The big swap

What can you put in a barrel to make it lighter?

A hole.

Thank you for coming to my joke boat.

No, but seriously, that riddle is a fun one, because it plays on the idea that almost everything that you would put into a barrel would add to its weight.  You can put a feather, or an ant, or a ballpoint pen, but all those things, whether large or small, would add weight to the barrel.  A hole take the weight away, either by carving out some of the wood, or by letting all the contents drain out.  And then you'll have a pretty angry cooper.

Carrying heavy things is no fun.  Sure, there are some of you out there who genuinely enjoy going to the gym, and who like 'lifting,' but carrying heavy weights? Nah, not so good.  It's less fun than you think it would be. Think of carrying a suitcase through the airport, or carrying heavy bags of groceries, whatever you'd like, and think about how not fun it is to deal with that.  Carrying a load isn't fun.  And the further you have to carry it, the less fun it is to carry that load.  It can be an absolutely miserable experience, and as I said, the further you have to go, the less enjoyable it is.

So the prospect of someone exchanging a heavy burden for a light one is an attractive one.  If you're pulling a heavy weight, and someone else isn't, their offer to swap with you is immediately appealing.   And when Paul speaks about his burdens, he does so by speaking the truth about the human condition.  And when he writes, you can feel his words right through the page even through the centuries.  The good he wants to do is what he can't seem to manage, and the evil that he wants to avoid, is what he ends up doing almost exclusively.  And if we're honest, which we typically are not, we can deal with that as being a core human truth.  I've said it before, that something important for us to remember is that the Holy Scriptures are relevant year after year because they speak to the truths of our human condition through a spiritual lens.  We have computers in our pockets and food in refrigerators, but it's still human beings eating the food and using the cell phones.  When Paul talks about the nature of his sin, even though he doesn't want to do it, he's talking about something we all know, because we live it.  that is, in our lives, we do things that we know are wrong, and that we don't even want to do. Do you think that everyone who steals a wallet full of money has convinced themselves of the objective morality of doing so? Or do you think that the possibility presented itself, and they went for it? When someone cheats on their wife, do you think that they have composed a moral and ethical reason for doing so, or do you wager instead that they went for the opportunity, and then will make a case for it later?

For in reality, the wheels of our ethical engine almost always turn on the fuel of our rationalization.  That's what drives it.  When you're pondering through what it is you did, do you do it by running your decisions through an objective standard, or do you do so run those morals through your decisions, starting with the conclusion and working backwards?  Well, once you do the thing where you actually break it down vis-a-vis your objective standards, then you begin to understand the weight of what you're carrying with you.  The way that Charles Dickens described it in A Christmas Carol was to have Jacob Marley's ghost tell Ebenezer Scrooge that the links of chain Scrooge saw on him were made by Marley in life - "Link by link and yard by yard."  Scrooge had assumed that someone had placed those chains on him, but Marley assures him that had placed them on himself.  And Marley also told Scrooge that Scrooge had a bigger and longer chain that Scrooge had made for himself.

From Paul, to Scrooge to you.  It's no different, really.  The human condition that has spanned thousands of years has not changed on this fundamental point - that we are making our own chains and forging them for ourselves.  Mankind is our business, as they say, and we haven't done well at keeping up with said business.  But it's bigger than that, of course.  as the reality of good and evil tells us that there are good people, bad people, good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell.  And if that's the case, and we're not letting the rationalization be our guide, then we're going to realize that we're not the good people that we know people should be.  And this is where the Gospel takes over. When Jesus of Nazareth tells us to take his burden upon him and learn from him, we need to talk about how deep this goes.  I know, it's the classic Gospel promise, that Jesus comes to take away your sins, and you already know that.  But what have you done for me lately?

It's not just that Jesus comes to take away sins, which he does, but also that he comes to take other burdens from you as well.  For if you think about your last few months that you've survived, you'll know something. Again, if you're honest. You'll know that you are people who have lived for a while with real, actual fear in your life.  Genuine fear.  Much more so than you normally have.  You've been second guessing all your activities, wondering if what you're doing will kill you. Normally when you go to the CO-OP, you look for good deals, squeeze tomatoes, eat free samples of sausage, all that stuff, right?  Well now, you don't do that, do you?  You don't do the thing where you enjoy all those things, you have to go one way down the aisles, the staff are wearing masks, everything is wiped down, and even though all those things are there to keep you safe, they still make you afraid.  And we've been questioning every interaction, every activity, every meal, every outing.  When someone coughs around you, you're essentially terrified, and you almost leap away, no matter how many local cases there are.  We're all doing this because we're afraid, mainly of death.  And the fear of death is a healthy fear.  But part of the exchange of burdens with Jesus Christ is the exchange of our fear of death with his emergence from the tomb.  Do you think Jesus is afraid of death?  The man who walked back out of the tomb, the one who strode confidently out of the grave?  Jesus has moved through death, and was the one that death could not hold.  Part of what we exchange with him is to give him our fear of death and to carry with us the assurance of the one who has returned from the grave by his sheer force of will.

