Breakneck speed

So why is there so little about Jesus in the Bible?

Oh, sure, you may say that there's lots about Jesus in the Bible, but think long and hard about it, his life as recorded in the scriptures I mean.  For in the scriptures, you have the account of his birth, his presentation in the temple, a moment when he was a child in the temple, and then BAM, he's thirty.  That's quick. 

Sure, you will look at the scriptures, and say that of course, Jesus is very prominent, which he is, but hold on, because the Gospels deal primarily with Jesus after the age of thirty, and all the way up to thirty-three.  That's it, really, a three year period.  A three year period which is the most important three year period that has ever existed.  Think about this, though.  The Gospel of Mark, the shortest Gospel, the one that starts with John the Baptist's ministry, so Jesus is effectively beginning his ministry in it, and it lasts, in my Bible, for about 30 pages.  That's not that long.  But we know that there's an incredible silence there, an incredible silence that exists there, in which there is a massive gap between what happened at the birth of Jesus, and what happens when he turns thirty. 

We have tried at many times, as human beings, to try to fill in the gaps.  We really, really want to know what Jesus did in that time.  And because we want to know what Jesus did in that time, in that 30 year gap, we tend to want to fill it in . We want to speculate, to imagine what might have happened in that time.  We want to picture what it would have been like in Nazareth, growing up as the word made flesh.  But that almost always leads to trouble, as we see in the infancy gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus ends up killing one of his playmates because he doesn't know his own strength or power, and it's an absolute nightmare.  This obviously doesn't fit anything else that we know about Jesus Christ, and nor does most of the rest of the story of the infancy gospel,long thought to be a heresy by anyone reputable (except Mohammed).  I get the deal, I understand why you would want to do it, why you'd want to fill in the gap, because we are naturally curious about what happened in the life of the most influential man in all of history.  But the Scriptures remain staggeringly, unnervingly silent on the topic.

What's up with their hats?

This is where we kick and scream, and insist that we want to know more, of course we do. But there's a snag built into it, which is that our desire to know more is, and must always be tempered by the reality that more content doesn't always make a better story.  Sometimes, less is more. Sometimes, you know what you need to know.  Sometimes what you have is what you need.  Consider for a moment, the Gospel reading we had from Sunday, which is the reading in which Jesus is presented in the temple, and is recognized as the savior of the world by both Simeon and Anna.  Both Simeon and Anna are aware of the great and wonderful things Jesus will do, but they don't talk about animating birds, killing playmates or carrying water in his lap.  They don't discuss feeding five thousand, four thousand, or lengthening a beam in the carpenter's shop.  They don't talk about water into wine, or walking on the water.  Simeon goes straight to the crucifixion.

It may seem strange to our modern ears, to hear the words that Simeon speaks immediately after the Nunc Dimittus, where he talks to Mary and lets her know that this boy has been appointed for the falling and rising of many, and a sword would pierce her own soul too.  Not the words that we would want to hear at the dedication of one of our children, but Simeon wants you, and everyone else too, to keep their eyes on the prize.  The prize of the cross.

When Paul speaks of the work that he does, he says that he did not come with fancy words, or human learning, he came that they may know nothing but Jesus Christ, and him crucified. That's it, the beginning and the end of things.  I came that I may know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. That simple sentence may just as well be the mission statement of the entire scriptures, the whole Bible reduced to that simple mission statement, that we may know nothing but Jesus Christ and him Crucified.  That's what the good news of the Bible boils down to, that's what it's all about, the presence of Jesus Christ, his work, his life, is all leading up to his death, which is why the narrative of the Gospels accelerates at such a breakneck speed.  The rapidity of the narrative, spending some time with the infant king but beyond that moving immediately to his baptism, to his ministry, because it hastens to what you need to know as a person who needs to be saved.  It's moving directly towards the cross.  The Gospel of Mark, the shortest Gospel, in my Bible lasts only 30 pages.  It moves along at an incredibly rapid pace, bringing you from the baptism of Jesus to his death in 30 pages.  Now, you and I, we may wish very earnestly that we had more knowledge about the early days of Jesus, but honestly, if the Gospel of Mark were ten times as long, at 300 pages, would that make you more likely to read it?

Well, how likely to read it at 30 pages are you?

Remember the end of the Gospel of John and what it says, that there are many other things that Jesus did that are not recorded here, but these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and by believing you may have life in his name.  And what are you supposed to believe in? The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  You're supposed to believe that Jesus Christ, true God and true man, was nailed to a cross, and left there to die, and after doing so, rose triumphantly from the grave and broke death itself while doing so.  You are meant to believe that this was accomplished for you, that you may do likewise.  He came to earth to redeem it, to die for it, to be slain for it, and to give to all believers the power to transcend death itself.  That's the key story in the gospels, and that's what you need to know.  And if you took a lifetime to meditate on that story, the only one, thinking on nothing else, about the mystery of the eternal immortal God only wise veiled in flesh, working undercover to redeem his own broken creation, about the death of God himself and his triumphant rising from the grave, if you had forever to think about that it still wouldn't be enough. 

I know that Simeon, Anna, and the whole scriptures move faster than you want them to, that they get to the conclusion while you're still trying to catch your breath.  I know that you want to know more, but there are depths and majesty that you still need to plumb.  If you think to yourself that you would like 300 pages on the life of Christ, I have an alternate suggestion. 

The Gospel of Mark, the story of the baptism of Christ to his crucifixion, three years that shaped the world, is only 30 pages.

Read it ten times instead.

The Holidays

There are three sides to every coin.  Heads, tails and the edge.  I know that we don't think of the edge as a side of the coin, but it's there, and believe me, it's important, because a coin isn't a two dimensional figure.  It's 3-D, which means that it has to have depth.  And the depth is the edge of the coin, and part of what the edge of the coin does is that it adds an additional identifiable factor to the coin.  That is, a ten cent piece isn't just the smallest coin, which it is, it isn't just composed of its constituent materials which it is, but it also has key ridges on its edge that are helpful for not only identifying the coin in your pocket, but also make it so that you can't shave the coin down to keep a bunch of its silver.
Why oh why am I, an amateur numismatist, talking about coin edges? Because the additional layer, the additional depth isn't often thought of, but it's there, and you need it to have a complete, spendable coin. 
Now, at this time of year, we have a situation in which we have the birth of the baby Jesus in the manger, which is fantastic, and is a story that the world knows pretty well.  We understand births, we understand babies, we understand families, which is part of the reason that the world, religious or not, feels all kind of warm and fuzzy when thinking about the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.  Babies are designed by our Lord to be incredibly cute, for pretty obvious reasons, because we are keen to protect them, even though they need near constant effort, care and supervision.  If they looked ugly, that might be a bit of a harder sell . But think about babies that need care. 

