How sweet the sound

Do you all remember the slapchop commercial? I know, I know, this is something that I probably like more than anyone else, but this is one of the many things that obviously captivated me for quite some time, and that I like to bring up frequently.  I liked that ad, and as a result, I have essentially memorized the snappy dialogue that carries the commercial forwards.  And what we find in the commercial is a fun line, kind of a throwaway, where Vince talks about onions, and says of them

They're making you cry they're making me cry.

That's how I feel about the scriptures, not just about onions.  The thing that you need to know about me as a pastor, is that a lot of the passages that you don't like about the Bible, I don't like them either! I'm not really in love with the presence of these passages in the scriptures, and I'd much rather that they weren't in the scriptures as opposed to being there.  That's how I feel about them, and it's probably no different from where you are.  The passages I like the least, obviously, are the ones that talk about me having to do anything.  I much prefer the passages that talk about how other people are the problem and they shouldn't judge me.

But guess which of those two passages there are more of in the scriptures.

This is a problem, and it's a problem that we as Christian people have to deal with, that there will be a great many passages in the Bible that we don't like.  But overall, most of us want to find the passages in there that we care for a great deal, and not focus too much on the passages that bother us, that we don't care for, that trouble us.  In brief, we want to see what we want to see, and we want God to back us up on that 100%.  But the problem with that, of course, is that that isn't the way the world actually is.   Now, I don't really want to get too matrix-y here, but unfortunately, it remains the best illustration for all of this, especially when talking about blindness. That you can, in a second, see the truth.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus healed a man who had been blind from birth, and gave him his sight.  And when this man received his sight, he went over to the Pharisees, who were displeased, incredibly displeased, with the healing.  No, not necessarily because they figured this guy should have stayed blind forever, but because of the way in which Jesus healed him.  For Jesus made mud and put it on the man's eyes.  Now, if you've ever read this passage in the scriptures, you will probably have found it to be one of the grosser passages in there, where Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, and puts it on the guy's eyes.  Gross.  But the Pharisees didn't get angry because it was gross, they got mad because Jesus made mud on the Sabbath.  And no, I'm not making that up.

You know how the third commandment says that you shall remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy?  You know how the third commandment tells you that in six days you are to do all your work, and then in the seventh day, you are to rest? Well, that begs the question as to what work actually is, and for the hebrews at the time of Christ, they had come up with 39 things that you aren't allowed to do on the Sabbath.  One of those is the kneading of dough, and as a category, that includes combining any solid and fluid ingredients to make a paste or dough.  Like making mud.  So, Jesus made mud, applied it to the man's eyes, and then he was able to see, but the man regaining his sight was a problem based on the usage of mud, the manufacture of which on the sabbath was never expressly forbidden on the Sabbath.

Stop me if I'm getting too technical, but the presence of mud to heal someone shouldn't counteract the healing, but when the Pharisees saw the miracle that had been done, that the man had his sight given to him, they were in a rush to cry foul, and to complain that things hadn't been done to their specifications, even though those specifications were things that they had created for themselves.  Meanwhile the man who had been given his sight was having a great time, and upon being questioned for the gorillionth time about his sight being given to him said this much 'why are you asking me so many questions about him? Do you want to be his disciples too?'  

Now, this leads to us talking about spiritual blindness, in addition to physical blindness.  That is, there are a great number of people out there who are spiritually blind, who are and who remain spiritually blind.  There are people out there in the real world who would prize what they think is in the scriptures over what's actually in there, and there are a lot of people who would not want to see things they way they are, given that they disagree with those things so much.

And those people aren't 'out there' somewhere.  If you want to see one, open your camera app, and switch the camera to selfie mode.

We aren't much better at this as Christians than anyone else is.  Though the Bible tells you to walk as children of light, we don't want the light to shine on our lives, and certainly not in our eyes.  We'd rather stay in the darkness to which we have grown accustomed, rather than open our eyes and see the world the way it actually is.  And that problem can be traced back entirely, 100% to us.  Think about it when it's six am, where it's dark and comfy in your room.  Now imagine if someone were to flick on the light.  Your first impulse would be to request that the light be turned off again, so that you can go back to the comfy nature of things, back to sleep, back to the darkness that doesn't hurt our eyes, doesn't shine too brightly, lets us rest, and doesn't let us accomplish anything.  You're going to get a lot more done if your eyes are open than you are if they're shut.  You're going to get much much more done if you can see the things around you than if you're content to clamp your eyes shut, and not to see the way the world actually is.  And if you tell me 'but pastor, I have no problem with anything in the scriptures.  I love all of God's word equally.'  Really?  As I said earlier, it's making you cry, it's making me cry.  I find it funny that the very next bit from the Bible after the reading from the Epistle that we had from Sunday is this one:  "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.  Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, giving himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he migth present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.  In the same way husbands should love their wives their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body."

