The great divorce

Great meaning large or immense, we use it in the pejorative sense.

That's right, the teachings from Jesus on divorce.  This is unpopular, isn't it?  I mentioned that I wasn't really looking forward to the readings for Sunday, and I asked my wife to guess what they could possibly be, and she guessed that it was 'wives submit to your husbands.'  Very close.  It was
actually the teachings, obviously from Jesus about divorce, and they're much harsher than we would expect. Especially today.

For you see, these days, folks get divorced at an alarming rate.  That is, they get divorced at the rate of about 50%.  That's not an accurate number, you understand.  That number is purely hearsay, but it's out there now, and we're going to have to deal with it.  Anyhow, let's go conservative, and say that the number is hovering around 40%.  Fine.  The big surprise for us is that the Christian population doesn't show any appreciable increase in marriage survival rate over the outside population.  That is, you're not looking at a massive increase in either marital fidelity, or marital survival over the vast heathen hordes.  And these are people who believe sincerely that Jesus really REALLY doesn't want you to get divorced.  He's quite opposed to it, to the point that he calls remarriage after divorce adultery. 

But you don't see Christians protesting outside courthouses that allow divorces.  You don't see them holding signs saying 'one life, one wife!' or 'Get your patrimony off my matrimony!'  Why on earth
don't you see those same signs in the same way you'd be seeing protests associated with same-sex marriage or abortion clinics?  Probably because unlike those, the people who are protesting might very well be protesting themselves.  Why did furor about divorce die off?  Because people got divorced.  And if a lot of people get divorced, then all of a sudden nobody wants to talk about divorce anymore.

If I've imparted nothing else to you, and I haven't, your one take-away from all of my ramblings should be that everything is a democracy, even when it isn't.  Everything happening in Iraq, Syria, all those places, well, they're all democracies, even if they're dictatorships.  If enough people in the country decide they want Bashar Al-Asad gone, he'd be gone.  Ask how Khadaffi is doing these days.  If you get enough people deciding something, hitting critical mass, then things become that.  The only thing that isn't, and can't be a democracy, is God's word.  We don't get to take parts out based on them being unpopular.

But we want to.  Because so many of us get divorced, we want to edit Jesus, and make it so his requirements on us aren't so high.  We get to thinking that what he demands is impossible, and so knowing that, our job is just to make what he says easier.  Less complicated.  We take his words, and fudge them around, making sure that he doesn't actually put holes in what we do.  We want to make sure that he's not going to bust us up, that he'll turn his attention elsewhere.

But it's not a democracy.  If Jesus says something that gets under your skin, your job isn't to strike out those words.  It's to hear them, and if you need to be made uncomfortable by them, then to be made uncomfortable by them.  If Jesus tells you that you have something to change, don't react to it by changing him.  And if we look at those words of Jesus about divorce, and claim that they're too hard, then that should tell you why you need Jesus.

To be honest, everything he says is too hard.  Have you ever noticed that?  It's not a plan that he gives you that is easy or straightforward.  When Jesus talks to his people, he tells them to be perfect, just as God is perfect.  That's a tall order, and not one that we can realistically attain.  Obviously.  Nobody's perfect. 

But on this issue, we complain and get mad, and when we read the firm, inflexible words of Jesus, we get upset, saying to him 'No, you don't understand!  You don't know what it's like to live with someone who hurts you.  You don't know what it's like to fall out of love, to find out your spouse is unfaithful.  You don't know what it's like to lose your faith and fellowship in someone.  You don't know.'

And to that, Jesus responds by saying 'don't I?'  He's in a relationship with us.  We, as the church, are called the bride of Christ, and we're an unfaithful bride.  A bride who is interested in other gods.  A bride who wants attention from elsewhere.  An unsatisfied bride, who takes and never gives.  We end up not talking to each other for long periods, not visiting, not spending time together.  We end up, essentially, as strangers.  There has been a major breakdown in our relationship over time, and it's on our shoulders.  If there was ever a reason for someone to want to get out of a relationship, Jesus would have plenty of reasons to get out of his relationship with us. 

Here's where the Bible matters though.  Even though we understand that we are a long way away from perfection, this is where Jesus shines.  He's not in the business of telling you what to do, giving you a moral lesson, and then just letting you get on with it, he's in the business of two things
1 - fulfilling the law on your behalf, and
2 - forgiving you when you don't measure up.

Maybe for the first and only time ever, you have time and space in church to quit pretending.  You have time and space in that worship service to say to God 'I haven't done everything right.  My marriage is a shambles that nobody knows about, I'm just barely holding on, I don't think we're going to last even though I post on facebook constantly about how in love we are.  What am I going to do?'  That's what Jesus is all about.  You bring him your weakness, you leave with his strength.  Maybe your marriage is failing, perhaps it's already fallen apart.  That doesn't mean that we need to look at Jesus' words and delete them, or to pretend that he never said them, but to look at them and realize that level of commitment is not just good, it's divine.  And that's the level of commitment that God through Christ has promised to us.  Throughout the Bible, he tells us 'If it were not so, would I have told you?'  In other words, he's been trustworthy and true this whole time.  We believe him because he tells us the truth. 

