Wake up

It's the most wonderful time of the year.  

Or so you'd think.  You'd think that this is the great party, the great party that we're all on all the time.  For in this time of year, the party begins, and we get into this way of thinking that Christmas is here already.  But there's a problem with that, which is that we are people who get sick of this forced mmerriment eventually.  Did you know this?  By the time we get to the actual Chriatmas day, then we usually just want it to be over laready.  Let's wrap it up, get to the movie threatre, and try to forget that Christmas ever happned. That's why we have the movie called 'surviving Christmas'.

This happens because Advent vanished.  It disappeared some time ago, gobbled up by Christmas.  We have a season of Christmas, a very very long one, but it's in the wrong place, and it takes up too much time.  It grew, spread out, and invaded Advent, eventually co-opting the entire season, and turning it into something completely different.  Turning it into more Christmas.  Now, on the surface, this sounds great, right?  This sounds fantastic.  More party, more merry-making, what's not to like?  Well, here's the trouble, kids.  What we have done is to move directly to joy and merriment with no preparation.

You all know that you can't start Christmas at some arbitrary time, right?  you all know that you can't just get Christmas going out of nowhere.  You need time, you need preparation, you need space in which to get everything done.  Think of it like cooking a turkey, something you hopefully understand fairly well.  Cooking a turkey takes time.  You can't flash fry it, that won't work.  It's a big old bird, and requires time to make it palatable, and less-fatal.  You can't just toss it in the oven and cook it for half the time at twice the temperature.  That just leads to a bird burned on the outside, and frozen on the inside. And if it works this way for a turkey, imagine how it works for your soul, for your spirit.

You need time to prepare. When Christmas comes, it should be a time of great joy, that Christ has come into the world.  It shouldn't be a time where you are just waiting for it to be done with.  But you won't be in that frame of mind if you've been in a holiday that has been lasting for two months before it can officially start.  By the time Christmas gets here, you've been in the throes of it since the beginning of November, and you've skipped advent.

So what is Advent for?  It's for preparation.  And it's for waking up.  It's for rousing yourself from sleep, and preparing to take on the day ahead.  Advent is your time to get ready for what is happening, and what is going to happen.  If you listen to the Advent readings, as most of us rarely do, the readings aren't joyful, they aren't riotous, they aren't phenomenal in their exultation.  Instead, they are intensely repentant in their character.  They are greatly repentant in what they say and what they tell us.  It isn't quite as sackcloth and ashes as Lent, but it's darned close.  Here, in the season of Lent, the atmosphere ought to be decidedly penitential, in keeping with the words and work of John the Baptist.  For John, as the voice calling out in the wilderness, is busy telling people to get their lives right, to figure it out before it is too late, for it will be too late faster than they'd expect.  John tells them that the axe is at the root of the tree, that the winnowing fork is in Christ's hand, and that judgment day is in fact coming.

When the people hear this, they panic, as they ought to do, and ask John 'then what are we to do?'  Right.  And this is the big question that will dominate our thoughts over the course of Advent.  You and I, as good, Bible-believing Christians, looking maybe for the first time at what John and Christ would say about the second coming, we may ask ourselves 'what do we do?'  And the answer that we get for this week is simple.  Wake up.

Wake up, as the epistle to the Romans says.  Wake up for the night has passed, and get yourself out of those works of darkness.  Paul doesn't mince words here, moving for an end to orgies, drunkenness, sexual immorality, all that stuff that not just makes up immoral works and deeds, but also makes up the sleep of our lives.  There was a great bit in that great book 'The Screwtape Letters,' that gets into this, where, to paraphrase, Screwtape describes the gradual bleedout of life from people, stating that their lives

You will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention.  You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do.  You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him.  You can make him do nothing at all for long periods.  You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room.  All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here 'I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked. The Christians describe the Enemy as one 'without whom nothing is strong,' and Nothing is very strong.  Strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and it knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chane association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

This is what Paul wants us to steer clear of, this fuddling, this clouding, this somnambulation through life where we end up stagnating in the same sins, as though we were dreaming.  And like with any addiction, the sins we are addicted to, we don't even enjoy them after a while.  Once we become comfortable in them, we continue to commit them with no encouragement, no temptation, it just becomes sort of what we do.  

Paul has in mind for us to wake up.  Christ has in mind for us to wake up.  Shake off the gloomy sleep that encroaches, push through the fog, and realize that the time for the return of Christ is closer than you may imagine. But fortunately, you have been given time.  We all have.  The time of preparation is now.  Advent is the time not just for the preparation for the birth of Christ, but for his return.  This is the time where we as Christian people focus on how we have prepared for his return,

for judgment day, and for what we have done in the meantime.  Has it been enough?  Can it ever be enough?  The time of Advent is a time where we consider the immediacy and inevitability of the return of Christ in glory, and ponder through what it would be like were he to return at the end of the month.  How would you live if you knew for sure that Christ would return, and the world would end in a month's time? Would you do anything differently? Likely you would, so perhaps start making those changes now.

Christ told us in the Gospel reading that we won't know the day nor the hour of his return, and if we take him seriously, that means that we shouldn't be trying to figure it out.  That means that we should be living in such readiness that it won't matter.  The entire Christian universe has been living in preparation for the end times since the time of Christ, and this time should be no different.  Don't get comfy, don't assume that you're living at the end of history, don't feel as though you've got all the time in the world.  Seriously consider that Christ is coming back, will be here at some point, and then ask yourself, if that were true, what would you do differently?

Because it is true.

And whatever you'd change, do it now. 

Hide it under a bushel, NO!

There's a church approved way to light candles.  Did you know that?  There's the magical acolyte wand that acolytes carry with them, to light candles and get the service started on the right foot.  But the candle-lighting apparatus, it has two functions, a real swiss army knife of candles.  It has the taper, for lighting the candle, and it also has the snuffer for extinguishing the candle.  And here's where things get interesting.

For you see, this was my first real experience with the science of fire, was being an acolyte in my church growing up, and using the lighting wand.  When the service was ending, we were told to go to the front of the church, bow reverently before the altar of God, and then hold the snuffer over the candle until it goes out.  Well, we were twelve then, and we all thought that it couldn't be that easy, to just hold it there, we figured that there had to be some sort of mechanical component to it, so we crammed the snuffer over the candle as hard as we could, to force the candle to go out.

We didn't need to do that.  The candle would have gone out all by itself, if we would have just left the snuffer over it quite passively.  It would have burned itself out.  Starved of oxygen, which is a vital fuel for fire, the snuffer ensures that the flame will burn through all the oxygen in snuffer, and then go out.  Science!

Why are we talking combustion?  Well, the disciples, this weekend, when they heard something they didn't want to hear, responded to Jesus with a resounding 'Lord, increase our faith!' As well they ought. Jesus had just told them one of the more difficult things that they were ever going to hear, which was that forgiveness, for a Christian, isn't optional.  This injuction from Jesus stings.  It hurts to hear it.  It cuts us in ways we'd rather not be cut, because it tells you that the commandment from Christ to forgive is every bit as binding as any other.  We're happy to talk about why couples shouldn't be cohabiting before marriage, and about how gambling is of the devil, but it's comparitively rare to talk about how forgiveness after sin isn't an option.  You don't get to choose.  The language of Jesus, your Lord, is perfectly clear.  'If your brother sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times saying "I repent," you must forgive him.'

You must forgive him.  Emphasis mine, but honestly, emphasis also Christ's.  We don't truck with that kind of controversy, you know.  We don't tend to give people a hard time in the church for long standing, unresolved grudges, but we ought to, given that Jesus spoke specifically about that.  He spoke in no uncertain terms about how forgiveness has to happen, and we don't exactly take that seriously.  Actually, we want to pretend that it sort of never came up.

