Lazarus

The Gospel reading we had for Sunday was one of the best known readings in the entire scriptures, which seems to happen a lot at this time of year.  That is, we had the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

Lazarus is sort of like Thomas, in that his name has become a short form for his defining characteristic.  That is, Lazarus is to resurrection as Thomas is to doubt.  And the raising of Lazarus is so well known, obviously, that we aren't taking into account the mundane truth of it all.

For at its core, death is phenomenally mundane.  You know that it is, though you don't think about it. We are people who think about death as a big event because we're not really used to seeing or experiencing death of humans, of people we know and love as a daily part of life.  Unlike in the time of Christ, people die at hospitals, at hospices, far far away from the hustle and bustle of home.  In the time of Christ, people both lived shorter lives, and died at home. If you were sick, you were sick at home. If you were sick to the point of death, you died at home.  It wasn't unusual to have a house that someone had died in, it was incredibly common.  Common as death.

Now, though we are distant from death of humans that we love and care about, we are actually closer to death of certain other things than we think about on a regular basis.  We don't think of meat as death, but it sure is.  But in our homes, even meat stays fresh, fresh for days.  It's not as though you could go to the Zebedee brothers in the first century, buy some tasty tilapia on Monday, and then fry it up on Thursday.  If you were to wait that long, without refrigeration, that tilapia wouldn't be quite so tasty anymore.  Meat doesn't really stay fresh that long when it's dead.  We are people of the fridge, people of the freezer, people of the dehydrater, people who have worked out ways to keep meat fresh for a long time.  But if you leave it for long enough, you'll still find out something about death, and how mundane it is.

Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

This little bit from the book of John, from the account of the raising of Lazarus, tells you something mundane about death.  That if you leave a human being out for a few days, then they become, well, dead meat.  They stink.  This simple mundane fact of death, that things spoil, that they go bad, that bacteria gets in and ruins and corrupts, that simple fact is something that we need to know and wrap our heads around, for your fridge is frequently as close to the tomb of Lazarus as possible.  Sometimes, when you open your refrigerator, you will find that it stinketh, for something has gone bad.  And not only has it gone bad, it will stay bad. I know, I know, many of us, upon opening the refrigerator will have a similar reaction to that in the Gospels, saying 'it stinketh,' but then will close the fridge to prentend that we didn't smell anything, and let someone else clean it up.  But when you finally confront the content of the refrigerator, when we find the mouldering pork chop, the rank sausage, the toxic tilapia, you know a simple truth.  If it has spoiled, you're not bringing it back.  There's nothing you can do about it. Once it has started going bad for four days, then the slimy meat that has begun to putrefy, you're not going to serve that to your guests anymore.  It stinketh.

Lazarus was no different. This is the mundane, everyday fact of death.  Lazarus had died, he had turned from a living, breathing human being into meat.  And dead meat at that.  He had become expired meat, past its best before date, and had begun to rot.  And as you know from your own fridge at home, once things have gone bad, once they have begun to rot, they're not coming back.  Lazarus wasn't just dead for a minute, for an hour, for an afternoon.  He had been dead for four days, and now stinketh.  And that's when the raising happened.

Jesus waited for the fourth day for a reason.  We know from the scriptures that he didn't rush over to the home of Lazarus as soon as he heard that his friend was sick.  Rather, he waited until Lazarus was dead, and had been dead for a few days, before moving in to take care of things.  He waited until things were done, over, until things had turned from concern to mourning before doing something about it.  But this is how God operates.

If you know about the concept of 'festivus' from Seinfeld (I have never seen the episode, but I understand it exists), then you'll know about the concept of 'festivus miracles.'  That is, mundane things, not even really coincidences, that people would say are miracles of the festivus season.  Well, in the case of Christ our Lord and Savior, he tends to wait until things are impossible before acting.  He tells us as much when he talks about Lazarus and his illness, saying

And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.

Do you see that?  Jesus is telling his disciples, and anyone who would listen that he is glad that he missed the illness of Lazarus, that he did so on purpose, in order to make what was to happen meaningful, or even possible.  In other words, the God shown at that moment is and remains the God of the impossible.  Sure, Jesus could have shown up and healed a dread disease, but how much more impressive is it to raise the dead, the dead meat?

And this is the good news of the Gospels, which is that Christ is able to take what is dead and gone, and to give it life.  We know that we were dead in our trespasses, and that is where Christ decided to step in and give us new life.  Understanding this is key and critical, that Christ doesn't just encourage you, or give you a pat on the head, forgiveness of sins isn't that simple.  We think that it is, because we think of ourselves as being sort of okay, doing alright, but we aren't.  We are dead meat, and we stink.  If Christ is going to do something with us, it's got to be more than just walking a corpse around.  It has to be making new life, working the clock backwards to a time when things were genuinely good, when things worked.

This is the Gospel promise.  And if you're someone who believes that Jesus can raise the dead, those who have gone bad and are rotten, from the grave, then you should believe the same about those who are dead in their trespasses too.  What Jesus tells you at the grave of Lazarus, dead for four days, stinking and rotting, is that nothing is too late and too far gone for him.  He is the one who makes all things new.  He is the one who creates, who restores, who makes whole. That is his job, his calling, his work, is to work with and grapple with even the impossible, the lost causes, to restore, to renew, to give new life even to that which has gone bad.