It goes on like that.  It goes on like that for quite a while, talking about the responsibilities of wives and husbands, about the responsibilities of children and parents, of slaves and masters.  And you probably fall into one of these groups, and then Paul will tell you about your responsibilities.  And you're not going to like those responsibilities that you have been given.  But that's the real trick now, ain't it?  Clamping your eyes shut lets you stay in the darkness, but it doesn't show you how things actually are, and it doesn't help you to get anything done.

Now, I'm aware that you may not be in love with these passages, and remember, that I'm not either.  No human beings are!  You may like the parts that don't apply to you, but you suuuuure don't like the parts that apply to you.  And you don't want to do them.  And that's what you need to ponder in the season of Lent. For in Lent, you will find that you don't have to look too hard to find things to repent of.  Christ comes to open your eyes, both to the way things should be, and then to make clear to you that you don't do the things you ought to do.  But he makes clear to you that he is there to continue to apply his grace to you, child of dust, who doesn't do what you know, by now, that you ought to do.  His forgiveness, his grace applies to the parts you don't like, because those are the parts that you have no intention of keeping. And the good news of Lent is that Christ's work is to place your disobedience, your eyes clamped shut, your lack of desire to see the way the world actually is, your refusal to follow through with his simple edicts and your lack of willingness to do so, and to march all that to the cross.  You, like me, tend to think that Christ died for the things that you think other people should be doing, but it's more than that.

He died for the parts that you don't care about.  Which is why you need his grace. 

To know, in the Biblical sense

Have you ever heard the expression that knowledge is power? If you haven't before, you sure have now.

Knowledge is power, you understand, but it's a particular kind of power, one that increases the more knowledge you get.  It reminds me always of the opening screen of Mortal Kombat II, which flashed, only for a moment, the phrase "There is no knowledge that is not power." That was hilarious, coming from a game that required you to print out a list of moves off of the world wide web just to be able to play it.  It was a game steeped in mystery, and you really had to do your homework just so you could get around to playing it.  Everything in that game was a secret.

And of course, we played it gamely, and you listened to you friends who knew of a secret finishing move where Reptile pulled out your small intestine and made a macrame potholder, all those things that seemed really plausible,  but a generous proportion of them never actually existed.  But, hidden secrets everywhere, to the extent that anything worth doing was a secret.

Fast forward to today, and we are very much living in an internet connected culture.  That's how you're reading this blog right now!  I've had thoughts, composed them on a keyboard, and then you're reading them off your PC or smartphone screen.  What an age we've arrived at.  But in this age where we can look anything up at a moment's notice, where we can find any and all information in the world whenever we want, what do we actually know?

This is where Jesus comes in, and the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.  They had a moment at the well, where Jesus promised to give her living water, which she, as someone who would have been transporting water to and from her house every day, was very much in favor of.  Jesus told her that he would give her living water so that she would never be thirsty again.  This sounded great to her.  And after this came up, Jesus told her to go and get her husband.  And this is where things get interesting.

For she tells Jesus that she doesn't have a husband, and Jesus tells her that this is true, that she has had five husbands, and the man she has now isn't her husband.  Wow.  That's a lot to hear, and a lot to digest.  And Jesus, at that point, was a stranger to her, which is why things ground to a halt pretty quickly, and, after bringing people from town to meet Jesus, she spoke about him thusly:

He told me everything I had ever done.

Yes.  That's what Jesus did.  And that's part of what makes his words so spectacular to hear even now.  If you go back a little ways in the scriptures, you will find him speaking, and when people speak about him remark that he speaks differently than other teachers that they've had, and speaks as someone who has authority.  And that's a big deal.  Jesus was able to speak to this woman and tell her in no uncertain terms, nothing vague, nothing clouded, what she had done with her life. Now, that's a surprise, and something that you don't see every day.

But that's only part of it.  It reminds me of the first interaction between Jesus and Nathanael, where Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him under the tree, and Nathanael was shocked, surprised, and perplexed by that.  And Jesus says to him 'You believe because I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than that.'  True enough.  It is one thing to point out something very specific about one person.  It's quite another thing to point out something that's true about everyone.