Look at this baby warthog!  It's insane!  How could this animal be so incredibly cute, given that the adults are so ugly?  It's the same thing with naked mole rats

That's not that ugly, especially considering the finished product. Point being, babies are by and large cute, which is why Ellen's baby ratings are completely pointless, as every single infant just gets over 10/10.  100% is the base score, so the entire thing is absolutely nuts.  Babies are cute, and have to be cute to survive.  Even if you harbor hate in your hearts, it's likely that infants of your enemies will melt your precious heart. 

So, we have a baby in a manger, a baby in a stable in Bethlehem, and he was likely cute, because most babies are.  And the world, when it looks at this baby in the manger, it sees an infant, it sees a child, it sees something it understands. And because the world's only interaction with Jesus Christ is at his birth and at his death, beginning and end, Christmas and Easter, because the world only ever understands Jesus in those spheres, it misses out on the bigger issue that comes up in the scriptures, which is that Jesus of Nazareth isn't just a baby, he is God in human form.  And this is bigger than just the birth of a cute kid.

For the remainder of this blog ramble, I'm going to be discussing GK Chesterton's thoughts on babies, which are important if you want to understand the baby in the manger, and the divine working right under the surface.

The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel oursleves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to been through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small… we feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that [God] might feel…

This is a quote from Mr. Chesterton, and it's a fascinating thing to think about, to contemplate.  Think about your reaction to babies, to small infants, and think about how you relate to them.  They are frightening, you know.  They are frightening, they are terrifying because, as he says, the essential human energy moves and operates such a tiny thing.  You know how you feel about newborns, about their tiny tiny fingernails, their little tiny eyelids, their tiny knees, their soft feet, all those things are moved and operated by the, as he calls them, the essential human energy.

Well, that is a powerful drawing card for the essential, key moment in the Christian faith to the outside world, a world that likes babies because they're cute, but it's bigger in the Christian story.  For the Christmas story begins with the birth of the baby in the manger in Bethlehem, but it carries on to the next day, Christmas day, and the discussion of the pre-incarnate word of God, the word of God that not only predates Christmas day, but predates everything else.  Let's indulge ourselves by going down memory lane, and looking at the very beginning of the Bible.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,

the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep,

while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  And God said 

'Let there be light' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.

As Christian people, it should be a matter of some interest that right there in the beginning of everything, page one of the Bible, back as far as things possibly go, before anything was made, we have the Trinity.  God, his Word and his Spirit.  The Holy Trinity, and that Word, the Word that makes everything, the Word that speaks everything into being, that Word of God that was responsible for everything, and as the New Testament says, through him all things were made, that is who Jesus is.  

The beginning of the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus was with God from the beginning, was the essential creative force behind all that we see around us.  He set and underpinned all the rules, all the mechanisms through which the world functions, and that was his role and his responsibility.  Through him were all things made, and without him nothing was made that has been made.  Now that we've gotten that out of the way, now we can think about Christmas day a little bit differently.  For in Christmas day, we have something going on that's bigger than you'd think.  Oh, sure, it's straightforward enough to consider the possibility that there was a baby born in a stable somewhere and he ended up being special, that's the feel good story of the year.  But the story is bigger and more important than that, because that baby born in a stable isn't just a baby, he's God.  And just like that Chesterton quote above, if we're a bit jarred by imagining the essential humanity moving tiny fingers, well imagine the essential creative force of the entire universe moving those same tiny fingers.  Imagine the creative force that made gravity being held down by it for the first time.  Imagine the creative force that made oxygen breathing it for the first time in hungry gulps.  Imagine the creative force that made the human digestive system being all of a sudden desperately hungry, and unable to do anything to satisfy that hunger.  Imagine the mind behind all of creation being brought low, being brought so terribly low, as to have to cry out for help to accomplish absolutely anything.

Christmas is a very humbling time if you consider who Jesus actually is, the word made flesh.  Not just a nice guy, not just a good or capable leader, not just a man who works hard and does his best, but the creative force behind everything that has been made, that's him.  If you understand things this way, then you'll understand Christmas a lot better, and why it's a big deal.

 

Joy to the world

The third week in Advent is the pink week.  The pink candle.  The one that stands out.

And the sentiment in that week is the one that stands out too, the sentiment, the theme of joy. And what is joy, after all? What is joy and why is joy so hard to get, and so hard to find? Well, part of it comes down to this quote from an episode of family guy that came out some time when family guy was still funny.  And not just degenerate propaganda.  Which it always was. Peter seems awfully interested in Bonnie, his neighbor's wife, and Stewie is confused about it.  And Stewie's reasoning goes as follows:

• 00:08:49 What do you mean? Lois is prettier than Bonnie.
• 00:08:51 Oh, I get it.
• 00:08:52 It's worse, but it's different.
• 00:08:54 Okay, all right, so that's something.
• 00:08:55 Okay.

And there you have it.  Setup, joke, the end.  But that joke, that throwaway line of saying that Peter's wife is prettier than the woman he is interested in is notable, because it speaks to our essentially perpetual dissatisfaction with things, and with how elusive joy is going to end up being.   For why is it that we are going to always find something novel to be more enticing than what we already have.

If I may wax about affairs for a second, in the reading that I've done on extramarital affairs, the conventional wisdom seems to be for those involved that you can't parley your affair partner into your marital partner eventually and expect things to work out.  There's a reason why you're looking outside the relationship for companionship, and it tends to be because the drudgery of the day to day aspects of the relationship, the familiarity with your spouse and the daily grind of building a life together tend to sour things with your spouse.  It's a matter of understanding that the thrill of the novelty is enough to crowd out the comfort of the familiar.  The desire for what is new can despoil any real building that you might do in the long term.

Now, when the Bible talks about finding joy, as it does in our reading from Thessalonians, buried in there is the idea, the notion that we ought to rejoice always, but also to give thanks in all circumstances, and that's pretty key right there.  For in the average North American Christian life, there is a great deal, a massive amount of things to be thankful for, but the problem is that we forget it a lot of the time.  Essentially, the advice from Thessalonians only works if it's taken all together.  That is, you're going to find it hard to rejoice always unless you're being thankful in all circumstances.  Why is that? Because your brain is going to switch off the joy sensors in it unless the thankfulness centres are being lit up on a regular basis. 

