Kids these days

In military tactics, one of the oldest tricks in the book is to make your enemy believe that you're going to attack in a certain place, while really attacking where they are weak.  You could also pretend to retreat, but actually then turn around and catch the pursuers in a bottleneck.  This happened, in the history of warfare, all the time.  Classic tactic, which led to the classic blunder of falling for the feigned retreat. 

Why do I mention this?  I mention this because in the church, we have certain expectations of who the devil is and what he's going to do.  We assume that he is going to tempt us into murder or adultery or something like that.  We assume that the devil is going to tempt us to a life of criminal larceny, rubbing his hands together all the way.  But, of course, the devil is just using that old classic of the feigned retreat.  He is prenteding to run away from you, and allowing you to become complacent.  He is doing this because he is a sapper.

What is a  sapper?  A sapper is someone who gets past fortifications not by battering himself against them until one of them breaks, but someone who digs under them, and makes the fortifications useless.  This is what the devil is all about, attacking you not where you are strong, where you want to be attacked, but where you are weak.

So where are we as Christians terribly weak?  And no, it's not where you wish it was.  You want me to say something like drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution, murder, or any one of a number of other problems that you doubtlessly don't have.  But you've spent a lifetime building fortifications against these things, building defenses, preparing for the expected onslaught.  All the while, you left yourself open in a few key areas, that when examining your defenses,, made it obvious where the enemy was going to hit you.  And it should be no surprise that he hits you exactly there.

Think of the reading from the Gospel of Mark for Sunday.  The reading in which the disciples do a very good impression of you on a Sunday morning.  They hear the Gospel of Jesus in its fullness preached very simply and straightforwardly.  Jesus tells them that he is going to be taken away, killed, and rise on the third day, and for some reason the disciples don't get what he's all about on that one.  Not only that, but even though they don't understand what's being talked about, they don't dare ask any questions to clarify.  Sound familiar yet? 

But while they are on their way home from the preaching, they chit chat amongst themselves.  And if this story was made up, if it was fabricated from whole cloth, you would expect the disciples to be meditating in quiet contemplation.  You would expect them to be worshiping, praying penitential psalms, and self-flagellating.  But they aren't.  Instead, they are talking about which of them is best. 

Now, this is easy to talk about at present, because we are in an election season in both the USA and Canada.  And in this election season, all the politicans want you to believe that they are the best suited for the job, so they can get elected, and enact sweeping legislation.  Think for a second about how it is that politicians promote themselves.  Think about the ads you see for any political party or candidate.  Pick any one you want, odds are they're all the same, really.  The most successful ads are attack ads. The best way to convince people to vote for you is to convince them to vote against someone else.  This is sad, but it is also true.  The disciples were on their way back with Jesus, right after hearing the Gospel message and not getting it, and the whole way back, they were discussing which of them was best.  And they likely did so by knocking each other down, and talking about how the rest of the 11 were basically no good.

So Jesus stops them, and asks them what they were talking about, and none of them want to answer, I guess because what they were talking about was pretty embarrassing.  Nobody wants to tell Jesus 'yes, we were all talking about which of us was the best ever.'  Not likely.  But Jesus knew what they were talking about, and so he goes and places a child before them, and tells them that it is their job to serve that child.  I want you to take a good look at this child in this picture of Jesus.  What does this child look like?

These children look like darling cherubs.  Because they always do.  And if the children in question looked and behaved like these children, then it would be no problem, no issue, for the disciples to serve them and care for them and love them.

But you know children, right?  Do children look and behave like this?  I mean real children.  Because they don't.  They look more like this.

A little grubby, a little louder, not being quiet, demure, and stoic; probably because children aren't stoic.  They're children.  Can you imagine being in a church, and the child that was crying and fussing through the service, the one who was kicking you in the back through the pew, that's the child that you're called upon to serve?  Maybe you'd love that.  If so, then you need to focus on the area where you are weak, because the devil has no time for you there.

But for those of us who are proud, who feel very good  about what we do and say, those of us who love and adore our place and position in the church, and in society, this is humbling.  To be called to serve the grubby, the untidy and unkempt, the messy and loud, that's humbling.  And you probably don't want to do it.  But think about what Jesus is actually doing with you and for you by doing this, by pushing you and extending you to be more mindful of who you ought to serve and look after.  What is Jesus doing here?  He is working very hard to do what you don't do, because he knows where your walls are weak. He knows where you're going to be hit, and he's doing his best to make sure that you're defended.