When he says things that upset us, because he forbids things we do, we have a couple of choices.  We can walk away, saying 'This is a hard teaching, who can understand it?' or we can say with some degree of confidence 'Lord, where else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!'  Essentially, it's not your job to be perfect but to be made perfect.  It is your job to have your sins forgiven, to not hide them or stash them away or to pretend Jesus doesn't say what he says.  He does say it.  He does mean it.  And our faith in his power to forgive, cleanse, and make whole, rests in his promise.  He told us he would draw us to himself, he told us he would forgive and make all things new.  We believe in him as children believe in their parents.

Because they promise.

Cut it out!

So, why does Jesus say what he says? 

That seems like an obvious question, but it isn't.  It's not actually as straightforward as you might expect. Why do any of us say things, really?  It's not why we think we do.  We think we say things in order that we might be heard and observed, in order that we might communicate and further human discourse.  But then there are times when we say things to 'make conversation.'  You know, when we say things just to fill the mental space that is not currently being used for anything else.  Nobody's saying anything, so we figure we might as well add something to the mix.  And so we say stuff just for the sake of saying it.  'Reading the newspaper?' 'Watching TV and playing on your phone?'  Stating and restating the obvious, just for the sake of having something to say. To 'make conversation.'  Only problem is that we don't make conversation when we do that, not really.  We just fill space with words. 

But Jesus doesn't do that.  How are we so sure that he doesn't do that?  Well, if you get right the way to the end of the Gospel of John, it'll tell you all about it.  There are many other things that Jesus did that aren't recorded in this book, but these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.  All simple and above board, certainly.  Or so we'd think. 

But then we get to passages about cutting off limbs.  And when we get to passages that talk about cutting off limbs, we are far more tempted to think that Jesus is just making conversation.  Oh, sure, he's talking about amputations, but he's just exaggerating for effect.  He doesn't actually mean it, does he?  Or does he?

There's a movement out there that is called 'red letter Christianity.'  I won't bore you with the details, but essentially what we're looking at is that the letters of Jesus that show up in the Bible (often helpfully in red ink) are incredibly important, and matter.  Now, we won't get into the discussion as to whether all scriptures is God-Breathed (it is), or if scripture interprets scripture (it does).  Instead, we're going to isolate those words of Jesus and ask ourselves 'does he mean it?'  Simple question.  If we say that he doesn't mean it, then we are setting ourselves up for all sorts of trouble as we pick through the words of Christ in the Bible.  Oh sure, Jesus doesn't really mean what he says about care for the poor and feeding the sick and taking care of the weak and the orphans.  That's too hard!  Some might say that's impossible.  Okay, sure. And it is.  But just because it's impossible, doesn't mean that Jesus doesn't mean what he says. 

Take, for example, a quite serious thing that Jesus says, when he tells everyone 'be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.'  Would we say that because this is impossible (yes, your perfection is impossible), that Jesus is therefore not serious, is only joking, and shouldn't be taken seriously?  Or do we say that he means it, that his intention for us is to be perfect, and we have to grapple with what that means. 

So back, once again, to his suggestion that if our hands or feet offend us, that we should remove them.  If it is your hands or feet that lead you into a life of sin, Jesus suggests removing them.  But he is also suggesting that you remove yourself from any cause of sin.  Whatever it is that is dragging you down and causing you to sin, remove it, be far from it, because sin is a serious business.  Though he doesn't talk about it often, he does mention hellfire in this section, and it's no joke.

Yes, I know, I'm not what you would call a fire and brimstone preacher.  In fact, I'm not sure what brimstone even is, only that it's bad, and I should avoid it.  Beyond that, no clue.  But when Jesus speaks up about Hellfire and damnation, it's a good idea to listen.  It's a good idea to listen because Jesus takes sin very seriously.  He takes it more seriously than we in the church do.  Most of us are pretty relaxed about sin, take it easy, don't think about it too much.  We don't dwell on our sin and what it's doing to us at all.  We think instead that our sin is something for Jesus to deal with, and for us to laughingly do, and then half-heartedly repent of later.  What does Jesus expect?  We're not perfect!

Jesus doesn't do what we want him to, though.  He doesn't shrug his shoulders at sin and pretend like it's no big deal.  He reminds you, exhaustively if necessary, that it is a big deal, and it always was.  Your little sins, the things you do on a daily basis, that's what's dragging you down to hell.  It's not the big stuff only (though make no mistake, it is the big stuff), but it's the small stuff too.  The little indescretions, the hushed whispers, the browsers opened in incognito mode.  The things you do that nobody knows about so you can fool yourself into thinking that there are no consequences, and it won't matter.

But it does.  it's the stuff you do that is the problem, not the stuff other people do.  Let them do whatever they're going to do, and don't worry about it.  Don't fret, don't sweat, don't focus on what they're all about, think about yourself.  Jesus is talking about your sin, and how your sin is leading you to hell.  Eternal hellfire and damnation where the fire never dies out, and the worm never stops eating away.  Sound fun?  Of course it doesn't.  What would you do to avoid it?  Anything Lord, anything! Would you cut off your hand?  Well, no, no I wouldn't.  I've grown quite attached to it.  Well, would you throw out your computer?  No, Lord, for I need it for work, and to watch cat videos in addition to pornography.  Okay, well would you then install filters on your internet browser to avoid seeing that content anymore?  No, Lord, for I don't really want to stop.

