Cox and Box

whew lad.

This Sunday's epistle reading was a grenade, and if I'm right, as I frequently am, it's a reading that quite a few churches likely wouldn't bother touching, if they read it at all.  What I mean by that is that there are a few things in the Bible that, even two thousand years on, still have the power to move, bother, and offend.  That stands to reason, of course, because in the big picture, you must understand that the Bible is and always has been a countercultural book, but it is more than that.  The Bible has always been a countercultural book that people desperately want to be cultural. That is, most everyone wants to be on the side of the Bible, and to permit themselves to believe that they are squarely in the camp of the right side of both the scriptures, and of history.  But here is where things fall apart, as they do.

Often, you can get yourself to thinking that you do fall in line with the scriptures.  You can believe that no matter what a rude, unforgiving, covetous old sinner you are, that you are perfectly in line with an interpretation of the Bible.  It will be vague enough for you to skate on by assuming that you're fine and you'll be fine for forever.  If the Bible says not to steal, and you're a thief, you can always redefine things to say that your theft really isn't that bad.  It's not the same as real theft, you know.  Or perhaps, if you're an adulterer, you can consult the relevant Biblical passages that will say that you're not a real adulterer, that's other people who commit real adultery.  But this passage, well, it blows the lid off of all of that by saying the words 'I command no woman to teach or hold authority over a man.'  Well, what do you do with that?

Well, you get to do the thing that modern Christians are exceedingly bad at, and you get to say conclusively that there are parts of the Bible that you don't particularly like.  (caveat: if this is a part of the Bible you do like, then stay tuned, pops, I'm sure I'll find something you don't like next week).  Now, I'm going to assume that a lot of churches talked about the parable of the dishonest manager, and did their best to explain that in the lens of justice or what have you, but with the epistle reading, you are presented with the rare opportunity to talk about things that people don't much care for, and their desire, however much they've tried to hide it for a long time, to serve two masters at the same time.

At first, serving two masters is easy enough.  The schedules line up pretty well, the demands are not too onerous, and you can fool yourself into thinking that you can manage to work both these jobs at the same time.  After all, as long as they don't conflict, two paycheques, and you can keep on being the hardest working candy in town.  But the schedules do conflict.  You can't work at both jobs forever.  Eventually one will make a demand on you, that will conflict with the other, and then you will have to choose.  Which master will you serve?  Honestly, we've been happily somnambulating through this ethical choice for a long time, figuring that we will never have to pay the piper.

This is what I will call the Cox and Box effect. In that one act comic opera, a landlord rents a single room to two different people, one who works at night, and one who works during the day.  He figured that he could rent the same space to both men forever, and he figured wrong.  The men eventually have a day off at the same time, and find one another.  "Hilarity" ensues.  I bring this up because this is what we're trying to do with our heads.  We are renting it to two forces at the same time - God and the forces of the world.  They don't often head home at the same time, but this last Sunday, they did.  They came home at the same time, occupied the same space, and we all had to deal with it.  When they're at home at the same time, you have to factor in that they both want the same space. They both want your adherence.

When Paul is writing to Timothy, he is telling you something that you something that you may not necessarily like, mainly because it conflict with what the world is currently saying.  And the question that comes to you is 'what do you do when there is this conflict?'  I'm not going to necessarily read the scripture from Sunday to you, but what I will do is to point out that if you are going to be a Christian, and you are going to be in the world, you will have to reconcile things, and will have to have them work together.  And when this pulls you in two directions, you get to think of something else that is also important.  That is, you get to think about all those other times where the scriptures were speaking against you as well; and there are lots of those times.  There are lots of times where the scriptures give you the Cox and Box, and you have to deal with the disconnect.  And the only real way of doing so is to understand that you cannot serve two masters.  You can't do both.  You can't both be of the world, and of God.  Where there is a disconnect, where there is some degree of conflict, you have to ask the big question that of these two forces that are in conflict, which one will you serve? You will have to come to a conclusion, but the one thing you cannot do is to pretend that these things can exist at the same time and space.

But you're not going to want to choose God, you know.  You're not going to want to choose God, his word or his decrees.  But Christ Jesus does something that is truly and wonderfully revolutionary.  He comes to save even the people who don't put him at the centre.  For if the Gospel only went so far as to say 'Jesus died for those who always put him first,' there would be no point.  If there was any possibility that you were going to be able to choose God all the time and every time, if you could get to the point that you were going to hear God's word and love it, and embrace it fully every time, you wouldn't need it at all.  You need Christ because you're not that person.