You know, to you.

How sweet the sound

Do you all remember the slapchop commercial? I know, I know, this is something that I probably like more than anyone else, but this is one of the many things that obviously captivated me for quite some time, and that I like to bring up frequently.  I liked that ad, and as a result, I have essentially memorized the snappy dialogue that carries the commercial forwards.  And what we find in the commercial is a fun line, kind of a throwaway, where Vince talks about onions, and says of them

They're making you cry they're making me cry.

That's how I feel about the scriptures, not just about onions.  The thing that you need to know about me as a pastor, is that a lot of the passages that you don't like about the Bible, I don't like them either! I'm not really in love with the presence of these passages in the scriptures, and I'd much rather that they weren't in the scriptures as opposed to being there.  That's how I feel about them, and it's probably no different from where you are.  The passages I like the least, obviously, are the ones that talk about me having to do anything.  I much prefer the passages that talk about how other people are the problem and they shouldn't judge me.

But guess which of those two passages there are more of in the scriptures.

This is a problem, and it's a problem that we as Christian people have to deal with, that there will be a great many passages in the Bible that we don't like.  But overall, most of us want to find the passages in there that we care for a great deal, and not focus too much on the passages that bother us, that we don't care for, that trouble us.  In brief, we want to see what we want to see, and we want God to back us up on that 100%.  But the problem with that, of course, is that that isn't the way the world actually is.   Now, I don't really want to get too matrix-y here, but unfortunately, it remains the best illustration for all of this, especially when talking about blindness. That you can, in a second, see the truth.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus healed a man who had been blind from birth, and gave him his sight.  And when this man received his sight, he went over to the Pharisees, who were displeased, incredibly displeased, with the healing.  No, not necessarily because they figured this guy should have stayed blind forever, but because of the way in which Jesus healed him.  For Jesus made mud and put it on the man's eyes.  Now, if you've ever read this passage in the scriptures, you will probably have found it to be one of the grosser passages in there, where Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, and puts it on the guy's eyes.  Gross.  But the Pharisees didn't get angry because it was gross, they got mad because Jesus made mud on the Sabbath.  And no, I'm not making that up.

You know how the third commandment says that you shall remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy?  You know how the third commandment tells you that in six days you are to do all your work, and then in the seventh day, you are to rest? Well, that begs the question as to what work actually is, and for the hebrews at the time of Christ, they had come up with 39 things that you aren't allowed to do on the Sabbath.  One of those is the kneading of dough, and as a category, that includes combining any solid and fluid ingredients to make a paste or dough.  Like making mud.  So, Jesus made mud, applied it to the man's eyes, and then he was able to see, but the man regaining his sight was a problem based on the usage of mud, the manufacture of which on the sabbath was never expressly forbidden on the Sabbath.

Stop me if I'm getting too technical, but the presence of mud to heal someone shouldn't counteract the healing, but when the Pharisees saw the miracle that had been done, that the man had his sight given to him, they were in a rush to cry foul, and to complain that things hadn't been done to their specifications, even though those specifications were things that they had created for themselves.  Meanwhile the man who had been given his sight was having a great time, and upon being questioned for the gorillionth time about his sight being given to him said this much 'why are you asking me so many questions about him? Do you want to be his disciples too?'  

Now, this leads to us talking about spiritual blindness, in addition to physical blindness.  That is, there are a great number of people out there who are spiritually blind, who are and who remain spiritually blind.  There are people out there in the real world who would prize what they think is in the scriptures over what's actually in there, and there are a lot of people who would not want to see things they way they are, given that they disagree with those things so much.

And those people aren't 'out there' somewhere.  If you want to see one, open your camera app, and switch the camera to selfie mode.

We aren't much better at this as Christians than anyone else is.  Though the Bible tells you to walk as children of light, we don't want the light to shine on our lives, and certainly not in our eyes.  We'd rather stay in the darkness to which we have grown accustomed, rather than open our eyes and see the world the way it actually is.  And that problem can be traced back entirely, 100% to us.  Think about it when it's six am, where it's dark and comfy in your room.  Now imagine if someone were to flick on the light.  Your first impulse would be to request that the light be turned off again, so that you can go back to the comfy nature of things, back to sleep, back to the darkness that doesn't hurt our eyes, doesn't shine too brightly, lets us rest, and doesn't let us accomplish anything.  You're going to get a lot more done if your eyes are open than you are if they're shut.  You're going to get much much more done if you can see the things around you than if you're content to clamp your eyes shut, and not to see the way the world actually is.  And if you tell me 'but pastor, I have no problem with anything in the scriptures.  I love all of God's word equally.'  Really?  As I said earlier, it's making you cry, it's making me cry.  I find it funny that the very next bit from the Bible after the reading from the Epistle that we had from Sunday is this one:  "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.  Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, giving himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he migth present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.  In the same way husbands should love their wives their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body."

It goes on like that.  It goes on like that for quite a while, talking about the responsibilities of wives and husbands, about the responsibilities of children and parents, of slaves and masters.  And you probably fall into one of these groups, and then Paul will tell you about your responsibilities.  And you're not going to like those responsibilities that you have been given.  But that's the real trick now, ain't it?  Clamping your eyes shut lets you stay in the darkness, but it doesn't show you how things actually are, and it doesn't help you to get anything done.

