Where do you live?

If the power goes out at home, what do you do, and where do you go?

Now, if you're like the rest of us, you sort of wait for the power to come back on, but there's a thing that happens, which is that if all the power goes out, and you're left in the darkness, you don't just sort of curl up and wait, you probably go to bed, and rest up for a night.  You can do this because you know your house well enough to not have to hide in the darkness and wait for the morning.  If the lights go out, it's inconvenient, but it's not a deal breaker as far as living your life.  That you can do whether or not the lights are on.  You can be fine with that all the time, because you're not a stranger in your own home, and you know it better than you think you do.  I would wager that even if you couldn't tell me how many stairs go down to the basement in your own home, you could manage your stairs even blindfolded, because even if you don't know it, your brain does. 

This is because you're not a stranger in that space.  You spend every day there, you move in and out of that space with ease and rapidity.  You have molded that space to your desires, and you can move effortlessly through it, with very few problems beyond the odd stubbed toe, that sort of thing. 

The longer you abide in a space, the easier it is to get around in it, and after a while, you have a connection to the place that you don't even need to see it anymore.  In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells us that we are to abide in God's love.  And abiding in God's love is a matter of working out what God's love actually is, before you can start to live there.  Think of it like knowing what your address is, knowing where you live, and all that, before you can claim to live there.  And people who have a passing idea about God's love don't actually abide in it.  They visit it, sure, like a hotel, but think about a hotel, about how a hotel works, or a showhome, that kind of thing.  Those places are there as spaces in which everyone can see themselves, places in which absolutely anyone can picture themselves staying for a while, but not living.  Your house, your actual home, is formed and molded around you, molded to your life, your needs, your desires, the way you move through your day.  People visit God's love in that way, expecting it to be like a hotel room or a showhome, looking like it could apply to anyone, but actually applying to nobody.  If you actually abide in God's love, though, you will find that it definitely applies to real people. And once you understand that it applies to real people, then you will also understand that it applies to you.

That's part of the reason why you should read the Old Testament, you know.  If you read through the Old Testament, you will get a feeling for what God's love actually is, and it's not generic, not bland.  It's specific, because it applies to people, and that's the history of Israel.  God's love is active, it is vibrant, and it applies directly to people, to human beings, and it isn't always what you want, you know. Honestly, you probably don't want anyone to really genuinely love you actively; you want people to love you passively.  Passive love is a love in which you are loved through a lack of correction: if someone loved you, they'd leave you alone, wouldn't bother you anymore.  When we're teenagers, we want our parents to love us passively, not actively.  We want them to love us by leaving us alone, baking us casseroles, but not actually engaging with wanting us to be different than we currently are.  We want them to feed, house, and clothe us, but not to move beyond that at all.  But the love of God isn't a passive love, it's an active love, that wants you to be different than you are.  It wants you to be different, to move beyond where you are and what you are up to.  The love of God that we abide in is the one in which he tells us to love one another actively, as he loves us actively.  This brings us up against Matthew 25, in which the passive love, the laid back going nowhere love, that love is what leads to you being on the left, with the goats.  It's what leads to you being cut off from the paradise prepared from the foundation of the world, given that you had a thousand opportunities to do the right thing, to choose to accomplish what is good and proper, and chose not to do it, believing that the best love you can offer to the world is passive, does not insist on itself, does not try to hard nor go too far, but just doesn't interfere.

To love one another as Christ loves us is to lay down our lives for one another, to seek to serve, to do what we can to ensure the life of our neighbor is preserved, to see the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the naked, and to look out for all their needs, that sort of thing.  That's what Christ did, to move through the world, ministering to those who were around him, those who need healing and peace, who need to be raised from the dead and to have their sins forgiven, all those things are what Christ did, and did tirelessly.  And I would ask you if you love people like that? Do you love people in the way the Christ loves you, giving himself up for you? Do you give your life to others an hour, a minute at a time? Are these things that you do constantly, or do you avoid those things and think about your time, your resources as being phenomenally important all the time?  Do you give of yourself tirelessly as Jesus did, or do you squeeze charity and mercy in and around all the other important things you have to do in a day?

