give it to me straight

And now, say the disciples, you are speaking to us without figures of speech. 

Ah yes.  All they wanted was for Jesus to be straight with them, to give them the straight goods, the straight dope, the Georgia straight, if you will.  All they wanted was to have Jesus tell them what is known as the Gospel truth.  And that, well, was more than they'd bargained for.

It's like this, if you will.  Man says to woman to just say what she means.  She says what she means.  He asks why things are so difficult to say straight, and why she can't just say what she means.  So she does.  Again.  Same result, ad nauseum. 

 

There's the perpetual complaint that nobody says what they mean, but honestly, they frequently do, and therein is the trouble.  If you want to know what someone means, there's a good chance they're already telling you what that is, but you refuse to hear it or listen to it.  And that's the problem.  CS Lewis gets to the base of it, talking in his essay 'the problem with X' about how the people whom we have tried to communicate and have given up communicating with all have a fatal flaw making talking with them in a straight way about their faults and failings impossible.  But the point about Lewis' essay is that we are the exact same.  We have the same sort of faults and failings, we are every bit as weak and frail, every bit as difficult and backwards as the people that we are trying to communicate with. 

Now, this slots in nicely with the Gospel reading, where the disciples say to Jesus 'we want the straight goods,' and the response from Jesus is to say 'here's the straight goods.  You all want to stand by me, you all think that you're going to be with me until the end, but you're going to be scattered, each to his own home, and I will stand alone.  Just me and God.'  The most obvious, visible sign of

this is the presence in the Gospels of Simon of Cyrene, the man made to carry the cross.  If the disciples were as steadfast as they had promised to be, if they were as keen to follow through with their commitments, then finding someone to carry the cross of Christ wouldn't be necessary.  There would be 12 volunteers.  But there weren't. 

Christ stood alone.  He stood alone, and was escorted to Calvary and crucified there between two criminals.  He was buried in a stranger's tomb.  There wasn't anyone around to stand fast by him to help him with the work he was going to do.  He was going to be alone.  This was the straight goods, the straight goods that the disciples didn't want to hear.  They wanted to hear the straight goods that they were going to be good, they wanted to hear that they had been doing a great job, and that everything was going to slot into place nicely based on their excellent work.  But that wasn't how things actually went.  Jesus was going to give them the straight goods, and the straight story was that their vigor, their commitment, their decisions for him were all essentially worthless when it came to the salvation that they needed.

The reading from Revelation that we had for this Sunday is one that tells us that there is a holy city, the new Jerusalem waiting for us, with streets of gold and environs of Jasper, that it is a wonderful place that nothing unclean will ever enter into, but the straight goods is that there's a good chance that you've done some pretty unclean stuff yourself.  Or, to put it another way, I feel fairly sure that there's at least one person who couldn't possibly imagine paradise if you were there.  How does Revelation put it?

As for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Are you 100% certain that you've avoided all that?  100% certain that you're not a coward and a liar?  For I tell you the truth, and this is a great mystery, cowards and liars make up the vast majority of the disciples.  Or, to put it another way, have you ever found it strange that St. Peter, one of the all time great cowards and liars, is often depicted as the one who is the gatekeeper of heaven itself!

How does that work?  It works because Jesus stands alone.  The commitment, the steadfastness, the righteousness that the disciples all planned on showing and displaying, none of that stood.  It wouldn't and it can't.  The salvation rests on the shoulders of the one who died on the cross to take all those sins away.  

With us, a vast majority of the time, we end up with our commitments on one hand, and the world on the other, and the world has a nasty habit of getting in the way.  We arrive at church, we get confirmed, we get baptized, we commit to Christ, we choose him as our Lord and savior, we answer the altar call, whatever it is that we do for him, and then the world has a way of getting in the way.  Reality matters, and the real world, for all its troubles, squeezes the Gospel out of things.  Just like the likelihood of crucifixion squeezed the commitment out of St. Peter in the courtyard.  But this is what Jesus came to do.  He came to overcome that world, he came to do what he had to do to ensure that all the sin that sticks to us, all that stuff that we do because the world is there, pressing in all around us, he came to take that upon himself and break it on the tree.  He came that we may have life, and have it abundantly.  This is what he is all about, and it is his prime focus.  That's what the Gospel is.  

If you claim that the Bible is too hard to figure out, if you wish that the Christian church spoke clearly, and just said what they mean, then here it is, in black and white.  Jesus Christ came, and was crucified, to save sinners, of which I am the chief.  And since he has done so, since he has chosen us, not that we have chosen him, then let us love one another.  

That's what it means.