Now, I'm aware that you may not be in love with these passages, and remember, that I'm not either.  No human beings are!  You may like the parts that don't apply to you, but you suuuuure don't like the parts that apply to you.  And you don't want to do them.  And that's what you need to ponder in the season of Lent. For in Lent, you will find that you don't have to look too hard to find things to repent of.  Christ comes to open your eyes, both to the way things should be, and then to make clear to you that you don't do the things you ought to do.  But he makes clear to you that he is there to continue to apply his grace to you, child of dust, who doesn't do what you know, by now, that you ought to do.  His forgiveness, his grace applies to the parts you don't like, because those are the parts that you have no intention of keeping. And the good news of Lent is that Christ's work is to place your disobedience, your eyes clamped shut, your lack of desire to see the way the world actually is, your refusal to follow through with his simple edicts and your lack of willingness to do so, and to march all that to the cross.  You, like me, tend to think that Christ died for the things that you think other people should be doing, but it's more than that.

He died for the parts that you don't care about.  Which is why you need his grace. 

To know, in the Biblical sense

Have you ever heard the expression that knowledge is power? If you haven't before, you sure have now.

Knowledge is power, you understand, but it's a particular kind of power, one that increases the more knowledge you get.  It reminds me always of the opening screen of Mortal Kombat II, which flashed, only for a moment, the phrase "There is no knowledge that is not power." That was hilarious, coming from a game that required you to print out a list of moves off of the world wide web just to be able to play it.  It was a game steeped in mystery, and you really had to do your homework just so you could get around to playing it.  Everything in that game was a secret.

And of course, we played it gamely, and you listened to you friends who knew of a secret finishing move where Reptile pulled out your small intestine and made a macrame potholder, all those things that seemed really plausible,  but a generous proportion of them never actually existed.  But, hidden secrets everywhere, to the extent that anything worth doing was a secret.

Fast forward to today, and we are very much living in an internet connected culture.  That's how you're reading this blog right now!  I've had thoughts, composed them on a keyboard, and then you're reading them off your PC or smartphone screen.  What an age we've arrived at.  But in this age where we can look anything up at a moment's notice, where we can find any and all information in the world whenever we want, what do we actually know?

This is where Jesus comes in, and the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.  They had a moment at the well, where Jesus promised to give her living water, which she, as someone who would have been transporting water to and from her house every day, was very much in favor of.  Jesus told her that he would give her living water so that she would never be thirsty again.  This sounded great to her.  And after this came up, Jesus told her to go and get her husband.  And this is where things get interesting.

For she tells Jesus that she doesn't have a husband, and Jesus tells her that this is true, that she has had five husbands, and the man she has now isn't her husband.  Wow.  That's a lot to hear, and a lot to digest.  And Jesus, at that point, was a stranger to her, which is why things ground to a halt pretty quickly, and, after bringing people from town to meet Jesus, she spoke about him thusly:

He told me everything I had ever done.

Yes.  That's what Jesus did.  And that's part of what makes his words so spectacular to hear even now.  If you go back a little ways in the scriptures, you will find him speaking, and when people speak about him remark that he speaks differently than other teachers that they've had, and speaks as someone who has authority.  And that's a big deal.  Jesus was able to speak to this woman and tell her in no uncertain terms, nothing vague, nothing clouded, what she had done with her life. Now, that's a surprise, and something that you don't see every day.

But that's only part of it.  It reminds me of the first interaction between Jesus and Nathanael, where Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him under the tree, and Nathanael was shocked, surprised, and perplexed by that.  And Jesus says to him 'You believe because I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than that.'  True enough.  It is one thing to point out something very specific about one person.  It's quite another thing to point out something that's true about everyone.

The real intensity of the work of Jesus Christ is that what he says is true.  Not just that it's true of you, or of me, but that it can be true of both of us at the same time, and of everyone else.  Now, that's a bigger deal, isn't it?  That's a little bit amazing that Christ could speak with that kind of authority, that he could make those cases, that he could say things that manage to be universally true, and yet here we are.  This is part of what people key into when they say about him that he spoke as one who had authority. He didn't speak like anyone else, because he had authority.  And the words long written down in the scriptures still apply, they still work, because they apply to us as human beings.  They apply to the human condition.

Think for a second about the spate of diet books which exist, taking us from fat being the enemy to salt being the enemy, to sugar being the enemy, to carbs being the enemy, lather, rinse, repeat.  It seems like there is a real progression that goes on, a constant treadmill that tells us constantly what is safe to eat, what is healthy, and what isn't.  From paleo to Atkins, from vegan to Santa Clarita, diets are changing all the time, but our inner workings aren't, so why is it that we haven't figured this out? 