Much to our detriment.  For you see, the prayer that we have all memorized, the prayer that Jesus gave to the disciples when they asked to be taught how to pray, that prayer has in it the line 'forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.' Of course, we are tempted to say 'well, that's part of the prayer, but Jesus meant it metaphorically, right?  Well, there's a problem with that, and it comes with the verse right after the Lord's prayer.

'IF you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.'  -Matthew 6:14-15.

Oh.  Talk about your inconvenient truths.  And when you hear this, large as life, I know it's tempting to close the book and prented that it didn't happen, and wasn't ever said, but the opposite reaction is demanded.  The reaction of the disciples:  Lord, increase our faith!

For you see, we want to be shielded from this kind of discussion from Jesus, we want to avoid it, to bury our heads, and insulate ourselves from it.  We want to be protected from it, so we put a bushel over ourselves to try to avoid those words we don't want to hear.  But the bushel, the thing that we put over ourselves, over our hearts to insulate them from God's word, it just ends up being a snuffer, and puts out the flame of our faith.  Because our faith was never intended to run on this.

We think of our faith as a candle, and if it is blown on, it will go out.  That's how candles work, you know.  Children know that from a very early age, they know that if you blow on fire, it goes out.  That's basic observation.  But that's why the reality of the situation is so much stranger than you may have expected.

If you blow on a candle, it goes out.  No problem there.  But if you have dying embers left, if you had a roaring fire at one point, and it has died down to embers, how do you get it to spring back to life?  You blow on it.  The same thing that put a candle, a weak flame out, brings a strong fire to life.  It's crazy, it's counter intuitive, but it's the way the world works.

We think our faith is weaker than it is.  We think that the faith given to us in holy baptism is weaker than it is, that the holy spirit that dwells within us is weaker than he is, that faith is a frail candle that can easily be blown out.  But it is the opposite.  In the epistle reading, Paul tells Timothy to fan into flame the gift of God.  How do embers get fanned into flame?  Rekindled?  By being breathed on.

In the scriptures, Jesus breathes on his disciples and tells them to receive the holy spirit.  In Greek, the name of the Holy Spirit is either the Holy Spirit, or Holy Breath.  It is the breath of God that fans our faith into flame, and that breath of God is given in the holy scriptures.  I know your reaction is to look at what we're given in the word of God and to avoid it, that his injunction is too hard, his rules are too much, and we want to pop on the ol bushel basket and pretend it didn't happen.  But the reality is that our faith, the gift of the Holy Spirit given to us in baptism is a burning flame, which can die out, it simmer down, but it doesn't go out.  The thing we want to avoid is the thing we need, the words of Christ we want to side-step are the words we require.  They build faith, not avoiding the air that our faith needs.

Essentially, what it all boils down to is that by trying to protect our faith, we tend to put it out.  By trying to protect the flame, we snuff it.  Avoiding the breath of God, the word of God, it just makes things go out faster.  For the breath of God is the fuel that our faith runs on.  Grow in it, be immersed in it, and realize that the words you want to avoid, they're the words you need to hear.  They're what are going to increase your faith.

The one thing worse than fire and brimstone

I tell you the truth, me fulminating and bloviating from the pulpit all about fire and brimstone awaiting sinners is not really going to motivate anyone.  I know it used to be what people would do, to have preachers preach fire and brimstone, but I'm not really sure that the ol' F&B really has the power to shock, or to horrify, as once it did.  More's the pity.

I don't do a whole lot of fire and brimstone myself, but in the reading for this week, I found something that bothered me more than fire and brimstone possibly could.  I myself and used to the idea of hell as a fiery pit of unpleasantness in the centre of the earth, so hearing it mentioned is not overly troubling to me anymore.  But here's something that is troubling, something that does bother me, more than I thought it would.

When the rich man descends into hell in the account that Jesus shares with us, his name and his life are forgotten.  Think about us and how we live as people these days.  Think about how many selfies are taken and posted online every day.  Think about how much time we spend trying to get people to

'like' what we do, to get them to notice us and our cute filters, to get them to comment on our achievements and to see and enjoy what we are up to.  That's what an awful lot of our internet traffic is, to say nothing of googling ourselves.  This is our lives, and this is what we enjoy.  And what we want is our fifteen minutes of fame, to be well thought of, to be admired and noticed, to have people see what we do and like it.  And in our age of fame and glory, of instant internet notoriety, can you imagine what would happen if all of a sudden all this notoriety went away, and all records of you as a person, as a person of interest, disappeared.  The rich man's name isn't unknown by Jesus necessarily because he's making it up and didn't bother to come up with a name for this guy, nor is this a half-assembled parable with the rarity of only have the information being there.  No, this is a situation where one of those names is left blank for a good reason.  It's left blank to illustrate a point.  This person, this rich man who delighted in being known and liked in life, in the hereafter is obliterated, has vanished like vapor from the notion of anyone who is at Abraham's side. The man who loved to be seen, who loved to be noticed, has disappeared.  His old name that people used to use was 'Dives,' but that's not his name, that just means 'rich man' in latin.  His  name is not found in the book of life, so when it comes time to recount the tale, Jesus says of him 'I did not know you.'

Now, this speaks to a pretty important part of how we treat the poor.  Think about where Lazarus was at the rich man's house.  He was at the gate.  He was lying at the gate, and would lie there day in and day out, hoping for some crumbs, some scraps, something, anything to give him a chance to eat.  And I would imagine that the various people who came in to feast sumptously at the rich man's house didn't really give Lazarus much of the time of day.  Not much at all.  They likely viewed this poor man as an obstruction, a natural hazard like a pothole, or a fallen log, the sort of thing you have to step past, or indeed step over.  They likely viewed this as an obstruction, and not as a person.  How do I know?

Because I've done this too.

Maybe I'm the only one here, and maybe I'm not.  But the accepted method of dealing with the panhandler coming towards you is to avert your eyes, look at the floor, and prented you neither see nor hear them.  These people, and there are lots of them, have little to no influence on society, they folks,' they have no humanity either.  We just walk by like we would walk by a monkey that was begging for scraps, or a hole in the ground, or some other obstruction.  Something to be avoided, not something to be actually looked at, cared for, or appreciated in any way whatsoever.They have nowhere to go and nothing to do, no jobs, and when they come face to face with us 'normal people,' they disappear, vanish, and become non-people, not even an inconvenience, but essentially invisible.

The beggars, the poor, the mendicants, those who don't have any kind of financial upward mobility, these are people who are completely without identity to us.  We all have names, of course, but those who are poor, who need help, may as well be called 'the poor man' for us.  And this is how I have treated the poor in my life, and there's a possibility that you have too.

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is not the story of the rich going to hell and the poor going to heaven, such a story would fly in the face of the prospect of grace, and wouldn't fit with the rest of the narrative of scripture.  But let scripture interpret scripture, and you'll get an idea of what this story actually is about.  Think about the 25th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus divides the sheep from the goats, mainly based on what they had either done or not done. We are used to this notion of division being along lines of the people who have done good going to paradise, and the people who have done horrible things going to hell.  But if you read through Matthew 25, you'll see that that's not really the case.  The people who are divided on the left hand of Jesus Christ are divided based on what they did not do.  Jesus says it clearly, that they had countless opportunities to do what was good and right, that they had countless opportunities to serve him by serving others, and they declined to do so.  They knew what was right to do, and yet they declined.  They knew that this was the right thing to do, and they felt as though it didn't matter too much while they were alive.  But Jesus makes it clear that it does matter.  This is what is important.  You have chance and ability to do the right thing, you have opportunity to do what is good and right, and yet you do what the rest of us do, which is to walk on by.