Don't believe me? Consider the account of the ten lepers who were healed by Jesus of Nazareth, son of David, after they had stood a long way off, and had begged for help. Jesus healed them, and told them to go and show themselves to the priests.  They went and did so.  Only one came back. And if this is a bit too abstract for you, then think of yourself the morning after the cold that you caught from your child's kindergarten class lifts. Think about how great it is to breathe through both nostrils, to breathe without coughing, to swallow without agony, that sort of thing.  Then think about this morning, and how you didn't give your nasal health a second thought.  Very likely, you woke up breathed through both nostrils and didn't think for one second about how grateful you were for that ability.  You probably take your health pretty much for granted until it goes away, same with your house, your job, your car, your spouse, your children, your friends, all of it.

So why wait until then?

Why wait until your house has been burgled to get an alarm system? Why wait until your car has been stolen to get a club for it? Why wait until things are gone to appreciate them? Start by appreciating the blessings that God has given you today. Start by living in a state of gratitude for what you have now.  start by rediscovering the things that God has given you, rediscovering the wonderful blessings that you enjoy, that are around you constantly.  Start by praying through the Lord's prayer, being grateful for daily bread.  Start by saying grace and being genuinely thankful for the food you are about to receive.  Avoid the horrendous virus of complacency, the virus that saps you of any interest and fire, and replaces it with tepid vacuous misery.  You will get awfully used to your blessings and will find no joy in them unless you rediscover them day by day. Unwrap your house daily, your car daily.  Take joy in your job daily, be thankful for your food daily.  Unwrap your spouse daily, and rediscover all the blessings that God has already given you.  And one of the biggest and best of these is the Holy Scriptures.

In the scriptures, you will find the truth of God's word, what he wants to get across to you, what he wants you to know and see.  You will find the reality of Christ's love for you, how he wants to make all things new in your life.  You will encounter the treasure of knowing the love of Christ through the cross, his movement to restore you to life and salvation, his desire to ensure that your families and relationships might last forever.  You will find the inestimable joy of knowing even as you are fully known. 

Whatever else you unwrap this Christmas, unwrap your Bible.  It's a really good first step towards being appreciative of the blessings you enjoy already, and finding joy in them.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

• 
  

Sheepin it real

Jesus only talks about the last judgement once, you know.  The rest of the Gospels are a last-judgement-free zone.  But in that one passage, where he finally and completely describes the last judgement, the last day, the resurrection and the judgement, he does so in such a succinct way that it's spooky.  For those of us who are reading it today, the division of the sheep from the goats is quite shocking, quite galling, because it has within it that uncomfortable issue in the Christian faith that never quite seems to go away.  The fact that if you're playing a game, it'll be possible to lose.  There's a heaven, and there is a hell.  This isn't a new addition, you know, it was in the Christian faith from the beginning, and Jesus talks about it not infrequently.  His advice tends to lead towards hell as a place to most definitely be avoided; you don't want to go there, and he doesn't want you to go there. 

Now, for a lot of people who believe that Jesus is just a nice guy, just a swell fella, and all that fire and brimstone stuff came into it later, thus corrupting the simple message of peace and love that Jesus had for his people, well, buckle up.  There are lots of things like that, where we think that the way things were originally is much more of how we want it to be today, and are surprised when it is the opposite.  Take, for instance Robin from the Batman comics.  People my age tend to like to say that Batman was a loner originally, and that Robin was added much later to get the kiddies reading the comics.  That's a nice idea, and it works for those of us who want to picture Batman as all dark and edgy,  but it's not really all that accurate.  Batman was a dark edgy loner between his first appearance in May 1939 until Robin showed up in April of 1940.  Yes, that supposed dark edgy period that was the way Batman was always supposed to be, it lasted for 11 months.  It turns out that Robin is a bit more integral, a bit more foundational than we had wanted or expected him to be. 

It's the same thing with hell.  If you think that this is a much later addition, I hate to tell you that Hell, from Jesus' words, shows up in Matthew chapter 7, as part of the sermon on the mount, which is the first public address that Jesus gives as part of his anointed, baptized ministry.  That's early.  That's really early.  And it doesn't stop.  Jesus mentions Hell quite a few times, and if Jesus talks about anything at all, it's worth us thinking about, especially if he mentions it often, which he does.

And Hell is one of those topics that, even if we discuss it, we discuss it in terms of good people going to Heaven, and bad people going to Hell.  When we talk about this, we almost always do the thing that we do, which is to look at ourselves, and say that we are good people, the people who are mean to us are bad people, and everyone else applies that exact same metric as well.  Everyone uses themselves as the barometer for good people, and that's as simple as that.  But the way we weigh out good deeds and our bad deeds tends to be only in terms of what we have done. This way, we can all convince ourselves that we have done enough, because we can call to mind all sorts of good deeds that we have accomplished, all the good things we have worked on, and all the wonderful things we have done for friends and neighbors.  Sins? Those are bad things that we have done, and those are fewer than the good things we have done, so it should balance out, right?

Well, in the Gospel reading, Jesus doesn't let you do that at all.  You think you can, because you think your righteousness is going to be measured in terms of positive actions, right? Who does good things, and who does bad things? But the last judgement seems to not be weighed out like that.  Instead, when Jesus talks to the sheep on his right, he does so by talking to them about how they had served him by doing things for one another, for the least of these.  The sheep are surprised by this, of course, and don't have any understanding that they were doing this for their Lord.  They were just doing what needed to be done.  But the goats on his left, they are in a bit of consternation, because they aren't those that we would think of as bad people, even in the context of the church.  We'd expect them to be adulterers, fornicators, sorcerers, the lewd and lascivious, idolaters, murderers, and all that.  We would expect them to be the Hitlers, Pol Pots, James Fields of the world, but that's not who they are in this account.  The truth that Jesus presents us with is far more shocking, and far more difficult for us to get our heads around, you know.  When Jesus approaches these people, he says to depart from him, because they didn't do all the things that they should have done, either for him, or for one another, which ends up being the same thing.  It's not about what they did that was so bad, but it was all the chances that they didn't take, all the good that they didn't do, all the chances for service that they didn't take, and that is what is damning them.

