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.