Well, it's the same way with our ethics, our morals, our human condition, our spiritual yearnings, and the human experience actually hasn't changed much in a few thousand years.  We just think it has.  Point being, the words of Jesus are true.  And they are true because they address fundamental needs that we have as humans, that we have always had as humans and always will have as humans.  They address needs that we have to make our relationships work, to find meaning in the things we do, to build for the future, to seek eternity, to have in each day that goes by some tangible sensation of the eternity that each day almost begs for.  We have in the words of Christ a vision of the reality that underpins everything, and he tells us as much in his own word.  Our needs, our hunger and thirst for him, is addressed, and that's why he told that Samaritan woman at the well that upon consuming the living water that he would provide, the drinker would never be thirsty again.  The woman at the well assumed that he was talking about physical thirst, but he wasn't.  He was discussing spiritual thirst, spiritual desire for fulfillment, spiritual craving for truth and stability.  And to quote Augustine - Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.

We spend a lot of time trying to satisfy ourselves with things other than Christ, trying to find meaning other than where he said it would be found, trying to work out a way to last forever though that was never a promise anywhere but through him, and all that amounts up to is going to the same well again and again, and trying to quench our thirst with it.  But Jesus makes us a promise, same then as now, that when we find him, we will never be thirsty again.  Grow strong in that truth, the he speaks to you with the truth that is your humanity, your human condition, the deep truths that apply to all of us, that meet all our deep needs.  Find Christ, and realize that his work is to make it so that you will never be thirsty again.

(over)Turning the tables

John 3:16.

 That was our Gospel reading from Sunday, and the funny thing about it was that of all the readings that we've had over the years, this is the one that didn't even need to be read. Not that it's not a good verse, they're all good.  But this verse stands alone as the one that I don't even need to read out loud.  All I have to do is say 'John 3:16, and you all instantly know where I'm going with it.  There were approximately zero people in the pews saying to themselves 'wait, John 3:16? What a great verse, I'd never heard that one before!"  Yes yes, we all know John 3:16 really well.

But our level of knowledge of John 3:16 is super interesting given the nature of the original audience.  This verse is often trotted out as 'the whole Bible in one verse,' but it wasn't spoken to a vast crowd, nor was it spoken on a mount. It didn't have a ton of witnesses, wasn't spoken from the cross, that sort of thing.  Instead, it was spoken in secrecy, at a covert meeting by night, with Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

Isn't that interesting? Isn't it fascinating that we have this situation in which the best known part of the whole Bible was spoken to an incredibly tiny audience? Now, if we consider the words of Jesus as spoken in secret, we have to ask ourselves why that was.  If Jesus has something that is so important to hear that we all know it off by heart, then why is it that we see him speaking this essential, core, vital truth in secret?

Well, think about this verse in its context.  I know, I know, I hate it when people use 'oh, you took that remark out of context' line to defend themselves, but in this case, context is, in fact, vital.  You really do need to consider the context because without it, the rest of this passage really doesn't make sense.  For Christ our Lord to meet in secret to dispense this massive wisdom.  But it does make sense when you consider what had just happened.  This is only the third chapter of John, you know, and in just three chapters, Jesus had become so dangerous that meetings had to be take place in secret.  What he had done, of course, was to flip tables, scatter money, and to cleanse the temple from what had gotten in the way between people and God . For there were extra steps, you know, there were extra steps that had crept into the temple, and these steps were placed over and above the word of God himself.  God had spoken in his word about taking no pleasure in burnt offerings, and in desiring the sacrifice of a contrite spirit instead of other sacrifices, but the people in the temple at the time decided that the content of someone's heart was less important than ensuring that sacrifices were offered in the appropriate way.  They wanted to make sure that you were only bringing the right kind of money, the right kind of sacrifices, that all these things were done well and above board, and that nobody would dare to deviate from what the proper temple protocol was.

Jesus messes up the tables at the temple.  That makes him dangerous.  Then when they ask him to justify this action, Jesus tells them to destroy 'this temple' and he will build it again in three days.  That is, according to Jesus, his body is the temple that the people who are there will destroy, and Jesus will rebuild it in three days.  All understood so far.

Your body is a temple too, you know.  Your body, as the scriptures say, is a temple of the Holy Spirit.  so the question comes to you, as the individual, what is it that is cluttering up your temple?  what is it that is working as a barrier between God and you? What is it in your heart of hearts that is blocking the word of God, the Spirit of God from getting through to you? It is this that Jesus goes out of his way to overturn, to get rid of, to dispense with, and it is this that makes him dangerous.

This is why people had to meet him at night, this is why people couldn't ask him these questions in daylight, because his words were too incendiary, and spoke out against everyone.  Everyone has something cluttering up their temple, everyone has something that is splintering themselves off from God, so the question is, what is it for you?

Go ahead and ponder it.  I'll wait.

But I don't need to wait.  I don't need to wait because you don't need to ponder.  You don't need to ponder because there's a good chance that you already know.  Here's a simple test for you to run, it takes just one minute.  Think about the Christian faith, and think about the thing about it that makes you a little uneasy.  Think about the part of the Christian faith, even just one part that you'd amend, that you'd drop, that you'd change to suit where you are right now.  Think about that.

That's your table, that's your clutter.