You're a rebel.  You need to know that that is the prime cause of sinfulness.  Rebellion.  Rebellion against God's word and his decrees.  You are in the process of rebelling against Jesus of Nazareth and what he has commanded.  You are renting his space to other forces, to other powers, thrones, dominions, and expecting them to continue to coexist forever.  They can't coexist forever, though.  They will conflict, they will push against one another, and will be immoveable and implacable.  Your job now is to embrace the feeling that you have right now about the reading from Timothy, and to understand that the Scriptures are veritably dripping with passages that should make you just as uncomfortable.  You've just gotten good at compartmentalizing, and in handwaving these issues away.  But when the scriptures talk about the rich, the wealthy, and the fat sheep, when it talks about those who use their laborers for an unfair wage, when the scriptures talk about how you should have dominion over the world and tend it, these things are spoken against you, you know.  You're just assuming that Cox and Box will only be in your space at alternating times.  But they aren't.

These passages are written against you.  The people of John the Baptist's time worked that out, you know.  They heard the word of God preached from John, and were afflicted as they should have been. They didn't respond by saying 'thank goodness Mr. Cox is out while this is being delivered to Mr. Box.'  No, in panic, they said to John 'what shall we do then?' And John tells them what to do, obviously, running through tips with the people on what would be good to do for their particular positions, but culminating with saying 'bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance.'  Repent and believe.

More often than not, even as Christians, we can forget that we have anything to repent of.  Only once in awhile does the Bible jar us with the fact that we actually do not agree with Christ.  But when it does, we would do well to remember that feeling, that desire to fight back against the scriptures.  And if you can figure this out, understand that you are a rebel against God and his word, that you don't want to do what his word suggests yet figure that you can still appeal to him for forgiveness and peace, then you can work out how the other passages can exist for you as well.  You can run into passages against the wealthy, against the adulterers, and against the cruel. And once you understand yourself as a rebel, as rebelling against the Lord your God, then you can understand what repentance is all about.  It's about putting down your weapons, about admitting that you are wrong, and are in need of salvation.  It's about understanding that you are trying to rent the space to both Cox and Box, and assuming that you can get away with it.  You can't forever.  Repent and believe in the Gospel, and remember that the king died for the rebels. Not for the ones who don't follow his word, not for the ones who can't follow his word, but for the ones who don't want to follow his word, and who openly rebel.  Repent and believe, and rejoice that the king of kings and lord of lords dies for the rebels, the master dies for the servants who refuse to serve him.

Digging a hole

If you're from Regina, I can tell a joke by way of only a punchline.  Ready?

Capital Pointe.

There you go.  That's the joke.  Not funny? Then you're not from here.  If you need an explanation, get this.  Ten years ago, permits were issued for the construction of a new hotel / residential tower that was set to be the tallest building in the province.  Now, of course, if you're downtown, you may find yourself short of real estate to build the tallest building in the province on, so you would have to knock down existing buildings, dig a foundation, that kind of thing.  So the old Plains Hotel was knocked down, the spire was saved to be put on top of Capital Pointe, and the foundation was dug.

And that's where the activity stopped.

For about five years, there has been a massive hole right on some of the most valuable real estate in the city.  Where the largest tower was supposed to be, there is a cavern now, and because the hole has been there for so long, the company that was working on building the tower has now been ordered to fill the foundation hole in.  So they've made zero progress total.  Or, I suppose, negative progress since the foundation was dug, and then filled back in, so negative progress indeed.  What a waste.

And it's that sort of thing that gives the Gospel reading that extra bit of punch, you know. As I mentioned, the massive hole where Capital Pointe is supposed to be is a massive joke, you know.  Here in Regina, everyone thinks that it's hilarious that nothing was done. A sign of this was that there was an event put together where "we gather to point at the Capital Pointe hole and say 'wow' like Owen Wilson."  This is a real thing that actually happened, you know, where hundreds of people showed up and said 'wow' and pointed at the hole where nothing had been built. And the Gospel reading speaks directly to that, you know.  In the Gospel reading from Sunday, Jesus turned to the massive crowd and said to them 'Which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying ,"this man began to build and was not able to finish."'  Yes.  And you know that this is true because when you see a project, particularly the biggest, grandest building in the entire province not being completed, you better believe that you laugh.  The level of hubris is off the chain.  You thought you could get it done, you thought you could build a monument to yourself, you thought that you complete the biggest building, and you didn't have enough in the tank to finish the job. Let's all gather and say 'wow.'