People these days think that they are good because of all the nice things they've done (or more likely because of all the right opinions and views they have), and all the bad things they didn't do.  But the way Jesus describes it, is that we will be held to account not just for all the bad things we did, all the sins we committed, but also all the good things, all the opportunities for service to God and our fellowman, that we did not take. Do you know what this means? This means that there is a zero percent chance that you are ever going to counterbalance this problem? There is no shot that you have of ever doing enough to counter all the opportunities you didn't take, and that you won't take in the future, because you don't see yourself in the way that God has told you that you are.  He told you that you are his workmanship, created to do good works, which he has prepared in advance for you to do.  If you understand this about yourself, and you probably should, then you'll realize that you are here to do those works that he has set up for you to do, and every time you turn away from doing anything for any of the least of these, you turn away from Christ your savior. 

Nobody comes out looking good from this.  I have yet to meet anyone who can with any kind of sincerity say that they are always looking to serve constantly, to give without seeking any reward or restitution.  Nobody is able to say that they give constantly until there's nothing left.  Rather, they do what they can, and avoid doing too many bad things.  But when Jesus talks about the last judgement, it's a matter of understanding that if you're not doing the works that God has prepared in advance for you to do, you are failing at the purpose for your existence, and all your right opinions won't count for much, given your dereliction of duty.

Understanding this really helps you to work out your need for a savior.  People don't think they need a savior because they feel as though they are good people based on the good they do, and the bad they avoid.  Understanding, though, that your missed goodness is counting against you means that the stack is so heavily weighted against you, the debt you have accrued is so great that you're never going to dig out of that hole.  And thus Christ. 

Think on him and what he does, how he gives consistently and tirelessly, how he provides daily and richly for us, how he supplies us all and doesn't refuse anyone of us. Think about how he loves and cares, how he is always present and prepared to hear from his creation, and how no matter how many times he wants to withdraw by himself, there are people who come to seek him out, and he hears them.  Think about how he gives his time, his work, his food, his clothes, and eventually his life, to a lost and fallen creation.  That's the person you need on your side, someone who never turns his back, and who understands that he did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.  Understanding who you are in this sort of big picture means that you can't turn your back on anyone, that every single person around you is important, that they are all forever, that they all matter in a vitally important, cosmic way.  And so do you.  The work of the cross, the work of making all things new is the work of ensuring that every single person matters, they all count, and you serve Christ by serving them, and likewise they serve Christ by serving you.  You don't serve Christ in an abstract sense, by having the right opinion, by thinking the right thoughts about the poor, that's what the Priest and the Levite did in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  No, Christ tells us that we serve him by serving one another. And this is so fundamentally key to understanding Christian morality - you can never do enough, you're never a good enough person because there are hundreds and thousands of moments and chances that you see Christ in the faces of friends and strangers, and refuse to help.  And the way it works is that in repentance of all those missed opportunities, in understanding that these are things you need to be forgiven of, it takes these issues away from being just things that you're avoiding, and into a world in which these are things that absolutely are commanded by the Lord your God. 

Working that out helps you to see what sin and forgiveness actually are.  You serve Christ by serving your neighbor, and you need Christ because of how often you don't. 

Cattle call

Eyes in front, like to hunt.  Eyes on side, like to hide. 

This is the nice mnemonic to help you to remember the predator / prey relationship, the relationship between what like to eat, and what likes to get eaten. Now, obviously nobody and nothing wants to get eaten, but some things are predators, and some other things are prey.  And prey has been equipped with various survival strategies to help them to avoid, evade, or fight their way out of capture and inevitable death.  Whether it be horns, claws or deadly poison, whether it be speed or shells, prey would like to have a way to stop being killed for food. 

That's good for them, but bad for us.

Before we as humans domesticated animals, we hunted them.  Before we put fences around animals so they couldn't get far, we had to hunt them, chasing them down, and attacking them with spears or driving them off of cliffs.  This was a good way to get meat, but it wasn't perfect.  If we wanted to keep our meat fresh, then we were going to want to do something a little outlandish, which was to instead of hunting the animals, we would keep them close to us.

This is going to involve something specific though.  If you're going to domesticate an animal, you're going to want to do something important, which is to take away its survival instinct. For if an animal is going to want to survive, it's going to want to evade capture and death from all its predators, including but not limited to the farmer.  The animal has to be taught not to fight the farmer that is raising it, and that's what domestication is all about.  In order to keep the animals close to you, to make it so they don't run away, you have to kill the survival instinct that they have.  You have to give them nothing to strive for, nothing to work for.  If you pen them in, if you fence the cattle in, and give them food and water, safety and shelter, gradually cattle will stop running into you with horns outstretched, and will inevitably focus on just wandering about from place to place, eating, sleeping, and mating.  And that's all.

So, ask yourself what it is that you're here for.  You are the same as likely all people, which is that you have a life, you have decisions that you can make, and likely you have been listening to the same instructions as the rest of us.  And I do mean instructions.  There is a good chance that you've been hearing the same instructions that I have.  We've been hearing the same things, that tell us that the things we ought to do is to eat, sleep, mate, and that's it.  There are great forces out there that are happy, very happy, for you to be essentially gelded.  There are forces out there that are quite pleased for you to move around in a circle, eating and sleeping, mating and dying, without ever lifting your head up to realize the talents, skills and abilities that you've been given. 

The first epistle of Peter says to us, Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.  Can you imagine if a lion could be assured of getting a kill? Can you imagine a situation in which the gazelles, or the wildebeest were just milling around, captive, and never looking up to see the lions awaiting them?  It seems  unlikely, but that's the best situation for the lion to be in.  A position in which the prey doesn't even bother to look up, because they're amused to death.

And this is the situation that we are in today. We are being amused to death.  We are being quite happily amused down to nothing.  We are quite happy being led around by our instincts, and being defined by our consumption, and not by our production.  We are quite happy to be moved about, directed by our passions, with our gods in our bellies, face down in the grass, quietly munching away while we are awaiting butchery.  But we aren't meant to be killed and eaten you know. We were made and placed by God on earth to use our skills, talents and abilities to do the extraordinary. We were placed by God to do something fantastic.  We were baptized with the holy spirit and with fire, to lift up our eyes to the hills, and to be focused on things far far more significant than just our bodily passions, and to be focused on things far more relevant than just surviving the day.

