Author Author!

 On Sunday, I started preaching about how easy it is to lose the thread when we're talking to people through pandemic lenses.  That is, it's possible to get the wrong idea when you're talking to someone face to face, no masks, no zoom, that kind of thing.  It's possible to do that, but it's less likely than if you have to work through other media.  That is, the more barriers that go up, the easier it is to get the wrong message from the person that you're talking to.  

If there's a mask on, and you can't read facial expressions, it gets a little bit harder.  If you're meeting someone over zoom, it's harder yet, because eye contact is impossible, and all the dialogue is ever so slightly delayed; but at least you still have facial expression, tone, that kind of thing.  And if you're going to go one further, listening to someone over text message, email, or, God forbid, blog post, is harder yet.  The difficulty is going to be that all tone, nuance, and subtlety is lost, and gone.  Forget it.  And in that moment, it's very easy to get something wrong. 

That's a flaw that I have, no fooling.  I come off very poorly in emails, texts and so on.  That's a weakness of mine, that I will insist on communicating in emails the same way I would communicate in person, which comes off all kinds of wrong, given that my natural charm is lost very rapidly.  Some might say that it never existed, and that's possible too.  Either way, though, I do tend to sound awfully terse and unpleasant over emails.  Now, if people want to get a better picture of what I meant, they would hopefully contact me, and say to me 'hey, that last email that you sent, what did you mean by that?'  And I would like to hope that I'd give them a good answer.  What would be less helpful is for them to show the email to someone else, a third party, and ask them to interpret it.

I'd give a better answer, because if you're going to ask what I mean, I'd be the best person to tell you my intent.  And if you think that the nuance of an email is easy to get wrong, let's talk about words chiseled into stone from forever ago.  God gave his people some very clear commands, and then people spent the next thousand years stroking their chins, clucking their thick tongues, and asking so very delicately, 'ah yes, but what did He mean by you shall do no work?  What did he mean by saying you shall commit no murder, or you shall not commit adultery? What does it mean to say 'you shall not steal?''  Great questions all, and debate, midrash over those topics lasted for a long time, wondering what it could possibly mean to not steal, to not commit adultery, all those sorts of things.  Fine and good. 

The trouble is, though, that the people back then (as well as now) viewed those laws and commands as things to be possibly kept, rather than strict moral absolutes.  That is, here in the great nation of Canada, we tend to think of laws as being no longer just if enough people break them. So, if enough people want to consume marijuana, we would adapt the laws on the books to make consumption and possession no longer criminal.  If enough people want to speed on a street, we may consider raising the speed limit.  If enough people want stores to be open on Sundays, they will be, because the laws of this nation are a legal framework, not a moral absolute.  And if you can't keep the law, and nobody can, that makes it into a bad law.  A good law would be straightforward and easy to keep.  

So, a law against murder has to define what murder is, and not all killing is murder.  Sometimes a killing is accidental, sometimes it can even be justified.  According to Canadian law, you're going to have to work out the circumstances surrounding the killing, and to work out if it can be justified, forgiven, overlooked, or punished.  But you can't legislate 'no being mean to anyone.' Because that can't be kept, can't be proven, can't be enforced.  It brings be back to the law code proposed in Stuart Little, which formed moral absolutes - "Absolutely no being mean, and nix on swiping anything." They sound great, but good luck enforcing them.  Gradually, we would ruminate on them, and work out a complex legal code to ensure that those moral absolutes, were we to enforce them, would end up codified and straightforward.  If it's about enforcing laws, you're going to have to go with something that is enforceable.  But if it's a moral absolute, then the question is not 'can the law be kept,' but rather, 'is it right?'  And here, the law of God is good and right.  To go back over the age old question, you can't just make it legal to burn down barns, as burning down barns wasn't wrong because it was illegal.  It was illegal because it was wrong.

So, the law is a moral absolute, and people found it hard to keep that moral absolute.  Which is why when Jesus came onto the scene, he taught differently - as one who had authority, not as the scribes who could only interpret the law that they had read.  Because he is the author of the law, when he speaks about it, it has, you know authority.  They were able to interpret the law to find ways around it, whereas Christ was able to address what the law meant as a totality, free from evasion or trickery.  Just the law, whether you could keep it or not.  And the great thing about the Christian faith is that you don't have to struggle to find a way to make the law fit what you're already doing. Rather, you get to rejoice that the word of God made flesh kept the law in such a way that completed it and fulfilled it, therefore his righteousness gets passed directly onto those whom he has washed clean in baptism.

But there's another way that authority is important.  And this factors into these times we're living in right now.  Right now, we are in a time of sickness and concern, of trepidation and fear.  And we are pleading with Jesus Christ for help, for healing and for hope.  And that's what he brings.  For Jesus is not just the Son of God, which he is, but he is also the Word of God. And what does the word of God do?  It creates.  It makes everything around us.  Through him everything was made, and without him nothing was made that has been made.  That's a very big deal, and that is what gives us confidence when we go to him for help.  If you look at all the miracles in the Gospels, what you have is Christ showing his authority over even the elements of creation.  He is able to change the end of the story to fit what he wants, because he is the author of creation. When they run out of wine at the wedding of Cana, and they come to Christ, he re-writes the story to say that the wedding instead has better wine than before.  When a man comes to him deaf and mute, Jesus rewrites the story for him to have his hearing again.  When Jesus is taken to the tomb of Lazarus, dead for so long that he stinketh, what does Christ do but to re-write the story so that Lazarus is alive again. This is why we appeal to him for things, you know, because it is within his ability to do something about it. Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? This is the Word of God, the creative power of God who made heaven and earth.  Given that all of the earth is his story, it doesn't seem like too much to ask him to write the end a little bit differently.  And that's what he does at the conclusion of the story, rewriting things so that the rebellious creatures who had turned their backs on him could be saved, redeemed and brought to salvation.  Not the ending that we deserved, nor the one we should have gotten, but it is the one that is given to us through Christ.  He does this because he can make all things new.