Please wait

I bet you think you're easy to shop for.

I bet you think that you're the easiest person to shop for, and your friends and relatives who don't feel that same way are wrong, and probably fools.

I bet you're also the person who sees things that you would like to have everywhere you go.  I bet that you go into stores, shops, marketplaces, boutiques, and see things you would like everywhere.  That's why you think you're easy to shop for, because you see so much that you like.

And I bet that while you are out shopping, and you see those trinkets and baubles that you think are precious, that you pop them into your cart and buy them as a little treat for yourself, instead of telling someone about it right ahead of Christmas.

You should stop doing that.  You should stop shopping, or at least, stop shopping for yourself right before Christmas.  For Christmas is a time of year in which you will be surrounded by people who will want, or who will feel obligated to buy something for you, and even though you think that you're an easy person to shop for, if you're buying everything for yourself, nobody can possibly get to something that you want before you do.  And that might mean that you may have to exercise that most complicated of all things, you may have to exercise patience.  And we're not good at that.

If you're not great at being patient, well, take a number, because the people of the Scriptures weren't exactly hyper-patient either.  Think for a second about Abraham, who was promised by God that he would have children, descendants as numerous as grains of sand on the beach, or as stars in the sky.  Now, Abraham was already getting on a bit in years, and understood that there is a ticking clock when it comes to fertility.  So although God had promised him that he would be the father of a multitude, Abraham wasn't seeing a lot of movement on that, so he figured that since he knew where babies came from, he would just cut God out of the equation altogether.  Which he did.

This is not a rare story. God makes a promise to people, and people get tired of waiting for the promise to be fulfilled, so they either abandon the promise altogether, or decide that they can happily find another way around it.  When God promises a Messiah, a savior, the people get sick of waiting and appoint a few to be the messiah while they wait.  Again, this isn't new at all.  And as I say, you're in good company.

But part of being a Christian, especially being a Christian in Advent, is that you have to get used to waiting.  Things are not going to happen on your schedule. In fact, it won't even be close.  And of course, it's easy to want things on your schedule, why wouldn't you? It's easy to want things on your schedule, especially because the things promised in the scriptures are good things that you ostensibly want.  If you have been paying attention through this Advent season, you will have noticed that we have been looking at Isaiah a lot in the Old Testament readings.  And all the readings have been looking forward to perfection.  They have been looking forward to a return to the garden, a return to paradise.  Whether it be the swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, lions eating straw like oxen, or streams of water flowing in the desert, all these things are looking forward to fulfillment of the end of all things, the new heaven and the new earth.

And that doesn't work until Jesus returns.  You may kick and scream and say that it should, but it doesn't.  Only once Christ returns will everything be set right.  Until that moment, in this world you will have trouble.  We are dealing with flawed ingredients, you know.  We are dealing with broken material, and the overall desire for justice, for perfection, for all of that will not happen while the ingredients are still of dubious quality.  Human beings are that ingredient, and from the moment they turned away from God, committed sins, and fallen from grace, they would be unable to have any kind of paradise, given that we, as humans, are fundamentally flawed.  There can be no perfection as long as we are a part of it.

I talk about the garden, because it was in the garden, while Eve was on her way out, that God gave a promise of a savior for the first time.  Right after the first sin, right after a need for a savior first appeared, the savior was promised.  But it would take a long time for that savior to arrive.  Even though Eve thought from the word go that a savior had arrived, it would take a long time to happen.  Generations of people would live and die in the promise, never seeing the presence of the Lord on earth.

Now, here's how to deal with the fact that there are tons of things you want, and you kind of want to buy them now.  Take a moment to think about the gifts you got last year for Christmas.  Think about all those things that you were given, and think about the fact that there are probably still all sorts of things that you haven't used yet.  There are still boxes you haven't opened, there are still books that you haven't cracked, all these things that you were super excited to get at the time, but haven't gotten around to since.  If you're starting longingly at what you want, maybe at this time it's the occasion to think about what you already have.

Take a moment to open that book that you were happy to get last year.  Take a moment to open that bottle of scotch, to play that game, to use that paint or that wool.  Take a moment to enjoy all those things, and to delight in them instead of only thinking about what you don't have yet.  And this works in the church as well, you know.