If you go to bing and type in 'Christianity is too' you'll find all sorts of tables, and all sorts of clutter.  Christianity is too white, too casual, too restrictive, too middle class, too busy, it goes on and on, and it shouldn't be too terribly hard for you to figure out where you slot into this experience.  Christianity is too something for you, so you've erected a table in your temple, you've replaced the Gospel with coins, offerings, deals of your own, and you've likely gone a long way towards crowding out the Gospel.  So Jesus comes to overturn the tables, he comes to strip out the division between you and God, and he comes to deliver you some truth after doing it.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

There. The most well known verse in the Bible, but it makes so much more sense in the context that it would have first appeared, at night, under the cover of darkness.  This verse means so much more because of how it is given, right after Jesus has stripped everything else away that was a barrier to the simplicity of the Gospel.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, because what you were doing wasn't working! All those things that you were doing, deals that you were making, all those extra issues that had come up, those get tossed out, overturned, smashed and driven away.  So what's left?  Christ, and his Gospel.  Christ and the cross.  The more you encounter Christ in the Gospels, the more you'll see what it is that he wants to be done with, the more you'll see what it is that he wants to put away, and those are things that either divide you from him, or that you use as a substitute for him.  All those things have to go away.  They must disappear.  They must decrease, and he must increase.

That's what it boils down to.  That's what you're going to be left with.  Every time you read through the Gospels, you engage in that radical act of Christ cleaning out your temple again.  You will find that he will smash all the things you are placing in your temple instead of him, and he will reject them utterly.  He will set himself up as the mediator and arbiter of all your life, and of your relationship with God.  Your question is not to allow him to do that, for he doesn't ask permission.  Your question is what do you do with the temple, and what do you do with him, after he has done it.

Jesus cleansed the temple, people put all the animals and the moneychangers back (presumably).  Jesus tore the temple curtain in two, and people put it back up (presumably).  Eventually, the temple was destroyed, and the people couldn't worship there ever again.  Jesus is trying to tell you something.  The sacrifices didn't count for anything.  The money didn't count for anything.  The division between God and humanity was destroyed through the work of Christ, and shortly after that, the temple was destroyed.  Smashed to pieces.  Those barriers between God and humanity are gone, thanks to the presence of Christ our Lord, the word made flesh, who took on humanity and dwelt amongst us.

If you fast forward to the very end of the Bible, you will find that the book of Revelation tells us that in the new heaven and the new earth, there will be no Temple, no space set aside for worship, no space holier than any other.  God himself will be with them, they shall be his people, and he shall be their God.  This time of lent, of penitence, of fasting, of going without, this is the time where you get to ask yourself what it is that divides you from God, and let him remove it.  Whatever it is, it must be removed from your temple, and must be replaced by this simple truth.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Beatitude or Platitude?

One of Alec Guinness' autobiographical volumes is called 'a commonplace book,' and is based on the fact that he wrote down all his various volumes in small notebooks, probably not unlike a moleskine or other such thing.  The idea is that the books themselves were not overly remarkable nor did they stand out in terms of their beauty or binding.  They were in every way commonplace books.

Now, skip ahead to the Bible, and you would be unsurprised to hear that the Bible is the most commonplace book in the world.  The Bible is the book most people would have, really.  An older quote is one about the prevelance of the scriptures, that says that if a house has only three books in it, one will be by Stephen King, one will be a cookbook, and one will be the Bible.  Truly, the scriptures are everywhere, and copies are available on demand all over the place.  You can find copies of the Bible without even trying anymore.  Sure, there used to be a time in which you would be immolated at the stake for having a copy of the Bible in your own language, and there are still places in the world that you will be arrested for having a copy of the Bible, but here in this country, the Bible is so available that you don't have to look for it anymore.  It's sort of the way things go, which is the idea of a difficult to get, stand-alone Bible is foreign to us.  Now, there are Bibles in every hotel room, every prison, presidents are sworn in on them, and there are dozens of Bible apps available for every OS (even windows phone.  Possibly blackberry).  And the prevalence of the Bible, the scriptures, runs the real risk that most people will assume that they know what is in them, and therefore don't have to read them.

It's sort of like Star Wars, or the Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or the Sound of Music.  You already get the jokes, you get the cultural references, whether you've seem the source material or not.  Everyone knows who Darth Vader is, they all know

who Maria is, they know who Frodo and Gollum are, without ever having to have partaken in the material.  And likewise, when the scriptures come up, we all know who Jesus Christ is, and we all feel as though we get his message well enough.

Well, fast forward to these days, and currently, in schools, we are getting close to pink shirt day.  And pink shirt day is the day in schools (in the schools my children go to at any rate) where kids are supposed to wear pink shirts in solidarity against bullying.  And the thing about it is that in the schools, in the elementary schools that our children go to, all the kids will be wearing pink shirts.  Even the bullies.

Pink shirt day isn't the day where the bullies are called out, nor is it the day of restitution and reparations.  Rather, it is the day where everyone stands together against bullies, many of whom are in the crowd, standing against the bullies.  This is bizarre, but must be contemplated, where nobody believes that they themselves are bullies.  No matter how bad someone is as a bully, they will never look at themselves in the mirror, and say 'Gosh, I'm a bully.  Thank goodness the school has a day dedicated to putting me in my place.'  Everyone who is in that class will show up, will wear a pink shirt, and will think that bullying is bad.  But if everyone thinks bullying is bad, then where does bullying come from?

And that brings us to the beatitudes, and the real danger of transforming those beatitudes into platitudes.  It's a real danger, you know.  It's a real danger of changing the scriptures into meaning nothing, given that everyone, from the poor to the super rich, from the peacemakers to the warmongers, from the hungry to the super-filled will see themselves in these words.  The Beatitudes are essentially printed on rubber, the way that they're stretched to cover each and every single human being that exists.

