The king has landed

 I want you to think about David for a moment. Him, his hometown of Bethlehem, his rule and his family.  We know him as a man after God's own heart, yes, of course.  But we do so because we have the benefit of hindsight. 

By the time the Bible has been placed into our hands, we already know some of the best known stories about him.  Including, but not limited to, the story of David and Goliath.  You know the story so well by now, that it's kind of a trope by now.  David, the shepherd boy, manages through sling and stone to overcome the giant Goliath, and bring him to ruin and death.  But by the time we encounter that story for the first time, we already know how it ends.  There's an expression out there of a 'David and Goliath struggle.'  There are weapons of war called the Goliath, named for their destructive potential. So given that these things are in our language, are part of our lexicon, it should be no surprise that we know how the story ends.

But try to think about David, Bethlehem, the whole story as though you were hearing it for the first time.  We have the benefit of knowing that Saul is going to be a bad king already, but imagine that you were seeing it for the first time.  You would for sure give Saul the credit and admiration over David.  As everyone did.

Osama Bin Laden, back when he was alive, famously said "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will by nature like the strong horse."  And we'd be liars to assume that we would work out that David was the one to watch.  Saul was strong, mighty, handsome, and all of that.  He was bold, athletic, and a capable warrior.  In short, Saul was the strong horse that we, and Israel, instinctively would like.  But what he wasn't was faithful.  Saul did that thing that we must not do, and he believed in his own hype, and turned his back on God.  Actually, that's not quite true.  He viewed God as an accessory to what he wanted.  God was useful to him only insofar as he could get what he wanted out of the divine, believing what a great many kings at the time, as well as commoners do today - Even God in Heaven works for me.

He was wrong, of course, and was replaced in due time by David, son of Jesse.  David, out tending the sheep in the surrounding regions of Bethlehem, which is such a nowhere place that I'm sure that most people in the centres of empire didn't even know it existed.  And David was specifically chosen by God, and anointed by Samuel at his command, because he was the least of his brothers.  Not what the people of Israel would have sought after, but he ended up being the king that they needed.

How about this for a second.  How many of us can look at our current crop of rulers, and say that we're satisfied with everything they've done so far? How many of us can look at how that's going, and say that we're 100% delighted with how things are going?  Most of our time these days is spent being relatively upset at what our leaders are doing, given that they're mismanaging pandemics, are corrupt, are mean-spirited and wicked, are inept and dottering, whatever stick you choose, you can beat a politician with it.  But here's the deal, which is that these politicians who are hopeless, meandering and callow, we picked them. Given the choice in a slate of candidates, we chose the ones we've got running the show. In many ways, it says more about the electorate than it does about the elected.  It says more about us as people who elected them than it does about them.  Wouldn't it be nice if that choice was a)up to someone else, and b)they made consistently good choices?

In many ways, it's a lot like us as Canadians, looking down to our neighbors to the south.  Sure, we can't vote in American elections, but the president, and the congress of the United States sure affect how things run here in Canada.  A president who likes Canada and Canadians makes things a lot easier for us, but a president who doesn't like Canada too much, well it makes things a lot harder.  And that's tough for people who don't have any control over the situation.  And for us, we want Americans to make a good choice for us, given that we can't participate in the elections, and also we want that good choice to stay in place for as long as possible.  But they have term limits, which means that even if a president is top notch, he'll only be in there for a maximum of 8 years.

What we really want is for the president that we like, whom we didn't elect but who affects things greatly for us, to be in power for forever, and to rule and govern in a way that benefits us, the people who did nothing to put him into power.  That, in a roundabout way, is close to what we're talking about with Christ the King.  We didn't vote for him, and in many ways, if we could have, we likely would have voted for someone else.  We would have voted for something more in keeping with a strong bold zealot, a conqueror, someone who would institute a kingdom here on earth to govern justly, etc.  Christ isn't that, he isn't that at all.  He isn't what we would choose, but is exactly what we need.  And he doesn't have a term limit.  He's not limited to 8 years, he can govern eternally. 

So who could he rule over eternally?  That's where we need to think about what we mean when we say 'eternal.'  It's not just a long time, it's forever.  For longer than the earth will exist, you know.  And if that's the case, that we're not talking about a while, even a very long time, like McKenzie King.  We're talking forever.  And if he's going to be king forever, he's going to have to rule over people forever.  And folks, that's us.

Part of the good news is the eternity of his reign.  Not for a while, not even for a long while, but forever.  If that's the promise that gets made in the Old Testament, ratified in the New Testament, and guaranteed to us now, we have a great deal of comfort.  The king has wildly humble beginnings, but he has the promise of an eternal throne, and makes a promise to people that he will rule them forever.  Not as a tyrant, not as a Saul, but as the true and rightful king.

Joy

 This last Sunday, the third in Advent was the joy Sunday.  Are you all feeling joyful? 

There's a good chance that you're not. Far from joy, it's actually relatively uncommon for people to be even contented right now.  There's a good chance that you're tired, worn out, or in some other way relatively disturbed.  There's a good chance that you're not doing as well as you'd like.  There's a good chance that you, like the rest of us, are living under restrictions that you weren't planning on living under.  Your family may as well be miles away, your friends are locked away from you, and you're going to have to work very hard indeed to get anything done.  It's all hard, all difficult, and all unpleasant.  This world that we're living in right now is a world that we are stumbling through, and most of us can just barely get by.  

So where's the joy?  

Well if joy was to be synonymous with happiness, then you'd probably be out of luck.  That is, there's a very good chance indeed that your happiness is miles away. And although I do it surprisingly rarely, I'd like to run that through the lens of a reasonably popular Christmas tune.  

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Make the season bright.

From now on our troubles will be out of sight.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Make the yuletide gay,

From now on our troubles will be miles away.....

Really? Because it doesn't seem like it.  It doesn't seem like it at all. In fact, it seems for all the world like our troubles are right here, and right now.  And they're surrounding us and swarming all over us. If you've had a particularly troublesome year, it becomes more and more difficult to engage in the 'xmas season,' you know. That is, the season in which we engage in what I have been calling 'enforced merriment.' And merriment is a tricky customer, because at this time of year, we are all asked to behave as though the song lyrics above were universally true.  This turns the Christmas season, so focused as it is on merriment, into a burden on people.  They are tired, burned out, and sad.  The only thing that could make it worse would be an invalidation of their feelings of grief or weariness, and a focus on the idea that they should be having fun.

But fun and joy, happiness and joy, aren't the same things.  They may overlap, which they do, but they're not identical.  Rather, they have large, pronounced differences that speak to the nature of the holiday for you.  If the season is all about family and friends and togetherness and a big meal and that warm feeling when you have hands to clasp, you're only going to be miserable this Christmas. You'll be miserable because you've spent a long time confusing joy with happiness, then have no joy to fall back on when the happiness gets removed.  But the happiness that you were promised was, itself, the illusion.  I'll explain what I mean.

A long time ago, someone very clever made some deductions about the Christmas season. They looked at the season and saw that people were buying and selling, and that it was an immensely profitable season.  And said individuals said 'you know, things seem to be going well, but not everyone is buying and selling at this time of year.  What can we do to increase the commerce?' So they hit upon a brilliant plan - to throw open the season not just to the Christians who were celebrating anyway, but to everyone, by encouraging buying and selling, partying and revelry, to absolutely all people.  That worked fine for its purposes, but you have to play a very careful game on this one.  You can't just tell people 'you need to buy things from us because it's the end of December.'  Even with our jaded outlooks, we would resist such naked consumerism.  So, you have to couch it behind some other reasoning, some sort of emotion, which would induce your consumers to, well, consume.  So, instead of making it about the birth of Christ, which is exclusive, you make it about family and togetherness - which is not.  Even in Grinch terms, Christmas is about family and clasping hands and singing.  With the fig leaf of family and togetherness in place, you are free to ramp up the consumption on emotional grounds.