Aha.  How our excuses fall.  Sure, if you wanted to stop, I'm certain you could.  If you wanted to quit, there would be ample opportunities to do so.  If you really wished to steer aside from your sin, it would be possible, but you and I and Jesus all know that you won't.  Far from cutting off your own hands, you won't even change the TV channel to save your soul.  So what now?  Just abject defeat?  Is this the end of all things?  Or is it something else entirely?

When Jesus tells you to cut off your hands and feet, he is doing so not for effect, but telling us what it would take to seriously avoid sin.  What would it take?  It would take body part removal on a large scale.  And yet none of us Christians seem to do that.  We don't chop off our hands or toss away our feet.  Why not?  Because the weight of the problem carries with it a solution - it carries with it the solution in Christ Jesus.  The price of staying clear is far too high - sacrificing our hands and feet!  But that's that Jesus does to keep us free from sin.  In order that we might be saved from the consequences of our sin, Jesus doesn't demand that you give up your hands and your feet, but he gives up his.  Think of the price Jesus pays on the cross for your sin - think of what he loses.  He gives up his friends, his freedom, his safety.  He gives up his dignity, his clothes, and his family.  At the end, he gives up his hands and his feet, not cut off, but nailed down, and pinned to the cross.  and there he dies.  Dies for you, and for me, dies for the sins that we wouldn't cross the street or put down a book to avoid.

But the great thing is, the story doesn't end there.  There was a bit in Blackadder (a british TV show from the 80s) in which a thorny theological problem got introduced.  Namely "Suppose my right hand offends me, and I cut it off.  Well, suppose my left hand offends me as well.  What do I cut it off
with?"  Funny, but it does illustrate a good point, which is after you cut off a hand, you don't have another one grow back in its place.  Humans are not built to do this, you understand.  We don't regrow limbs.  Gone is gone, and dead is dead.  You have to be really sure cutting that hand off will solve the problem.  Well, Jesus was sure that his death would solve the problem of your sin.  He knew it would.  Itw as all plotted out, this was the price that had to be paid.  So he paid that price, bled and died, and your sin was gone.  But unlike you, you who could only lose a hand once, Jesus died and then rose again.  Paying the price for all time, and yet keeping all the glory to share with us.  The amazing miracle of the resurrection isn't only that your sins are paid for, but that you sins are paid for by the one who actually had the resources to do it.  Not you, you don't have anything close to enough in your bank balance.  This is why you lean on the glory of Christ, because he has promised to give unto you grace everlasting out of his riches.  How much does he have to give?  Enough that death itself can't hold him down.

Kids these days

In military tactics, one of the oldest tricks in the book is to make your enemy believe that you're going to attack in a certain place, while really attacking where they are weak.  You could also pretend to retreat, but actually then turn around and catch the pursuers in a bottleneck.  This happened, in the history of warfare, all the time.  Classic tactic, which led to the classic blunder of falling for the feigned retreat. 

Why do I mention this?  I mention this because in the church, we have certain expectations of who the devil is and what he's going to do.  We assume that he is going to tempt us into murder or adultery or something like that.  We assume that the devil is going to tempt us to a life of criminal larceny, rubbing his hands together all the way.  But, of course, the devil is just using that old classic of the feigned retreat.  He is prenteding to run away from you, and allowing you to become complacent.  He is doing this because he is a sapper.

What is a  sapper?  A sapper is someone who gets past fortifications not by battering himself against them until one of them breaks, but someone who digs under them, and makes the fortifications useless.  This is what the devil is all about, attacking you not where you are strong, where you want to be attacked, but where you are weak.

So where are we as Christians terribly weak?  And no, it's not where you wish it was.  You want me to say something like drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution, murder, or any one of a number of other problems that you doubtlessly don't have.  But you've spent a lifetime building fortifications against these things, building defenses, preparing for the expected onslaught.  All the while, you left yourself open in a few key areas, that when examining your defenses,, made it obvious where the enemy was going to hit you.  And it should be no surprise that he hits you exactly there.

Think of the reading from the Gospel of Mark for Sunday.  The reading in which the disciples do a very good impression of you on a Sunday morning.  They hear the Gospel of Jesus in its fullness preached very simply and straightforwardly.  Jesus tells them that he is going to be taken away, killed, and rise on the third day, and for some reason the disciples don't get what he's all about on that one.  Not only that, but even though they don't understand what's being talked about, they don't dare ask any questions to clarify.  Sound familiar yet? 

But while they are on their way home from the preaching, they chit chat amongst themselves.  And if this story was made up, if it was fabricated from whole cloth, you would expect the disciples to be meditating in quiet contemplation.  You would expect them to be worshiping, praying penitential psalms, and self-flagellating.  But they aren't.  Instead, they are talking about which of them is best. 

Now, this is easy to talk about at present, because we are in an election season in both the USA and Canada.  And in this election season, all the politicans want you to believe that they are the best suited for the job, so they can get elected, and enact sweeping legislation.  Think for a second about how it is that politicians promote themselves.  Think about the ads you see for any political party or candidate.  Pick any one you want, odds are they're all the same, really.  The most successful ads are attack ads. The best way to convince people to vote for you is to convince them to vote against someone else.  This is sad, but it is also true.  The disciples were on their way back with Jesus, right after hearing the Gospel message and not getting it, and the whole way back, they were discussing which of them was best.  And they likely did so by knocking each other down, and talking about how the rest of the 11 were basically no good.