By way of example, and not to get too political, but I'd love to talk about Donald Trump for a moment. I know, I know, dead horse and all that, but seriously for a moment.  When Donald Trump was getting inaugurated as the president of the United States, one of the invocations was that of the beatitudes.  The beatitudes were read in their entirety, and then Donald Trump was sworn in as President with his hand on a Bible.  And this is the same Donald Trump who earlier had stated that he had, in general, in his life, nothing to repent of.  He didn't feel any real need to repent of anything in his life.  Again,  I have no desire to get political, so I won't talk about policies, I won't talk about supreme court picks, or executive orders.  What I will talk about, though, is the bizarre juxtaposition of a billionaire, the most powerful man in the world, being sworn in as such, just after the beatitudes are read.  And every single person in the crowd identified with those words.

And that's the danger, which is that if everyone is against bullying, nobody is.  If everyone is the meek, nobody is.  If everybody is the poor, nobody is.  If everyone

hungers and thirsts for righteousness, nobody does.  Platitudes work like fortune cookies, they work like horoscopes, they apply to everyone, and in the process of doing so, they say nothing.  But the beatitudes aren't supposed to apply to everyone in equal measure. Rather, they're supposed to apply to you when you've actually lost something, or been pushed beyond where it hurts.

When Jesus was speaking the beatitudes to the crowd, his disciples were with him, and Jesus spoke the beatitudes, beautiful words, to be sure, but words that were going to apply to the disciples sooner rather than later.  The words of the beatitudes are beautiful words, but they're beautiful words to those who are hurting.  Part of what we need to know and to recognize is that the words of the beatitudes, when applied to the super comfortable, to those who see no need to repent, to those who have never shed blood or tears for what they believe, the words of the beatitudes don't apply to them.  These are words from Christ not to mollycoddle you where you are, not to encourage you to remain where you are, not to motivate you to do nothing, or to mire and wallow in tedium, but to pronounce blessings upon you when you begin to lose things for your faith.  The Christian faith, properly considered, will cost you.  It will cost you piece by piece, taking you away a piece at a time. It may not lead you to outright persecution by the government, but likely it will lead to missed opportunity, reduced social standing, fewer intimate relationships, lost time, and more work.  That's what it can and will and should lead to.  If your Christian faith hasn't led to anything even vaguely resembling that, then you need to reconsider what it is you believe in, and react accordingly.

The beatitudes are there to give you sweet relief, as it was to the disciples who lost everything, including life in service of their Lord.  They lost their homes, their businesses, their goods, the respect of their peers, and eventually their lives.  They perished in the service of their Lord, and the words of the beatitudes were vital to reassure them that the blessing of Christ were there to replace the blessings of the world.  That's so much  a theme of the scriptures, that you can claim your reward here, or later, remembering all the while that friendship with the world is enmity with God.

But when you do lose out,  When you miss out on something. When you won't sleep with that girl, when you won't keep the money that you found in that wallet, when you won't break the law, when you won't fight the ticket even though you could on paper, when your faith costs you something, when it hurts, when you bleed for it, that's when the words of the beatitudes mean something.  it's not just for when you have a bad day and you're bummed out because your team lost.  It's for when keeping your faith costs you, when it pinches, and when it hurts.

The greatest living embodiment of the beatitudes is, of course, the one who spoke them into being.  The one who spoke the beatitudes was the one who lived them out, and the one who realized that the disciples who were with him were not going to be faithful unto death.  Jesus knew what was going to happen with his disciples, he knew that they were going to desert him, that they were going to sell him out and flee him when things got tough.  But that's the point of the Christian faith, that we have Christ's grace and not our own.  When you look at the beatitudes, don't strip them of their power.  Instead of insisting that they all apply to you at every moment, remind yourself that they are there for when your faith will cost you. And each and every time your faith costs you, rejoice that your life has meaning and purpose, that it isn't just being blown about by the wind.  And those times where you flee, where you run away and avoid the cost of discipleship, rejoice that Christ shed his blood for the weak, those who fled his side, those who left him, those who ran away.

That's worth so much more than a big bowl of platitudes.

Swordsmanship

The only sport I have ever been good at was fencing.  Not that good, mind you, but better than the rest.  Not being much of a sportsman, I didn't really get playing team sports, didn't enjoy the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat, with everything except fencing. Fencing is the sport in which you fight with swords, you duel with weapons, and the winner is the one who hits the other guy first, and does so more often.  That's the only real way forward in the sport, and it leads to dueling that doesn't look pretty, doesn't look fancy, and doesn't take long. The average point in a fencing bout takes a few seconds to be scored.  That's it.  It's not a big long rally of swordsmanship, it's over pretty quickly.

But one of the things you learn when you're fighting with swords is that you are holding in your hand the tool both for your attack and for your defense.  Although you are in a kevlar vest, and have a sieve on your head, you're holding your tool for both attack and defense.