This doesn't run counter to the doctrine of grace, you know.  Instead, it tells you of your need for that grace that most of us have cheapened for so long.  Look at this story of the rich man and Lazarus, look at him and know that this rich man thought of himself as basically alright: not a murderer, not a killer, not an adulterer, probably not a thief either, someone who was successful and felt as though he was entitled to the fruits of his success.  No problem there, right?  But we learn from the holy scriptures that walking on by the suffering, the weak, the poor, the destitute, dehumanizing them day after day and week after week, that's a sin that doesn't exactly go unmentioned by the scriptures.  When you confess your sins, when you confess your sins to the Lord your God, do you confess the massive number of times that you had the right thing to do right in front of you and did not do it?  Likely not.  But you ought to.  Jesus thought that this was important enough to mention, that this is part of your imprefection, part of your sin, and deserves, needs to be addressed.  We are living in times and places where this is more common than ever before, and we need to think on it.  We are Christians, living in cheap grace, who believe that we're fine because we have nothing to repent of.  Well, read this passage, think of how many people you have passed right by and dehumanized, well then, this is why you have always needed and will continue to need Christ.  He has made promises to us that he can and will and does forgive sins.  If the story of the rich man being blotted out from the minds of those in paradise and burning in agony makes you uncomfortable, then good.  And you have a choice, which is to either step over those passages, to pretend that they were never said and aren't in the scriptures, or to realize that you maybe do have something to repent of.

And then Christ, as he has eternally promised by the blood of the new covenant, will forgive you.  Because that's the promise that he made.

Sheepin it real.

The more I think about it, the more I like the analogy I used on Sunday about the wasp.

For you see, if you have a wasp in your house or your car, you don't want to touch it, lest you aggravate the situation further and make yourself more likely to be stung, so what you do is to open doors or windows, and to hope that the wasp flies out.  After all, he managed to fly in there, probably through a smaller entrance even, so it should be perfectly simple for the wasp to, you know, fly right back out again. If it was a fly, you might have other options.   But the problem is, as it always has been, that the wasp can't find his way to the open window.  Because you'd rather not get stung, then, all you can do is gesture, wave, try to fan the wasp in the right direction, all the while saying, sometimes out loud, that the wasp should just leave already, and go through the massive door to freedom that you have opened for him.

But he doesn't.  So you have a couple of choices: Kill him or leave the vehicle and come back when he's dead.  That's it. 

It would be so simple, of course, if the wasp were just to take the exit, to take the out that you've offered him, but he won't, he will stubbornly keep on butting his head against the windshield, because he can see the freedom just on the other side.  But he can't or won't, move over to the window where freedom awaits. And if you've ever been seated in a vehicle with a wasp, who is growing more and more irate as time goes on, then you'll know what it is like to watch something fly right past freedom again and again and again.

If we've lived this dozens of times in our lives, then surely we can apply this to ourselves, as people who do much the same.  Jesus, in Sunday's gospel reading, talks about shepherds who, if they lose a sheep, will go out and try to find it.  Shepherds who will leave the 99 who are in the pen to find the one who has wandered away.  But sheep aren't dogs.  And they aren't cats.  They don't know where
they ought to go, and they aren't going to wander back to where they were from.  I'm not sure that little Bo Peep's awesome idea to get sheep back into the pen by leaving them alone is a good tactic.  Leave them alone and they'll likely stay lost, or even get further lost.  This should not be a surprise, given what sheep do, which is to follow other sheep, even to their own destruction.  Sheep will follow another sheep who looks like he knows what's up, even if it means their death.  And yes, this has happened, in recent memory.

So yes, sheep can not be relied upon to go and make good decisions, in fact quite the opposite.  And given that they'll be making bad decisions, they're likely to follow whoever looks like he knows what he's doing.  And this is where Matthew chapter seven comes into it.  For in Matthew chapter seven, you have a situation in which we see wolves in sheep's clothing, which I always thought meant that there was a wolf dressed up as a sheep in order to get close to a sheep to eat it.  But upon closer inspection, what's the point of that?  Sheep can't survive against predators, they're far too domesticated.  They've had all the fight bred out of them over generations, to be docile enough for women and children to take care of them.  If a wolf wanted a sheep snack, it doesn't have to trick the sheep.  It can just roll on up, outrun them, and take a bite out of the one it wants.  That's it. 

But hold the phone, because if a wolf grabs one sheep, then it eats for that day.  But imagine if you could get a situation, as a wolf, where you could get the sheep to follow you around.  Now you're talking!  Can you picture wolves turning into full on sheep rustlers?  Can you imagine them instead of running sheep down, getting tired and hungrier, just having a group of sheep back at their den?  That's what we do, so why wouldn't wolves want to do the same?

The wolf in sheep's clothing is out there to decieve, to take advantage of the sheep and to lead them astray, and because they look like they know what they're doing, then the sheep will follow them around, and will be taken advantage of.  Even to their own deaths and destruction.  Ultimately, they're not bright enough to stay still, nor to find their way home.  If sheep are lost, then they will trend towards further destruction, on average.

This is why Christ became incarnate, you know. To find and to seek out the lost.  He didn't come to earth to save those who were safely in the pen, he came to save sinners, of which you are the chief. He came to bring you back home, as lost and as desperate as you were, because you had a zero percent chance of finding your way home yourself.  It was never going to happen, and leaving you alone was just making it worse.  He came to earth to find and to seek and to save sinners.  Arguably the most popular psalm in the scriptures is Psalm 23, where it talks about the Lord as our shepherd, who makes us to lie beside clear waters, who restores our souls, who leads us to good pastureland, and who will always be looking out for us no matter what.  This is who the Lord is and what he does.  And most of us found our way to Him because we were led there by another sheep.  Be it our mothers or our grandmothers, be it a pastor or friend, a spouse or co-worker, most of us found our way to the Good Shepherd because we were led there by another sheep who wanted to show us where the good pastureland was to be found.  Wide is the gate that leads to destruction, and many find it, but narrow is the gate that leads to life. That doesn't mean that you're not going to get through, but it does mean that you will have to be shown where the gate is.

And that's where we come in.  We are people who desperately need to have a heart for the lost.  If all our evangelism consists of is Bo Peep evangelism, to leave them alone and they'll come home, then we shouldn't act surprised when they don't.  This should not be a massive shock to the system that if we leave the gates open and wait, that more sheep will wander out than wander in.  If you're going to leave the gates open, it had better be because you are bringing sheep into the sheepfold, and rejoicing at their return.

But do we have a heart for the lost?  I honestly don't know.  Sometimes I get to thinking about the church, and feeling as though it is a social club for lots of people, that it is a thing to do, but not necessarily the distinction between heaven and hell that Jesus Christ seems to think it is.  Jesus' heart for the lost led to him leaving Heaven itself, and going to wherever the lost sheep were.  Even the people of Jesus' time seem to have missed that point, asking why he was eating and keeping company with sinners and tax collectors, and that was the whole point.  He was going where the lost sheep were, leaving the 99 and going to find the one. 

We who are in the good pastureland, we who are enjoying the blessings of knowing Christ, who have gone in through the narrow gate, we have that responsibility now, of knowing that sheep will follow other sheep, to be the sheep that other sheep follow.  They'll follow someone, that's what sheep do.  And they'll either follow you or follow someone else.  As Bob Dylan said, it can be the devil, or it can be the Lord, but you're gonna serve somebody.  True it is.

We are not the saviors of the world, we aren't the Good shepherds ourselves, but we are and can be the ones who point out the way to salvation to the lost who are out there, the lost who find themselves following wolves in sheep's clothing.  We can have the same heart for the lost the Christ has, and we can know the eternal truth.  If you try to save a friend from hell, you may not succeed, but at least you tried.

Clean living

Choose life. 

That's the statement at the heart of the Old Testament reading from Sunday, with the idea that death and life are set before you, so you ought to choose life.  Fantastic.