So Jesus stops them, and asks them what they were talking about, and none of them want to answer, I guess because what they were talking about was pretty embarrassing.  Nobody wants to tell Jesus 'yes, we were all talking about which of us was the best ever.'  Not likely.  But Jesus knew what they were talking about, and so he goes and places a child before them, and tells them that it is their job to serve that child.  I want you to take a good look at this child in this picture of Jesus.  What does this child look like?

These children look like darling cherubs.  Because they always do.  And if the children in question looked and behaved like these children, then it would be no problem, no issue, for the disciples to serve them and care for them and love them.

But you know children, right?  Do children look and behave like this?  I mean real children.  Because they don't.  They look more like this.

A little grubby, a little louder, not being quiet, demure, and stoic; probably because children aren't stoic.  They're children.  Can you imagine being in a church, and the child that was crying and fussing through the service, the one who was kicking you in the back through the pew, that's the child that you're called upon to serve?  Maybe you'd love that.  If so, then you need to focus on the area where you are weak, because the devil has no time for you there.

But for those of us who are proud, who feel very good  about what we do and say, those of us who love and adore our place and position in the church, and in society, this is humbling.  To be called to serve the grubby, the untidy and unkempt, the messy and loud, that's humbling.  And you probably don't want to do it.  But think about what Jesus is actually doing with you and for you by doing this, by pushing you and extending you to be more mindful of who you ought to serve and look after.  What is Jesus doing here?  He is working very hard to do what you don't do, because he knows where your walls are weak. He knows where you're going to be hit, and he's doing his best to make sure that you're defended.

For most of us, we don't think too much about pride.  We think about the big problems being murder, adultery, prostitution, abortion, any or all of these things, and we dont' think much about pride.  Our spiritual defenses have been raised up against the prospect of attack in these areas, and we've spent years preparing for a frontal assault designed to get us to murder or drink or gamble.  Then we get lulled into a false sense of security when we start to see that the attack isn't going to come at those points, and we figure that if the attack isn't going to come there, if temptation isn't going to come there, then it's not going to show up anywhere.  All the while, we ignore the devil digging into where we are weak.

This is what the book of James is all about.  This is what this passage from the Gospels is all about, which is to highlight where we are weak.  It's the stuff that we dont' often think about, the things we ignore and don't spend time on.  The things that we forget, leave off to the side, and when we encounter them, want to surpress.  When we get word from the scriptures as to what our problems are going to be, that we are going to spend far more time working on our pride than listening to the gospel message, it's tempting to just close the Bible, and talk about the issues we don't have.

And that's why the child in this passage being a real child is so important.  It's so important because Jesus shows us a real child, not a well behaved fictional child, and tells us to recieve him.  And if we balk at that, or get concerned, get concerned, or feel as though it was beneath us, then we are finding out exactly where we are weak, and where we need to be strengthened.  It does us no good to focus on where we are strong, and sit around polishing our bulwarks.  If Jesus is highlighting our weaknesses, this is not the time to remind him of our strengths.  The fortress is only as strong as its weakest wall.

What Jesus promises is to forgive sins; real genuine sins, not the ones you think other people have.  He came to forgive pride, and hard-heartedness.  He came to forgive our inflated sense of self, our obsession with our needs and wants.  He came to take that away.  Perhaps the most humbling thing about that entire encounter with that child was the knowledge that the disciples couldn't claim power or authority over that child .  They were called by Jesus to serve him.  And if that seems like a lot, then meditate on this - This is exactly what we ask Jesus to do for us.  We ask him to humble himself to serve us, to wait on us hand and foot, to wash our feet and to do our bidding.  We are honestly beneath him, far more than that child was beneath the disciples. But the point of the story is that the work we balk against, the stuff we don't want to do, is what Jesus does for us, bearing our sins and taking them away, restoring us and making us whole.  He is here, and has come, to work for those who have done nothing, earned nothing, and who are far far beneath him.

Us.

unhappy jack

While we were on our houseboat vacation, we got a front row seat to something amazing.  It was during a brief squall, in which the boats were being a little bit blown about by the wind.  However, we had an experienced captain and crew, so our boat was safe and secure on the shore, so no problem there.  However, the same cannot be said for the crew of 'Happy Jack.'  Happy Jack was showing up a
lot on the radio chatter, to the extent that we figured that he may be in trouble.  However, the Shushwap lakes are big, so we had no idea that we'd actually see    Happy Jack drift by.  Which we did.  Happy Jack drifted by, and seemed to cruise right into the rocks on the shore.  Now, structurally, the boat was sound.  It wasn't sinking, wasn't vanishing beneath the waves, nothing like that.  But it was in trouble.  It was in trouble, and was going to be unable to drive itself off of the rocks where it found itself wedged.  What a front row seat we had. 

So the crew of happy jack were on the radio back to base, trying to get some help, and base sent a tugboat out to them to pull them away from danger.  It was super interesting to see the tugboat with its raw power move in, and pull the boat safely into the lake.  And reading our epistle reading for Sunday got me thinking about that incident. 

