kingdom come

 Hooray! The book of Ecclesiastes!

That's one of those books that even Non-Christians will grudgingly say 'yeah, that one's okay.' It doesn't hurt that the Byrds wrote a banger of a song with the text of Ecclesiastes as the lyrics.  It's one of those books that it's always good for people to discover, and to rediscover. To find it again as though for the first time. 

And Here in the book of Ecclesiastes, it presents you with some weight from the preacher. Vanity of vanity, all is vanity. Yes it is. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of men to be busy with. All is vanity and a striving after wind.

This gets to a pretty significant problem with the modern world, which casually and deliberately dropped meaning out of the conversation. That is, at a certain point we all agreed that being religious was like wearing chainmail, in that people didn't really do it anymore, and that led to a pretty interesting conclusion. If there's no God, and no paradise, and nothing around at all, then what's the deal with any of it? Why bother with anything?

And the thought was that we would be perfectly fine finding meaning within ourselves, etc etc, but in reality, that didn't really take off to the extent that it was supposed to. Atheist meeting houses that were built on the broken backs of churches posited a world where people would gather, sing Monty Python songs, and hear humanist messages about greatness and meaning, but it didn't catch on. Instead, a horrible, creeping, numbing apathy came in where people realized, as the preacher does in Ecclesiastes, that it's all chasing after the wind, you know. 

That's a pretty big problem - you're not catching that wind, it's not going to happen. So you're left with the horrible, terrifying reality that meaning has left the building, and it's not going to be recoverable.

Nietzsche fumbled through the death of God hypothesis, and unlike a lot of modern thinkers on the subject, worked out fairly rapidly that if the Christian basis for a worldview evaporated, then the Christian morals, ethics and nature of the worldview could not be retained. That is, you can't toss God out, and keep the rest intact. It all goes. He was concerned overall that if we abandoned God, as we seem to have done in the Enlightenment, then we would end up in crippling nihilism. Sure, there was the possibility that people would rise to being supermen, but the far greater concern was that we would find ourselves adrift permanently on uncharted seas that went nowhere.  And folks, you are here.

 

 

Now, something that is extremely important to learn is that you, as a human, are by and large standing on the shoulders of giants. A lot of people have done a lot of discovering to find a lot of things out that you yourself don't have to learn. The book of Ecclesiastes has worked this out for you, you know. It has gone to a lot of effort to parse through that very problem that meaningless has crept into everything, then  asks the very important question of where to find meaning after that.

 

For it is a great truth that when you drop the essential core view out, then everything else topples along with it. And you're going to be left with the disaster that is what remains, which is the trappings and nothing else. But I want you to think about the core teaching of the Christian faith - forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. I want you to think about how if you give someone a cup of water in the name of Christ that you've done something. The world you live in was carved out by generations and generations of people who lived lives quietly filled with deep meaning - where they had worked out that because God lives, everything that they do matters, and everything they do is of cosmic importance. Sure, the James Webb space telescope may show glimpses of far off dead galaxies from thousands of years ago, but your simple acts of grace and charity, of love and care, matter so much more because of the impact of what happens when you do them. If you are polite, kind, generous, and gracious to those around you, you are being kind and gracious to people who are going to last forever. For eternity. And that means that you're not chasing after the wind, or looking for meaning by running in a circle. you can find meaning right around you right now.

Teach us to pray

 There's been a lot of conversation these days about pronouns, names, and that kind of thing, and essentially what it boils down to is a desire for people to be spoken to the way they would like to be spoken to. That's simple enough, and that carries over not only for the people you see here on earth, but also to God himself, as well. At this point in the scriptures, in our Gospel reading, the disciples ask Jesus a pretty important question: You're God, we've been talking to you for a while now, but seeing as how we have you here in person, how would you like to be spoken to? What would you like to hear from us?

The response from the Lord Christ is to give the Lord's Prayer - the best known prayer in all of Christianity. The one that is engraved, tattooed, on posters and art all over the place. And for good reason, because when Jesus was asked how we should pray, that's what he gave to us. 

But like with everything else that we have in the scriptures, this isn't something that God gives us because it's good for him. After all, he's God. He doesn't need anything from you. And it also isn't something that he gives us because he'll refuse to listen to us unless it's in exactly those words. Quite the opposite, and you can feel free to speak to God in all kinds of words, as people do all the way through the Bible. So if it's not for those reasons, then why are we doing the Lord's prayer at all?