Now, here's a thing, where the choice that is set before you, if it's in those terms, should be an easy choice.  It should be straightforward enough, that option, and it's easy for most of us to look at that scene, and say to ourselves 'choose life, well, why wouldn't I?'  And when it's in a spiritual sense, we all have in mind that we can choose life quite easily. People have in mind that they can choose life, can decide to follow Jesus, can choose not to sin, can choose a commandment to keep, that sort of thing.  People think this about their spiritual lives, but hold the phone there, Jimmy, because think about choices that you make that aren't spiritual.

Think of food.  Why does food taste good?  Or, more specifically, which food tastes the best?  I know we all have different tastes in food, in what we like and what we don't but honestly, the way you can
tell something is bad for you is that it tastes good.  Ain't that the way.  In fact, it can count as a good calorie metric that if you're enjoying the flavour of something you're digesting, then it's probably bad for you, and you should switch out to kale.

It's not just food though.  It's all sorts of stuff.  You know what you should be doing, drinking eight glasses of water a day, eating whole grains, limiting fats and alcohol, limiting excess sugars, limiting things that taste good or feel good, eating a tiny portion of sawdust every day, with matcha and yerba mate, you know, all that stuff that you are well aware that you should be doing, and yet, you don't end up doing the vast majority of it. 

You do what we all do.  You have another beer to keep the other three company.  You stop by a restaurant on your way home from another restaurant.  You go out to 'check the weather' several times a day.  You order portions bigger than you need, because the food tastes so good that it doesn't matter if you're hungry or not.  You make a long series of bad decisions, that over a long enough time add up.  They add up big time.  It's not as though one cigarette is going to rot your lungs clean out, but a number of relatively harmless things over a long enough period of time add up.  And they can destroy you from the inside out. 

Few of us make consistently good lifestyle choices. This is why for the first time essentially ever, life expectancy in the developed world is set to go down.  It has always increased before, has always gone up, has always improved.  Now, it is set to dip.  It's never done that before.  And this is a period in history where there aren't the usual outside factors, there aren't the normal things giving us pressure.  There's no war, no famine, no pestilence, no plague.  We have access to better healthcare than ever, better information than ever, food is super abundant and there's no crisis of where our next meal is going to come from. We have tons of literature about what we should and should not be consuming, so why is it that we are in worse shape than before?  Because of our daily choices.  Because we smoke and drink and eat for three people.  Because we are sedentary, and don't move very far.  Because our habits lead to our bodies breaking down. Because we have life and death set before us, and 90% of the time, in bits and pieces, we choose death.  Not too many of us would voluntarily choose a firing squad or gas chamber, but we are happy to kill ourselves by degrees, in fits and starts, getting ourselves into death by tiny tiny choices over a long period of time.

If you know you do that physically (yes you do, stop lying), then what makes you think that you don't do that spiritually.  If you have the food pyramid and ignore that a whole bunch of times, then what makes the ten commandments or the golden rule any different.  Jesus, the great physician, puts it into terms that are quite easy to understand, telling us that if we don't value him above everyone and everything else, if we don't hate our family and renounce all that we have, we can't be his disciples.  Cannot be.  If we value our families over him on occasion, if we still have house, home, wife, children, shoes clothing and possessions, we cannot be his disciples. With that kind of injunction, which of us can stand?  Whom amongst us is making choices good enough to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? 

None of us.  There is none righteous, not even one.  That's sort of the point.  That's why Jesus came to earth, that's why he lived and died, was because we were choosing death, consistently.  On a daily basis, we were choosing death, we were getting up to bad choices, dreadful options, and leading ourselves down the path to death, destruction and damnation.  We knew what we had to do to avoid it, of course, but time after time, we neglected to do it.  We neglected to follow through with it, and decided not to.  The commandments are there as large as life, and we all know them, have memorized them since we were children.  This is the way we are supposed to behave and operate, and we don't.  We choose death, and have been from the time of Adam and Eve.

Which is why Jesus. I know that people have a bit of a hard time with the atonement, they have a bit of a complication with Jesus' atoning sacrifice, but it's not that hard to figure out if you think about how you live on a daily basis.  Think about your little choices that you make that aren't that good for you.  Your small indulgences, the extra cream or extra sugar, the fourth beer or the extra fistful of chips, all that stuff that ain't great for you and you know ain't going to do wonders for your liver or other organs.  You know what you should be doing instead, but you decide not to.  You and I feel as though the chips are worth the tradeoff, and that a lifetime of eating sawdust and kale, skinless steamed salmon and lentils, it's just not worth it.  Life isn't worth living without the little indulgences. 

Well, we put ourselves through the wringer with this kind of conduct, you know.  We put our bodies through the wringer, and our organs are no exception.  Little by little, we wear ourselves down for the purposes of enjoying what's not good for us, and our organs break down because of it.  But imagine if you will, there was someone who was making good choices.  Only the skinless salmon and chicken breast.  No smoking, had never taken a drink. Someone who ate kale and quinoa and never put dressing on his salad.  Imagine if this person was going without all these little indulgences and guilty pleasures not because he thought that was a great thing to do, but because he knew that your organs were breaking down because of your decisions.  Imagine if this person was keeping himself pristine by clean living not because he was anticipating living a wonderful healthy life, but because he wanted to be ready to donate his organs to you when you needed them.  He wanted to donate his organs to you because you wore them out making decisions that benefited you in the short term.  This person went without little tiny indulgences their entire lives just so that yours could be better when you needed it. 

That's the work that Christ does.  His clean living gets imparted to us. His good decisions are what we inherit.  We get the benefits of his choices because our were bad.  It's not a matter of us making the richt choices, it's a matter of us knowing that the right choices were made for us.  I know I keep on bringing it back to this but I think it's important.  At the moment of his crucifixion, the soldiers took Jesus' clothes away, and gambled for them.  One of them won his tunic.  At that moment, Jesus was on the cross, and another man walked away with his robe.  Jesus died, and one of the people who killed him walked away looking like Jesus, covered in his robe.  That's what happens to us at the confession and absolution, at baptism and the Lord's supper, we are covered with the robe of Christ's righteousness given to us not because we were doing such a great job, but precisely because we weren't.

Lord it's hard to be humble

Recently, it was my birthday, and for my birthday, my wife took me to the Weird Al concert.  Yes, he was in town, and yes he was fantastic.  of all the modern artists, Weird Al is probably the hardest working one.  There were about seventeen costume changes, the older songs were reworked to continue to be good, the whole thing was super duper fun, and we all enjoyed it.



And one of his 'older' songs is Amish Paradise, which is, as usual, a great song, which skewers things, as Weird Al tends to do.  The verse that sticks in my head from this song is as follows:

Think you're really righteous? Think you're pure in heart?
Well, I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art.

Ha!  What a great bit!  It's a great bit, because trying to out-humble someone is impossible, and ridiculous to contemplate.  You can't be humble to be seen as being humble, that's nonsense!  Or is it?

You'd be surprised at how many people think that they can fake humility.  Spoiler alert, it's a lot.  Lots of folks assume that they can fake humility, that you can get away with pretending to be humble, and pretending to be meek and nice.  

But attempting this is trying to square the circle, it's going through the impossible.  You're trying to put two mutually exclusive things together, pride and humility, and whichever one is really there will bubble to the surface remarkably quickly.  And here's the issue, we have all run into people who are faking humility.  People who try to make it appear that they are humble, that they are self-effacing, but are actually looking for near constant approval.  This is a real thing that happens, and it's one of the more unpleasant things to witness.

  

 Now, why is this?  Well, it's not too hard to figure out. You know that we all love people who are humble, who are good, who work hard and who are genuinely interested in what we have to say.  And when we see the admiration that these people get, often we want a little bit of that ourselves.  But here's the problem, which is that if we want the attention, then it takes all the humility away from us, and turns it into pride.  And the pride never works out. 