There was obviously a cost to building Capital Pointe that was not met, and we all had a giggle at the project. And Jesus talks about this in reference to the cost of being a disciple.  And this is where things get interesting, because the cost of being a disciple is very very big.  Being a Christian, a disciple of Christ, is a heavy investment, it really is.  Most of us think about being a Christian as being as complicated as choosing a place to go to on Sunday mornings, when you feel like it, sometimes, twice a year.  We think of it as a thing you do, a choice you make that is no more consequential than choosing Avengers vs Justice league, Star Wars vs Star Trek.

 We don't think about it as the matter of grave seriousness that Jesus presents it to be.  And in this passage, the cost of being a disciple isn't hidden you know, it isn't concealed.  It is there, large as life, in easy to understand words, where Jesus of Nazareth says to the great crowds who accompany him 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.'

Were you expecting those kinds of family values from Jesus? Were you expecting him to say that you have to hate everyone if you are going to be his disciple? Because that's where this goes, you know. That's what he ends up saying, that the cost of discipleship is the hatred of all that we are taught to hold true and dear.  In our lives, these things are frequently seen as the most important things we have, and here, Jesus is saying that we have to hate them. That seems at odds with the sort of message that you would expect, but in reality, it is exactly in keeping with what the Gospel is all about. I will explain.

If you take the opposite tack from where Jesus is heading, if you say about your wife and children and father and mother and even your own life that these are not things to be hated, but to be embraced, to be loved, and to be loved above all other things, then you will end up in very curious places indeed. You will end up in a world in which you will do what you are absolutely forbidden as a Christian to do, which is to end up altering the scriptures, and the meaning thereof, to fit your circumstances.  And this is what people do, and I've seen them do it, where they have very strong, Biblical views about sex outside of marriage, cohabitation, intoxication, whatever you'd like, and when they, or someone the love decides to go against those views they will change their views to fit the paradigm they've found themselves in.  And this is how Christians get lost, you know.  This is how Christians stop believing in God at all, this is where standards flip and fall apart, when you change your morality to fit your behavior, instead of changing your behavior to fit your morality.  People do it all the time precisely because they forget that this is the cost of being a disciple.  Not that Jesus is saying that he won't let you be a disciple otherwise, but that by the virtue of behaving and believing this way, you will by definition no longer be a disciple. You can see it happen too, bit by bit, and moment by moment, people rejecting the scriptures, rejecting the truth because it conflicted with themselves, their views, their activity, and their behavior.  With nothing new under the sun, people looked at their place next to God, and instead of listening to God's word as presented, began listening to the devil, who has never changed his argument, saying 'Did God really say.....'

You can be very sure that the majority of people who believe something sideways about God got there not by a deep reading of theology, the scriptures or the church fathers..  It wasn't that they read or reasoned into a space that went wherever the scriptures would take them.  More often than not, that space was found by wanting a conclusion to be the case, and finding their way there.  And this is what must be resisted.  The cost of being a disciple is to place all these things, house and home, wife and children, parents and caregives second, and second always to Christ. He must be the centre, he must increase, and we must decrease.  If that happens, then something curious also happens. That is, if we want to change morality, virtue and truth to keep our family, we will lose them anyway.  Thanks to the fallen world, your family will leave you one way or another, guaranteed.  But if you have Christ at the centre, change nothing, allow him to say what he says and believe in his promise of salvation, then you will keep it all.  If you seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, then all these things will be added to you.

It doesn't work by cheating, though.  If you cheat, if you try to 'put God first' as a way of only keeping those things that he said to hate, then you will find yourself sacrificing God's word all the way, because you'll want to do something that all humans want to do, which is to make sure that the people you know are justified.  But you'll want to do that with them being perfect, not forgiven.  Which isn't going to work.  Christ comes to forgive.  If you hold that as the highest esteem, then the rest of those things that you are told to hate, to consider second place, will be given to you as well, and given to you for eternity.

With Christ at the centre, you keep everything.  With Christ at the fringes, you lose everything.  As usual, we let scripture interpret scripture, and so we let Jesus speak for himself as he does in John 12.

"Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  If anyone serves me, he must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.  If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him."