In the parable of the talents, we heard about how there was a master, an overseer, who gave his servants some talents, and then left on a journey.  And the big question for each of those servants was what they were going to do with those talents.  How were they going to employ these things in service to their master? Two of the servants, those that had the lion's share of the money, invested said money until it doubled in size, and well and good.  But the third servant, the one who had received only one talent took it and buried it.  Better to leave it buried, hidden away, than to let it be seen, let it be used, to risk using it or tarnishing it. Burying things, leaving them in the dirt, staying face down, that's sort of the way we do, isn't it? We are keen to just keep our heads down, bury our talents, and just live day to day.  That's what the world wants, that's what our flesh wants, that's what the devil wants.  And that's why we are called to do more.

You may ask what happened to things like devil possession, to things like ghosts and goblins, the things that go bump in the night, the long-leggedy beasties, and the thing is, that the devil worked out some time ago that it was far far more profitable for him to just perpetually drown you in your desires, and then you'll never really have a chance to focus too much on what you really should be accomplishing.  And as long as you're facedown in fleshly concerns, as long as you're thinking all day every day about eating and sleeping and mating, as long as you're thinking only about buying and selling, about profit and purchase, about sweet treats and pornography, as long as you're thinking about those things, then you have been made fully complacent.  And the devil, who prowleth around, has got you exactly where he wants you, just thinking about yourself, and thinking with your belly.

But you weren't made to be a prey animal.  You weren't here to eat and sleep and mate.  You weren't put here on God's earth, as the crowning achievement of creation and the apple of his eye, just to binge watch Stranger Things and to take a woman you don't like and don't want to have children with home from the bar.  Instead, you were entrusted with the tools, talents and abilities that God wants you to use in his service, and you were given the command, the order, to get those things working for Him, and by extension for you.  And these days, complacency is your biggest enemy, the biggest threat, and the number one thing that the devil will attack you with.  Instead of starving you, scaring you, or threatening you, he'll just give you whatever you want, and kill you with absolute complete complacency.

So the work of the Christian begins by recognizing that the horns and fangs and claws and hooves and teeth aren't just for show, they're not ornamental.  The things that you were given by God aren't decoration, they're there to be used, to be activated in his kingdom pursuit.  People often ask questions where they say 'why doesn't God just save everyone from hell?'  Good question, and the answer to that question typically is 'why are you standing in his way? '  Why are you burying your talent, why are you roaming around in complacency, why are you walking from place to place in a big circle with your eyes focused on the ground, thinking only of eating, and sleeping, and mating? Why is this sufficient for your life? And the answer is that it isn't.  This is not any kind of good use of your talents.

We'll get more into this next week, of course, but what you need to know for this week is that the person you are, the skills you have, the talents you enjoy are things that you are given not only to make you extraordinary, but also to do the work that has been set aside for you specifically to do.  As the scriptures say, you are God's workmanship, created by him to do good works, which he has prepared in advance for you to do.  This is true, and even if you're not a believing Christian (which you ought to be), you must realize that there are a great many tasks and responsibilities that you have before you that are straight up given to you and to you alone.  There are many deeds that could be done by you, that don't really seem like they'd be suitable for anyone else.  In other words, the abilities, skills, talents and resources that you have at your disposal seem to be awfully convenient for making inroads on some things you desperately need to do, and that God wants you to do.  How do you get to it? Glad you asked.

If you know anything about the scriptures, about Jesus and his crucifixion, you'll know that he was taken to the place of the skull, Golgotha, Calvary, and was crucified there.  And the Romans tended to crucify people in public, very much on display, so that the people of the surrounding region would look upon the condemned, and perhaps change their ways.  They were placed way up high on crosses, way up high on a hill, and were put on humiliating public display.  The words that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about this are words that display that he understood the significance of this act, saying to Nicodemus 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.'  Lift up your heads.  Look to the cross, and let the work that Christ has done shock you out of your complacency.  Look upon the cross, and realize the price paid for you, the blood shed for you ,the wounds opened for you.  Look upon the cross, and think of the crucified savior, who burst through the bounds of complacency to bring you life everlasting.  And in doing so, you will find yourself less and less able to be complacent, to be servile, to be passive. You will find yourself thinking more of Christ, and less of yourself. 

The theme at this time of year is very much about lifting up your head.  About moving through the complacency, shattering through it, realizing that the devil is quite happy indeed to suffocate you with what you think you want, and to look up Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith.  He who did not scorn the cross, but instead bore it, and carried it up to Calvary. That man is the focus of what we do . If the focus is on us, and what we want, it will all be food and drink and sex.  Always. But if the focus is on Christ, his work and his commands, then instead of being buried the talents that we have been given may very well be put to work.  And we may very well be convinced that putting them to work isn't just the best thing for God in his majesty.  It's the best thing for us too, moving us away from being complacent cattle, and into being women and men.

The best of times, the worst of times

The end times.

And, as it says in the scriptures, that the end times are the great and terrible day of the Lord.  How can something be both great and terrible? Simple, really, that great meaning large or immense, we mean it in the pejorative sense.

Simple enough, and everything we read about judgment day seems to suggest that it is darkness and not light, that it is bad news and will plague us with horrendous sights never before contemplated. The Bible tells us that judgment day is a time in which everyone is resurrected, and each one must give an account of his deeds.  The righteous will move towards heaven, and the unrighteous into eternal damnation and fire.

Working that part out helps the Old Testament reading to make sense, really.  For in the Old Testament reading, it tells us that the day of the Lord is as though a man was escaping from a Lion, and a bear met him.  Or if he entered into a house, and a snake bit him.  The colloquial expression for this is 'out of the frying pan, and into the fire,' and that's sort of what is promised on the last day. The last day, judgment day, in which everyone will escape the first death, where we will all be raised up on the last day, but then what happens to us? Some will avoid the first death, only to meet up with the second.  Some will be alive until the coming of our Lord, and will escape temporal death, but not the judgment that comes along with that return.

Our view of judgment day is skewed, as these things often are.  That is, we tend to think about judgment day as a time in which God will be there, and he will be accountable to us.  We will get to ask him why it is that he felt it was appropriate for our dog to die when we were seven, which made us real sad.  We feel as though it will be the right time for us to say to the Lord our God, the king of the universe 'how come I got split ends right before the big dance?'  In many ways, we think about judgment day in the same fashion as that footprints poem, you know the one.  And when I read that poem, I'm always struck by the audacity of the man in question to say to the living God, the fire and the whirlwind 'I'm gonna let you finish, but How come there was only one set of footprints when things got tough?'