This year, though the family and togetherness just aren't there.  And if they're not there, but the consumption remains, what on earth is going to be bringing you the happiness you were seeking? As I said earlier, if you take out even the fig leaf, you're not going to like what's underneath.  

And that brings us neatly to joy.  Joy as something different than happiness.  You should know that for most of human history, they celebrated the birth of the savior in far more meager circumstances than we do today.  That is, they shuffled around with a low life expectancy, in miserable conditions, polluted and afflicted, but they still managed to rejoice.  They had very few if any gifts, and nothing was easy or pleasant. So how did they celebrate with joy?

 Joy and happiness are blessedly different things.  And Paul tells you as much when he discusses the situations of his own life.  Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians when he was free to rejoice, but also tells us to rejoice in Philippians, while he is in chains.  How can he do both? Because he knows what the source of joy is - the victory of Christ Jesus over sin, death, the devil and all the forces of scarcity and misery in this world.  Paul knows that the world is a dark and brutal place sometimes, where things can go in your favor, but they also may very well not.  And if you're only capable of experiencing joy while things are going well, then you're going to find that most of the time, there's not going to be much joy to be had.  But if you can learn the secret of being intact in plenty or in want, with a full stomach or empty, then you will be able to find joy.  Because the things of this world cannot bring joy.  They can bring happiness, even if it is only for a short time, but they cannot bring joy.  Even the people of this world, on their own, cannot bring joy.  They can bring happiness for a while, but not joy.

True joy is to be found in Christ, who brings not happiness, but joy.  He does say that in this life you will have trouble, and we believe him in that, but he promises joy.  He promises that because he lives, we will live too.  Because the grave could not hold him, it can't hold us either.  And he promises us that the ones we love who die in the faith will be with us for eternity.  That's joy, and it doesn't depend on this particular Christmas being just so.  It depends on Christ and what he has already done.

With the focus in the right place, you can have an intensely joyful Christmas, full of faith and confidence in what Christ has done already.  And that can't be taken away.  It's the same yesterday, today, and forever.  It points to a definite time and place in history where Christ stepped into our world, passed through it like a flame, died the death we deserved and rose again so that we, and those whom we love, would not have to be apart forever.  This Christmas will be painful, with not being able to see one another.  But Christ's work is to ensure that this pain is temporary.  

Joy is eternal.

All flesh is grass

 Hi reader.  Take a second here.

Are you tired?  

There's a good chance that you are.  Maybe if you're reading this in the distant future, you'll be fine, but gosh, today is a tiring day.  And they're all tiring these days.  These days in which we're hanging out and waiting, shuffling our feet.  These days where we're cut off from one another, these days where we're segmented and sliced away, these days are hard.  It's not too much to admit it.  I'm giving you permission to take a second, breathe, and to take in your exhaustion.

Now, unfortunately, unless I'm much mistaken, I don't think that your exhaustion is going to get fixed by a good night's sleep.  Were that the case, I would simply recommend that you go, take a nap, or go to bed early, and get a good night's sleep tonight, and all week.  But it's not that easy.

For we are dealing with weariness, with a general exhaustion, a tiredness that is caused not by a lack of sleep, you know, but caused by a general ennui, exhaustion, weariness which are hard to come out of.  These aren't easy times, and it's okay to admit that.  It's okay to say that you're tired, worn out, and fit to be tied. That's fine.  And what you need to know is that you're not alone in this. The scriptures are full of references about this similar sort of circumstance.  I have to tell you, you practicing Christian you, that the desire to read through the Bible from beginning to end runs aground not where you'd expect. People expect to fail on the book of Numbers, but honestly once you push through the names of the armies and so on, it's quite an exciting book!  It's got Baalam and his talking ass, it's got the serpent on a pole, and it's got a bunch of grapes so big it takes two men to carry it.  No, where people tend to run aground is when they decide to read through the psalms beginning to end.  No thanks.  

Reading through those is like reading through the hymnal and expecting it to read like a novel.  Which it doesn't, because the psalms aren't a narrative.  They don't tell a story or a history, they don't recount events, rather they're poetry.  And what poetry!  But they do get a bit repetitive, which shouldn't be too bad, given that our lives are repetitive, to be honest.  And all human experience is thus, repetitive, and our experience through this time is echoed through the Psalms, which were written by real people who were going through similar things to ourselves.  Here are some examples:

"If I do not remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth" (Psalm 137:6)

"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.  My heart is like wax, it has melted in the midst of my bowels.  My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. You have brought me to the jaws of death." (Psalm 22:14-15)

"My burdens are too heavy for me. My wounds stink are are corrupt because of my foolishness.  I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly.  I go mourning all the day long.  For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh.  I am feeble and sore broken.  I have roared by reason of the disquetness of my heart." (Psalm 38:5-8)

That's just a sampling. There are plenty more, have fun looking them up.  But the point I am trying to make is that being tired, worn out by the weight of the world, that's not a new thing.  We can echo the words of the prophet Isaiah who says 'all flesh is like grass,' and think about the grass that we can see these days.  Brown, dried up, not green and healthy and vibrant, but dried up and gone.  All flesh is like that.  And I'll tell you, your flesh is probably feeling like it these days.

For everything takes extra effort these days.  Even simple things are hard: going to the store is an ordeal of hoops to be leapt through.  Seeing friends and family almost requires a waiver, and I'm only just barely joking.  Going to church is a totally different experience, and Christmas itself is set to be the biggest grind of all time in a few short weeks.  You thought you were tired before, you're going to be really tired then.

We're not used to it, but we'd better get used to it.  Not that you should get used to this Christmas being a horrible grind, which it will be, but you should get used to the idea, the concept that wars, rumors of wars, famines, pestilences, that's the natural order of things.  And whatever peace and comfort we have, that's the aberration.  That's the uniqueness.  That's what we shouldn't expect to last for too terribly long.  I don't say this to you to get you down. I too hope for an end to the COVID experience, and I long for a time when family and friends can meet together, when hearts are brave again and arms are strong.  But I'm under no illusion that everything will be perfect forever once that happens.  Things are hard right now for a reason, you know.  They're hard, and even when things get back to easy again, that's not the natural state.

Knowing this means that you can't wait for peace as the world gives.  Jesus, in speaking to his disciples close to the end of John says to them 'My peace I give to you.  I do not give as the world gives.'  And it's a good thing too.  The world gives not only an uneasy peace, but it gives a very temporary peace.  It doesn't last, and right now, as worn as we are, we should know and understand that.  But the peace that Christ gives us is something that doesn't depend on the world and the material conditions of it.  If it did, if you were just counting on Christ to get you through this disease, this ennui, this grind, I have some bad news for you, because you're just getting ready for the next one and the one after that. The world lurches from crisis to crisis, from outbreak to outbreak.  The world lurches between problems, wars, famines, diseases, natural disasters, essentially constantly. That's what we do.  And if we're asking Christ for a return to normal, it'll be to a normal that is between these problems until they manifest themselves again. Which they certainly will.

John baptized with water for repentance.  That's a material condition for the world.  Being baptized into repentance means that you have looked not only at the material conditions of the world and found that they are wanting, but that you have looked at your own material conditions, and found the same.  You've looked at yourself and realized that you lurch from crisis to crisis as well.  The wars and rumors of wars in your own life, your own famine and heartache, your own strife with your fellow humans, these things are a micro of the macro of humanity.  Being baptized into repentance only means that you are baptized into a realization that the world is the way it is because we have made it that way.  