I know, you're looking forward to a time in which everything is made right, where those who died are alive again to die no more.  You're looking forward to a time in which all scarcity is gone, where all issues are resolved, and where tears are wiped away from every eye.  We all want that.  But you need to wait.  We're broken material, and you can't make perfect out of the imperfect.  For there to be perfection, we would have to be perfect. Which we will be, but not yet.  For now, you have to wait.  But while you wait, you get to think about, and take joy, in what you already have.  House and home, clothing and shoes, spouse and children, food and drink, all these things that you can enjoy this side of heaven . All these things that are gifts of God for you, that you can enjoy in the here and now.   Forgiveness, life, salvation, sanctity, salvation, a good conscience through forgiveness of sins, these things are all things to be enjoyed now, and will make waiting much easier for everyone.  For then you're not thinking only about what you want.  You're thinking about what you have.

Chaff

Let's discuss the nature of wheat and chaff.

This should be incredibly straightforward to everyone, but we are so divorced from the natural world from which we draw all our nutrients, that we have largely forgotten where our food truly originates.  Allow me to bring it to mind.  There was, or possibly is, a show that was on TV a while ago called 'alone.'  And that show has contestants living by themselves in hostile environments until all but one quits.  While you watch the show, you become painfully aware of something, which is that even when someone is doing their absolute level best to forage for food really efficiently, they will find that they can't eat the vast majority of what they see.

This woman is foraging a lot of food, and appears to be doing it very efficiently, getting the absolute maximum out of the world into which she has been placed.  But there's something that should drive you up the wall watching that, which is that she is surrounded by greenery, surrounded by plant life that is everywhere, but there is very very little of it that she can actually consume.  Some berries, fireweed root, mushrooms, that sort of thing, but all the trees, the grass, the moss, all of that is functionally worthless to her, because her body absolutely can't process it into nutrients. So for the berries that she picks, the berry itself is only one tiny part of the plant.  The rest of the plant is no use to her.

I bring this up, because I would like you to look at this image of wheat.

That's wheat, as you would know if you were from God's country of Saskatchewan, the breadbasket of Canada, etc. And wheat, or some kind of grain, is vital for civilization to exist, moving us beyond being hunter / gatherers and moving us in to being stable, and civilized.  Having grain and grain stored between harvests, allows you to specialize labor, not think beyond just your next meal, and to let you have a society in which people can have a bigger picture, and a better perspective.  It was grain storage that the Israelites were compelled to build in order that the Egyptians could have Pharaohs, armies, magicians, and so that every single role was not just one of subsistence gathering.

But look at that wheat, and you will realize something, which is that although things like grains are absolutely required, mandatory, and civilization is real hard to get without it, the majority of the biomass of that wheat is not useful for you as a human being.  The wheat grain is all that really matters for you, the rest of the plant is not useful at all.  You can't harvest your wheat by bringing an entire plant into the elevator, they'll throw you out for doing it.  All that the elevator wants, all that the market wants, is the grain, the part that you eat.  The rest is what we will call chaff.  And most of the plant, for human beings, is chaff.

I bring all this up because of John the Baptist standing on the banks of the Jordan river, calling out to everyone, compelling them to be baptized.  And as he does so, he brings stark warnings to the people who come to see him to be baptized.  The  axe is at the root of the tree, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hands, and he will gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

This is all stuff you know, of course, being wise and educated Christians.  But hold on a minute, because I would like to point out that if you are winnowing your grain, then you are separating out the majority, which is chaff, from the minority, which is the wheat grain itself.  Most of the wheat plant is straw, it is chaff, it is not usable for human consumption.  The majority of this plant, and almost every plant, is not usable for us.  If you have rhubarb, you're only eating the stalks.  If you have raspberries, you're only eating the fruit.  If you have potatoes, you're only eating the tubers.  There are very few plants that you are going to eat all of.