For you see, James talks at length about our tongues, our words, our language and the use thereof, which is what gets us into trouble.  It's what we say that ends up getting us into messes.  If you will permit the metaphor, the words you say end up steering you towards rocks almost all the time.  Now, on a boat, you can avoid rocks by not just steering properly, but by consulting the maps and charts which will tell you about the narrows, the sand bars, and the rocks that you might not see.  But these maps, charts, guides, instruments, they only work if you consult them.  And that's where we end up getting into a fix.

It's not for lack of guidance that we get into trouble.  The holy scriptures are full of guidance for you, and will tell you what to do, how to behave, in order that your joy may be full.  It seems counter-intuitive, in the same sense that on a houseboat, you just want to sail around.  You don't want big Shushwap telling you where you can and can't sail.  But if you choose to ignore the maps and charts, you'll end up aground, having significantly less fun than you would otherwise.  And Happy Jack, as he careened towards the rocks, probably ought to have been consulting the various buzzkill charts that would have kept him out of trouble, and safely cruising around. 

In that same sense, the guidance you get from James is there for your benefit. . It's supposed to keep you off of the rocks, and away from the shores.  James, and God, are well aware of the results of your unchecked gossip, your harsh words with each other, your careless and foolish arguments that you enter into, James knows where those things will end up, and he cautions you to tame your tongue, to avoid those conversations, those words, that only lead to trouble.  You don't have to beach yourself, it's not an inevitability, but it will end up happening if you ignore the directives.  And once you have beached yourself on the rocks, once you've gotten wedged on the rocks, slapped sideways against the beach, then good luck driving yourself out of it. 

And this is where the story of the Bible really begins to take hold.  For you see, the Bible does indeed do its fair share of telling you what to do and say.  It has moral rules, lots of them.  If you want to know how God wants you to live your life, you will find abundant material in the Bible to tell you what you should be doing.  But it doesn't stop there.  The Gospel reading gets into that, too.  It's the reading where a man brings his possessed son to Jesus for help, telling Jesus that they've tried everything, and nothing has worked.  This boy is in far too deep to be helped by conventional means.  So they approach Jesus, and ask him if he can help.  And Jesus responds by saying that all things are possible for them who believe. 

That's a tough thing to hear, but it's what we would expect.  We would expect Jesus to say that if we just pray harder, worship more, read our Bibles more, become more moral, then things would by definition work out.  But they don't.  We try and we try, and we end up frustrated, bitter, and alone.  The more effort we put in, the more we realize we still have to go, and the more frustrated we end up.  It's a horrible cycle full of disappointment, because you continue to say to yourself that if you were working harder, you wouldn't be in this moral mess.  Unfortunately, it ends up being the same as telling Happy Jack to steer better....once he's grounded on the rocks. 

When the boy's father hears that all things are possible for him who believes, he replies by saying 'Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.'  I want to do what you say, but I'm sinful.  I want to believe in your word, but I live in the real world, which tends to get in the way.  I want to avoid the rocks, but I keep on steering into them.  And Jesus doesn't respond by stepping back and telling this man and his son to work harder, to believe more.  Instead, he steps into them, and heals the boy, casting the unclean spirit out.  This is what the incarnation is all about, you know, about God seeing that we had run aground on the rocks, had spoken and acted our way into misery, had consistently chosen things and words we ought not to have chosen, and stepping in to tow us out of it.  To tow us to safety, away from the forces that would threaten to sink us.  Of which there are many, and they're usually of our own making.

I know, it's tempting to ignore God's advice, to say what seems like a good idea at the time, and then to end up struggling on the rocks, trying to talk your way out of it, trying to reason with God and with human beings.  It's tempting to do this, to try to argue or rationalize yourself into or out of situations.  It's tempting, but ultimately flawed.  Once you're on the rocks, you cant' use that same rudder to get yourself out of it.  You can't radio in to base and tell them that everything is fine.  All you can do is say that the charts were right, but that you need help getting back to safety.  Essentially, 'Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief.'

You will always have them with you.

Jesus famously said that we would always have the poor with us.

If you were in an average Christian church, the first question that you would ask yourself is 'where?'  Functionally, they're nowhere to be seen.  Now, our church is located in a reasonably affluent area, but even churches that I know that are located in slightly less wonderful areas of town aren't filled to
the brim with the poor and very poor.  They aren't jam packed full of people who are hard up on their luck and desperate to get by.  Why on earth not?

Most churches, this one included, will mention that all are welcome, and it's true.  It's very true that all are welcome, and churches will go to great lenghts to ensure that as many barriers as possible are torn down, and that people feel comfortable approaching.  But like it or not, the barriers are there.  People don't feel all that comfy coming to worship in a community in which they are the minority.  And here in Canada, we tend to stratify on economic lines.  This happens constantly, where the classes separate themselves out, and don't really rub shoulder to shoulder, unless it's a rider game.  Beyond that, quite separate.  Now, I'm not here to call everyone out, and to scold us all, I'm here to point out that this isn't a new problem or a new issue.  It's as old as the Christian church, certainly, and without doubt older than that.  It's so old that James cautioned against falling into classism.  He cautioned against this, because he was well aware that were were incredibly likely to fall into it. We are people who have a desire to stratify on economic lines, who want to suck up to the rich a whole lot.  We want to suck up to the rich, and sweep the poor away, or at least out of our sight.  James mentions for us the possibility that we might want to encourage the poor of this world, and to not try to shove them towards the back where they might not be seen.