John points out, though, that we are not baptized into repentance only, but are baptized with the Holy Spirit.  God himself is bestowed upon us in our baptisms. And what that means is that we are not baptized into repentance alone, but into salvation.  We are baptized into forgiveness.  The peace that the world gives is a peace that is always stumbling between various crises or disasters or difficulties.  The peace that the world gives is always a brief peace between problems, and that's the peace that we have on an individual level as well.  But the peace that Christ gives, not as the world gives, is that he reached down into history and washed you clean of your sins.  The guilt and shame, the problems and divisions, the things you didn't do that you really should have, all those things have been taken away. And because your baptism is a thing that is not of the world, you can return to it over and over again, and make a powerful and bold claim that you are baptized into Christ Jesus. Baptized into a death like his, and baptized into a resurrection like his. He rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and death no longer has dominion over him..  No more scarcity, no more want, no more misery.  Just the presence of the Lord God whose peace does not stumble from crisis to crisis, but instead is peace unbound.  A forgiven peace.  A redeemed peace.

That's what lets you renew your strength, to stand up boldly and to proclaim the name of the Lord, to grow stronger even as the exhaustion sets in, because you're not dealing only with worldly things to satisfy you.  You're counting on things divine.

Hope

Welcome to Advent.  The start of the new church year.  And Advent is the time where the church changes gears dramatically, and begins to think about the coming of the messiah.

But there is a bigger question ahead than just 'is there going to be a baby born into the world?'  And that question that doesn't get asked on Christmas Eve, really, is 'why?'  That question is of dynamic importance, you know, not just for Advent, but for most of the year.  Knowing why something is happening, knowing why you do what you do, is extremely important, to have worked out why something matters, so that you may always stand ready to give a reason for the hope that dwells within you.  

And the birth of Christ is no different.  It's not enough to know that Christ was born, you should also know why.  Knowing why, knowing that he was a savior who was born for you changes everything about Christmas, you know, in the same what that your baby is very different to you from a baby.  If it's just a regular ol' baby, then you can like it, certainly, it can make you smile, you can tickle it under its little chin and admire its tiny fingernails, but when it's your baby then everything means something different.  That smile, that chin, those fingernails, they are of such fearful and dreadful importance for you that you may very well never get over it.  Holding your baby is one of those things that changes your entire outlook on life, dramatically alters how you see the world and your place in it.  Holding a regular ol' baby for a friend, or a relative or whatever, even a very new very cute baby doesn't do that. It's nice, but it's not world changing.

The readings at this time of the year really do bring to mind the reason for the birth of the baby in the manger.  The readings that we hear go out of their way to generate within you the knowledge that unto YOU a child is born, and unto YOU a son is given.  This only really works if you understand the key of the Christian faith, which is forgiveness of sins.  Whose sins? Why yours of course.

The readings that we had from Sunday were all about living in a state of readiness constantly, so we can be ready for the coming of the Lord whenever that happens.  When will that happen?  Who knows!  That's why you have to be always ready, because it will be happening whether you're ready or not.  And that's reasonably key, you know, because Christ's return will be as Lord and judge, and he is going to be a lawyer arguing on your behalf.  If you'll let him.  If not, then your sins will be arguing against you.  And that's not a situation that any of us want to be in.

Now, it is only once you understand that you have sins that you've committed that Christmas can really truly mean anything, you know.  It's only once you've moved through the thoughts from Isaiah that we had from Sunday that you can make any progress.  When Isaiah writes

Behold, you were angry, and we sinned;

in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?

We have all become like one who is unclean,

and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf,

and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

we can feel it.  His writing comes from a real place, from a man who has examined himself, from a man who has examined his people, from a man who has taken a long, hard look at the way things are, and has realized that things aren't what they want them to be. This is someone who knows that things aren't working out properly, that the greatness of God is at a heck of a contrast to the misery of humanity. And this is someone who is asking, with some urgency, if they can be saved.  Most of us have never been in that state of panic, because most of us tend to measure good by ourselves, with us as a 1:1 metric of what is good.  But Isaiah is measuring things by a different metric.  Isaiah is measuring things that he and his people have done next to the ineffable goodness of God himself. And they are weighed in the balance and found wanting.  

I hate to go back to this, but it reminds me for all the world of when Peter Hitchens observed the painting 'the last judgment,' and in doing so, was shocked perhaps for the first time in his entire life, into considering that if there were some who would be damned, that he would likely be among them.

“I gaped, my mouth actually hanging open. These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own age by time-bound fashions. On the contrary, their hair and, in an odd way, the set of their faces were entirely in the style of my own time. They were me and the people I knew. … I had a sudden strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time. My large catalogue of misdeeds replayed themselves rapidly in my head. I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned.”

That understanding is the same as that of Isaiah, rightly concluding that if there was truth and righteousness, if there was peace and goodwill, if any of those things were available, then he, and all his people, would be on the wrong side of it.  And after generations of calling for and seeking a savior, imagine the relief when he arrives.

Like Isaiah or Hitchens, we get to consider our own sinfulness, and to realize that there is a good side to things that we are on the wrong side of.  We have not been alert and awake, about our Father's business. We have been drunk, disobedient, mistrustful and wicked.  We have lived as though we were the measure of all things, and as though God did not matter at all. And the more and closer we look into this moral enterprise, the more we are weighed in that balance and found wanting.

So what does Christ do? Does he come to condemn us, or to urge us all the more into actions that we weren't taking anyway? Or does he come to tip the scales in our favor? That's what he actually comes to do, you know.  And that's why we Christians are so excited to see him, both in the manger, and when he comes in glory.  Because this is your advocate, your friend, your helper and your redeemer.  The one who breaks the chains that you have placed on yourself, who tips the scales in your favor, who rebuffs every claim the devil has on you and said that through his blood he, Christ has claimed your for his own.  Because he wanted to.  Because he was desperate to. 

So be awake.  Be watchful for his coming.  Not just that he comes, of course, but why he comes. Remember why it is that Jesus stepped into the world, and rejoice at the news of his birth.  For it heralds the moment when God and sinners will be reconciled. 

Pink

 It's wild when you see it.

When I was in school, we didn't have Pink Shirt day, now they do.  It's a day that was started in Canada, one of our gifts to the world, where students saw that a fellow student was being bullied for wearing a pink shirt, and so they decided to bring 50 pink shirts in order to show solidarity with the bullied student.  They were also making a statement: 'you'll have to bully us all.'  Well, that initial show of good faith expanded into a movement that broadened across the nation, and eventually internationally, where people would wear pink on a particular day, to stand up against bullying.  

Good initiative.

But there's one fatal flaw, which is that when you observe the school assemblies on that day, you'll see something happening - pink shirt wearing has pretty well universal adoption, and almost everyone wears one.  Even the bullies. 

And that's self defeating, isn't it? What's the point of an anti-bullying initiative in which even the bullies say that bullying is bad but do nothing to change their behavior?  Obviously, everyone is going to agree with the sentiment that bullying is bad, and shouldn't be done, but the real risk and danger is that people would be completely incapable of seeing their own activity as bullying.  They view themselves as good people, nice people, who just happen to have given someone a good natured ribbing once in a while.  They don't see themselves as bullies, you know.  Bullies are bad people.  They're nice guys.  Who isn't?

This kind of dialogue seems to be at least partially related to the Old Testament reading, where there are fat sheep and lean sheep. Fat sheep, lean sheep, and the fat sheep keep on kicking the lean sheep out of the way.  They keep on bullying them aside, thrusting at them with horn, and pushing at them with side and shoulder.  But the fat sheep don't think that they're fat sheep.  They just think that they're sheep.  And when it says in that Old Testament reading that God is going to serve them in justice, we tend to want that to happen, but it's just like the bullies putting on pink shirts.  Of course we want justice, who doesn't?  But the justice that we want likely won't work out in our favor.