There's a real chance that you're nowhere near as active in your love for the poor, for the miserable, for the needy who surround you as you believe other people should be, and this is where the rubber hits the road for the Christian faith.  Most people would change their definition of what is good based on what they are doing already - if you're doing it, then it's good.  But the Christian definition isn't based on you being good by definition, but rather it is based on the goodness of Christ.  He wants you to love others as he has loved you, which is tiring, and exhausting to say the least.  But there is one other key way in which he loved you, and it's what you need to know the most about.  Not just what he did in service to people, but in forgiveness for when they did not.  And this is so key  that it can't be overstated.  When Jesus tells you what you need to do, and you know that it is right from the beginning, you need to ask yourself why you don't do it.  Is it right, and if it is right, is it important?  If the answer to both of those questions is yes, which it is, then you have to deal with the reality that you are not doing these things that you think all people should do.  And if this is the case, and the commands of Jesus are good, then you have to repent, and be forgiven.  And if you can be forgiven, then you can forgive others as well.  You aren't going to serve other people perfectly, the way Christ does, you're not going to love others perfectly as Christ loves you, but you can forgive them, as Christ has forgiven you.  And here's something strange that you need to think about.

To love one another as Christ loves you means you have to abide in Christ's love to understand how he loves you. How does he love you, fellow Christian?  The same way he loves me, which is that he forgives me.  And to forgive me, he had to lay down his life on the cross, to suffer the spear and the nails, the crown of thorns and the inevitable death.  This is the cost of your forgiveness, and this is how Christ's love is exhibited to you in the here and now.  And as it is exhibited to you in this way in the here and now, this is how you are to love one another.  But make no mistake, to love one another as Christ loves you, to forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you, that hurts, and it will absolutely require you to lay down your life for those people. To hold onto a grudge, that's the easy part.  To forgive, to renew a relationship, that requires you to lay down your life day by day.  It requires you to in a sense let go of your own desires, your own will, and to seriously contemplate that God's will for you is of vital importance.  He wants you to give yourself up, and in doing so, you will understand something that you forgot a long time ago.  That there is a lot in you that needs to be forgiven, to be absolved, and when you know that,  and how much it took to forgive you, then you may very well begin to understand how you love one another.  Forgiving them as Christ forgave you.

True vines, false prophecies.

I am the vine, says Jesus of Nazareth, and ye are the branches.  Without me, ye can do nothing.

This is a heck of a reading, and it's a reading that it would do us good to remember, recognize, and contemplate.  For in this reading we hear the reality of how deep the connection with God goes.  Here's what I mean.

If you know nothing whatsoever about gardening, if you know nothing about the state of the soil, what you ought to know is a lesson from the dandelions, which is that if you're planning on getting rid of you dandelions, you're not going to get too far by just plucking the surface stuff.  You can pull the leaves, the flowers, all of that, but if you do only that, you can expect the dandelion to come back, right in that same spot.  Inexorably, you can and you will find the dandelion coming back right there. How does that magic happen? How does the dandelion grow back right in that spot?  Likely because you're not getting the root.  And the root of a dandelion is a real problem.

The important part of the dandelion is going to be under the surface, and you should know that.  You should know that the root is likely far far bigger than the surface of the plant.  Knowing this should help you to understand why it is that the vine and the branches that Jesus talks about is such a big deal.  You can be small brained, and think of the vine and the branches as being part of one another, and that the branches do not differ in any real way from the vine, but if you want to get big brained, then you'll have to understand what it is that the vine actually does.  And the most important part of the vine is the part that you can't see.  The part that goes under the surface, the part that brings the nutrients, the water, the life for the plant out of the soil, and the part that the plant absolutely can't survive without.  But we feel as though what we can see is the most important part, and we tend to think that the branches can exist perfectly happily without the vine.

The way I talked about this on Sunday was in terms of grapes.  And I do want to talk more about grapes in the here and now. Because grapes, those are something that we all know about, and we all know how grapes show up to us, and in our clamshell punnets.  That is, when you get grapes, if you get grapes from where I get grapes, you get them attached to stalks.  If you want to eat those grapes, you have to pull them off the stalk, either one by one or a few at a time, but as you eat, only the stalk will be left.  That stalk that is left over stops producing grapes.  Once that stalk has been plucked from the vine, it has produced its last grape.  It's done as of that moment.  That's why when you bring grapes home, eat them, and stare at the stalk, it doesn't make any more grapes, and if you want more grapes, you have to go back to where grapes are found.   That makes sense, right?  Nobody expects that a dried out grape stalk would make more grapes, right? 

Then why do we expect to keep on bearing fruit when we're cut off from God?