I'm bringing all this up because when it comes time to assess the life of the Christian, I'm not asking you to think too much about the sheep from the goats here.  Instead, I'm talking about separating people from their sins.  This is tougher than we think it is, primarily because we are living under the impression that people want their sins to be forgiven.  We tend to think about people as understanding that they are sinful, and that they would very much like those sins to be taken away, but the opposite is, in fact, true.  People in general have no desire for their sins to be forgiven, and in fact would very much like to hold onto them and cling to them forever.  Part of this is born out of an idea that you are good, and what you do is good per se, but another part of it is an inability to perceive that what you do is not who you are.  Those are different things.  An awful lot of people, perhaps including yourself, may think of their sins as being unforgivable, not because Christ is incapable of forgiving sins, but rather because they do not approach their sins as something to be forgiven.  They will approach their sins as something that make them who they are.  And if that is the case, people can and will ask the big question, which is that if all these things are sins, if what I have done is sinful, and so much of what I have done has been sinful, then if I were to be forgiven, what would be left?

That's a question that people ask themselves as they grow up, as they grow older, and as they start to take stock of their lives in general.  As a child, you are disciplined by society, by your parents, by your school, and you are expected to repent, and to repent pretty sharpish.  But when you grow, you end up thinking about yourself as being generally pretty good, and as your decisions as forming you into who you are.  And thinking about your decisions that have made you who you are, that have formed and fashioned you into the person that you are today, thinking about those decisions as things you should repent of is a hurtful thing . For if you repent of those, cast them off, repent and are forgiven of them, then what will be left once that threshing is done, and the chaff has been burned?  

Well, the answer is you.  You're left.  You are what continues to exist after all this has been divided from you.  It may seem like there would be nothing left at all, but look at the wheat, and marvel at how little of that plant is kept vs how much is discarded.  The grain is very small.  There is a lot of chaff.

When it comes time to divide the wheat from the chaff, to separate out sin from saved, that's work that involves purging away an awful lot of what you have fooled yourself into thinking is you.  But it is not.  These sins are not you, these bad decisions are not you, and you don't have to be captive to them.  Rather, you can be forgiven, and can begin to understand who you actually are.  Not the layers that you have cased yourself beneath, not the dross surrounding the silver, not the stains on the cloth, not the chaff that is all around the wheat.  

No, you are the part that is worth saving.  Not your sins, not your misdeeds, but you.  When John the Baptist, after calling out all these things as problems to be addressed, continues by pointing out Jesus the Lord, and saying with a loud, clear voice, what the Christmas season is all about:  

'Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.'

Swords into plowshares

We have finally had the reading from Isaiah that talks about beating swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks.  And it's a nice reading.  It's a nice reading because it speaks to what everyone wants when they talk about wanting peace.

But true peace, world peace, it isn't as straightforward as you might think it is. For example, it isn't as though all the governments of the world just haven't thought of trying peace out yet, if you see what I mean.  It isn't as though humans just haven't considered the idea or the concept of peace.  Honestly, we all want peace, but we don't live in a peace universe.  We live in a war universe, governed by war rules.  Competition reigns.  There are not enough resources to go around, and there never will be.  It seems as though there will always be too little for everyone to have, and as people tend to bring up frequently, if we were all to live in the manner to which we have been accustomed in North America, we would need something like three earths to make that happen.  But we don't have three earths, we just have the one.

Given that there is only one earth, and only so much to go around for an ever increasing number of people, you can understand that this condition isn't going to get any better, I can guarantee that it's going to get worse.  If there wasn't enough to go around then, there sure won't be enough to go around now.  Look at the oft mocked stampedes for cheap goods and electronics that you find on or around Black Friday, or Cyber Monday or whatever.  These low level riots that you see are built around the fact that there are only so many doorcrashers to go around, and when they're gone, they're gone.  People will crush one another for the Nintendo Wii, or a cabbage patch doll, or a tickle me elmo, or whatever, because there are not enough of them to go around.