For most of us, we don't think too much about pride.  We think about the big problems being murder, adultery, prostitution, abortion, any or all of these things, and we dont' think much about pride.  Our spiritual defenses have been raised up against the prospect of attack in these areas, and we've spent years preparing for a frontal assault designed to get us to murder or drink or gamble.  Then we get lulled into a false sense of security when we start to see that the attack isn't going to come at those points, and we figure that if the attack isn't going to come there, if temptation isn't going to come there, then it's not going to show up anywhere.  All the while, we ignore the devil digging into where we are weak.

This is what the book of James is all about.  This is what this passage from the Gospels is all about, which is to highlight where we are weak.  It's the stuff that we dont' often think about, the things we ignore and don't spend time on.  The things that we forget, leave off to the side, and when we encounter them, want to surpress.  When we get word from the scriptures as to what our problems are going to be, that we are going to spend far more time working on our pride than listening to the gospel message, it's tempting to just close the Bible, and talk about the issues we don't have.

And that's why the child in this passage being a real child is so important.  It's so important because Jesus shows us a real child, not a well behaved fictional child, and tells us to recieve him.  And if we balk at that, or get concerned, get concerned, or feel as though it was beneath us, then we are finding out exactly where we are weak, and where we need to be strengthened.  It does us no good to focus on where we are strong, and sit around polishing our bulwarks.  If Jesus is highlighting our weaknesses, this is not the time to remind him of our strengths.  The fortress is only as strong as its weakest wall.

What Jesus promises is to forgive sins; real genuine sins, not the ones you think other people have.  He came to forgive pride, and hard-heartedness.  He came to forgive our inflated sense of self, our obsession with our needs and wants.  He came to take that away.  Perhaps the most humbling thing about that entire encounter with that child was the knowledge that the disciples couldn't claim power or authority over that child .  They were called by Jesus to serve him.  And if that seems like a lot, then meditate on this - This is exactly what we ask Jesus to do for us.  We ask him to humble himself to serve us, to wait on us hand and foot, to wash our feet and to do our bidding.  We are honestly beneath him, far more than that child was beneath the disciples. But the point of the story is that the work we balk against, the stuff we don't want to do, is what Jesus does for us, bearing our sins and taking them away, restoring us and making us whole.  He is here, and has come, to work for those who have done nothing, earned nothing, and who are far far beneath him.

Us.

unhappy jack

While we were on our houseboat vacation, we got a front row seat to something amazing.  It was during a brief squall, in which the boats were being a little bit blown about by the wind.  However, we had an experienced captain and crew, so our boat was safe and secure on the shore, so no problem there.  However, the same cannot be said for the crew of 'Happy Jack.'  Happy Jack was showing up a
lot on the radio chatter, to the extent that we figured that he may be in trouble.  However, the Shushwap lakes are big, so we had no idea that we'd actually see    Happy Jack drift by.  Which we did.  Happy Jack drifted by, and seemed to cruise right into the rocks on the shore.  Now, structurally, the boat was sound.  It wasn't sinking, wasn't vanishing beneath the waves, nothing like that.  But it was in trouble.  It was in trouble, and was going to be unable to drive itself off of the rocks where it found itself wedged.  What a front row seat we had. 

So the crew of happy jack were on the radio back to base, trying to get some help, and base sent a tugboat out to them to pull them away from danger.  It was super interesting to see the tugboat with its raw power move in, and pull the boat safely into the lake.  And reading our epistle reading for Sunday got me thinking about that incident. 

For you see, James talks at length about our tongues, our words, our language and the use thereof, which is what gets us into trouble.  It's what we say that ends up getting us into messes.  If you will permit the metaphor, the words you say end up steering you towards rocks almost all the time.  Now, on a boat, you can avoid rocks by not just steering properly, but by consulting the maps and charts which will tell you about the narrows, the sand bars, and the rocks that you might not see.  But these maps, charts, guides, instruments, they only work if you consult them.  And that's where we end up getting into a fix.

It's not for lack of guidance that we get into trouble.  The holy scriptures are full of guidance for you, and will tell you what to do, how to behave, in order that your joy may be full.  It seems counter-intuitive, in the same sense that on a houseboat, you just want to sail around.  You don't want big Shushwap telling you where you can and can't sail.  But if you choose to ignore the maps and charts, you'll end up aground, having significantly less fun than you would otherwise.  And Happy Jack, as he careened towards the rocks, probably ought to have been consulting the various buzzkill charts that would have kept him out of trouble, and safely cruising around. 