So how do the genuinely humble people of the world manage it?  How do they get away with being humble and self-effacing?  How do they manage to be nice, to be kind, to think of others before themselves?  Because they're not thinking about themselves.

This whole attitude links in with Matthew Chapter 25, where the sheep on the right hand of Jesus Christ hear from him that when he was hungry or thirsty or in jail or sick that they took care of him, and the sheep had no memory of this.  When did we do this, they say.  And the answer is that whatsoever we do for the least of these, we do for Jesus. 

This isn't a throwaway, nor is it a minor detail.  It's actually quite central to understanding good works, charity, humility and all that stuff from a Christian perspective.  For in the Christian faith, you don't get to heaven by good works, by doing good things, by being a good person, that's not how it works.  Faith in Christ and his atoning grace is the ticket, not works, lest any man should boast.  And if that is the case, then why would any good works in the Christian faith exist (and goodness, some might argue that they don't)?  We in the Christian faith would say that the good works that we do, the charity that we offer, the humility that we have, is in response to the work that Christ has done.  The sheep on the right hand of our Lord said as much, when they vocalized that they had no idea that they were doing things that would factor in on judgment day, they were just doing things in response to the work of Christ on their behalf. 

And that's how Christian humility works.  You can't concentrate on being more humble, because that'll just draw more attention to yourself so that you can be seen before men, sounding a trumpet before your charity.  The only real way forward, honestly, is to not think about yourself at all.  CS Lewis talks about it like falling asleep, in that if you're concentrating on falling asleep, you're going to stay awake.  You can only really fall asleep if you're concentrating not on falling asleep, but probably on nothing at all.  Just drifting off into sleep and contentment. 

"About sleep: do you find that the great secret (if one can do it) is not to care whether you sleep? Sleep is a jade who scorns her suitors but woos her scorners." ~ C.S. Lewis

If you're focusing on how humble you are, then you're always going to be thinking about yourself, and the humility will be gone, at best you'll have a simulation of humility. At best.  But if you are thinking of Christ, of his majesty and glory, of his kingdom and his righteousness, then humility will be a natural side effect of that.

As the scriptures say, seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all the rest will be added unto you.  All the legitimate humble Christians that I have ever met have been like this, you know, and no, I don't count myself in this number.  There are legitimate humble Christians, Christians who are empty of their own opinions and dedicated to service.  People who don't think about themselves and how they look, but who instead would wash feet, feed thousands, and never let on that they were doing any of it.  Which is the point.  How do they manage it?  Because they aren't thinking about themselves.  They're thinking about Christ, and responding to his grace.  That's all.

It's so simple, really, but incredibly profound.  And as usual, you can't fake it.  There are no oven settings for this, no Shariah finance to help you shortcut around it.  None of it can be put on, and you've probably seen enough people try to fake it to know when they're doing it.  You can't sit at the worst place with the expectation that you're going to be moved up higher.  That's not how it works, it's more false humility, and it never works out. You have to sit at that low place because that's where you feel you ought to sit.   You've looked at yourself, you've mused on the concept of God and his majesty, you know how great he is and how small you are, and so you sit at the lowest place because that's where you feel you should be.  And it is there that Christ whispers those comforting words to you 'Friend, move up higher.'

If you've placed yourself at the best possible place you can, then there is nowhere to go but down.  If you are at the highest high, if you've placed yourself in the prime place, higher than anyone else, if you are up there, then there is nowhere else for you to go but down, to be moved down in the esteem of others, to be placed in a lower spot.  If you're in the lowest spot, then there's only one direction to be moved, which is up.  I know, it seems so simple when explained like that, but that's how simple it is.  Most of the time, we end up making things more complicated than they have to be or need to be.  When humility comes up, don't think about how humble you are, don't think about how humble you can be, don't think about how great it would be to be seen being humble, none of that.  Just think on Christ.  Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.  The rest will follow. 

To close, it all reminds me of a book by Terry Jones called 'Fairy Tales,' which was a book of fairy tales written by Terry Jones. I know, what a synopsis.  One of those fairy tales had to do with a castle
a long way away, that a man was trying to get to.  He spent a long time trying to get there, but never ended up getting any closer, always retreading over the same ground, and never making any progress.  Eventually, he gave up, and found that when he gave up, he had arrived at the castle.  He was there.  THe moral was that sometimes giving up is the best way of getting to where you want to be.  I know that seems strange, like it's the exact opposite message from what we are usually given, but that's what was so special about it - it's true.  Never quitting is a silly way to try to run things.  So too, the only way to be humble is to not think about being humble.  The only way to be humble is to think of others, think of Christ.  Thinking of yourself and how humble you are will lead to self-reflection and self promotion, and being moved down from the place of honor.  Thinking on Christ will lead to grace, humility and charity.

As numerous as the stars in the sky.

There's a great line from the Old Testament reading from last Sunday, where God says to Abraham 'Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them.'  To Abraham, that would have seemed like an insurmountable task - to number all the stars, to count all the stars in the sky.  Surely not!  The milky way sort of goes on forever, and you can see the stars twinkling far away into the night sky.  It's a beautiful and humbling thing to see.

When you can see it.

Most of us can't.  Most of us can't and don't see it all that often.  We fall prey to something called light pollution, and no, that doesn't mean pollution that isn't too heavy.  That means that we have put so much light up from our cities that we can't see the stars anymore. They get crowded out.  It's the same principle that governs why you can't see a flashlight in the middle of the day, that sort of thing.  And when we look up in our cities now, we can see, what, twelve stars, total?  Look up and count the stars, if you can number them.  Sure, no problem.  I only just barely need to use both hands.

Now, we have set up a great many lights up in our earthly dwellings these days, you know.  We have set up a great many lights, a great many things that threaten to cloud out the promises of God to the point that we can't see them anymore.  God has told us a great many things through his word, he has informed us of his care for us, how much attention he has for us, what he seeks to bring to us, what he wants to give to us.  The reading from the Holy Gospel from Sunday discusses that at great length, with the account, the words of Christ about how we ought not be anxious.  We ought not be anxious about what we should wear, not about what we should eat, nor about what we ought drink.

You know, all those things that occupy almost all our thoughts.

All the ads that we see are concerned with those sorts of things, the base things of this world that occupy almost every single surface that we look at.  Surfaces are covered with advertisements, smeared with messages designed to pique your interest, to get you to consider how bad your life is right now, and how much better it would be with a big mac, or a coke zero, or a new blouse, or a new car, or whatever else they're hawking to jam into your heart and rend it asunder with want.  This is what occupies essentially all our thoughts, all our motivations, is all this stuff, and each thing that diverts us, that occupies us, that draws our attention is one more lightbulb that we light up that drowns out the stars of the promises of God.

Now, if you've ever gone camping, or have gone outside the city at night, maybe out to grasslands national park or whatever, then you will see the stars.  And when you get back into the city, you'll notice that the stars are all gone.  But they haven't gone anywhere.  You just can't see them anymore.  Now, this is the issue that we have with the promises of God.  God has made a lot of promises to us, promises of daily bread, which promises to give us house and home, wife and family, clothing and shoes, and all the things of this world that give us the life that we have enjoyed.  And what we see happening on a regular basis is that we have clouded things over so heavily with our own pollution that we absolutely cannot see the promises that have always been there, and which are not going away.  Jesus tells us clearly in his word that heaven and earth will pass away, but his words will never pass away.  And we have to believe him.