It's a genuinely good question, and one that shows all kinds of real world practical stuff in the scriptures.  One of the best is the story of Samson from the Old Testament.  Samson is someone that you know of, right? Samson, he of the great strength and raw power, Samson who killed people with his bare hands, with the jawbone of a donkey, who tied foxes together, all that.  Samson with the hair.  On the surface, it looks like a story of magical hair, that long hair = strength, and short hair = weakness.  That looks like the story, but it isn't actually that story at all.  It's a bigger story of someone who had been called upon to judge Israel, who had been appointed by God to perform a role, and a duty, but who turned his back on that role consistently over a long period of time.  His faith, his devotion to God didn't die all in one shot, but bit by bit, a piece at a time.  Think of it like twisting a branch or a flower, that it doesn't pop off all at once, but if you twist it a little at a time, it eventually gives up, and breaks away.  Then the wilting.  Then the death. He drank to excess, dealt with corpses, got into the ladies; piece by piece he abandoned his faith, his commitment, his vows, concluding with his hair, the last vestige of his vows to God being abandoned and cast aside.  And then he ends up surprised when he is as weak as any other man.

No kidding you're as weak as any other man.  How on earth did that happen?  How on earth did that tragedy occur, where you systematically turned your back on God, the source of your strength, that you cut yourself off from the roots, from the nutrients, from the might that had supplied you with iron and fire from your life?  How could this tragedy have happened?  Well, how does it happen with us? 

Think of the church that functionally cuts itself off from God, that takes away a piece at a time until there is nothing left.  Think of the person who pulls themselves back from all their history with their Lord, who pulls themselves back from the stability of their base, from their history, from their roots, and expect to still bear fruit?  There will be no fruit.  It isn't going to happen.  The fruit that God wants you to bear: Love, joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, those things go away when you're cut off from the source.  And I know that there's a meme out there that tells you that you can be good without God, but you know what that is, don't you?

False prophecy.

You're not likely to get a false prophet telling you to worship Baal, or Asherah, but you will certainly find false prophets who will tell you quite happily to ditch God, to cut yourselves off from that vine, and who will tell you that literally nothing will change after you do.  That's what false prophecy looks like, and the false prophet that we can think about the most here is Delilah.  You know, that Delilah, the one who decided to tell Samson to cut his hair because she was being bought off?  Her false prophecy was based not about telling Samson to worship her Gods, but instead of that telling him to turn his back on his own God.  To turn away from his savior, to turn away from his vows, and to surrender his will to hers. Which he did.  The one that told him through manipulation and seduction to listen to her, to do what she wanted him to do, and to believe that he could be strong without God, which he believed.  He was then taken away, blinded, and made to grind grain in the mills of the Philistines.

When Samson regains his strength, which he does, I want to emphasize once again that this isn't the story about magic hair.  Instead, it's a story of faith lost, and faith regained.  It's a story of Samson turning from God, departing from him, being cut off, and desiccated, and while he was in prison, while he had time to think, while he had time to consider his actions, he got to think that he wasn't bearing the fruit he used to.  He wasn't strong and powerful, he wasn't able, he couldn't do anything by himself.  And while he is in prison, he calls out to God, and prays to him "Sovereign Lord, remember me again.  O God, please strengthen me just one more time."  He's not counting on his strength by himself, but rather is relying heavily on God, realizing that being cut off from the roots, from the vine, had done nothing for him.

Now, we are living in a world where people fall away from God all the time, where branches are constantly being cut off, where people are not bearing fruit now, nor are likely to in the future.  But we are people who believe intensely in a God of forgiveness.  Until the branches are burned, there is a real possibility that there is some amazing work that this gardener can do.  This amazing work is highlighted in Romans chapter 11, where it says "'Well,' you may say, 'those branches were broken off to make room for me. '  Yes, but remember, those branches were broken off because they didn't believe in Christ, and you are there because you do believe.  So don't think highly of yourself, but fear what could happen.  For if God did not spare the original branches, he won't spare you either.  Notice how God is both kind and severe.  He is severe towards those who disobeyed, but kind to you if you continue to trust in his kindness.  But if you stop trusting, you also will be cut off.  And if the people of Israel turn from their unbelief, they will be grafted back in again, for God has the power to graft them back into the tree...So if God was willing to do something contrary to nature by grafting you into his cultivated tree, he will be far more eager to graft the original branches back into the tree where they belong."

That tells you what you need to know.  The good news, the wonderful news of forgiveness, of grace, is that even if you cut yourself off, even if you bear no fruit, even if you're doing nothing whatsoever with the gifts you have been given, there is still a chance for repentance, for belief, and for being grafted right back in again.  It's amazing work, grafting, where you can take a branch and make it part of the plant, but it can be done, and does get done.  Just like with Samson, cut off and then grafted back in, the people of this world can do much the same, simply by saying the truth of the situation:

Lord, I believe.  Help thou my unbelief.  Lord I am cut off, graft me back in.