That's because we are convinced that we do the right thing.  And we can do that because we tend to view our actions as good, primarily because they benefit us.  The actions that we do are good because we do them.  If something benefits us, it is good.  If it doesn't, it is bad.  By definition, pretty much.  And we can justify all kinds of bad decisions based on how something affects us.  All our actions, good or ill, we can dismiss as being things that we just had to do.  And given that bullies genuinely believe that they are against bullying, how can we possibly make any kind of moral inroads with a group of people who legitimately believe that they have nothing whatsoever to change?

Well, Jesus' division of the sheep and the goats helps with that.  A lot.  The division that Christ makes between the sheep and the goats is done not how we would expect.  We would expect him to divide the sheep on one side, the goats on the other, and to say to the sheep 'you did good things,' and to the goats 'you did bad things.'  And if he had done that, then everyone would universally believe that they are on the side with the sheep. Because modern humanity believes that they have nothing to change, and their actions were good.  People, when they are thinking about themselves as moral agents, think of themselves as people who have done good things by and large.  We took care of our families, we helped our friends, we were good to those who were good to us, and so on.  But the division that Christ makes is something that goes a bit deeper.  One the one side, the sheep, are those who served Christ without knowing, feeding him, visiting him, clothing him, tending to him, that kind of thing.  But the ones on the left, those are people not who did bad things, but who didn't do good things.

That really should convict us.  It should convict us because there's no way out, you know.  We all believe that the naked should be clothed, that the sick should be cared for, that the hungry should be fed, that kind of thing.  But those things aren't being universally done.  And Jesus doesn't let you off with the idea that this is someone else's responsibility.  It's yours.  Through and through.  When you see the needy, how you approach them is how you serve Christ.  If there is still hunger in the world, still homelessness, still misery and illness, then I guess you haven't done enough.  Which is true.

When we look forward to the end of all things, we're looking forward to a world in which every tear is wiped from every eye, where there is no more hunger nor thirst, nor illness nor death.  All those problems have been solved.  That's what we look forward to, and we all acknowledge that such a thing would be good!  We want it to happen.  Amen, come Lord Jesus!  And for that to take place, Jesus Christ had to empty himself completely, had to suffer and die, had to shed his blood for the sins of the world in order to bring about the perfection that we're looking for.  In reality, we're looking towards salvation, paradise, in a way that recognizes that these conclusions are good, and we are also recognizing that we are incapable of doing them well. What it comes down to, then, is for us to realize that it's not our job to change right and wrong, but instead to understand who it is who fulfills right and wrong himself.  

That changes the conversation fundamentally. Ordinarily we say that these things are too hard, so Christ can't have meant them.  But that falls flat when we see that these are things that Christ himself did.  Look through the Gospels, and witness the times that Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, ministered to the prisoners, and clothed the naked.  Realize that it cost him everything, far more than we are willing to do.  We want these things to be within reason. Christ is, by definition unreasonable, and will behave accordingly.  He loves you with a desperate love that cannot be restrained, where he embraces us with wild abandon, willing to give it all up for us.  Which he does.

At this time of year, we can feel our need for the savior pressing in on us.  Not just all the cruel, petty things we did, but all the chances to be good and righteous that we didn't take.  But thanks to Christ that he did all of that, emptying himself a little at a time until there was nothing left.  Exhausted, worn to nothing, giving it all for us, so that we can be spared.  It's not that he made the law easier to follow, it has always been too enormous for self-interested people to properly pursue.  But what he did do was to fulfill that law. Every jot and tittle, not one jot, not one iota would be gone from the law, but would rather be fulfilled perfectly by Christ.  And for those of us who don't and can't do enough to alleviate suffering here on earth can rejoice that Christ has set the precondition for a world in which suffering is not there.  Confess your sins, therefore, and get past the idea that you still have to change the morals of God to fit what you are able to do.  Instead, rely on the grace of God in Christ who overcomes.

Counting down

 Have you heard? Christmas is canceled this year!  

It reminds me of the moment in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves where the Sherriff of Nottingham, enraged by the antics of Robin Hood, calls for the cessation of various practices that benefit the poor.  Alms for lepers, merciful beheadings and the like.  But he ends by saying 'And call off Christmas.'  

Laughter ensues.

Laughter ensues because we know that it is outside the scope of any one man to call off Christmas.  You can't just cancel Christmas, you know.  Nobody can just reach into the calendar and pluck that day out of existence.  Goodness knows the Grinch tried to pull that stunt off in Whoville all those years ago, making sure that the presents, ornaments, roast beast and who hash were all spirited away and taken to a cliffside to be tossed over.  But as it turns out, his heart grew three sizes that day, and the only casualty was like one glass ball.  

The reason that the Grinch brought all the goods back to Whoville was because he realized that he was not able to stop Christmas from coming. The Whos still gathered in the town square and sang their who-hearts out, saying Christmas has come at last, as long as we have hands to clasp. And the Grinch thought to himself at the top of the cliff, that maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.  Maybe Christmas means a little bit more.

Fast forward to today.  Christmas season 2020.  Fast forward to a time in which people are out of work, impoverished, and incapable of getting together with friends and family. No toddies, hot or otherwise, no carols, no gifts because you're out of work, and no parties.  Essentially, it's how the COVID stole Christmas, and it's taking massive effect right now.  There was a CBC story that I read recently that talked about this, and you can go ahead and read it for yourself.  What it boils down to is that for people who are out of work, who can't afford gifts, who won't be going to parties, who can't see friends and family, Christmas will be 'just another day.'  Not putting up the tree, not singing yaboo doray in the town square, nothing like that.  Just another day.  COVID did what the Grinch and the Sherriff of Nottingham could not do: for some, it canceled Christmas.  

Now, we did this to ourselves, you know.  Over time we did something to Christmas, something that we shouldn't have done. This is the fruit of the commercial Christmas, the end result that was guaranteed to happen.  When we took Christmas and turned it into the Holiday Season, it had to become something other than it was.  Something that was generic enough for everyone to celebrate.  But if everyone was going to be able to celebrate, they're going to have to celebrate in a non-specific fashion.  Not everyone believes in Christ, you know.  So in order to have a world celebrate this festival all at the same time, you're going to have to welcome them into what our Catholic friends call the accidents, but not the substance.  What do Christians do on Christmas? Well, they go to church, of course, but they also gather together to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  They open presents, and while they are together, they have a nice big meal, because they're celebrating something very important.  The birth of the savior, Christ the Lord.  They sing songs, drink festive drinks, play games, watch seasonal films, and enjoy the season.  Well, why happens if you want to expand that beyond the base of Christians who already celebrate it?  Well, you can do that fairly easily, by keeping the accidents, but not the substance.  If you jettison the birth of the baby in the manger, the coming of the King of Kings, but you still want people to celebrate Christmas....what's left?

Well, you can't just come out and say that the true meaning of Christmas is keeping the stores in business through the annual season of buying and selling.  You have to at least get a fig leaf for that naked consumerism, lest the individual understand that he or she is being played for a sucker.  So, if you want everyone to take part in the buying and selling and partying, you're going to have to make Christmas all about something other than the birth of Christ.  It's going to have to be all about family, friends, parties and togetherness.  It's all about the songs, the movies, the big meals and the togetherness.  

And that can be canceled.  

So these stories about Christmas being canceled or ruined or whatever, these stories are all about how those accidents are impossible now.  You can't have the accidents, and the substance, which can't be canceled, was removed, which turns Christmas into a grind that you can't deal with.  It will be an absolute grind to suffer through the simulation of Christmas this year, if all you're doing is having family meetings over zoom, singing Christmas carols to yourself, or decorating for nobody.  If you've been conditioned over dozens of years to believe that the true meaning of Christmas is all those things, and you can't have them, then yes, Christmas will be canceled, at least for you.  