That's not the judgment day that the scriptures describe.  They describe a day in which God himself will judge us, not the other way around.  And it's described not only as a great and terrible day, but as a sudden, immediate, terrifying time, in which you won't have time to repent, to get your life in order, to live properly.  The day of the Lord, just like our own individual deaths, will just happen.  Not necessarily any warning, so you have to be ready all the time.

And that brings us to the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.  The sophomoric virgins, if you follow me.  The ones who were wise prepared, they brought with them extra oil for their lamps, as they planned on joining the wedding procession to the feast site.  The foolish ones did not.  The foolish ones likely didn't know how long it was going to take for the wedding procession to get going, nor for the party to start, and besides, why should you bother getting your extra oil ready when you have other people, in the same boat, and they can prepare for you?  What's the point, after all?  So, the foolish virgins, when they heard that the bridegroom was coming, they got up, trimmed their lamps, and prepared to join in the procession.  And they said to the wise virgins 'we have no oil for our lamps.  Give us some of yours.'  The reply from the wise virgins makes perfect sense, too 'if we give you our oil, there won't be enough for anyone.  You should go to the dealers and buy some.'  Yes, yes they should.  But they should have done so much earlier.  By the time they go and get oil, and then come back, the door to the festival is shut, and as they knock, a voice can be heard from the inside 'I do not know you.'

Does that end bother you? It should, and it tends to bother most people.  Most folks don't look at what happened to the foolish virgins and say 'good end.  Git rekt.'  Most folks, when the foolish virgins get shut out, when they are not welcome, when they are barred entry into the feast, they say that this is a horribly unfair scenario.  That the groom should just open the door, and let them in as they pound desperately to be admitted.

Okay, but if you think that's a good idea, then I would ask you a simple question, which is to ask you who would you invite to your wedding? Would you invite friends, family, that sort of thing? Would you invite people who had a large part in making you into who you were, and who your intended spouse had become? Or would you just invite total strangers, start up the open bar, and let them have at it?  Almost nobody I have ever met has ever welcomed gatecrashers into their wedding reception.  Almost nobody I have ever met has been at their own wedding reception, have seen uninvited strangers show up, and have said 'gosh, the more the merrier.'  An invitation to a wedding doesn't tend to go to the best and brightest, it doesn't ususally go to the captains of industry and socialites.  Wedding invites tend to go to the people known and loved by the bride and groom, and their families.

If you find that moment where the virgins are pounding on the door, begging to be let in to be offensive, it it bothers you that the voice from the inside comes out and says 'I do not know you,' then I welcome you to think about the work of Christ to get to know people before the wedding feast begins.  For the book of Revelation, mandatory reading as we consider the end times, there's a passage that we shouldn't skip, especially if we're not overly in love with the idea that there might be unanswered knocking at doors.  There is a passage where Jesus talks of us, and says to us 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in, and we will eat together as friends.  Those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat with my father on his throne.'  That all seems fine, to be sure. It seems fine, because this is the work of the bridegroom to meet the guests before the wedding.  You and I both know that admission to a wedding isn't based on being the best and the brightest, but based on being the people with whom you break bread, and eat with.  It's based on who you know, who you love, and being invited to share with the bride and groom in their happy occasion.  And this, well, it's a matter of some interest for us, because Jesus is standing at the door of each and every human heart, and knocking.  And the response that he tends to get seems to be the same as the response that he gives in the Gospel reading.

I do not know you.

That's how people respond when Christ seeks to come and visit with them, to eat with them and drink with them, to grow in love and service and knowledge with them.  They respond by saying to him that they do not know him, that they refuse to open the door to him, refuse to let him in and grant him entrance.  At the point where we are discussing life and salvation, where we are talking about grace and sin, life and death, salvation and damnation, we look at the words of the groom, and are upset by them.  As the hands of the foolish virgins pound ever more insistently on the door, we feel as though the groom should just let them in, whether he knows them or not.  But if that is the case, then surely each and every single one of us ought to be unlocking the door to Christ as he knocks on the doors to our hearts.

The number one thing to know, to remember about how this whole salvation and damnation thing works is that the door, though locked between us and him, is only locked on our side.  Complaining about how Christ refuses to come to us, about how he refuses to allow us into paradise, is a lot like saying that you have been locked inside your house, or inside your car.  Surely, you can  understand that here, as Christ desperately wants to know you and wants you to know him, the door is locked, it is barred, but from your side.  If you want to know Christ, to be forgiven, to be given new life and invited into the wedding feast, then it would be best for you to unlock the door, and to not shut out the bridegroom, who wants to know you, that you may be welcome at his wedding feast as an honored guest, and not pounding at the door as a gatecrashing stranger, just there to enrich yourself.

But that could happen at any time, you know.  And as the church year draws to a close, our focus stays sharply on the idea that none of us know the day nor the hour. So best to welcome him past your threshold now, that you may know him before the procession starts.  You had better be prepared at all times, for you won't get a warning when he returns in glory.  Instead, you will have to see and encounter the living God face to face.  So be sober, be alert, and be ready for his coming.

Fidelis

Have you ever found a time when you've been in a rather disreputable bathroom, seen graffiti, and noticed that sometimes people write back and forth to one another?  This is the nuttiest thing I've seen in a long time, especially in an age of social media, where everyone has his or her own wall, can be poked at any opportunity, and where you can write on other people's walls all day.  This is the new age of things, but as long as there have been walls, real walls, people have been writing on them.

You may not know how true that is, but it is seriously, abundantly true.  For the history of humanity largely deals with what we have left on the walls of things.  Think, for a moment, of some of the most famous walls of all time, and I'm thinking in this moment of Lascaux.  The cave paintings in there are some of the oldest things that we have as far as human artistic endeavors.  People making things, people making art, people composing and constructing things that look like other things.  And that's almost as old as people themselves.