But what if it goes even deeper than that? What if it goes deep underground? What if we're talking about one of the things that is complicated about the creeds, but that we desperately need to hear now - the fact that Jesus Christ descended into Hell....and rose again.  After being killed, after being buried, after descending into Hell, Jesus rose again, and ascended.  Any of us who understand what the penalty for sin should be, who may be questioning our salvation, should take seriously that line from the creeds, as well as the evidence for it in the scriptures.  That Jesus descended into Hell, the place where you for sure don't want to be, and then was not there anymore. It's a wonderful part of our faith, that Jesus Christ died, descended into Hell, and rose again from it.  And all that burden that you would feel upon yourself from fear of death, fear of Hell, fear of descent, fear of what comes after death, all that is what you can put plainly on the shoulders of Jesus Christ, and he will take them away.  Because he's died, he's gone to hell, and it's old news for him.   Let him do that for you.  Let him die for you, let him go to Hell for you, and then the burden that you get to carry is the burden of life and resurrection.  So that's what it is for you to exchange burdens with him: To swap your burden of fear of death, of Hell, and of all your sins onto the one who died and rose again already.  What good news that is!

Priorities

Let's talk about the hierarchy of needs, shall we?

Now, this is a principle, or idea, that even if you haven't heard of, you're going to essentially agree with, at least in part.  That is, that each one of us carries with us a hierarchy of needs.  We have needs, and those have to be met in order.  The ones at the bottom have to be met first, and the ones at the top, well, less urgent, but you can only meet those once you've met those more fundamental needs.

So, here's what we mean.  It's all good to philosophize, to think and to dream, but it's impossible to do that if you're in the process of drowning.  That is, your biggest need is always going to be to breathe.  Air is the one need you have to meet in order for everything else to work, and if you're not constantly breathing, you're not going to be able to talk about higher things for too long.  Likewise, you can last for a day or two without water, but longer than that, and your theorizing about the way the world works kind of goes away, you know?  I'm not asking you to sign on to the entire pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but merely to understand that you might want to see the next Marvel movie, but you don't need to.

And that has been the story of the entire pandemic, right? the story of the pandemic has told us that we had to separate our wants from our needs.  For the first time in a long time, the entire shuddering mechanism of the modern industrialized world rose from its moribund slumber, and worked together for a common goal.  This is the sort of mobilization you normally see in wartime, and here we were, seeing it in peacetime, activating itself for the common good.  And what was that common good? The realization that people's lives were at stake, and we all needed to act accordingly.  We all needed to behave as though people's lives were at stake, which they were.  So, we dutifully closed shops and businesses, we closed stores and libraries, and it all ground to a spooky 3 month halt.  Some of those businesses that closed were never to reopen, of course, and people lost jobs, income, and all that.  But we all determined that it was worth it, for the sake of the preservation of that most basic of needs on the pyramid - life itself.

There's a lot you can do once you work out your priorities.  And for most of the time, we don't think too much about it, because we don't have to set any priorities at all.  That is, we don't have to think about where our big moral statements and positions are, because, well, it doesn't interfere with buying goods and services, and going to ball games.  But if COVID has taught us anything, it's that if push does actually come to shove, you'll find your priorities pretty quickly.  If lives are at stake, if the fate of a nation, and of your community hang in the balance, you can figure out how to skip a marvel movie or two.  Or all of them.

Now, Jesus Christ talks about priorities in the Gospel reading.  He talks about priorities in an almost savage fashion, saying that if you don't value him above family, friends, even above life itself, you're not worthy of him.  And that doesn't sound like something he'd say, does it?  Well, yes it does.  And it's time for me to bring up one of my favourite things to talk about vis a vis this reading, which is an old bit from an equally old Canadian game show, Gutterball Alley.  And that show had a bit in in where the contestants had to guess who said a quote: Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddha, or Charles Manson.  And one of the quotes was 'do not think that I have come to bring peace.  I have not come to bring peace but a sword.'

The contestant guessed Charles Manson.  And didn't get a bowling ball for his or her trouble.