The real intensity of the work of Jesus Christ is that what he says is true.  Not just that it's true of you, or of me, but that it can be true of both of us at the same time, and of everyone else.  Now, that's a bigger deal, isn't it?  That's a little bit amazing that Christ could speak with that kind of authority, that he could make those cases, that he could say things that manage to be universally true, and yet here we are.  This is part of what people key into when they say about him that he spoke as one who had authority. He didn't speak like anyone else, because he had authority.  And the words long written down in the scriptures still apply, they still work, because they apply to us as human beings.  They apply to the human condition.

Think for a second about the spate of diet books which exist, taking us from fat being the enemy to salt being the enemy, to sugar being the enemy, to carbs being the enemy, lather, rinse, repeat.  It seems like there is a real progression that goes on, a constant treadmill that tells us constantly what is safe to eat, what is healthy, and what isn't.  From paleo to Atkins, from vegan to Santa Clarita, diets are changing all the time, but our inner workings aren't, so why is it that we haven't figured this out? 

Well, it's the same way with our ethics, our morals, our human condition, our spiritual yearnings, and the human experience actually hasn't changed much in a few thousand years.  We just think it has.  Point being, the words of Jesus are true.  And they are true because they address fundamental needs that we have as humans, that we have always had as humans and always will have as humans.  They address needs that we have to make our relationships work, to find meaning in the things we do, to build for the future, to seek eternity, to have in each day that goes by some tangible sensation of the eternity that each day almost begs for.  We have in the words of Christ a vision of the reality that underpins everything, and he tells us as much in his own word.  Our needs, our hunger and thirst for him, is addressed, and that's why he told that Samaritan woman at the well that upon consuming the living water that he would provide, the drinker would never be thirsty again.  The woman at the well assumed that he was talking about physical thirst, but he wasn't.  He was discussing spiritual thirst, spiritual desire for fulfillment, spiritual craving for truth and stability.  And to quote Augustine - Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.

We spend a lot of time trying to satisfy ourselves with things other than Christ, trying to find meaning other than where he said it would be found, trying to work out a way to last forever though that was never a promise anywhere but through him, and all that amounts up to is going to the same well again and again, and trying to quench our thirst with it.  But Jesus makes us a promise, same then as now, that when we find him, we will never be thirsty again.  Grow strong in that truth, the he speaks to you with the truth that is your humanity, your human condition, the deep truths that apply to all of us, that meet all our deep needs.  Find Christ, and realize that his work is to make it so that you will never be thirsty again.

(over)Turning the tables

John 3:16.

 That was our Gospel reading from Sunday, and the funny thing about it was that of all the readings that we've had over the years, this is the one that didn't even need to be read. Not that it's not a good verse, they're all good.  But this verse stands alone as the one that I don't even need to read out loud.  All I have to do is say 'John 3:16, and you all instantly know where I'm going with it.  There were approximately zero people in the pews saying to themselves 'wait, John 3:16? What a great verse, I'd never heard that one before!"  Yes yes, we all know John 3:16 really well.

But our level of knowledge of John 3:16 is super interesting given the nature of the original audience.  This verse is often trotted out as 'the whole Bible in one verse,' but it wasn't spoken to a vast crowd, nor was it spoken on a mount. It didn't have a ton of witnesses, wasn't spoken from the cross, that sort of thing.  Instead, it was spoken in secrecy, at a covert meeting by night, with Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

Isn't that interesting? Isn't it fascinating that we have this situation in which the best known part of the whole Bible was spoken to an incredibly tiny audience? Now, if we consider the words of Jesus as spoken in secret, we have to ask ourselves why that was.  If Jesus has something that is so important to hear that we all know it off by heart, then why is it that we see him speaking this essential, core, vital truth in secret?

Well, think about this verse in its context.  I know, I know, I hate it when people use 'oh, you took that remark out of context' line to defend themselves, but in this case, context is, in fact, vital.  You really do need to consider the context because without it, the rest of this passage really doesn't make sense.  For Christ our Lord to meet in secret to dispense this massive wisdom.  But it does make sense when you consider what had just happened.  This is only the third chapter of John, you know, and in just three chapters, Jesus had become so dangerous that meetings had to be take place in secret.  What he had done, of course, was to flip tables, scatter money, and to cleanse the temple from what had gotten in the way between people and God . For there were extra steps, you know, there were extra steps that had crept into the temple, and these steps were placed over and above the word of God himself.  God had spoken in his word about taking no pleasure in burnt offerings, and in desiring the sacrifice of a contrite spirit instead of other sacrifices, but the people in the temple at the time decided that the content of someone's heart was less important than ensuring that sacrifices were offered in the appropriate way.  They wanted to make sure that you were only bringing the right kind of money, the right kind of sacrifices, that all these things were done well and above board, and that nobody would dare to deviate from what the proper temple protocol was.