It should come as no surprise, then, that in thinking about All Saints' day, we think about what it is that those saints left behind.  And in thinking about All Saints' day, it's nice that we have the beatitudes to give us some comfort and direction.  The Beatitudes tell us that we are blessed, blessed by God, when we are in a variety of bad, dangerous, and unpleasant situations.  It's easy to be and feel blessed by God when everything is going well, when there are essentially no problems, but boy oh boy, it is much harder to be on point, to continue with things as though there were no problems, to feel the blessing of the almighty Lord on you when things aren't going all that well.  The Beatitudes serve to remind you of something crucial, which is that God is still there, he is loves and comforts you, even and especially when things aren't going your way, exactly.  I can't tell you how many times I've had the conversation with people where they will say after a catastrophe, after an event that has plagued them, after a death or a breakup 'where is God in all of this?  Where's your God now?'  Good question, I suppose, and it really has two answers - one, that he has been with you this entire time, and you really didn't stop to acknowledge him in the slightest, and two, the beatitudes are there to show you how God blesses you even in the midst of suffering.  I don't want to get all 'footprints in the sand' with you, but I do want you to know that the beatitudes are there for you to see and find comfort in the real suffering that exists in the real world.  There are blessings there for the Christian even in dark times.

And these days, in Canada, in the 21st century, how much are you really expecting to give up for your Christian faith? If you're like most of the rest of us, the answer is 'not much, really.'  For the cost of being a Christian is not that high.  You're not going to be put in stocks, nor burned at the stake.  You're not going to lose your job (probably), nor are you going to be crucified, beheaded, sawn asunder, sewn into wild animal skins, or anything of the kind.  Someone may call you a dummy, though, and that's pretty much it.  And what do we fear as current humans? We are so far removed from any possible threat of hunger or thirst, so far removed from any threat of cold or scorching heat, that we move through our lives with so little discomfort that our priorities have changed.  You don't fear violence or famine, because those things don't really exist for you, not in a real, tangible way, anyway.  But what you do fear is a loss of social standing.  You fear a drop in your likes, a social shunning that might happen.  And if you hold to Biblical views on things a social shunning will happen. This is inevitable, given that you are dealing with a fallen world with its own priorities.  And the fallen world that we live in is one in which we are constantly and perpetually dealing with the idea that our sins should be served and serviced.  And if you take a stand on anything, from a Christ-centered view of creation to an ethic that puts God and family first, then you will find yourself running afoul of the world that we are living in, and that will place you squarely in the camp of the last two verses of the beatitudes, that is where it says quite clearly 'Blessed are you when people reviles you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.'

For the average comfy Christian, that's going to be the only cost you're going to have to pay.  People are going to make fun of you. They're going to give you a hard time, they're going to give you the business.  They're going to think you're silly or outdated, and there is immense pressure to cave on that, just to fit in, to go along to get along, and to do the worst thing as an observant Christian, which is to conform Christ to men, and not men to Christ.  Being a Christian is going to cost you something, it is going to pinch, it is going to hurt, there's really no way around it.  The only way to avoid even this tiny cost would be to quit, or to make the Gospel say nothing.  Because the Gospel is always going to be counter-cultural, its message will always be counter-cultural, and the world will always try to shut it down. And this isn't new, in fact it is as old as the Christian faith itself.

As we celebrate All Saints' day, I would like to introduce you to a saint you may never have heard of.  Alexamenos. Have you heard of him? Perhaps, but perhaps not.  In either case, Alexamenos is an important guy, given that he is at the centre of the first, earliest depiction of Jesus of Nazareth.  Now, Alexamenos didn't draw this depiction, he didn't illustrate it, didn't call attention to it.  Instead, it's mocking him.  It's a drawing making fun of Alexamenos worshiping his god, that of Jesus Christ.

In case you can't read the writing, it says 'Alexamenos worships his God.'  What do we know about Alexamenos? Not much, save that he was obviously a Christian, and a Christian in a time where there was going to be large scale mockery for believing in a crucified and risen savior, here depicted as a donkey.  And this is probably the earliest depiction of Jesus in existence.  This is probably the earliest depiction of Jesus around, you know, and it's a crude, insulting one.  It's not nice, or fun, it doesn't praise or worship Jesus, heck, it isn't even neutral.  It's insulting and offensive, and what it shows you is that mockery of Christians has been around from the word go.  In fact, Jesus himself was mocked while he was on the cross, so I don't know why we think that would have changed ever. 

Now, we know that Alexamenos was insulted for his faith, we know that he was mocked and derided.  We know from the evidence left behind that someone, at some point, thought it would be fun to make sport of Alexamenos' faith, and to give him a hard time for what he believed.  And this person who etched this into a wall was likely hoping that Alexamenos would give up his faith, would surrender what he believed, and cave into pressure.  And if Alexamenos had done so, along with all his Christian contemporaries in the second century, then there is a great chance that there would be no Christian church at all in the 21st century.  For people living in the time of Alexamenos, shortly after the time of Jesus, they were functionally living in the last Christian generation, as we are today. Every single generation of Christians in the world has been living in the last Christian generation.  We have all be existing in the twilight of the faith, unless we should choose to pass it along, no matter what the cost might be.  There will be a cost, obviously, and for us, it is likely the cost of mocking, of derision, of a ribbing from friends, family, acquaintances, people who will give us a hard time for deigning to believe in something so hopelessly outdated as the Christian faith.  The world will stand against us in what we believe, for they wish not to believe it, and that's why we need the last little bit of the beatitudes, that promise us that we are blessed when people mock us, utter all kinds of falsehoods against us on account of our Christian faith.  Great is our reward in heaven, which makes sense.  The world will mock us and deride us, the world will oppose us.  In this life we will have trouble, as Jesus said, but take heart, for he has overcome the world.

The Christian faith is built, then, on the legacy of the saints, those who have come before us, lived and died, who have folded our hands in prayer and placed into those hands the holy scriptures.  The Christian faith is built up off of people who have passed the faith down to us, both in commands and in whispers, people who have prayed with us and for us, who have encouraged us and built us up.  People from the time of Alexamenos onward, who kept the faith in a crucified and risen Lord, slain for our sins, and refused to give it up.  For if you have ever wondered what Alexamenos might have answered to the person who mocked him and laughed at him, well we actually know.  For Alexamenos wrote something back.  Etched crudely into the wall in the same location is Alexamenos' response.  Two words only.

ALEXAMENOS FIDELIS.

Alexamenos is faithful.