You see, that line is so unlike the way that Jesus is presented, that people assume that it can't possibly be the words of Jesus Christ.  But they are the words of Jesus. They really truly are.  And the Bible isn't all kittens and rainbows, you know.  It's not all fluffy baby ducks and paddling pools.  Sometimes it gets serious. And this is where I quote my main man GK Chesterton, who is still right about 100% of the time on these subjects.

We have all heard people say a hundred times over, for they never seem to tire of saying it, 

that the Jesus of the New Testament is indeed a most merciful and humane 

lover of humanity, but that the church has hidden this human character

in repellent dogmas and stiffened it with ecclesiastical terrors till it has taken on an 

inhumane character.  This is very nearly the reverse of the truth.  The truth is that it is the image 

of Christ in the churches that is almost entirely mild and merciful.  It is the image of Christ in the Gospels that is a good many other things as well.  The figure in the Gospels does indeed utter 

in words of almost heart-breaking beauty his pity for our broken hearts.  But they are very far from

being the only sort of words that he utters.  Nevertheless they are almost the only kind 

of words that the Church in its popular imagery ever represents him as uttering.

There is something appalling, something that makes the blood run cold

in the idea of having a statue of Christ in wrath.  There is something insupportable even to the 

imagination in the idea of turning the corner of a street or coming out in the spaces of a marketplace, to meet the petrifying gaze of that figure as it turned upon a generation of vipers, or that face as it 

looked at the face of a hypocrite.  The Church can reasonably be justified therefore

if she turns the most merciful face or aspect towards men; but it is certainly the most merciful aspect that she does turn.

That quote is from 'The Everlasting Man.' Give it a try, it's good.  But this quote is amazing precisely for the reason that we have to grapple with the reality that it isn't that the church has promoted a vicious and angry Christ while the Christ of the Gospels is kittens and ducklings.  Rather, the Christ of the Gospels is hard as nails, wild and dangerous.  He is untamed, and frequently, frequently talks about the weight of faith and the struggles against the encroaching darkness.  This isn't a one off thing, otherwise we might be forgiven in thinking that this doesn't sound like Jesus.  But it does.  This is the second week in a row where Jesus talks about divisions in family, about creating hostility here on earth due to faith in him. This sounds like something Jesus would say because it is something he has said.    And why did he talk like this?  Because faith in Jesus Christ has massive implications for everything else.  When placed on the hierarchy of needs, it is, effectively the most crucial one because of the implications for everything else.

When Jesus talks about not bringing peace but a sword, he's talking about the possibility of division between family and friends and so on, which is true, but here on earth, that's a temporal division, which can be healed, etc.  What is crucial, though, is to run the promises of Jesus Christ through the ol' risk / reward analysis.  That is, if Jesus is right in what he says, then faith in, and support of his message is of paramount importance.  If he is wrong, then what he says is meaningless.  And what he says is that faith in him means that you don't just preserve your relationships with your family while you have them here on earth (60 years on the longer side), but you also preserve those same relationships in perpetuity.  Now what that means is that you will have to make hard choices, to say that you must make priorities, but if you insist on keeping everything here on Earth in the status quo, then you will lose it in eternity.  Or, to quote CS Lewis on the subject, 'if you reach for Heaven, you will find you get Earth thrown into the bargain.  But if you reach for Earth alone, you will lose both."

But this isn't just an esoteric thought experiment that pertains only to the hereafter. Another one of Lewis' points was that you will be more effective even in the here and now if you understand the message of Jesus Christ.  And I'll explain how.  Imagine for a moment, that the people you see around you all day are permanent, forever people.  That they are made in the image of God and will last forever.  Does that change how you perceive them, and how you relate to them?  For the non-Christian, you get to treat your accountant, your waiter, your girl you meet at the bar, whatever, as a vehicle for your own prosperity.  You get what you want out of the exchange, and can profit from it like that.  But as a Christian, how you treat those people matters eternally.  That girl you meet at the bar, and are planning to get some drinks into so you can have your way with her and then never see her again, she doesn't disappear as soon as the interaction is over.  That person is eternal, will outlast kings and countries and civilizations.  So if you understand her properly, you can't just use and discard her, because she is eternal.  And so is everyone else. 

So really, this is just like the hierarchy of needs, basically.  And the need for Christ is right at the foundation.  Get it right, and everything else is possible. Get it wrong, and you lose everything else.  And just like you can stay self-actualized for three minutes if the oxygen runs out, you can't get more than that. I bet Laika up in space felt pretty neato until the air ran out.  But replacing Christ with anything else will lead to satisfaction for a while, and losses for eternity.  Gain him, and you gain it all, lose him and you lose everything else too.