We recoil at this, in real life.  We recoil like this like Dracula from the cross, we do.  Nobody ever outright says that poor people aren't welcome, but their lack of presence seems to indicate that they aren't showing up for a good reason.  Everyone wants to welcome poor people to the church, where they may hear God's word, and be encouraged, but they just aren't around.  And because they aren't around, and even if they are they aren't visible, it leads us to a peculiar problem here in the Christian faith.  It leads us to a problem in which we get to ignore what we are called to do. As human beings, we tend to forget pretty quickly about the magnitude of the task before us.  We tend to forget about chapters like Matthew 25, we tend to forget that all this stuff is incumbent on us to do and to take care of.  We forget rapidly that we are required to take care of the poor of this world, that it is demanded of us.  And one of the things that lets us forget it is the general invisibility of the poor.

Think of what happens when the Olympic games come to a city.  What happens to the homeless?  In the case of Vancouver, they were shipped away, removed so that they might not bother the nice people who came to see athletes ride sleds down hills.  This is our desire, not to solve the problem, but to pretend, quite happily, that it doesn't exist.  We want to believe that the problem isn't a problem.  It's easy to do that when the poor aren't around.

For if they are around, then we are faced with something rather uncomfortable.  We are faced with the fact that our work is not done.  The more visible the poor of this world are, the more we are reminded of their presence, and it should be a little unsettling to those of us, myself included, who

have more than enough, and who are blissfully happy in their opulence.  We're essentially fat and happy, but it's much harder to be happy when you see those around you suffering.  James tells you to move these people, when they do come to our churches, to a higher, better place, to be visible to the congregation, so that nobody can forget the reason for their own wealth - to be used for God's will in his kingdom.

James not only tells you to let the poor into your congregations, but to place them at a place of great honor, up at the front, where we are normally used to having those who want to see and be seen.  And placing the poor there gives us a reminder of what it is that Jesus would have us do.  But something else happens, which is that they give us an opportunity, with their presence, to serve God in the world.  It's not as though you need to ask yourself what it is God would have you do when the people he would have you serve are all around you.  If the homeless, the destitute, arrive at your congregation, you have been given an opportunity by God himself to be charitable.

Now, you may not exactly want to hear this. You may want instead to fall back on the notion that faith, the faith of the Bible, is a matter of holding the right opinions, and that's all.  The vision that James presents, though, is that faith without works, is dead.  It's inert.  Oh sure, it looks the same, but it is dead.  And like anything else that's dead, Lazarus included, it stinketh.

So, what?  Is this works righeousness?  No, it isn't, though you might be tempted to think, heck, to hope it might be.  So you can ignore it.  Me too, really.  But it isn't.  All it is, is God indicating to you, who is probably comfortable with what you are currently doing, that you have a long way to go.  Even if you think you're doing fine, you aren't.  It's like when Jesus encountered the rich young ruler, so assured in his own righteousness that he figured that he didn't need salvation at all.  He just wanted recognition.  We're not like that though, are we?

So how can you be a Christian and not be constantly working with and serving the poor? How can you be a Christian and not have a church full of the poor who are desperate to hear God's word?  Well, you sort of have to ignore a pretty big part of the Bible.  The parts that talk about service to the poor of this world.  You either have to ignore them or not listen to them at all.  You have to become wilfully deaf to what Jesus wants you to do.

And that leads us to the biggest thing to consider, which is the Gospel reading for last Sunday, in which Jesus heals a deaf man.  And what does he do?  He touches the man's ears, and says 'be opened.'  This is Jesus, listen to him.  Through the words of the scriptures, you'll be unsettled, for sure.  But this is what it's all about, law and Gospel style.  It's easy to feel comfortable and assured in the church, easy to feel as though you have nothing left to do and everything is fine, but it's much harder to listen.  But it is only through listening to the words of the law that the words of the Gospel mean anything.  Whenever you are unsettled by the words of God in the Bible, whenever you read it and say 'this is a hard teaching.  Who can understand it?'  Whenever that happens, that is Jesus sticking his fingers in your ears and saying 'be opened.'  For after you have heard how far you have left to go, then you can hear his word of Grace pronounced.  For it is for these things that you don't want to hear that Jesus died.  After all, what is the purpose of a God of forgiveness if you have nothing to be forgiven of.

He still grabs our ears and says 'be opened.'  Hear the words of God's law, his good and perfect law spoken to us, and the words of his sweet Gospel, spoken for us.  Have your ears opened by Christ who will comfort and secure you, reminding you that it is for all these things that he suffered and died.  To take away the things you have done, and the things you have left undone.

PJ.

Satiety

Okay, brief sidebar before I continue.