Given that this is for sure the case, I ask you as a question that we will all have to face one way or another, the question of why are we not beating our swords into plowshares, nor our spears into pruning hooks?  Well, honestly, the best tool that I have to talk about this is another 'mountain of the Lord' passage, which comes to us from Isaiah, talking about how the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and so on.  That passage, if you take it seriously, represents a far bigger issue than just what the lion chooses to eat at any one moment.  Do you think that lions chase gazelles just because they enjoy the exercise?  Why wouldn't they just eat the hyper abundant food source of grass that is all around them?  For that matter, your house is likely surrounded by a ton of grass all the time, why do you bother hunting, fishing, going to the grocery store, or whatever else, when you could just eat grass?  Well, it's not just the flavor of the grass, the lion can't just sit down and eat grass while getting any nutrition out of it at all.  Cattle, who stay alive by eating grass, have four stomach chambers, and are ruminants who chew the cud, which is designed entirely around grass consumption.  How many stomach chambers do you have? How many does a lion have? Do you really think that lions just haven't figured out that grass doesn't run away from them?  Or do you think that a lion eating grass would end in a dead lion because they can't digest the food?

I bring this up, because when we think about the nature of the swords into plowshares, we think about this as an ideal that we can and should strive towards, to make peace and to have people know war no more.  And that's a nice idea, but it's not as though people just haven't thought about peace yet, you know.  Everyone, including known warhawks, always say that they want peace.  Nobody says that a war would be totally fun, and we should just have one already.  At least in public, people claim to want peace.  But if everyone wanted peace the way they say they wanted peace, we'd have peace. The only problem with peace is you can't make no money off it.  We don't have peace because we are in a fallen world, a broken world, that operates on scarcity, and insufficient supply.  It is a war universe with war rules.  It's a sin universe with sin rules.

So what is this passage about then?  It's not about wasting your time, surely. What it is about, though, is about making a universe that is not based on war anymore.  It is about a world without the rules of war and the conditions of war.  It is about a world where scarcity has been abolished, where the military industrial complex has been dismantled, where all those problems have been fully and completely addressed and fixed.  And that's the return of Christ.  That's what his return looks like.

The reason it's impossible right now is because you know what would happen to a country that disarmed. It's not as though everyone would follow suit and the world would be at peace.  If Ukraine disarms, it stops being Ukraine. That is the same for literally every place on earth.  If you have the gall to stop defending yourself, or to not have a strong ally to defend you, then you will be subsumed, sooner rather than later.  Someone will take over, someone will take what you own, someone will drive you to poverty or death.  You many not think about it, but your property is preserved by guns right now.  They may not be your guns, but if someone threatens your home, your family, or anything like that, someone with a gun will show up to put an end to the problem. While we are still in a world where lions can't eat straw, they won't.  While we are still in a world where nation will fight against nation should it become undefended, swords will remain swords, and will not become plowshares.

Why do we talk about this, then? Becuase this is what the return of Christ will look like, and it's what we have to be prepared for.  We have to be ready for his return, and the accompanying beating of swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. And you have to be prepared for him to turn your sword into a plowshare, and your spear into a pruning hook.  That's the real trick now, isn't it?  The only thing stopping all of this is that we won't let it, so understandably the return of Jesus will be a horrible event in which everything is put right, and wars cease.  Given that we don't want to give everything away now, given that we don't want to share our entire lifestyles now, what makes us think that we're going to be very much into it upon the return of Jesus?  The return of Christ to make everything right and good will be a painful thing, it will be a hurtful thing indeed for the rich.  Which probably includes you.

The rich have much more to lose, because they have taken far more over time.  When we think about justice, especially end times justice, it is a matter where every hill will be brought low, and every valley raised up.  If you have taken over the course of your life, you will have lots to give.  When you ask about swords being changed into plowshares, ask yourself why you want to hold onto your swords, and why you want to keep your spears.  Then you will understand what it is that God will make right upon his return.  It will be a hard time, and a difficult time, mainly because it will involve us having everything returned to where it should have been from the beginning, and confronting that it was our sins that stopped it from being there.  That's why Advent is a penitential season, not a joyful one.  It's a time to reflect on our sins, on why ther is war on earth, why we have rules for wars, why we defend and protect our property and why we have so much more than everyone else.  When Jesus returns, and confronts you for your sins, will you let him take them away, or will you defend them as not being sins.  That is the big question about swords nd plowshares.  Do you want Jesus to make everything right? Do you want a course correction? Or are you comfy being rich, happy and full of yourself?

He is the prince of peace.  He will make peace for eternity.  The question is, for all of us, where do you align yourself with what he will do? Do you welcome him as king, or will you insist that you have nothing to forgive?