I bring this up because of the prevalence of swords in the scriptures.  No, not those swords, not the ones used in the conqest of the holy land that made bodies pile up.  I mean the sword of the spirit that was the word of God. The sword of the spirit that is the word of God, as we are counseled to use in Ephesians.  Now, lest we forget that the scriptures don't just mention the sword of the spirit as the word of God once.  They mention it several times, including in our Old testament reading from Sunday.  The Old Testament reading is from the book of Isaiah, which tells us that the messenger of God's mouth is like a sharp sword.  And right there, even in the Old Testament, we see the presence of the word of God being a sharp sword.  This is a theme that is going to run right the way through the scriptures, you understand, and it is really worth us remembering that the sword that we are issued as christian people isn't one that is there to kill, maim, or mutilate.

We have a very strange interaction with the sword we are given, the sharp two edged sword seen in Isaiah, in Hebrews, in Revelation, in Ephesians, in that we are expected to use this sword as our only tool to attack with.  This is in keeping with Christ our Lord, who only used his words (and a whip one time)as a weapon.  When he encountered people, when he ran up against opposition, when he ran into the devil himself, he used his words, the word of God.  And that's us as well.  We as Christians aren't supposed to be pushovers, we aren't supposed to be quitters, and we aren't supposed to give up.  Christ told us that if we don't have a sword, we are supposed to sell our cloaks and go and buy one.  Is it a real physical sword?  I'll wager that Christ's priorities are the same as they always have been, that we are supposed to engage with the devil, with the world, with words, and with His word.

The reason for this should be clear, in that the vision of Christ that appears at the end of the New Testament, the vision of Christ in the midst of the lampstands, he has a sharp two edged sword coming out of his mouth.  This is the word of God that still gets stuff done, that is still powerful and effective.  It didn't stop doing what it was supposed to do, it didn't become less effective, but it stopped being used by us, and then we became surprised when those changes that we wanted to see stopped happening.

There's an old handyman joke out there that has a puzzled carpenter holding a hammer in one hand , and not having the best time of it. And he says, scratching his head 'I must be using the wrong kind of hammer for this screw.'  Laughter and applause follow.  but that's the case with most of our problem solving, most of our evangelism, most of our programs, most of our family problems and we're trying to solve them by attacking the problem with anything but what is shown to have worked.  I know I know, when the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail, but hold on a tic here, because the word of God is lively and active, as Hebrews says, sharper than any two edged sword, able to cut between joints and marrow, and so on.  We know that the word of God is lively and active, and yet we are less and less likely to use it.

If you're going to have a fire extinguisher in your house to protect against an unexpected and unwanted blaze, you'd better know where it is and how to use it. If you're going to have a life jacket in your canoe in case it tips, you'd better be wearing it before the eventuality happens.  The thing that people forget is that the scriptures aren't just a one size fits all, though they are only one book. In this book are words of law, and of Gospel, of anger and of comfort. In the books of the Bible you will find advice, guidance, history, poetry, love stories, comfort, agony and everything in between.  Essentially, in the scriptures, you have a philips head, a robertson head, a slot head, a torx, a tamper-proof, all the screwdrivers.  Without the scriptures, all you have is a hammer.  All you have is blunt force.  Will it work?  Maybe.  But using the right tool for the job will get you there a lot faster.

We have been given that tool.  We have been given the word of God, and there's a good chance that you have a Bible within line of sight to you right now.  When was the last time you consulted it when you had a problem that needed to be solved, or when you had something you wanted to accomplish.  When was the last time that you looked into the scriptures to see if they had what you needed for what you were trying to do?  We forget very quickly that it was the word of Christ that accomplished what he wanted, not force of arms.  When he spoke, things happened.  Follow me, Come out, be opened, be still, your sins are forgiven.  When Christ speaks, things happen, and they get done.

And when he spoke from the cross, he said 'It is finished.' And when he did so, the curtain in the temple was torn in half, and the dead were raised.  The earth shook, and the rocks broke open.  And at that moment, at those words, sin was beaten, death was trumped, and the kingdom of Heaven was opened.  Those are some powerful words.  And lucky for you, they're still accessible to you.

These are the words, the tools you've been given.  This is the sword that you have to go out into the world with. But unlike a physical sword, this one isn't designed to kill. It's not designed to make a pile of bodies.  That would be possible with a physical blade, but this one is better. Properly wielded, it doesn't change your enemy into a corpse, it changes your enemy into a friend.  Properly used, it doesn't change your adversary into a body, but your adversary into a fellow-combattant, a brother in arms.  That's why Jesus gave you this sword to use.

It's because we, as Christians have the strangest situation of all.  We want our enemies to live.  And we want them to live forever.

The Baptism of Christ

A long long time ago, I saw a movie called 'the order.'  You can tell it was a decent length of time ago, because it was starring Heath Ledger (too soon?)  Anyhow, the plot of 'The Order' was that there was a rogue group of priests who were known as sin-eaters.  And what they would do, is they would wait until someone was about to die, and then they themselves would eat that person's sin, and take it into themselves, leaving that person to die with a clear conscience, while that priest just accumulated vast amounts of sin on himself.  I bring this up, of course, because the film seemed to suggest that the whole point of the Christian faith was to go to Heaven, even if you had to find loopholes and plot holes to get there.  Even for the most mean and covetous sinner, there would be a loophole to get you there somehow.    Now the movie wasn't great, you understand, it was lacking in a few key areas, but that plot is at least semi-notable for dealing with the endgame more than anything else.
And that leads us quite happily to baptism.  It leads us to baptism, and to the modern idea that baptism can consist of just getting the kids done.  They can get baptized, and then they're all good for life.  It's a thing you do, and it functions as sufficient 'fire insurance' to get you out of all sorts of trouble.  Essentially, it functions as hedging your bets, being sure that you can get away with something if you need to.