In that same sense, the guidance you get from James is there for your benefit. . It's supposed to keep you off of the rocks, and away from the shores.  James, and God, are well aware of the results of your unchecked gossip, your harsh words with each other, your careless and foolish arguments that you enter into, James knows where those things will end up, and he cautions you to tame your tongue, to avoid those conversations, those words, that only lead to trouble.  You don't have to beach yourself, it's not an inevitability, but it will end up happening if you ignore the directives.  And once you have beached yourself on the rocks, once you've gotten wedged on the rocks, slapped sideways against the beach, then good luck driving yourself out of it. 

And this is where the story of the Bible really begins to take hold.  For you see, the Bible does indeed do its fair share of telling you what to do and say.  It has moral rules, lots of them.  If you want to know how God wants you to live your life, you will find abundant material in the Bible to tell you what you should be doing.  But it doesn't stop there.  The Gospel reading gets into that, too.  It's the reading where a man brings his possessed son to Jesus for help, telling Jesus that they've tried everything, and nothing has worked.  This boy is in far too deep to be helped by conventional means.  So they approach Jesus, and ask him if he can help.  And Jesus responds by saying that all things are possible for them who believe. 

That's a tough thing to hear, but it's what we would expect.  We would expect Jesus to say that if we just pray harder, worship more, read our Bibles more, become more moral, then things would by definition work out.  But they don't.  We try and we try, and we end up frustrated, bitter, and alone.  The more effort we put in, the more we realize we still have to go, and the more frustrated we end up.  It's a horrible cycle full of disappointment, because you continue to say to yourself that if you were working harder, you wouldn't be in this moral mess.  Unfortunately, it ends up being the same as telling Happy Jack to steer better....once he's grounded on the rocks. 

When the boy's father hears that all things are possible for him who believes, he replies by saying 'Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.'  I want to do what you say, but I'm sinful.  I want to believe in your word, but I live in the real world, which tends to get in the way.  I want to avoid the rocks, but I keep on steering into them.  And Jesus doesn't respond by stepping back and telling this man and his son to work harder, to believe more.  Instead, he steps into them, and heals the boy, casting the unclean spirit out.  This is what the incarnation is all about, you know, about God seeing that we had run aground on the rocks, had spoken and acted our way into misery, had consistently chosen things and words we ought not to have chosen, and stepping in to tow us out of it.  To tow us to safety, away from the forces that would threaten to sink us.  Of which there are many, and they're usually of our own making.

I know, it's tempting to ignore God's advice, to say what seems like a good idea at the time, and then to end up struggling on the rocks, trying to talk your way out of it, trying to reason with God and with human beings.  It's tempting to do this, to try to argue or rationalize yourself into or out of situations.  It's tempting, but ultimately flawed.  Once you're on the rocks, you cant' use that same rudder to get yourself out of it.  You can't radio in to base and tell them that everything is fine.  All you can do is say that the charts were right, but that you need help getting back to safety.  Essentially, 'Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief.'

You will always have them with you.

Jesus famously said that we would always have the poor with us.

If you were in an average Christian church, the first question that you would ask yourself is 'where?'  Functionally, they're nowhere to be seen.  Now, our church is located in a reasonably affluent area, but even churches that I know that are located in slightly less wonderful areas of town aren't filled to
the brim with the poor and very poor.  They aren't jam packed full of people who are hard up on their luck and desperate to get by.  Why on earth not?

Most churches, this one included, will mention that all are welcome, and it's true.  It's very true that all are welcome, and churches will go to great lenghts to ensure that as many barriers as possible are torn down, and that people feel comfortable approaching.  But like it or not, the barriers are there.  People don't feel all that comfy coming to worship in a community in which they are the minority.  And here in Canada, we tend to stratify on economic lines.  This happens constantly, where the classes separate themselves out, and don't really rub shoulder to shoulder, unless it's a rider game.  Beyond that, quite separate.  Now, I'm not here to call everyone out, and to scold us all, I'm here to point out that this isn't a new problem or a new issue.  It's as old as the Christian church, certainly, and without doubt older than that.  It's so old that James cautioned against falling into classism.  He cautioned against this, because he was well aware that were were incredibly likely to fall into it. We are people who have a desire to stratify on economic lines, who want to suck up to the rich a whole lot.  We want to suck up to the rich, and sweep the poor away, or at least out of our sight.  James mentions for us the possibility that we might want to encourage the poor of this world, and to not try to shove them towards the back where they might not be seen.