But the reading from Zephaniah, well, that should cause at least some kind of adjustment for us.  Zephaniah which tells you that there is a massive problem with our complacency, with our buying and selling and fraud. Zephaniah that tells us that the great and terrible day of the Lord is coming, the reckoning which will destroy and enervate.  The day of the Lord that will demolish and despoil.  That day of the Lord is on its way, and will be here at some point, and should it be so, we will be weighed in the balance and found wanting.  That troubles us, and brings us at least some slight fear.  The fear of the Lord is something that has stuck with us even in our advancement, as we touch the stars and split the atom, there is still the fear of God that lingers with us.  The possibility that we might be judged is something that we put out of our minds, distract away, but in reality, it is always there, right at the back of it all, and it never really goes away. When someone suggests it, we get upset, kick back against it, and push hard.  But it never really goes away.  If we sit down and read the writing on the wall, it will be the same as the writing in Zephaniah, that we are weighed in the balance, and found wanting.  None of us want it, but it's there, large as life.  So what to do with it?  

The words in Zephaniah that talk about judgment, about a great resettling of debts, and about the wicked being called to tasks, those words can and should trouble us, and as the end of the church year draws close, we are being impelled by this time of year to look more towards Christmas than anyone else.  Not to the part that can, and perhaps has been canceled, you understand, but towards the part of Christmas that can't be canceled because it has already happened.  That's the real deal, right there. The trouble that stirs us up, especially at this time of the year, the trouble that bothers and plagues us, it does so for a reason. We can fool others that we are perfectly moral agents, but we can fool neither God nor ourselves.  And when we read through the writings of the prophets, that there will be a great leveling, we are troubled and afraid.  

So this year, then, now that everything else is on hold, canceled, or shut down, you can look at things a little bit differently.  You can say that for Christmas, only once we've lost everything that it was, is it free to mean something.  In some ways, there is a great blessing here. The fear and trepidation that we're all experiencing - threat of a virus, of civil unrest on one side, and a gnawing existential dread of our sins and damnation on the other, for once, there's no distraction clogging things up. This Christmas, now that the Grinch has stolen everything, there's nothing between you and the manger where the savior of the world is. The one who calms your fears and dries your tears, that savior.  And he is right there, in the form of a tiny child, born into this world just for you.  All the parties, the business that we all swear we're not going to do this year, we're not doing it.  The presents are going to be sent, the obligations are lower, the meal is smaller.  So you have time.  

Once all the accidents have been stripped away, all you're left with is the substance.  The savior. The one who has come to save you.  Rejoice in his presence this Christmas, maybe like you never have before.

Preparation

These days, you have to bring more with you than you did before.

I'm old enough to remember when you left the house with keys and a wallet.  That was it. You could bring more of course, cash, maybe a cheque so you could pay for things, but keys and a wallet were expected.  From 2000 until about 8 months ago, it was standard procedure to leave the house with your cell phone as well as your wallet and keys.  But these days, a new challenger has appeared, and that is a mask.  With more and more cities and communities moving to a mandatory mask policy, in order that everyone be kept safe, you have to leave the house with phone, wallet, keys, mask, that kind of thing.  And the reason that you leave the house with those things, is that they anticipate the four circumstances that you are likely to encounter - You may have to buy something while you are out, you will have to operate your car / let yourself back into your house, you will want to communicate with someone while you are out, and if you're going indoors basically anywhere, you'll need your mask.  You bring these things around with you to cover the likely eventualities, even if you're not sure you'll need them.  In reality, you may well need them or you may not, but you won't know until the opportunity presents itself.

Now, of course, if you could rewind time, you'd know exactly what equipment you'd need for the day, but at the time, stepping into a future as yet unknown, you don't have that kind of luxury.  And that's just for a standard day. That's not taking into account all the other possibilities that may or may not exist at any given moment.  If you could have known, you would have anticipated them.  If you would have known you'd need a screwdriver, or a #2 pencil, or a pocketknife, you would have brought them along, but without knowing exactly what you would need to cover an eventuality, you have to trust that you're as prepared as possible for what is most likely to occur.

But imagine, if you will, something being not a possibility, but a certainty.  If you lock your door on the way out, you're going to have to unlock it on the way back in.  That's not a maybe, that's a given.  Okay, good.  So when you're working out the importance of certain items, you have to work in that order, I suppose.  And we, as people who are living in these last days, are people who are thinking about encountering Jesus not as an if, but as a when.

That one's a certainty, and at this time of the year, we think more and more about it. The reality that we will, certainly, meet our God.  Either when we go and see Him, or when He comes to see us.  One of the two of those things will happen, for certain, and so we should be prepared for it.  The problem is that for most of the time, we get to put this sort of thing out of our heads, and not think too terribly much about it.  We can be distracted by a hundred thousand tiny things, Netflix, grilling, tobogganing, and songs by the campfire.  But meeting your Lord isn't a possibility, it's a certainty.

Every once in a while, we are rudely reminded of the fact that we will encounter God someday.  Right now, that reminder is a little spiky fella called COVID-19.  The virus that is making the rounds gave us all time to think, and to think about our own mortality.  You leave the house, you risk death at any moment.  Candy chutes, tongs and masks for Hallowe'en, zoom meetings for Thanksgiving and Christmas, to stay safe, you have to stay apart, but until very recently indeed we gave very little thought to staying safe.  After all, death is something that happens to old people, and old people are determined by being people ten years older than yourself.  

But this is the season, in the church year, of the apocalypse.  And we're thinking about that now.  Political upheaval, a circulating virus, absence from friends and family, hunkering down and being scared, all these things that we are doing now, and it feels apocalyptic now, doesn't it? If someone were to tell you that this is the end of days, you probably wouldn't even be that surprised.  Every time Jesus talks about wars, rumors of wars, famine, persecution, and then says that these things are all just the beginnings of the birth pains, we should take seriously the idea that there will be at some point an end to all of this.  It may not be this year, or in a thousand years, but it will be eventually.

So your job, not just as a Christian, but as a human being in the world, is to live as though the world could end tomorrow, and you would be ready for it.  Does that mean that you rob a bank, and hire prostitutes because you want to have those experiences?  Probably not, of course.  But what it does mean is that you don't want to leave anything important left unsaid, and that you don't want to leave anyone not knowing how you feel, and how much they mean to you.  So go and do that, of course.  Call your mom, your dad, your dear grandmama, and let them know that they're important to you and that they matter.  But it's not just that you're going to leave this world behind one day, everyone knows that, even the non-religious.  Rather, it's that you're going to meet God.  And do you want to do so standing confidently in your own righteousness?  Or do you want to do so standing in his righteousness instead?

What does the story of the scriptures come down to?  Frequently, people say it comes down to John 3:16 "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."  How does that happen?  Christ takes your sins and nails them to the cross.  Your sins are forgiven, and you are embraced by God with the righteousness of Christ.  And that's a one-tool job.  If you knew for sure you were going to open a bottle of wine, you'd bring a corkscrew.  If you knew you were going to have to cut a tree down, you'd bring a saw. If you knew for sure you were going to pull out an ingrown hair, you'd bring real metal tweezers.  A swiss army knife is used because you don't know which eventuality is going to come up, so you're bringing some things that might be useful, but none of them are as useful as the one tool designed for the job at hand.  An actual saw is more useful than the three inch one that comes in your swiss army knife. A real pair of scissors is better than the tiny set that comes in your knife.  It'll do in a pinch, but you're better off to have the right tool for the job.  If you knew for sure that you were going to encounter the risen Lord,  not as a maybe, but as a certainty, then what would you do to prepare?  Confess your sins.  Read your Bible. Talk to God as often as possible.  Have your faith strengthened through the sacrament of the altar.  Then you're ready.  