I've been losing weight recently, and so a lot of the discussion from Jesus about bread, never being hungry again, it resonates particularly hard.  For you see, here in 21st Century North America, we have a quite different issue from that of the people of Jesus' time and place.  They lived each day working very hard to get enough food to survive the day.  There was no convenience store, there were no convenience foods, there was no industry set up to make sure that corn was plentifully produced and went into everything, there was just food.  And most of what food was, was bread.  Every day you would bake it, and it wasn't as though you could just toss the ingredients into a breadmaker and walk away.  You would have to build and tend a fire, grind the wheat into flour, knead and fashion the dough, and bake it on hot coals until it was done.  The reason that bread was so vital (and still is today) was that it was cheap, the ingredients could be stored essentially indefinitely, and it was versatile enough and filling enough to go with everything.

But now, we have a problem not with eating too little, but with eating too much.  Our world is awash in cheap food, laden with salt, sugar and fat, and then at the other end of it, purported ways to extract yourself from the effects of that cheap food.  And it brings us to a problem, which is that food, all food, is not created equal.  If you're trying to lose weight, one of the first things to wrap your head around is that a calorie is a calorie.  It doesn't matter where it comes from as far as weight loss goes, if you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight, and if you do the opposite, you will lose it.  And the source of those calories doesn't matter.  Your body neither knows nor cares if you eat a bucket of celery or two tablespoons of peanut butter, it will process that energy the same way. 

These are all 200 calories

What does this mean?  It means that the system of calories is inherently unfair.  You  can tell it's unfair from the word go, because two slices of wonderbread (63 grams) are a lot less filling than 50 grams of raw lentils, even though they're the same calorically.  In other words, part of your job as a human who eats food is to eat the right things.  That is, choose food that is filling and satisfying.

Ah, yes.  Satiety.  It's a bugbear, and is the reason that low carb diets work.  Not that I'm on one.  The basic tenet states that high fat high protein foods have a higher satiety rating, and will keep you satisfied for longer than simple carbs which are rapidly broken down.  In other words, the more simple carbs you have, in theory, the quicker you'll be hungry again.  Why do I mention all this?  Because this information is important towards understanding what Jesus is talking about when he talks about satisfaction.  Eternal satisfaction. 

When Jesus speaks of himself as the bread of life, the promise that he makes is that if you eat of this bread, you will never be hungry again.  You will be fully  and completely satisfied.  And the people who heard this were excited, as food acquisition and preparation were enormous time hogs, demanding a lot of people, and making their lives a bit of a drudge.  What Jesus was promising (in semi-parable form) was that they would experience, for perhaps the first time in their entire lives, satisfaction.  They would be filled and satisfied, and they wouldn't go hungry anymore.  Their lives would no longer be a succession of moments in which they desperately seek after the next meal, but rather, that they would be filled, satisfied, and comforted, freed from the need to be on that rollercoaster of filled then empty.

For us, though, it's a little bit different.  Very few of us here in this great nation have been what anyone could call genuinely hungry.  Oh, sure, we get a little bit peckish, but food is never too far away, it's as close as the phone, the pantry, the fridge, and if you get desperate, you could eat fruit.  It's not hard to get food, in fact in many cases it's too easy.  And so we as North Americans tend to overindulge in empty calories, which wind up making us feel worse.  It's the mirror of the issue faced by the New Testament listeners to Jesus' words, that they were seeking after food and it occupied all their time.  In our case, we seek food, but find that what we eat is dangerously unsatisfying for us.  We consume, and are still hungry at the end of it.

When Jesus talks about never being hungry again, his words echo what we hear in Isaiah chapter 55, where it asks us why we spend our money on that which does not satisfy, and our effort on that which does not fill us.  We are essentially, for the most part, consuming spiritual junk food.  The same epidemic of food choices that lead to us all being stuffed yet still hungry physically is the parallel to how we are spiritually, filling up on that which does not satisfy, and leaving ourselves constantly famished.  We are ravenous, starving hungry, and yet always filling up.  Why is that?  Why is it in an age in which we have all sorts of spiritual outlets, in which self help and associated issues are at an all time high, an age in which we have access to all the spiritual learnings since the dawn of time, are we still hungry?  Because we are filling up on the wrong stuff.  As usual, St. Augustine of Hippo says it best when he says 'You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.' 

All that other stuff we fill up on doesn't do the job.  It will make us bloated, sure, as it tend to do.  As the scriptures say, knowledge puffs up, and lots of us are very puffy these days spiritually.  We are full, but still seeking, taken but still looking.  Our hearts are so prone to wanderlust, and we find that everything we are consuming, everything we are taking in, leaves us unsatisfied, wanting more all the time.  We seek more, and though we take more in, we are unfulfilled.

What Jesus promises, though, is satisfaction.  Imagine, if you will, a world in which you are satisfied.  You are no longer hungry or thirsty.  You neither marry nor are given in marriage.  Every tear is wiped away from your eyes, there is no more want, you are free from that treadmill that has been governing your life from the moment that you were born, wresting yourself from sleep with your infant cries of hunger.  Imagine a world in which you are no longer a slave to those needs, but can do what you want.  That notion of satisfaction is what Jesus promises, giving to us in semi-parable form, an image of paradise.  One in which we are free from those needs, one in which the questions we ask have answers, and one in which our wandering souls, prone to seek after things that do not satisfy, will be made whole and satiated. 

PJ.