Let's rethink it. Maybe you're not praying that prayer to guarantee that God will hear you, and you're not praying it to get something specific out of him, so why that prayer? Because God knows that we need something from it instead of him needing something. In other words, prayer isn't just for you to get things out of God. This isn't letters from Santa territory in which you're trying very hard to get things from God. This is you communicating with the divine, and like with all mentions from scripture, the communications go both ways. 

For you see, the holy scriptures of God are his word for you. And when you pray from the Lord's prayer, you're speaking scripture aloud. You're hearing the word of God as you say it. And that's important, you know. In the Lord's prayer, you're communicating that God is the creator of the universe, the maker of all that there is. He knit you together in your mother's womb, formed and fashioned you and all other things. The waterfalls, the stable earth, the great salt sea around the waves' tempestuous shocks. All that. 

This is the force that you approach. This is the force that you approach with your petty concerns - the magnificence of the creation of the universe and all that is in it. The force that shattered the Egyptians, cast them into darkness and wrecked their chariots in the sea. The force that confounded the tower of Babel's builders, and scattered them over the face of the earth. The same God who flooded the earth to expel its wickedness, and drowned the surface of the water under the firmament.  

That's who you're talking to. And this is a dynamic power. I use the word dynamic as a word that shares its root with dynamite, dynamo, and so on. The root word is power, truly and genuinely. Dynamite is the substance of stored, explosive power. A dynamo is an electrical generator that makes everything that you use work. And God is Dynamic in that same way. Awesomely powerful, which is something that we are tempted to forget. When you're writing a letter to Santa, you're not thinking too much about Him being an awesomely powerful presence in time. You're thinking about how he can give you gifts if you've been good. But he's not the creator of the universe. He's a guy at the north pole that gives you things. 

If you're approaching God as a person that you just makes demands to, you'll be tempted to forget all that he does. You'll just think that he's a source for you to get things. A genie of sorts. But we base our interactions with God, based on the Lord's prayer, on God the way he actually is. Yes, he's approachable, but that's what makes it all the more majestic and wonderful. That is, if you're genuinely communicating with the author of creation, and the fact that you can come to him calmly, politely, almost intimately, and ask for your daily bread is quite the thing.

In fact, we will go one further, and state happily that what you're doing is talking to the creator of the universe in a colloquial way, which is why you need to be reminded of who he is before you start stripping this away into things that are unimportant or silly. Yes you're colloquial, yes, you're intimate, but you need to remember what the forces are that you're invoking.

This is similar in many ways to how things work in a marriage, for the great enemy of marriage is contempt and complacency. That is, you struggled and strove to enter into a relationship, worked as hard as you could to win someone over, put in effort and time, and then you end up in a world where you take that person for granted all the time. They no longer seem special because you're too familiar with them. That's why it's advocated that you take your spouse out on dates, etc, because you need to place them once again in a world where you are actually eager to see them, and want to impress them. You're genuinely supposed to be in a space where you are reminding yourself of what a prize your spouse is, and always has been. And nobody wants you to think about this after they're gone only. You can do it now. 

In that same way, part of what you do in the Lord's prayer is to approach God but in a spirit of deep reverence and awe, partially because of how blessed and fortunate you are to have something this magnificent so close to you. These are things you're going to be tempted to forget if you only make demands and issue decrees. But if you know what it is that you're talking to, things take on a bit more gravity. 

Don't "busy-shame" me

 I was listening to a sermon about Mary and Martha the other day, and as sermons sometimes do, the preacher wanted to look at things from a new angle. That is, said preacher wanted to get to grips with the notion of 'busy-shaming.' According to her, Jesus really shouldn't be busy-shaming Martha, who legitimately had a lot to do, and whose work should be appreciated.  And that's half right. 

Something you need to work out is that scripture interprets scripture. This is a method of interpretation that has to work in order for the entire scripture to mean anything. I'll explain what I mean.

There's a pretty dumb movie out there called 'Re-Animator.' It's based on a story by HP Lovecraft called 'Herbert West, Reanimator,' which is all about a man who discovers how to bring people back from the dead. Sort of. There are problems, difficulties, and eventual zombies. The movie follows the same sort of plot, just modernized for the 1980s. And that's fine so far, given that you're watching a dumb horror movie, and you have to acknowledge that, in the movie's logic, people can be reanimated. You're not going to enjoy the film if you're always saying 'wait a minute, people don't get reanimated, that don't make no sense.' Sure, but once you've accepted that people can come back to life, as zombies, then you're settled in for the movie to tell its story.