But if the entire benefit of baptism is going to heaven, which is certainly part of it, the question comes up, does it offer any other benefits?  Martin Luther certainly thought so.  if you wouldn't mind dusting off your catechism from the seven inches of dust that it's lying under, and turn to the section in the small catechism on holy baptism, you will see this:
  'Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.'

Okay, fantastic, and Luther goes on, stating 'the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sinsand evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in richteousness and purity forever.'

So this movement of baptism isn't just a terminus movement.  It isn't something that gets you to heaven only, though that is part of it.  Rather, it is a matter of equipping you for life as well as for death.

The book 'Jesus Mean and Wild' talked about this in one of its chapters.  The chapter in question dealt with not just the baptism of Christ, but also what happened immediately after.  For Christ our Lord stood at his baptism, the heavens were opened, and the Spirit of God descended on him like a dove, and a voice from heaven said 'This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.'  It's a great moment, to be sure, a great moment where you see the entirety of the trinity together, and you see them all , arrayed and bedecked before you, like we're living in a stained glass window.  But what happens after Christ has been baptized?  What's the next step?

The Gospels tell us.  And this is one of those situations in which all the Gospels agree.  From Matthew: 'Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.'  From Mark: 'The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.'  From Luke: 'And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned fro the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.' The only Gospel that doesn't talk about that immediate transition is John's Gospel, obviously, and that Gospel is the one where John is recounting the events of the baptism to us.

Of all those Gospels, I like Mark's the best, because Mark's Gospel carries with it a sense of immediacy, carries with it the idea that as soon as Christ was baptized in the Jordan, he went to work to do battle with the devil.  Right after his baptism, right after he went down into that sweet water, then he went out to be tempted, harangued, and beset by Satan.  So, for Jesus, we know that his need for baptism didn't cover his sin, because he didn't have any.  He was conceived without sin, born without sin, and lived without sin as well.  He was just fine, and didn't need that forgiveness of sins.  But did he get the other benefits of baptism?  Sure he did.  He was equiped to do battle with the devil through his baptism.  It was the start of his ministry, the beginning of what he would do in the world, and it was the start of his war with the devil, who would assail him either directly or indirectly for the duration of his ministry.

Your baptism functions in the same way, you know.  Your baptism functions in the same way, giving you a passport to heaven, clearly, but more than that.  Just as Christ was equipped to do war with Satan through his baptism, so you are too.  Your baptism equips you to, as Mark's Gospel says, immediately go out into the wilderness to be tempted, and to overcome.

Your baptism is the means through which your Old Adam is drowned, and the new man emerges.  Paul describes it in our Epistle reading from Sunday as being dead to sin, and alive to Christ.  It describes us as being dead from sin, no longer subject to its whims, no longer responding to it, no longer being moved in any real direction on it, being pulled by it into doing what it wants you to do.  The idea is to resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  To be dead to sin, and alive to Christ. And that happens in your baptism.  And it's not a one-time thing, though you do only need to be baptized once. Rather, like a vaccine, you get it one time, but it continues to work throughout your life, daily protecting you, daily strenghtening you, daily equipping you for the war that you have to engage in with the devil and the powers and dominions of this world.
People forget this.  And they forget their baptisms.  They forget what it was that that they received in their baptism, and thought no more about it.  They never considered that their baptism would be vital and useful to their wandering around in the wilderness, not just for 40 days, but for 80 years.  We're going to be out in this wilderness for a long time, with the devil assailing us at every opportunity.  We will be pursued by that prowling lion, who seeks whom he may devour.  We will be plagued by the monsters from our nightmares who seek our failure and destruction.  And what do we rest on?

We rest on our baptism.  We rest on our baptism and the moment where that Old Adam was drowned and put to death.  We rest on that moment where Christ reached into human history, and bound us to him through the same waters of baptism that he and we both descended into.  That's the hope and stay in the wiles of our lives.  That's what we are dependent on, and relying on.  We are counting on that to drown the Old Adam, to destroy him so that he might be dead to sin.  No longer tempted, no longer pulled and pursued, no longer interested in what may be before him, but altogether dead to sin.  And we also place our hopes in being fully alive in Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, who provided us with that exchange in the waters of baptism, where our sin was washed off of us, and was taken upon him.  Like the sin eaters from 'The Order,' he took our sin on himself, taking it all away so that we could stand before God blameless and secure in our salvation through his merits.

It's funny, that the plot of 'The Order' was less interesting than the plot of the Holy Bible.  The plot that details not an order of rogue priests running around eating sin and taking it on themselves, but the descent of God our Lord in human form, living and dwelling in his creation.  The story of the word of God made flesh, the story of the magnificent force of creation becoming part of creation, and at the moment of baptism, you leave your sins in the water and he takes them away, drowning your fiercest enemy, and restoring you to grace.

It's a good story.  But don't take my word for it.

The book is better.