The foolish virgins didn't bring any oil with them. They waited and waited, and their lamps eventually went out.  But they knew that the bridegroom was going to be there, and he was.  But when he arrived, they weren't ready. You need to be ready.  Whether you go to meet God, or he comes to meet you, you have to be ready in either circumstance.  This is not a maybe situation, this is a guarantee.  Instead of worrying about which eventuality might arise, think about the one that for sure will happen, equip yourself for that one, and then you can properly focus on the rest.

The forest for the trees

 There's a fun expression out there that says that you can't see the forest for the trees.  The big gag being, of course, that the forest is made of trees.  That is, you can't have a forest without trees, so if you see a large number of trees all together, there's a good chance that you're looking at a forest without intending to.

But what the expression means is that you're missing the big picture.  That is, you're looking at  something and missing the big picture for the details.  And that's easy to do, to be sure, to obsess over the details, the small picture, and miss the big picture of what is going on, and what to do.  But in the reading that we had on All Saints' Day, it ends up being the opposite.  That is, we miss the details because we only see the big picture.

We are people who are, right now, every day, looking at a big picture, and missing the details.  In my days now, what tends to happen is that I look at the numbers of cases, the numbers of deaths, and the number is so big that it just sort of washes over me. The details are completely lost to me as I watch the numbers tick up day by day, and see how much the line goes up by.  Say what you will about Joe Biden, but what he tried to do in his debate with Donald Trump was to humanize the Covid 19 crisis.  He spent some time talking about empty kitchen chairs, jobs left open because those who had been working at them had expired, and empty beds because the people who slept in them have now died.  This was a great humanizing moment, because we are tempted to miss the details in terms of the big picture.  That red number on worldometers, the number representing deaths, it just sort of goes up over time, and it's easy to forget that that number is made up of individual people who lived, felt dawn, saw sunset's glow.  Loved and were loved, and now lie dead.

We're coming up on Remembrance day, and that's the other humanizing day for the dear dead.  We remember the people who gave their lives for King and Country, but also the individuals who served their country whom we know.  They may have died overseas, they may have come home. They may have returned to normal life, and they may have been so traumatized that it stayed with them for life.  Humanizing them and making their service and sacrifice real means that we are less likely to forget them.  It's easy to forget a number, but it's harder to forget a person who matters.

When you're thinking of the great crowd of witnesses that nobody can number, it's easy to miss the trees for the forest.  It's easy to see them as just a great crowd, but Jesus didn't die for a crowd, you know.  He didn't shed his blood that a country, or a tribe, or a people could be saved, but he shed his blood for individual people.  Babies who are held and baptized in the sweet waters of baptism.  Children who come to Sunday School, and confirmation.  Adults who give themselves to one another in marriage, who share life and time with their friends and their relatives, people who live lives of quiet obedience to God and his covenants, who live and die and are remembered certainly not by history, but they're remembered by us.  They matter to us.  

And they matter to God.

The entire story of the scriptures is God making a promise to Abraham, saying to him that his descendants will be more numerous than the stars of the sky and the sand on the beach, and then also finding, seeking and saving the lost.  Lines talking about how he has engraved us on the palms of his hands, about how he knew us before he formed us in the womb and set us apart.  Jesus talks about how he as come to find, seek and save the lost, about how he leaves the 99 to go and find the one.  It's a big deal, and it seems obsessed with individuals.  Because God is obsessed with individuals.  He desires all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.  All people.  All individuals.  He stands at each individual door and knocks.  

That's the good news for you today, in a world where the bad news sort of overwhelms and washes over everything.  Where you can't keep up with the news that is so big that you can't even see it anymore.  A relentless tide of sickness, bodies, a great crowd that you can't even number anymore.  But you can think of individuals.  Of people.  You may very well be thinking of those today whom you love and have lost, and to think about them in a world that has moved on and has forgotten.  But God has not forgotten.  He remembers them still, as you do.  He loves them so much that he shed his blood for them, sanctified them, made them holy. And he came that you and they may have life together forever.

He does this not because these saints of God are well thought of or famous, but because they are not.  He shed his blood for the forgotten by the world, for the unknown by history, but for those whom are vitally important to those who were affected by them, and who love them still.  There's a movie out there called 'the incredible shrinking man.'  It's a slow burn, but it's worth it.  And that movie tells the tale of, well, a shrinking man.  The effects are reasonable, and he ends up being terrorized by small household pests, and lives in a dollhouse, and so on.  But he keeps on shrinking, for the whole movie, all the way to the end.  It gets very philosophical by the end, where he shrinks down to sub-cellular levels.  And he says something wildly profound, for those of us who are thinking of those whom we have loved and lost.  To God there is no zero.  They still exist.  There are no unimportant people to him, which is the majesty of All Saints' day.  Not that we celebrate those who are well known, thought of, and remembered, but we celebrate those whom the world has forgotten, but whom God has engraved on his palms, and for whom he shed his blood.  The individual who make up the great crowd.

Luke

In the church, we view St. Luke as an Ox.  

What do oxen do?  In the time before mechanized farming and agriculture, something was going to have to pull the plow, something was going to have to do all the hard work of hauling, pulling, and tirelessly treading out what had to be trodden.  In those days, it was oxen that did that work.  Think of Babe, the big blue ox, a creature of such size and strength that it is legendary.  The tireless workhorse companion of Paul Bunyan, the legendary woodsman of American folklore.  

Now, Paul Bunyan is uniquely American, one of those tales that was born from effort, work, and the clearing and taming of the American continent, and his story doesn't exist in other parts of the world.  Truly a new world creation.  But Paul Bunyan, though he was larger than life, could clear trees and strap hams to his feet, doing all that stuff, could not have accomplished what he accomplished without the presence of Babe.  His companion.  The one who pulls his load for him.

Babe, in many ways, is seen every bit as otherworldly in his abilities as Paul Bunyan, you know.  Babe isn't a regular ox who is bound by normal limitations.  Rather, Babe is otherworldly in appearance, as well as in attributes.  He's enormous, powerful, and blue, to indicate just how outside of the normal ox experience we're talking about.  What I do want you to remember, though, and to ruminate on as we move forward, is that Babe is crucial to the Paul Bunyan story.

In the story of the Bible, no book is about Luke.  No book, not even scenes in books are about Luke.  Even though Luke himself transcribes and writes down an awful lot of what we would deem to be absolutely vital information, he doesn't tell his own story at all. Rather, he is there to tell an intensely important story, and to pass that information down through the centuries.  He is there to let people know who this Jesus is, but unlike the other Gospel writers, he doesn't stop there.  Rather, Luke's story continues, to the time of the church.  Luke shepherds them through a difficult time in discerning who they are after the time of Christ.  Luke documents the change in the church from being a Jewish sect to being a true global religion, with adherents all over the known world.  And it is Luke who shows you the first gentile converts, and the rift and healing that they brought to the faith.  Luke's Gospel has Jesus telling his followers to take the faith to the ends of the earth beginning from Jerusalem, and in the Acts of the Apostles, also penned by Luke, we get to see what that looks like. 

Paul's missionary journeys, imprisonments, times in jail, shipwrecks, are all catalogued by Luke as well, who tells you about where Paul went, so that his letters that he writes to the churches may seem all the more sincere and real, from a real person in a real time and place.  Through Luke's words, you can hear about the effort, the risk that Paul took, you can see the changes in Paul happening over time, so that when you read Paul's letters, you can see a fully fleshed out individual, from the outside as well as from his own perspectives.  In fact, Luke's account of the work of the apostles is so crucial that it is essentially required reading for anyone who would venture into the letters of Paul. You should know who this man is and where he went in order for his letters to matter to you.