When the first movie ends, the main character, Herbert West, is dragged to his death by the entrails of his former boss (it's complicated). By the start of the second movie, he's just strolling around, helping out with making more of a stable reagent to re-animate more corpses. This is a film series in which people can be brought back from the dead, and the return of a dead character could be addressed, but it isn't. To paraphrase, Re-Animator interprets Bride of Re-Animator. And if there are big holes in the story, holes so large you could walk a camel through it, then you're not going to be satisfied.

Scripture interprets scripture. That way the story makes sense. If you're going to give Jesus a hard time for 'busy-shaming' Martha, then you're going to have to show your notes as to why that's in line with the rest of scripture. That is, in the scriptures, do you see busy-shaming or do you not, and is pushing for rest to listen to the word of God in line with what God would want, or away from it?

In Exodus 31:15, God makes a declaration that the Sabbath is to be observed, and that if anyone does any kind of work on the Sabbath, that person is to be put to death. And lest you think that it's exaggeration or hyperbole, in the book of Numbers (the most boringest one), a man is stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Rest, in the scriptures, isn't a matter of an option, where God says 'hey, if you feel like it, you can take a break.' 

Instead, from the way I read it, rest is required. On pain of death. You can try to gather sticks, holmes, but you may very well end up dead because of it. 

But the reason for the Sabbath needs to be explained. That is, yes rest, but why? Why rest? What's the reason for the resting? Just to take-a-break? The whole point of resting was not just to do nothing, but to do something without all the distractions that are a perpetual problem . Think of the story in which there was a party that people were invited to, and they all came up with excuses: 'Oh, I can't come, I have to look at some cattle.' 'Oh, I can't come, I have a wife.' 'Oh, I can't come, I bought some land and have to see it.' Sure sure. The idea is that you're always going to have busy things trying to creep in. Always.

It hits its zenith where you find Martha, with the Lord and God of the universe in her home, and she can't take the time to listen to his word. She has a lot to do. which she does. I'm not going to tell you that her work was pointless, valueless or silly. On the contrary, she was fulfilling her vocation as host, homeowner, sister, friend, all those sorts of things. And she was doing her best, but something that has to be acknowledged is that she's not going to be done. There's never going to be a moment where she is all finished, through, and can finally sit down and listen to Christ.

There's a short story by Ray Bradbury called 'the fruit at the bottom of the bowl,' in which there is a murder right at the beginning of the story. A killing where the killer plans on getting away. But the killer knows that he is going to leave fingerprints, so he's going to have to make sure that he wipes them all off, lest he be caught. He starts by wiping his fingerprints off of the obvious things - murder weapon, surfaces, that kind of thing. But then he remembers all the things that he's touched over the course of his relationship with the murder victim, and so he has to polish all of those too, to make the fingerprints go away. By the time the police show up, they arrest him handily, as he's up in the attic scrubbing all the old civil war coins that have been up there, untouched, for decades. 

You're never done cleaning, you know, until you say you are. In the world of the Sabbath, which is not enforced by death anymore, you're never done your buying and selling and consuming and purchasing until you decide you are. Then you're done. Martha is working hard, and getting lots done, but she was never going to be finished until she declared that she would be. Jesus isn't telling you not to do anything, not at all. He's quite keen to let us all know that we are to serve, to do good works, to do what needs to be done, that kind of thing. But he's also keen to tell us to rest. Not just for the sake of rest, though, but to hear the word of God, learn it, and respond appropriately. 

In Mary and Martha, you see a microcosm of that - The word of God is being preached by God himself, and at a certain point, you have to decide that you're done with the work that will never finish, and it's time to listen and to learn. To be ministered to, and to be refreshed. Because Mary isn't doing nothing, you know. She's doing what she's supposed to do. Six days you shall do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath, set aside for rest, and set aside for you to listen and to learn from the Lord God himself. The fruit at the bottom of the bowl will never be clean, the work will never be done, until you say it is. And at that point, you're set to listen, to receive the sacraments, and to be restored. That's also what God wants you to do, and that's why he gave you that extra time to begin with.

Where'd all the good people go?

