'does he mean it?'  Simple question.  If we say that he doesn't mean it, then we are setting ourselves up for all sorts of trouble as we pick through the words of Christ in the Bible.  Oh sure, Jesus doesn't really mean what he says about care for the poor and feeding the sick and taking care of the weak and the orphans.  That's too hard!  Some might say that's impossible.  Okay, sure. And it is.  But just because it's impossible, doesn't mean that Jesus doesn't mean what he says. 

Take, for example, a quite serious thing that Jesus says, when he tells everyone 'be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.'  Would we say that because this is impossible (yes, your perfection is impossible), that Jesus is therefore not serious, is only joking, and shouldn't be taken seriously?  Or do we say that he means it, that his intention for us is to be perfect, and we have to grapple with what that means. 

So back, once again, to his suggestion that if our hands or feet offend us, that we should remove them.  If it is your hands or feet that lead you into a life of sin, Jesus suggests removing them.  But he is also suggesting that you remove yourself from any cause of sin.  Whatever it is that is dragging you down and causing you to sin, remove it, be far from it, because sin is a serious business.  Though he doesn't talk about it often, he does mention hellfire in this section, and it's no joke.

Yes, I know, I'm not what you would call a fire and brimstone preacher.  In fact, I'm not sure what brimstone even is, only that it's bad, and I should avoid it.  Beyond that, no clue.  But when Jesus speaks up about Hellfire and damnation, it's a good idea to listen.  It's a good idea to listen because Jesus takes sin very seriously.  He takes it more seriously than we in the church do.  Most of us are pretty relaxed about sin, take it easy, don't think about it too much.  We don't dwell on our sin and what it's doing to us at all.  We think instead that our sin is something for Jesus to deal with, and for us to laughingly do, and then half-heartedly repent of later.  What does Jesus expect?  We're not perfect!

Jesus doesn't do what we want him to, though.  He doesn't shrug his shoulders at sin and pretend like it's no big deal.  He reminds you, exhaustively if necessary, that it is a big deal, and it always was.  Your little sins, the things you do on a daily basis, that's what's dragging you down to hell.  It's not the big stuff only (though make no mistake, it is the big stuff), but it's the small stuff too.  The little indescretions, the hushed whispers, the browsers opened in incognito mode.  The things you do that nobody knows about so you can fool yourself into thinking that there are no consequences, and it won't matter.

But it does.  it's the stuff you do that is the problem, not the stuff other people do.  Let them do whatever they're going to do, and don't worry about it.  Don't fret, don't sweat, don't focus on what they're all about, think about yourself.  Jesus is talking about your sin, and how your sin is leading you to hell.  Eternal hellfire and damnation where the fire never dies out, and the worm never stops eating away.  Sound fun?  Of course it doesn't.  What would you do to avoid it?  Anything Lord, anything! Would you cut off your hand?  Well, no, no I wouldn't.  I've grown quite attached to it.  Well, would you throw out your computer?  No, Lord, for I need it for work, and to watch cat videos in addition to pornography.  Okay, well would you then install filters on your internet browser to avoid seeing that content anymore?  No, Lord, for I don't really want to stop.

Aha.  How our excuses fall.  Sure, if you wanted to stop, I'm certain you could.  If you wanted to quit, there would be ample opportunities to do so.  If you really wished to steer aside from your sin, it would be possible, but you and I and Jesus all know that you won't.  Far from cutting off your own hands, you won't even change the TV channel to save your soul.  So what now?  Just abject defeat?  Is this the end of all things?  Or is it something else entirely?

When Jesus tells you to cut off your hands and feet, he is doing so not for effect, but telling us what it would take to seriously avoid sin.  What would it take?  It would take body part removal on a large scale.  And yet none of us Christians seem to do that.  We don't chop off our hands or toss away our feet.  Why not?  Because the weight of the problem carries with it a solution - it carries with it the solution in Christ Jesus.  The price of staying clear is far too high - sacrificing our hands and feet!  But that's that Jesus does to keep us free from sin.  In order that we might be saved from the consequences of our sin, Jesus doesn't demand that you give up your hands and your feet, but he gives up his.  Think of the price Jesus pays on the cross for your sin - think of what he loses.  He gives up his friends, his freedom, his safety.  He gives up his dignity, his clothes, and his family.  At the end, he gives up his hands and his feet, not cut off, but nailed down, and pinned to the cross.  and there he dies.  Dies for you, and for me, dies for the sins that we wouldn't cross the street or put down a book to avoid.

But the great thing is, the story doesn't end there.  There was a bit in Blackadder (a british TV show from the 80s) in which a thorny theological problem got introduced.  Namely "Suppose my right hand offends me, and I cut it off.  Well, suppose my left hand offends me as well.  What do I cut it off
with?"  Funny, but it does illustrate a good point, which is after you cut off a hand, you don't have another one grow back in its place.  Humans are not built to do this, you understand.  We don't regrow limbs.  Gone is gone, and dead is dead.  You have to be really sure cutting that hand off will solve the problem.  Well, Jesus was sure that his death would solve the problem of your sin.  He knew it would.  Itw as all plotted out, this was the price that had to be paid.  So he paid that price, bled and died, and your sin was gone.  But unlike you, you who could only lose a hand once, Jesus died and then rose again.  Paying the price for all time, and yet keeping all the glory to share with us.  The amazing miracle of the resurrection isn't only that your sins are paid for, but that you sins are paid for by the one who actually had the resources to do it.  Not you, you don't have anything close to enough in your bank balance.  This is why you lean on the glory of Christ, because he has promised to give unto you grace everlasting out of his riches.  How much does he have to give?  Enough that death itself can't hold him down.