We recoil at this, in real life.  We recoil like this like Dracula from the cross, we do.  Nobody ever outright says that poor people aren't welcome, but their lack of presence seems to indicate that they aren't showing up for a good reason.  Everyone wants to welcome poor people to the church, where they may hear God's word, and be encouraged, but they just aren't around.  And because they aren't around, and even if they are they aren't visible, it leads us to a peculiar problem here in the Christian faith.  It leads us to a problem in which we get to ignore what we are called to do. As human beings, we tend to forget pretty quickly about the magnitude of the task before us.  We tend to forget about chapters like Matthew 25, we tend to forget that all this stuff is incumbent on us to do and to take care of.  We forget rapidly that we are required to take care of the poor of this world, that it is demanded of us.  And one of the things that lets us forget it is the general invisibility of the poor.

Think of what happens when the Olympic games come to a city.  What happens to the homeless?  In the case of Vancouver, they were shipped away, removed so that they might not bother the nice people who came to see athletes ride sleds down hills.  This is our desire, not to solve the problem, but to pretend, quite happily, that it doesn't exist.  We want to believe that the problem isn't a problem.  It's easy to do that when the poor aren't around.

For if they are around, then we are faced with something rather uncomfortable.  We are faced with the fact that our work is not done.  The more visible the poor of this world are, the more we are reminded of their presence, and it should be a little unsettling to those of us, myself included, who

have more than enough, and who are blissfully happy in their opulence.  We're essentially fat and happy, but it's much harder to be happy when you see those around you suffering.  James tells you to move these people, when they do come to our churches, to a higher, better place, to be visible to the congregation, so that nobody can forget the reason for their own wealth - to be used for God's will in his kingdom.

James not only tells you to let the poor into your congregations, but to place them at a place of great honor, up at the front, where we are normally used to having those who want to see and be seen.  And placing the poor there gives us a reminder of what it is that Jesus would have us do.  But something else happens, which is that they give us an opportunity, with their presence, to serve God in the world.  It's not as though you need to ask yourself what it is God would have you do when the people he would have you serve are all around you.  If the homeless, the destitute, arrive at your congregation, you have been given an opportunity by God himself to be charitable.

Now, you may not exactly want to hear this. You may want instead to fall back on the notion that faith, the faith of the Bible, is a matter of holding the right opinions, and that's all.  The vision that James presents, though, is that faith without works, is dead.  It's inert.  Oh sure, it looks the same, but it is dead.  And like anything else that's dead, Lazarus included, it stinketh.

So, what?  Is this works righeousness?  No, it isn't, though you might be tempted to think, heck, to hope it might be.  So you can ignore it.  Me too, really.  But it isn't.  All it is, is God indicating to you, who is probably comfortable with what you are currently doing, that you have a long way to go.  Even if you think you're doing fine, you aren't.  It's like when Jesus encountered the rich young ruler, so assured in his own righteousness that he figured that he didn't need salvation at all.  He just wanted recognition.  We're not like that though, are we?

So how can you be a Christian and not be constantly working with and serving the poor? How can you be a Christian and not have a church full of the poor who are desperate to hear God's word?  Well, you sort of have to ignore a pretty big part of the Bible.  The parts that talk about service to the poor of this world.  You either have to ignore them or not listen to them at all.  You have to become wilfully deaf to what Jesus wants you to do.

And that leads us to the biggest thing to consider, which is the Gospel reading for last Sunday, in which Jesus heals a deaf man.  And what does he do?  He touches the man's ears, and says 'be opened.'  This is Jesus, listen to him.  Through the words of the scriptures, you'll be unsettled, for sure.  But this is what it's all about, law and Gospel style.  It's easy to feel comfortable and assured in the church, easy to feel as though you have nothing left to do and everything is fine, but it's much harder to listen.  But it is only through listening to the words of the law that the words of the Gospel mean anything.  Whenever you are unsettled by the words of God in the Bible, whenever you read it and say 'this is a hard teaching.  Who can understand it?'  Whenever that happens, that is Jesus sticking his fingers in your ears and saying 'be opened.'  For after you have heard how far you have left to go, then you can hear his word of Grace pronounced.  For it is for these things that you don't want to hear that Jesus died.  After all, what is the purpose of a God of forgiveness if you have nothing to be forgiven of.

He still grabs our ears and says 'be opened.'  Hear the words of God's law, his good and perfect law spoken to us, and the words of his sweet Gospel, spoken for us.  Have your ears opened by Christ who will comfort and secure you, reminding you that it is for all these things that he suffered and died.  To take away the things you have done, and the things you have left undone.

PJ.