Jesus messes up the tables at the temple.  That makes him dangerous.  Then when they ask him to justify this action, Jesus tells them to destroy 'this temple' and he will build it again in three days.  That is, according to Jesus, his body is the temple that the people who are there will destroy, and Jesus will rebuild it in three days.  All understood so far.

Your body is a temple too, you know.  Your body, as the scriptures say, is a temple of the Holy Spirit.  so the question comes to you, as the individual, what is it that is cluttering up your temple?  what is it that is working as a barrier between God and you? What is it in your heart of hearts that is blocking the word of God, the Spirit of God from getting through to you? It is this that Jesus goes out of his way to overturn, to get rid of, to dispense with, and it is this that makes him dangerous.

This is why people had to meet him at night, this is why people couldn't ask him these questions in daylight, because his words were too incendiary, and spoke out against everyone.  Everyone has something cluttering up their temple, everyone has something that is splintering themselves off from God, so the question is, what is it for you?

Go ahead and ponder it.  I'll wait.

But I don't need to wait.  I don't need to wait because you don't need to ponder.  You don't need to ponder because there's a good chance that you already know.  Here's a simple test for you to run, it takes just one minute.  Think about the Christian faith, and think about the thing about it that makes you a little uneasy.  Think about the part of the Christian faith, even just one part that you'd amend, that you'd drop, that you'd change to suit where you are right now.  Think about that.

That's your table, that's your clutter.

If you go to bing and type in 'Christianity is too' you'll find all sorts of tables, and all sorts of clutter.  Christianity is too white, too casual, too restrictive, too middle class, too busy, it goes on and on, and it shouldn't be too terribly hard for you to figure out where you slot into this experience.  Christianity is too something for you, so you've erected a table in your temple, you've replaced the Gospel with coins, offerings, deals of your own, and you've likely gone a long way towards crowding out the Gospel.  So Jesus comes to overturn the tables, he comes to strip out the division between you and God, and he comes to deliver you some truth after doing it.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

There. The most well known verse in the Bible, but it makes so much more sense in the context that it would have first appeared, at night, under the cover of darkness.  This verse means so much more because of how it is given, right after Jesus has stripped everything else away that was a barrier to the simplicity of the Gospel.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, because what you were doing wasn't working! All those things that you were doing, deals that you were making, all those extra issues that had come up, those get tossed out, overturned, smashed and driven away.  So what's left?  Christ, and his Gospel.  Christ and the cross.  The more you encounter Christ in the Gospels, the more you'll see what it is that he wants to be done with, the more you'll see what it is that he wants to put away, and those are things that either divide you from him, or that you use as a substitute for him.  All those things have to go away.  They must disappear.  They must decrease, and he must increase.

That's what it boils down to.  That's what you're going to be left with.  Every time you read through the Gospels, you engage in that radical act of Christ cleaning out your temple again.  You will find that he will smash all the things you are placing in your temple instead of him, and he will reject them utterly.  He will set himself up as the mediator and arbiter of all your life, and of your relationship with God.  Your question is not to allow him to do that, for he doesn't ask permission.  Your question is what do you do with the temple, and what do you do with him, after he has done it.

Jesus cleansed the temple, people put all the animals and the moneychangers back (presumably).  Jesus tore the temple curtain in two, and people put it back up (presumably).  Eventually, the temple was destroyed, and the people couldn't worship there ever again.  Jesus is trying to tell you something.  The sacrifices didn't count for anything.  The money didn't count for anything.  The division between God and humanity was destroyed through the work of Christ, and shortly after that, the temple was destroyed.  Smashed to pieces.  Those barriers between God and humanity are gone, thanks to the presence of Christ our Lord, the word made flesh, who took on humanity and dwelt amongst us.

If you fast forward to the very end of the Bible, you will find that the book of Revelation tells us that in the new heaven and the new earth, there will be no Temple, no space set aside for worship, no space holier than any other.  God himself will be with them, they shall be his people, and he shall be their God.  This time of lent, of penitence, of fasting, of going without, this is the time where you get to ask yourself what it is that divides you from God, and let him remove it.  Whatever it is, it must be removed from your temple, and must be replaced by this simple truth.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.