Now, ignoring the promises of God doesn't mean that they go anywhere, they're still there, and still as effective as they ever were, just that we can't see them.  And every once in a while, it's incumbent on us to listen to the words spoken to Abraham in the Old Testament, and to hear the direction that God gave him, which was to trust in Him, to believe him, to go to a destination that he could not see, to take steps away from what was comfortable, and to live and reside in the promise of God almighty himself.  And he took those steps.  He believed in what God was saying to him, and that is what sets Abraham apart from everyone else.  He wasn't better or stronger or holier than everyone else, but he did believe in what God said.  And God credited it to him as righteousness.

Us now?  We have a hard time believing God on anything at all.  He tells us in a most straightforward way what he has promised to do for us, how much he cares for us, and he follows that up by giving us this encouragement:  'Sell your possessions, and give to the needy.'  Wow.  That's in straight up black and white, with not a whole lot of room for wiggling out of it.  Sell your possessions and give to the needy, and most of us just really don't want to do it.  Most of us don't really feel like going through with that kind of initiative.  We would rather hang onto our bucks, and not get too deep into giving what we have to someone else.  We can talk in glowing terms about love and trust for God, about what Noah and Abraham and the rest of the Biblical heroes were able to accomplish thanks to their faith in God, and yet, and yet, our trust for God gets hung up on relatively simple things, like not really trusting that he will take care of us.

So what's to be done?  Back to the stars, at night, all our lights and smog and clouds have a way of obscuring those stars so we can't see any of them.  Sure, we know they're there, but we honestly don't see them too readily.  Everything we have made and built blocks them out, and they're hidden from our eyes based on what we've done.  And living in cities means that we are in a situation where we never really see that rich tapestry spread out before our eyes.  Oh sure, we could pull an Abraham, and go far outside the cities and towns, head into dark sky preserves where the stars can finally be seen, but very few of us are going to do that.  And knowing that, God decided to do something entirely different.  He decided to break right the way through the issue of our concealed hidden stars, and get us to the point where we would finally see the stars again.

You know, it blew my mind when someone finally explained to me that the sun, our sun, is a star.  That's what stars look like when they're up close.  That's what a star looks like, and it's massive, and all the planets in the solar system orbit it. And it doubly blew my mind to hear that our solar system only has one star in it, namely the sun.  It seems strange that at night, you can stars from way far away all the time, but during the day, you can't see any star except one.  And that one star, not only can you see it, but thanks to it, you can see everything else.  At night, you can go way out to a dark sky preserve, you can go far from the works and worlds of man to go and find the stars lighting up the sky, or you can wait for the morning, and see the one star that illuminates everything.

Abraham was asked by God to look up in the sky, and to try to count and number the stars, numbering and counting all the promises of God.  He couldn't count that high.  Today, we have blocked out not just the real stars, but the promises of God get crowded out by the various things we say and do.  We have blocked out the stars in the sky and thanks to what we built, the blessings of God seemed very small.  So God sent his son, Jesus, to break through all the things we have brought and built, to show us the promises of God large as life, that illumine, warm, comfort and light the way.  Think about those times where you have noticed that street lights are still one during the day, and you can't see the light coming from them almost at all.  Or when traffic lights lose their little hoods during the day, you can't see the light, not because it's not there, but because the light from the one star you can see is so bright. You see, you can either cloud out all the promises of God with what you're worried about, what you're concerned about, or you can look to Christ, to the son, and let him crowd out all your worries, all your cares and concerns, and let you see exactly how small your concerns really are.  All your anxiety, all those tiny lights that you light up, they are small and worthless next to the massive presence of that great promise, which lights up and overshadows all the issues and concerns, all the lights you've lit up for yourself, it blocks that out.

The reading that comes up for this is the one that comes up for Christmas, talking about Jesus Christ as the light of the world, the light that shines in the darkness, the light that illumines everything, that casts light and in whom there is no shadow.  What God asks, that we put all of our worries behind us, that we focus on him, that we look to the stars and number our blessings with them was proving to be impossible to this and all other weak and faithless generations, and so God sent his son, blessing us and cutting through all our worries and cares, and pointing us to the one who holds the future, and who prepares a place for us, an eternal place, where all the lights we have lit for ourselves can be seen for what they are: not enough to block out the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Cheeseburger and paradise

Vanity of vanity.  All is vanity.

Boy, that is NOT how you want a book of the Bible to start. You want it to start with some sort of actualized message about how great everything is, about how you're a treat, and how you're doing a good job so don't worry about it. And yet, the story of the book of Ecclesiastes tells you that all is vanity.  Everything is vanity, it's all chasing after the wind.

Now, that sounds glum, but give it a second, because you may well realize that this is one of the more self-evident truths about the scriptures.  How many times have you found yourself running from pillar to post, chasing hither and thon, trying to make sure that you have everything figured out, and
making sure that everything is exactly where you want it to be, when all of a sudden, you find yourself at the end of the day, the lights have gone out, it's dark outside, you have been chasing about all day, you're thoroughly exhausted, and you have nothing to show for it.  Nothing at all.  It shouldn't be that way, of course.  It shouldnt' be that way where you are exhausted, burned out, and you don't feel like you've accomplished anything, but there you frequently are.  You get to the end of the day, every day, feeling like you're totally run down, the house is still a mess, the kids are still cranky, and you only just barely managed to get by.

You know, the Good News Bible, though not the favorite of everyone, still has the best illustrations of a Biblical topic.  That is, we see in those illustrations the simplicity of a concept.  And one of the
ones I still remember is of a man chasing after the wind from Ecclesiastes.  In simple line drawings, it shows the total futility of pursuit of something you can't nail down. And that's the real thrust of the reading that we had from Ecclesiastes - that we spend our lives trying to chase the wind, trying to pin down something that is by its nature fleeting.  Hammering down the wind is massively impossible.  You can use it, but you can't keep it, can't secure it.  It's going to go wherever it's going to go.

Now, most of what we busy ourselves with is chasing the wind.  That is, it's fleeting.  It's vanity.  It drifts away, and you can't secure it.  But we think we can, that's why we chase it.  The majority of what we're hunting is the physical stuff of this world that is impossible to pin down, impossible to secure.  The illusion is that you can secure it, but in practical terms, you can't.  It's always going to be chasing after the wind.

All the money, all the possessions, all that noise ends up being clutter that we think we can secure, but this is the realm that theives break in and steal, and moth and rust destroy.  The thing about the way the world works is that it is all running down, winding down, and whirling towards destruction.  All the physical stuff of this world is collapsing and falling apart, eventually.  That is, the things, the stuff of the earth, and the entire universe, is running down and falling apart.  There will come a time when the universe cools to nothing, and then that's it.  All the things you have ever owned will be dust and ashes, or will be sucked into a black hole, or will just cool to nothing whatsoever.  It's all running out, and it's not just that everything you ever earned will go to someone else eventually, as the Preacher opined, but that it will go to nobody.  It will just turn to dust eventually.

Boy, that's depressing.  It's the theme for the first chapter of a great book called 'the skeptical approach to religion,' which tells you that given that nothing you have ever done is ever going to
matter long term, how do you possibly get through the day?  I'm over-simplifying, of course, but that's the nature of our long term existence, which is to say that if you sit down and really think about the purpose behind your life, it will amount to nothing but pursuit of the wind.  Just flailing around.

But what Jesus tells us is something truly exciting.  Something that is of massive importance that can't be overstated.  In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that the things that we think of as permanent actually aren't.  They're not forever things.  The man who accumulates the grain into his barn, who tells himself 'self, you're doing fine, eat drink and be merry,' must realize that he is running out of time, and all the stuff he viewed as permanent is fleeting.  What is it that matters, after all?

The man at the beginning of the Gospel reading is calling on Jesus, saying to him 'Jesus, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.'  Sure.  And like most of us, when money gets into the picture, even family goes out of it.  Family can wear down and break down when faced with money, which we prioritize as being more important even than those whom we love.  We'd rather lose brothers and sisters than inheritances.