 I started the sermon on Sunday talking about the big question, and then the smaller question behind the big question.

The big question is the one that asks 'Why do bad things happen to good people?' That question is used so frequently that it's become a bit trite. The question, ever hanging at the border of any theological question, is the one that asks 'if God is so good, then why do  bad things happen to such good people?' Why indeed?

But there's a smaller question that is at the fringes of that question, that I would like to pose to you now: If there are so many good people around, then why do bad things happen? If we are living in a world of bad things happening constantly, famine, war, pestilence, mayhem, cruelty, injustice, there where did all the good people go? Essentially, the prevalence of 'good people' comes down to a matter of self reporting, and that's a problem overall. That is, self-reporting is almost always a major problem to contend with because of how inaccurate it is, and nowhere is that more prominent than in the assessment of who the good people and bad people are.  Because we all know who the bad people are, right?

Okay yes, those are bad guys. But they're cartoonishly bad guys. These are people (with the exception of Mussolini) who unabashedly do bad things just to be bad. And that's not the real world, not really. Most human beings who live on planet earth don't do bad things just to be bad. That's an offshoot of good impulses and motives, taken too far, or in the wrong way. I think this video explains things pretty well vis-a-vis the Emperor.

Unlike human beings with real motivation, he's evil and he loves it. But that's in fantasyland, and not the real world. Sadly, though, we sort of expect things to work like that, expecting that you'd find real human beings whose motivations it would be to be just pure evil. They'd be bad for the sake of being bad, and would have no motivation beyond that. 

But that's not how humanity works, you know. Nobody does bad things just for the sake of them being bad, or wicked on purpose. Those consequences are made of cruelty and wickedness, but they are consequences. We truly have to get ourselves out of the mindset that self reported is sufficient for arriving at a good people vs bad people equation.

And that's what makes the parable of the Good Samaritan so interesting. That is, at the start of the parable, the man on a journey gets beaten and robbed by robbers. That's always kind of assumed, but I want you to consider very carefully the nature of a robbing like that - namely that the robbers have to rob someone. In the story, the Priest, the Levite, the Samaritan always take centre stage, and nobody really considers the robbers as participants in the story. They're like a force of nature, like zombies or something, you know? And as that kind of thing, even though we question the motivations of the priest and the levite, somehow, we never really consider the motivations of the robbers. But we should.

The thing is, the robbers are not like an earthquake, or a fire, or a tsunami, they're people, but more than that, they're people who assume that they're good people. They would, in fact, self identify as being good people, nice to people who like them, generous to their friends, gave their mother flowers, that kind of thing. But in the story, we think of them not even as bad people, but as bad elements. That is, they are the bad thing in the story that kicks off the plot. No agency, no nothing, just bad things that happen to a good person. And that's what I really want you to think about. 

When we say 'why do bad things happen to good people?' a lot (though not all) of the 'bad things' that happen to 'good people' are actually wrought by human beings, who almost universally consider themselves to be the heroes of their own stories, and view themselves as good people. So the secondary question that came about at the start of this blog post can be answered:

If there are so many good people, why do bad things still happen? Because the bad things are perpetrated by good people.

There. And that's the moral conundrum explained, and it requires Christian morality to improve. I'll put it like this - In the Christian conception of morality, there's a lot of discussion about how we are all bad news. In sin were we conceived, none is righteous, no not one, that kind of thing. And the breakdown between what we want and what we are has its locus in the reality that all the people, including those who do bad things, think of themselves as being good people. And that's the end of it. Once you work that out, then everything falls into place quite happily. Everything makes sense completely. Bad things happen to people because people do things to other people, and continue to think of themselves as being good.

So what do we do about it? Well, quite simply, we deal with the Biblical truths of the matter: Bad things happen to people because people do bad things to one another, and we are part of that exchange, through and through. We have sinned in thought, word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. You'd think that that would lead to us thinking of ourselves as being bad people, and being despoiled by the world, etc, but that's simply not the case. Rather, it gets to the heart of the human condition, which is that we want to think that we are good people. We want to believe that we do good things, and are noble and truthful. Justified, in a word. So we have two choices when faced with the misery around us:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us

But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just, will forgive us our sins, and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

One of those paths leads to you ignoring the problem in you, but seeing it in everyone else, driving you to misery and despair. The other lets you look in the mirror, and be justified not because you've done good, but because you've been forgiven. And that's the way the world actually is.