People held fast to that faith in Christ, for thousands of years they did so because they knew that the treasure waiting for them was bigger than the world.  The world never had any time for the Gospel, not truly.  The world has always resisted the Gospel, which is why faithful men and women have always had to pay a price for following it.  It may have been manning the walls in Constantinople, or hiding in the catacombs of Paris.  It may have been walking along the sand bridge of Lindisfarne, or sapping mines at Vienna.  All these people, for all these hundreds of years have all lived and died in the faith, and have all breathed that same word 'fidelis.'  Faithful.  Faithful to their faithful God, who holds fast to his promises made, and is ever faithful to us.  Be faithful to the crucified and risen Lord.  Celebrate all the saints who led you to this state, known and unknown.  And breathe that faith to the next generation, fold their hands in prayer, read the scriptures to them, and encourage them in their faith, that they may say with Peter, Andrew, James and John, Mary and Martha, Lois and Eunice, Alexamenos and everyone from that point onward who has carried the faith of Jesus Christ.

Fidelis.

To read, to know

500 years ago, something happened, and the most important things always happen with someone nailing something to something. 

Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a church ,and the reformation began.  And curiously enough, of course, Luther's nailing of the 95 theses to the door of the church were there to remind people of the fact that Jesus was nailed to the cross for their sins. And I say remind, but that's sort of inaccurate.  It was there to tell them.

For the people of the time of Luther, they had the Bible, the language of the church, the means through which Christ had promised to be seen and known, just out of reach.  They went to church, they heard the hymns, the readings, the liturgy, and the preaching, but it was just out of reach for them, for it was all in another language.  They couldn't quite get to it.  And so they would go week in and week out, and in doing so, would find that they didn't know any more about the church, about Jesus, than before they went it.  But this was the way of things, and if you wanted to know more about the faith, well you'd just have to go ahead and ask your local priest, and he'd tell you all about it.

But people are people, and they do what they do, which is that they won't leave well enough alone.  They will add to things nonstop until the thing that they are adding to is sort of beyond ruined.  We don’t tend to leave well enough alone, and usually, even our best of intentions end up being somewhat disastrous, which is funny given how well intentioned we are.  And all we want things to do is to make sense, right? We just want things to make sense, to be current, to be, as it is called ‘good news for modern man.’  But there’s a wonderfully inherent problem with that, which is that modern man, he doesn’t stay modern.  He moves on.  And what seemed cutting edge five hundred years ago seems hopelessly quaint now.

The point I was trying to make on Reformation Sunday was that in older houses, where the toilet is blue, where the sink is pink, where the oven is harvest gold and the fridge is avocado, all those things that seem awfully old and dated, those were the neatest thing in the world when they came out.  Back then, you couldn’t get more modern, more up to date than these pastel fixtures, which, when the trend has passed, look very dated, because they look very much of their time.  They don’t look neat, they don’t look cool, they look locked in time.  And the church in Luther’s time had ended up in that very same sort of fix. They had updated things to keep pace with a certain type of world, then had stopped there.  Forever.

Latin used to make sense for the church.  Latin used to be the language of the world, the language that you could be sure that almost everyone had at least a passing familiarity with.  Most people could at minimum struggle by with it, getting enough out of it to attend worship, to read the scriptures in what is known as the vulgar tongue.  The vulgar tongue, which gives us the vulgate.  Biblia Sacra Vulgata, or the common Holy Bible.  It was the common nature of it that should have made it more useful, but if you imprison it in time, if you lock it down, then all of a sudden, when times change, when people no longer speak, read or write in Latin, the entire thing gets a little dulled down.

But wedded to the concept as they were, this decision to keep the scriptures locked into Latin then had another side effect, which meant that only the clergy really got to read the scriptures, and only the clergy got to interpret doctrine.  And all their doctrines that were counter-scriptural, well, the common people, the vulgar people, they would never know.  And all the decisions that seemed good on paper, yet were miles and miles away form the content of the actual paper, all those things were made to overshadow the truth of what the scriptures actually contained.

That’s why the words that we read on reformation Sunday are so important. When Jesus speaks to the Jews who had believed in him, he tells them ‘if you continue (abide) in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’  To continue, to abide in the word of Christ means that you are going to have to live in it, and it is going to be just like living in the house you’re living in right now. For what do you do in your house? You are on a constant diet of repair, of replacement, of effort with your home in order that you might make it into what you want it to be.  For you know, and I know, that if you are going to live in that home, if it is going to be a house that you are going to want to call a home, you are never done with it.  Far far from it. If you’re going to live in a space, you’re going to have to work on it basically forever, to keep it moving and to keep it going.  And usually, what you are going to end up doing is everything you can to make it more like it was intended to be.  And that usually means peeling things away.

Think of it this way. You know what it is like to move into a home and pull back the linoleum to find hardwood, right? Or to remove the shag to find tile? You know what it is like to remove wallpaper, sheets and sheets of it, to uncover the plaster and paint underneath it? This is what we are talking about here, and it is constant work.  For the reformation didn’t end 500 years ago you know.  The reformation didn’t wrap up back then, and then we’ve been living in the afterglow ever since.  No no, the reformation started then, and it continues to this day.  For this world that we are in still needs to live in that word, still needs to abide in that word, still needs to know the truth, and to be set free from our sins that we commit all the time.  The truth is the number one thing that we forget, of course, and it’s what we need to be reminded of all the time, constantly.  We need to be informed, instructed, and told what we need to keep on going back to. We need to live in that word, and we need to be reminded of it all the time.

In the time of Luther, they couldn’t read the Bible, because they didn’t speak that language.  But in our day, we don’t read it because we don’t feel like it.  We have lots to do, you know, even though we’ve never head more free time in human history than we do right now.  Of all the things we need to take seriously about the reformation, this is a big one. The word of God, the work of Christ, it only really works if we are immersed in it, if we know the truth, and the in knowing the truth, are set free.  The truth about what? About our sin, about the ways in which we have fallen short and continue to fall short.  About how we aren’t anywhere near as good as we want and expect other people to be.  About how we are people who are a long way away from getting things right.  And also the truth about Jesus Christ, the one who took on flesh, and because we refused to dwell in the word of God, he dwelt with us.  He dwelt with us in this world of sin, lived amongst us, and was nailed to the cross, and died to take sins away.  This is not news to you but you absolutely need to be reminded of it. In the same way as Luther didn’t come to make a new church, but to reform the one that was, so too does your faith need to be reformed, daily and weekly. 

How does that happen? You live in God’s word, you abide in it, you continue in it. Then you will know the truth.  About the world, about sin, about life and death. About Christ and his work.

And the truth will set you free.