Here's a fun exercise.  If you're in the grocery store, and you have your shopping list, it is of infinite importance to you, because it tells you all the things that you need at home.  But if you're in the grocery store, and you find someone else's shopping list, it is of no value whatsoever, given that these aren't things you need at home.  Now, they may be similar, and may have some of the same things on them, but without it being connected to you in some appreciable way, it's a fun look into someone else's life.  That's all.  You see, the letters that are written to Rome, to Corinth, to Thessalonica, all these letters take on a much more human component because you and I have voyaged with Paul through his journeys.  We've seen him move from being an ardent persecutor of the church to its strongest advocate.  We've seen him leave his former life behind, and take on a new name, and a new identity.  When his letters reflect this, we nod along, because we've seen this happen. We've seen Paul do this, have come to know him through Luke, so when Paul writes of himself, we have seen it all happen, and appreciate it all the more.

But the books aren't about Luke.  Luke just makes them happen.  He takes down the information, compiles it, presents it, and sticks with Paul all the way.  Luke isn't at the center of the story, far from it.  But he is the reason that you know it the way you do.  And this is where I get back to Paul Bunyan.

In the iconography of the church, Luke is seen as the hardworking Ox. The one who pulls the load, who gets the job done.  Paul Bunyan cuts down the trees, but Babe pulls them away.  Paul is doing the work of the evangelist to the nations, difficult, dangerous work, but who is it who completes his evangelism, not just to those people at the time, but to you through the centuries?. That's Luke.  What Christ and Paul do, Luke records, transcribes, writes down and complies, so that you may not know Luke's story, but that you may know theirs.  And it worked. It worked brilliantly. 

The holy scriptures would be so much poorer without the work of Luke.  In fact, the Christian faith may very well have been completely different without him.  For all we know, without hearing of Cornelius, or of Pentecost, or of the Ethiopian eunuch, the Christian faith may have remained a Jewish sect.  But it didn't.  Christ never intended for it to be, and Luke tells you how that happened.  The work of the steadfast, unflappable, sturdy and hardworking Luke, laboring to bring us what Paul and Christ have produced.

The fruit in its season

 I bet this parable makes you quite uncomfortable.

If it helps, the initial hearers didn't seem to care for it too much either.  The reason we don't much like this parable is because it gives you the real understanding that you can play a game, and lose.  Most of the time, we like to forget that's possible.  We like to think that this is participation trophy time, and that everyone, no matter how well or how poorly they do, will come out okay in the end. Consider the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Willy Wonka says of the children who come undone in his factory that "It'll all come out in the wash," even as they are turned purple and maimed. Fine fine, so even though Charlie Bucket wins, nobody else really loses.  Nobody else really suffers the massive consequence that their behavior would suggest.

That's how we like to think about things. It'll all come out in the wash.  There will be more time, more moments, everyone will get a shot to be right with God in the end.  But Jesus, when he speaks to his audience in the reading from the Gospel, is making it clear that the vineyard will be given to other tenants who aren't quite as willing to kill the landlord's son.

So maybe it doesn't all come out in the wash. Maybe CS Lewis is right when he says that if you're playing a game, you have to be able to lose.  That's real stuff that happens, to be sure.  When it comes time for the good people of the time of Christ to pick a side, they define themselves by rejection of Christ and his word.  I want you to think about the specific time that these readings take place - Jesus has just cleared out the Temple, has just set up court there, and is teaching and preaching from there, and when he does, the people listening to him get angrier and angrier the more he talks.  They do so because Jesus is telling them, parable after parable, that they've chosen the wrong path forward.  This is easy to do, of course. Though the Bible is quite clear, we like to behave and act as though it's supremely complicated - that is, how could we possibly understand the subtle nuance of the words '[the lord of the vineyard] will bring those wretches to a wretched end and will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.'  How could we possibly work out the subtlety of the son being sent to the tenants, the tenants killing the son, and then the vineyard being taken away from them.  If you want further clarity of this, the Bible straight up tells you in black and white what's up "When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them.  They looked for a way to arrest him, but were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet."

The Pharisees and the chief priests get this, why don't we?  Why are you carrying water for the Pharisees so hard, to try and get them to not be held to account by these very simple and straightforward words.  And why are you doing the thing you're not supposed to do, which is after Jesus says what's going on, to step to him and say, in the words of Peter "Never, Lord."  Who are you to say that?

Now what the Pharisees didn't get is that the Parable isn't a guarantee of the future.  Think about Scrooge's conundrum where he faced his grave, saying to the ghost of Christmas future 'are these the signs of things that will be or can be?'  For the Pharisees, they could ask that same question. This parable, is this a parable of what must be, or what will be if things do not change? And the answer is that these things are not set in stone.  They're not a guarantee of what must be in perpetuity.  The people who are having the vineyard wrenched away from them don't have to.  This isn't a predestined racial thing, where the citizens of Israel are being passed over for the Gentiles.  This is something else entirely.  How do I know?

Because of Paul.

Paul walks this through in his own body.  Paul lives this out in his flesh.  He talks about himself as being a Hebrew of Hebrews: Circumcised on the 8th day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a persecutor of the church, zealous as to the law, all that stuff.  But Paul, when he runs into the reality of Christ as relates to forgiveness of sins, counts all those things to be rubbish for the sake of gaining Jesus Christ as his savior.  Paul lives this in his own flesh, as someone who had been disregarding the owner of the vineyard, as someone who had been dismissing the landowner, had not been bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, all that.  Paul has to confront the Savior, Jesus, and the conflict between the two cornerstones that were the possibilities for him.  On the one hand came the cornerstone that Paul had been building up off of so far, circumcision, tribal membership, all that stuff, contrasted with the cornerstone of Christ, which was forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body and life everlasting.  For Paul before, the law was a way of attaining God, of obedience and arrival into God's vineyard.  But for Paul as a Christian, he understood that the law was not something that he could ever attain, and by thinking that he could, the law itself became twisted and misunderstood. 

Here's the best way that I've found to be able to explain it.  If you're thinking that the law is something that people should reasonably be able to keep, then these things should be observed, and done.  But if the law is too hard, then it must be changed to fit what is possible.  That's what happens with the law of the land, you know.  The law of Canada changes over time to fit new realities, generally conforming itself to the behavior of its citizens.  If people are incapable of keeping the law, then the law tends to change to fit what people are currently doing.  Instead of posting a sign saying 'keep off the grass,' the attitude becomes to put a path wherever people are currently wearing through the grass down to the dirt.  

But if you keep on changing the law to fit where you are currently at, then the law becomes baser and baser.  In effect, if the law gets ground down to the lowest common denominator, it will end up being only what we are capable of doing fully, and given how broken people are, it will end up being less about what people are able to do, and more about who people were able to be.  Think of how things get defined over time - becoming a matter less of faith, of duty and obedience, and more a matter of right birth, right opinion, right ritual.  And the problem with this is that it becomes defined by an ingroup with a very large outgroup.  

When the owner of the vineyard comes to the vineyard looking for the fruit in keeping with repentance, with the fruit of the Spirit, the people were incapable of bringing it forward because they'd redefined things so heavily to be about who they were rather than what they believed.  And when Jesus arrives to tell them to repent, they resist, fighting him all the way, believing that they have nothing to repent of, given that they've been right this whole time.

Paul believed that until he encountered Jesus, and grappled with his ideas with seriousness.  There, he found something intense. The law was far larger than he'd ever expected, and that his plan to make it smaller had led to him keeping all of God's messengers out of the vineyard.  When the son comes to the vineyard, what is he looking for? Faith, repentance, belief all those things, not for you to keep the law perfectly, he has done that for you. Then the law can stay what it is, pure and holy, and not dependent on our ability to keep it.

Paul, in working that out in his own flesh, brings forward to his hearers then as well as now, the reality of what was possible, and what the Pharisees should have realized as well.  That you can forget what was behind, and strain on towards what is ahead. All are invited, you know, and Jesus desperately wants the Pharisees to be in the kingdom.  And what it comes down is that vineyard will not belong to those who cast out the the prophets and kill the son.  It will belong to the ones who offer up the fruit in the proper season.