Bread

You know how you feel about bread.  You hate to love it.

Isn't that true?  We are in the age now where gluten is of the devil.  You know it.  You're made to feel like a criminal every time you consume the devil's treat of wheat.  Wheat belly, atkins, gluten free, the catch words and buzz phrases fly fast and furious, falling over each other to eliminate wheat from our world. Gluten is a bit of a villain these days, which is funny, because for most of history, wheat, gluten, have been the engine upon which civilization has run.

We forget about this, because, of course, we have refrigerators, and canned goods, and year round apples, so we forget about the fact that for the majority of history, there were times of abundance and scarcity.  If you were a hunter-gatherer, you spent your time hunting and gathering.  that was it.  And everyone had the same job.  It wasn't as though you could be a dentist and your neighbor could be a nail tech.  No no, if you were alive, then you were a hunter / gatherer.  That was the only job there was. I know, I know, studies have shown that the hunter / gatherer people were happier and worked fewer hours, but here's the kicker - they worked fewer hours, but all at the same job.  They were hunter / gatherers, and that was their job.  Every day, you worked to make sure you didn't starve, and that was that.

But with the advent of grains, of crops that you could harvest, all of a sudden you could develop a surplus.  You could develop more food than anyone would eat that day.  and enough of a surplus

meant that you could have specialized labor.  And specialized labor meant that you could have dedicated construction workers, dedicated priests, dedicated bureaucracy, and dedicated military.  That meant that you could have all the workings, for good or for ill, of a modern working civilization.

Why do I bring this up?  Because in our modern times, we need to remember that Jesus as the bread of life is actually a good thing.  Yes, if you're gluten intolerant, or low carb, you might run shreiking from the room at the mention of bread, but Jesus is identifying himself as the greatest of all staple crops, the thing that keeps civilization going.  You may not like wheat yourself, but you must realize that staple crops have changed everything as we know it.

Now, here's the thing about staple crops.  if you Bing 'staple crops,' it should take you to the wikipedia page on staple crops, which will tell you all about the staple crops around the world, and how they are made into peasant food.  And the staple crops of the world, they're not very exciting on their own.  If there's one thing you should pick up on, you should know that the things you get, they're not going to set your tastebuds ablaze with excellence.  Corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, yams, that's what you're looking at with staple crops.  They used to dominate the menu for all the people of a given place, who used to eat overwhelmingly that thing.  Corn or wheat or rice, that used to be the majority of what was consumed.  I mention this, because this is how Jesus presents himself - the bread of life.  and for the people in the ancient near east, bread was the source of life.  This is what you ate. The widow of Narin, she and her son had only enough food left for one last loaf of bread, then they were planning on dying.  When the flour was gone, so were they.

Jesus, as always, knows what he's doing when he does things.  He knows what he's saying, and when he tells his disciples who he is, he tells them that he is the bread of life.  And as the bread of life, he forms the bottom of the food pyramid, the foundation of what the disciples will be building their lives upon.  That's what Jesus was always intended to be - to be the base for everything we do but not the only thing that we experience.  Think about bread.  think about bread in your home, and how you eat it (assuming that you're not gluten free.  If you are, imagine if you ate bread).  You have it alongside meals, in a breadbasket.  You have it under your eggs in the morning, You have it enveloping your meat and lettuce at lunchtime.  You have your peanut butter on it in the middle of the night (don't lie).  You have bread, but you have bread all the time and in conjunction with many many other things.   Rarely do you have a meal of only bread, undoctored and alone.  Usually, you have bread with other things, sometimes a great many other things.  This is who Jesus is.  He is the source and foundation for us spiritually.  He wants to be part of what we do, to be part of our daily experience.  Sometimes, he is the only thing, like he is on Sunday, but frequently, he is involved with the other stuff of our lives.  He is part of everything we do, making us in the world, but not of it.  This is how he is supposed to be, and if he is not, then something has gone wrong.  We are supposed to run on God, he is the source and norm of what we do, and who we are.  In him we live, and move, and have our being (preach it duck brother).  That's what we are for.  We are not supposed to be cloistered away, never seeing the outside world, nor are we supposed to ignore God for the remainder of the time that we are not in the church building.  He is supposed to be in and with everything we do.

The Lutheran understanding of Holy Communion is helpful here.  There are churches that say that the bread and wine just represent the body and blood of Jesus, so there is only bread and wine there.  There are churches that say that the body and blood of Jesus are the only things there, and that the bread and wine are totally gone.  And then there's the Lutheran church, that tells us that the body and blood of Christ, the true body and true blood, are in with and under the bread and wine.  And that's how Jesus is supposed to be in our lives.  Coloring everything, being a part of all our life experiences.  Not the only thing, but having his words, his blessings, his gift of forgiveness and salvation be part of all our experiences, and permeate them all.  The love of God that is in Christ Jesus affects, or should affect everything we do, otherwise our faith is just a hymn and a homily, just so much feel good chat, and nothing that actually moves us or changes us.

But Christ deigns to change us, from the temporal to the eternal.  He desires to have us be not here for a while, but with him forever.  To do that, he gives us himself as the bread of life, the bread of life that will be in, with and under everything that we do.  And surely, he will be with us always, giving us his grace in abundance, to the very end of the age.