But Jesus reminds us that the money that we prize so much, it's all just chasing the wind.  Life is not what you buy, and what you have.  Focus on those two commandments of Christ - Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.  Everything else can and will sort itself out.  For those two things, unlike all our stuff, are forever, and they never go away.  If you truly believe what the Bible says about human beings, you will know that everything else in creation eventually goes away, it disappears, but people are all forever people.  Including us.  AND including the people that you don't like all that much.

That's the difference between the vanity promised in Ecclesiastes and the fulfilling life that he talks about at the end.  If you're running after the things of this world, then it will be exactly like chasing after the wind.  You're never going to pin it down, it's always going away.  The reading from Ecclesiastes ends with this most excellent passage "For to the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy."  Yes indeed.  And as you have noticed, life itself isnt' different between the Christian and the non-Christian, so what is different?  What ends up being different is the grounding of the faith, the base for the life that carries on.  If your life, as Jesus says, is based on the accumulation of possessions, then it's all vanity and chasing after the wind.  But if it's based around love for God first, and love for each other second, then each decision, each interaction each moment you spend with other human beings becomes of phenomenal importance, because those are the forever decisions that matter.  The cheeseburger is of momentary pleasure, but the server who gave it to you, who you may never see again until Paradise, is forever.  Of the two things, which one do we normally feel is more important, vs which one actually is?

Ultimately, part of what we perhaps unfortunately need to consider is the people we see are forever people.  That's the big lesson of Christianity, and understanding that means that your life doesn't consist of chasing the wind.  If the prioirities shift away from the things, the stuff of life, the monuments that are naturally moving towards destruction, and towards the people, then everything we do, every encounter we have with people, carries more weight and punch because those interactions, no matter how small, are of eternal consequence.  You can't look at anyone and say that they don't matter, that they aren't important, that the way you treat them is irrelevant, because as Jesus says:

"Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40)

That's  a double edged sword.  If we refuse to treat each other well, then we are neglecting our divine calling as human beings, rejecting the good works which Jesus has prepared in advance for us to do.  But if we take that seriously, if we realign our priorities, then we notice that all the things of this world, the things we busy ourselves with, the things that the nations run after, all that is chasing after the wind.  Our priority is love for God, and love for each other.

And if we're not doing that perfectly, which, if we are honest, we aren't, then the scriptures still have some good news for us.  Some good news that tells us that God knows better than we do what is important.  Think of the moment where he was standing on top of an high mountain, and Satan showed him all the kingdoms of the world in all their splendor.  And Satan said to Jesus 'I will give you all this if you just bow down and worship me.'  And Jesus responds by telling Satan to get away, for all the kingdoms of the world are less important, less durable, than God, and his people.  Jesus came, shed his blood, and died to give you eternity, to make you into something that lasts longer than the stable earth, the great salt sea, around the old eternal rocks.  He came to make you, you child of dust, into something that lasts longer than the pyramids, than the monuments that are designed to stand forever, which are all falling apart and going away.  Heaven and earth may pass away, but his words will never pass away.  Take comfort in that, in the knowledge that his words of grace, of compassion, of love even for the wayward sinner are eternal.  He does not lose focus on what is important, on what is eternal, and he does not lose focus on you.

Father's day

Hey kids.

I say kids, because we are all God's children.  And what does that mean?  Jesus, in his earthly ministry did a lot of communicating with parables, communicating with parables to make sure that we could understand the incomprehensible through things we do see around us on a daily basis.  Object lessons and all that.  And when he tells us to talk about God, he does as our father.  Our Father.  Unpack that for a second.

Think about your earthly father here.  Think about your father and what he has in mind for you. Jesus Christ talks about this, when he mentions that God is our heavenly father, and that he does good things for us.  And for us, who are earthly fathers, if our child asks for bread, will give that child bread instead of a stone.  And if our child asks for an egg, we will give that child an egg, instead of a

scorpion.  We, who are evil, know how to do good things, how to give good things to our children, so how much more will our heavenly father give good things to those who love him?  But we are children still, through and through, and Jesus tells us to speak to God as our father, and about him as our Father.  When the disciples speak to Jesus and say to him 'teach us how to pray,' he responds with the Lord's prayer.  We also call it the Paternoster, or in English, the Our Father.  What that moment in the scriptures represents is God telling you how he wants to be spoken to.  This is how he has chosen to be viewed by us, the relationship that he has chosen to have with us is as our Father.

Now, people will bring up a dichotomy in the scriptures, something that doesn't seem to add up.  People will look through the Bible and see in there a split between the Old and New Testaments.  People will look at the Old Testament, and say 'well, look, there's angry God there, and the God I like is the nice God, the happy God, the New Testament loving God.  It's like they're two different guys.'

Sure enough.  It says something about us that we can't figure this out, given that it is in every way analogous to our own lives.  It falls in line with our own experiences as we grew up and matured.  For you see, when you were a child, you had to do what your parents said to do or there would be consequences.  "Wait until your father gets home" is a threat that is leveled against children, and it incubated the idea within them that they should do what their parents want them to do, because they would be punished if they were caught. You avoid breaking rules because of the punishment that would fall on you if you got busted. 

Well, then you move out, you grow up, and things change.  When you're on your own, when you're in your own space, with your own rules, maybe with children of your own, and then your father can't make you do anything.  He can't force you anymore, and there are no threats of punishment.  But one would hope that if you have been taking him seriously so far, then you would follow his counsel and guidance because, well, because it's the right thing to do. 

Your Father will go through a lot of effort to try to guide you, to shield you from yourself, from your own decisions that you believe that you are smart enough to make. As a child, and especially as a teenager, you figure that you know everything, and that you know what is right to do.  The Bible has a term for that, you know.  It has a term for that, and we saw that term being used in the Old Testament reading on Sunday, where people 'Walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices.'  That's what we are prone to do, because we are still children, and we figure that we're all about making good choices, and we don't need God's help anymore.  We're baptized children of faith, we're not going to be kicked out of the family and devalidate our baptismal promises by not being nice to each other, surely not.  But our earthly parents do something for us that we need to remember.  They give us advice and guidance, they will help and direct us, will give us all the counsel and aid that we want, but they won't force us, can't force us, into doing what we ought.  And there are natural consequences for our actions.

Galatians speaks to that, telling us that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different than a slave, though he is the owner of everything.  The child is no paid for his work, receives no recompense for it, cannot earn more of his parents' love by doing things, none of that works at all.  Instead, there is a matter, a simple matter of being subject to their wills and rules.  That's Law, to be sure.  But when the time comes for inheritance, for us to be redeemed by the will of Christ, then we were freed indeed.  It's exactly like it is in your homes, in your own families.  Why do you do the things your parents want you to do? Because you want to earn your way into the family?  Not likely, you're arlready there, and you can't get more there.  Instead, you follow their counsel and direction because you're convinced that it's the right thing to do.  In the Christian church, in our faith, salvation has been won for us by Jesus Christ. We don't have the law as something we need to observe or we're out of the family.  It's not a threat that if we don't do what Jesus would tell us to do, then we'll be out on our ears, that's not how it works.  Because he has fulfilled all righteousness for us, because he has fulfilled the law, not cancelled it out but fulfilled it, then we are all of a sudden in a position where we look at the rules and guidance and counsel of our Lord, and are not compelled to do it, but free to.

Most of the problems we run into in our lives are because we wilfully ignore what it is our Lord has told us to do.  He told us how to live, how to operate, how to function, and we expressly decide not to do it.  We look at the situation, and decide not to be involved, not to follow up with his advice, to say to and about ourselves that we know best, and we know what the best action is to take, always.  We follow the advice of our own hearts, we follow our own desires, and we're not interested in what God has to say.