But those, as Paul himself found out, can be the same people.  Alleluia.

Outstanding in the field

This is the best parable.  

Correction, they're all good, but this one is particularly great because of when it takes place in our calendar.  Not in the church year calendar, that's one thing.  But it comes up in our calendar right now, which is the most timely moment for it.  Because this is the moment in which we get to think about the harvest.  And a surprising thing, that shouldn't surprise anyone, is that our lives are still partially ruled and guided by the harvest.  Now, it shouldn't be that way because we should be eating full meals in pill form.  But we're not.  Instead of that, we're still eating food that grows from the ground or grows on legs, and that's about it.  Isn't it crazy that we're still only eating plants and animals and not full meals out of lab-grown chemicals?  Nuts.  

So given that we're only eating food that we get from plants and animals, and given that we still have to bring all this stuff in from the fields, the harvest time is still crucial.  Absolutely vital.  And harvest is something that you can't just leave for later.  You can't just leave it until you get a round tuit.  When it's harvest time, it's harvest time now.  There's a sense of urgency that, thanks to our continued analog mouths, still lives in our minds.  That is, we're looking at a sense of urgency that was just as urgent back in the time of Christ as it is today.  If you leave the fruit on the vines for an extra week, they're going to be bad.  And rotten.  And gone.  

So if you know that there's a ticking clock here, and you know that we've been under this same ticking clock for the full 2000 years and more, then you can understand the urgency in the mind of the landowner and his harvest.   He goes out, looks at his harvest, sees that it has come due, and knows that he is running out of time.  So he goes to hire some day-labourers who are standing out in the agora, waiting to be picked up for work.  He goes and picks them up at Prime, the first hour, and says that he'll pay them a denarius.  And that's fair.  If you work a day, you get a denarius.  That's the wage for a worker.  Workers get a denarius, no more, no less.  That is, if they work a full day.  If you work less than a full day, you get some sestersii, which are the farthings to the penny of the denarius, or perhaps the quarters to the dollar of the denarius.  If you work a full day, though ,you get a denarius.  So they go out to work for the full day, but the landowner sees the work that has to be done is still very large, so he goes out to hire more people.  At the third hour of the day (terce), and the sixth hour of the day (sext), he hires more people.  And he promises to pay them whatever is right.  

And that keeps going until compline, until the eleventh hour of the day.  Until the day is almost over.  And the landowner still needs a bit of help to get all that work done, so he hires some 11th hour workers.  And they all work to bring in the harvest.  And they finish the job.  So they come to get paid, and those who worked for only one hour get the full denarius.  Now, if you've been working all day, then your eyes are making Roman dollar signs.  For if someone who works only an hour gets a full denarius, then what are you going to get for working all day? 12 denari? two weeks' worth of wages for a day? Sounds great!  But when the landowner gets to them, they get paid the same denarius as everyone else.  And they rightly point out that the landowner has not been fair.

Which is true. 

The landowner wasn't fair, but it's not that he was unfair to those who had been there all day.  Those were the only ones who he was fair with.  They worked all day, and they got exactly what they contracted for, unlike everyone else.  Everyone else was told that they'd get whatever was right, and as it turns out, that was far more than they could have anticipated based on how much they'd worked.  But those who had been working all day only got what they'd contracted for.  As you know by now, I do love the Alien series of films, and in the first Alien film, Parker and Brett are talking about how they'd like some more money for going down to the surface of LV-426, and Captain Dallas tells them 'you get what you contracted for, just like everyone else.'  They respond by saying 'Everyone else gets more money than us.'  And that's a clear distillation, isn't it? A clear distillation that says that they're being paid fairly, which they are, but that proportionally, everyone else does, in fact get more than they did.  But they still got what they contracted for.

And when we look at this passage, we get to thinking of ourselves as being in that passage, which of course, we do.  But we see ourselves in a very strange place.  We see ourselves in a space where we have borne the heat of the day and the work.  But the funny thing is that we are coming to this way at the end of things.  We are rejoining this battle much nearer the end than the beginning.  I know we think of ourselves as those who make meals, sew masks, knit gloves, knit scarves, pack hygiene kits, all that sort of thing.  And though I don't want to belittle those things or for you to stop doing them, you should understand that those working at the sixth, ninth, and even eleventh hour were working hard too.  But they didn't bear the heat of the day in the same way as those who came first.  The harvest was very wide and broad, and the work had to be done, which is why people had to be added, for sure. But the people who started at the beginning had to do more and more difficult work.

Think about Paul in our epistle reading from Sunday.  Paul who says that he wants to go and be with Christ, but it is good for him to remain here on earth because it is fruitful labor for him to do so. In other words, the longer he stays, the more work he will be able to do.  What work is that?  That's the third hour of the day work.  The work that says that he is there to be an ambassador for Christ, to bring Christ to the world, and to an unbelieving world at that.  And boy was the world unbelieving.  It was an incredibly hostile place to be a Christian.  Sandwiched between the Hebrews on one side, the Romans on the other, every place that the disciples went was a hostile port for them to land in.  This is why 11/12 disciples were killed violently for their evangelism.  Sawn asunder, raked with iron combs on a cross, beheaded, killed with the sword, all these things happened to the disciples who bore the heat of the day.  Most of us, all we had to do was just show up at a church that had been built for us, and not only that, but to show up in a culture that had been built up to know and prefer the Christian church.  The world that most of us were born into, even in this late hour, is a world where prayers to Christ are said publicly, where we are permitted, and sometimes even encouraged to go to church.  It's a world in which every single prime minister, and every single president has been a Christian, at least on paper.  A world where politicians can go out holding Bibles as a way of trying to curry favor with an electorate.  In other words, this is a world where a lot of hard work has been done.  And we are closer to the end of the story than to the beginning. The disciples, the apostles, Paul, Mary Magdalene, all those people and more besides were working a lot longer than we have been.  And part of the humility of us when we approach this text is to understand that the denarius that they earned from their backbreaking (sometimes literally) labor is the same as the denarius that is promised to us, too.  The question isn't so much "how unfair is it that people who come after us get to slide into the same heaven as us," but rather, "how unfair is it that we get to slide into the same paradise as Paul, Peter, James, John, Mary, Martha, and the rest of the people we know from the scriptures?"  It's unfair, but it's unfair in our favor.  

But it goes one layer deeper.  Even the Apostles and Saints didn't work from the beginning.  Even they aren't owed a denarius for their work.  They hadn't worked hard enough to earn the full wage, not even close. All of them had to be told 'follow me' by Christ, all of them had given less than 100%, all of them had to have their sins forgiven, all of them had to be redeemed.  The only one at work from the beginning was Christ.  He was at work from the creation of everything, and in his life on earth, he was the only one who had been consistently good, like actually good.  Not pretending to be good, not good sometimes, but actually at work in God's kingdom from his birth to the cross.  He actually earned paradise, and the great part of the Gospel promise is that we are given what he was owed.  Only he worked hard enough, and yet everyone who comes after, everyone whose faith is fleeting, who can't quite seem to get it all the way together, the people who will say 'Lord I believe, help my unbelief,' all those people get paid the same as Christ.  Same heaven, same paradise.

As frequently happens, we get to talk about the thief on the cross, who says to Jesus 'remember me when you come into your kingdom.' Jesus replies, 'today, you will be with me in paradise.'  That's an eleventh hour worker, and the promise is that he will be with Christ in paradise.  Not in a second, half heaven, for those who haven't worked for very long, but instead the same Heaven that Christ has received, that he earned.  That's the good news of the parable, that God is generous to us, and we receive of his generosity. He'd be well within his rights to give us a half or quarter heaven, but it's not about what we earned, nor those who came before us, nor those who come after us.  We work in the same vineyard, the same mission field as Christ, but we get paid out of generosity what he earned.  

That's good news.