But Father legitimately does know best.  He's not going to force you into doing what he has set aside for you, he won't make you do it, but he will let you know over a lifetime that following his rules and ordinances was a good idea for a reason.  If you don't clean up, you'll get vermin.  That's true. You can avoid cleaning up, leave things out for forever, leave filth all over your home, and guess what, dad's never going to show up and yell at you.  But the roaches and mice might just move in.  If you smoke two packs a day, then you'll likely have health complications down the road.  Maybe back in the day you had to hide your smoking from your father, but if you're own your own, daddy won't catch you.  Cancer might.

It's usually only after our fathers have long since stopped raising us in their homes that we genuinely appreciate what they were trying to do.  And it's usually at that point that we realize that he had a good idea of what he was talking about all along.  He knew how we should avoid calamity, he knew how we should steer clear of trouble, he had a good idea of what we should be doing all along, and usually as children we were too stubborn to see it.  It's the same with God.  It's worth our while to remember that we, though fully grown, are really still children, because we will always be children.  We will always be his children.  And even though we are heirs, and can do what we want with our rich ineritance, it's always worth consulting with what our father has advised us to do.  He knows best.

Happy Father's day, everyone.

The Trinity

The Trinity.

This is perhaps the stickiest subject in Christianity, possibly because it is the most other-worldly.  That is, it is the thing about the nature of God that seems to be the most difficult to get our heads around, precisely because it is the matter that is the least like the things we see around us.

Think about this for a second.  Consider the following.  Jesus was a great believer in teaching with parables.  That is, he would use the things we see around us on a daily basis to explain the things that
we can't possibly understand.  He would use lost coins, wandering sheep, pearls in the ocean and money buried in a field, all to talk about the kingdom of God.  He would discuss himself as a good shepherd, as the door to the sheep pen, as the vine whilst we are the branches.  All good stuff, because it uses things that we know to explain what we don't.

But somewhere that Jesus doesn't use images, doesn't use metaphor or simile, doesn't use parables, is with the Trinity.  Now, obviously, if it was as simple as giving it the shamrock shake, or as straightforward as explaining it like an egg, then he would have.  But he doesn't.  These are all things that we have had to use ourselves to try to explain the Trinity, but because they aren't divine, they are going to have problems, and they're going to break down.

The Trinity is by its very nature not of this world.  Understanding the big questions about it, asking who Jesus is talking to when he prays, asking how the Holy Spirit fits into everything, well, that's all complicated, to be sure, and it resists our efforts to rapidly find a way to explain it in terms of things we get, and things we understand readily.  The reason, once again, being that it exists outside what we have around us at hand.

The absolute best way I've ever heard it explained is from Dorothy Sayers, who talks about the mind of the maker, being a discussion of the nature of God as understood through the lens of the creative process.  Dorothy Sayers herself was an author, both of fiction and of nonfiction, and her understanding that she used was to talk about God as being someone who made things, like we write or compose or create.  And understanding creation in that way would help to clarify the difficulty we see in explaning the Trinity while we are stuck in this world.

Think of this world as a play.  Think of this world as a play, conceived by an author, and produced on a stage. Now try to imagine the world from the point of view of the characters, not of the actors.  Try to imagine the world that the characters are living in, and trying to explain to them that the world they see around them is fake, that it is a simulation of the real world, but that it isn't anything real.  Oh sure, the set seems real to them, they're acting as though it is, but it's not.  This isn't the real world.  Now, imagine telling the characters who are in the play that there is a real world out there, a world not made out of crepe paper and styrofoam, a world where the trees are made of wood, not of papier mache.  What would they feel to learn that there was a real world where the sun gave light instead of Frenells.  How would they feel to learn that there was a world beyond the proscenium, where there were people who watched the play for an hour and then left, and went to a world that wasn't locked to the size of a stage, but was the size of the entire world, where they could go where they wanted, do what they wanted, where they could go and see other plays, and even be in plays themselves!  Imagine how they characters would react if you told them that out there, somewhere in a world beyond the limits of the stage, was an author who had conceived of their entire world, who had written their lines of dialogue, and who had worked out what was going to happen long before the play was rehearsed.

How would those characters react?  how would they see their place in the world knowing that this is the case?  Would they be able to understand the concept of the author?  What if the author, who was also a director, starred in the play himself, and was able to tell them about the world that was to be found outside?  What would they do?  How would they take it?  It's not as small as you think it is, either, not really.  It's far more complicated than you think it is, given that the characters in the play would have no idea what it was like to be born, to grow up, to have children, to eat real food and drink real drinks, any of these things that we go through in the course of our lives?  How would they take it?  Odds are, they couldn't possibly conceive of it.

That's what we have in the Trinity.  We have the author, who conceived of the play as God the Father, creating the world and the people in it essentially out of nothing.  Then we have the director, God the Spirit, who tells the characters what the author has in mind.  He gives direction, and guides the members of the chorus, the leads, everyone in a real way to ensure that the play goes the way it was supposed to.  and then we have the actor, God the Son, the one who enters into the world of the play, and who lives according to its rules.  The tragic hero, the one who suffers, the one who dies, and as far as the other characters know, dies for real.  In their world, he perishes.

But here's the score.  The actor, the son, knows of a larger world out there.  He knows of a bigger world out there not limited to the stage, not limited to the world that is stuck beneath the lights.  He knows of a world that is lit by the sun, the world that he came from, and the world that he is going back to.  And he has promised that one day he will make it so that the characters playing in that play, not the actors but the characters, who only exist in that play, will be able to walk off that stage and into the real world, where they can choose where they want to go and what they want to say.  No lines, no script, just life.

How would they take it?  Well, we assume that they'd take it well, but were' not basing that on anything.  More likely than not, they wouldn't believe it, or would find there was no way for them to imagine it.  Everything that the Son could do to tell them about the world he had come from would be confusing for them, because it would sound like their world, but would be impossible for them to conceive of.  There would be only so much that the Son, the actor in the play could do to explain the situation to them by relating it to what they see around them, before saying that there is ultimately so much that they could never ever work out, so they'll have to take what he says on faith.

For us, the Trinity works like that.  We have the Lord our God who made everything, who fashioned the world out of nothing, and placed it here, in this universe.  This wasn't where it had to be, but this is where he chose it to be.  He made the world, and made the rules that govern the world. He placed it into the universe, and chose how it was going to work . Then he placed into it the people that he was going to love and cherish, that he was going to watch work and grow.  And then they sinned, and caused the destruction of the world around them.

So God sent his son into the world, to take on flesh and dwell among us, to live as we live, to grow as we grow, to exist goverend by the rules that he had made yet had never been bound by, he placed himself into this world and lived and died based on rules that he absoultely did not need to follow.  But he did so becuase he loves and cares for us, and wants us to break us out of the stage, away from the death that awaits us, and into the real world that until now only he has known.  What is that real world?  It's too hard for him to explain, because it's far far beyond what we can imagine.  The characters in a novel can't imagine what it is like off a page.  The characters in a movie can't imagine what it's like to be anywhere but on film.  We can't really conceive of heaven.  And we can't conceive of a God who made everything entering into human history to guide and redeem us.

But that's the story of the scriptures.  And to be a Christian means that you know that it's not just the story of the scriptures, it's the story of us.  It's our story as children of God and people who are in history.  That means that the creeds aren't the story of creation and redemption and sanctification of the human race, or of Israel, or of the disciples, they're our story too.  The dogma is the drama, and it's the drama of humanity.  It's the drama of our story, the story of humanity that lives with God, and cherishes him because of what he has done for us.  It's the story of  God creating you, redeeming you, and making you holy through his means of grace. That's why it's such an important thing to be immersed in - because it's not the story of the past, it's not a dead document.  It's the story of today.  And it's vibrant, burning flame.