Shepherds

It was Good Shepherd Sunday this last week at not just our church, but all the churches, and the thing is, you can't talk about one shepherd without talking about another.  That is, you can't talk properly about the Good Shepherd, and his attributes, without talking about some other shepherd, you know.  Jesus tells us what it means to be the Good Shepherd, and this is what he says:

I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  

For this reason, the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have authority to lay it down, and 

I have authority to take it up again.  This charge I have received from my Father.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, lays down his life for the sheep.  This is the core belief of the Christian faith, you know.  This is the core, essential crux of the Christian faith, that Jesus died for the sins of the world, rose again, and is coming again.  This is what the Christian faith is all about, you know.  The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Well and good, of course, but we need to contrast this with another shepherd from the Bible, and if you're looking for another shepherd, heck, if you're looking for another king, you're looking for King David.

King David, a man after God's own heart, king David, a man that God anointed as king over all of Israel, King David was the one that ended up famously in an affair with Bathsheba.  Now, if you know your scripture, you will know that David and Bathsheba conceived a son in their sin, a baby, and the arrival of this baby was the reason that Uriah, Bathsheba's late husband, had to die.  You can cover up an affair by sneaking around, but babies really reduce your stealth, and Uriah is a man of the world, and he can count to 9.  He's well aware of how long a baby takes to gestate in a human female, and he would be aware that if he wasn't around nine months ago, there are some shenanigans afoot.

   

So, because David conceived a baby with Bathsheba, and a baby seriously impedes stealth, then the only way out of this, according to David, was to kill Uriah off.  Uriah dies, David marries Bathsheba, they have their son in wedlock, and it's all nice and legal.  But the sin came to fruition, and as it does, brings forth death.  The death of Uriah, and also, the death that was foretold by the prophet Nathan, the death of the child.  The child was sick, the death was foretold, and David was fasting day and night, refusing to bathe, refusing to change clothes, and praying night and day that this child might be spared.

And the child was not spared.

This unnamed child perished.  And so did another child of David's though this guy had a name: Absalom.  I talk a bit about Absalom, because his story, and more than that, David's reaction to his story is important to what we are talking about with the Good Shepherd.  Absalom was leading a rebellion against his father David, and the rebellion started to fall apart. And as the rebellion fell apart, Absalom was fleeing the conflict, and got caught in a tree, presumably by his mop of hair, and was killed dangling from a tree.  When David heard of that news, he was in anguish, and called out in a loud voice "O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, if only I had died instead of you!" 

But you didn't, did you David?  You didn't because you couldn't.  You couldn't because nobody asked you, the lives of your children weren't given, they were taken, and nobody asked you if it was okay.  Nobody cleared it with you, nobody checked if you wanted to give your life in exchange for either of those children.  Their lives were taken, and you didn't get a say.  You would have laid down your life for the sheep, but you didn't have the chance or the opportunity to do so.

And that's where the Good Shepherd kicks in.  The Good Shepherd, who is known by his attribute of laying down his life for the sheep.  When Jesus says that he is the Good Shepherd, he is separating himself from us, by showing us that he does what we cannot.  He comes into the equation when we do not, and he meets the standards that we are unable to.  Think about David again for a second, and his reaction to Absalom being killed.  David who cried out with a loud voice wishing that he would have been killed instead of his son, but he didn't get the choice, didn't get the option.  Nobody asked him if he wanted to exchange his life for Absalom's, it just happened.  And for us, as people who are living in the shadow of real world events, real deaths, real calamities, real moments in which we wish we could have helped, could have swapped our lives for those lost, we realize that we don't have the choice, don't get the choice, we don't have the option, and lives will be lost without anyone asking for our input.  You may want to do that swap, to exchange, but you won't be asked.  

This brings us, as things tend to do, to the calamities we see around us.  First and foremost in the minds of local Sask people right now is the bus crash in Humboldt.  The bus crash where lives were snuffed out in a moment, in an instant, and nobody asked the parents of those boys permission, nobody asked if the parents wanted to make an exchange, which they probably would have, given the choice.  But they didn't get the choice.  The parents of the boys on that bus would likely echo the words that David said, wanting to die instead of their sons, but nobody asked, and you don't get to make that exchange.  The only one who gets to is the Good Shepherd himself.

The Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.  The Good shepherd who has the authority to lay down his life, and the authority to take it back up again.  Parents don't have the authority to lay down their lives for their children; they can't get sick for them, they can't get into a crash instead of them . They cant undergo surgery for them, all that sort of thing.  They don't have that authority to lay down their lives, and they sure don't have the authority to take their lives back up again.  That's the province of Jesus of Nazareth, the Good Shepherd.  The only one who gets to voluntarily lay down his life for the sheep, and the only one who gets to voluntarily take it back up again.

David, upon hearing about the death of his son that he had with Bathsheba, got up, washed, ate, and worshiped the Lord. When his advisers asked him about it, he said 'when the child was still alive, I fasted, mourned, and hoped that his life would be spared.  But now that he is dead, what can I do?  I can't bring him back again, but I will go to him one day.'  David's faith is a good lesson to learn from, where he knew that he couldn't die in the place of his son, as he had no authority to lay down his life for his son.  He couldn't bring his son back from death, as he had no authority to take his life back up again.  This is why David, and the rest of us, absolutely need and require the Good Shepherd, the one who can do all those things that through a haze of tears and mourning, that we wish we could do.

Filet o fish

In the Gospel reading we had from Sunday, Jesus ate some fish.

This seems like a fairly straightforward thing to talk about, doesn't it? A little detail, Jesus ate some fish, no problem there.  But thinking about who the disciples thought Jesus was when he returned from the dead and who he actually is, well, it got me thinking about some famous movie ghosts who occupy different sides of the eating conundrum.  Here's a clip from Ghostbusters. You know, the good one.

Here's slimer, which is his colloquial name.  In the movie, he's never actually called slimer, and goes by either 'onionhead' or 'ugly little spud.'   Either way, he's a ghost, something from the ether, and unlike most ghosts, he loves to snack.  He loves to eat, loves to consume, and in the movie, if the little spud is in a scene, he's going to be eating.  Hot dogs, fries, whatever, and given that he's a ghost, he doesn't have to watch his weight.  He doesn't have to watch what he eats, given that he can't pile on the pounds, what with being a ghost and all.  But the funny thing about the movie Ghostbusters (aside from all the dialogue) is that the 'ghosts' don't really seem to be ghosts at all.  They are paranormal, but they have more in common with demons than they do with ghosts of people who died.  And onion head over here, he seems to bear that out, what with his drinking and smoking and choking down food, he doesn't seem to be too shy in the eating department.  But there's another famous movie ghost that I want to contrast this with, which is from Pirates of the Caribbean, which is a movie I didn't like much, but here it is.

That's captain Barbossa giving a much more realistic view of ghosts and food.  Not that you can eat whatever you want and never gain weight, but rather that you can't eat anymore, because you're insubstantial.  You don't have a body, flesh and blood, you're a ghost, and ghosts don't eat.  Ghosts lack things like tastebuds, tummies, and intestines with which to digest.  They're dead, they're all messed up..  

And this is why Jesus eating fish is as important as it is.  When the disciples see Jesus, they get concerned, they get perplexed, worried, and say 'it is a ghost!'  Sure, that's a realistic conclusion, based on every single fact that any of us have ever known, which is that dead people have no motivation, and they don't do anything.  They just lie there, and they sure don't come back into your house and ask for catering.  But Jesus did. Saying not only 'see my hands and my feet,' but also 'do you have anything to eat?'  So they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he ate it in their presence.


Now, you do need to think about what you believe in as a Christian, and what that actually means.  For an essential, core belief that we have as Christians, which comes up in the creed, is that we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian church, the commuion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.  Etc.  The resurrection of the body is key, it is absolutely key to all of this, and you know this from your daily life.  It's one thing to treat death in the way the average western human does, to say of your dearly departed individuals that they are always with you in your dreams, that they are ghosts or spirits, that they are memories and so on, but those things are ephemeral, and don't really say anything of any real value.  Nothing with the actual weight and importance, with the heft and stature of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 

He isn't a ghost, he isn't a spectre or a spirit, he's not a wandering sheet, or anything insubstantial, he's a real human being.  He takes up space, he walks and talks, he eats and breathes, which he does in the presence of his disciples.  He's not a ghost, which is something that has all the form of a person but none of the substance.  He's both.  And if you think of your loved one who have died in the faith, do you want them to be a spectre or a ghost? Do you want them to be insubstantial and incorporeal? For the pirates in the first pirates of the Caribbean movie, they were torn between two existences, which was that one the one side, they would be everlasting, but as everlasting creatures, they could not enjoy anything on earth; food or drink, sunshine or relationships, the curse was a waking hell for it was forever yet all they wanted was for it to end.  If you have a loved one, or even you yourself, and you're thinking about life in the world to come, do you want to be insubstantial, or do you want to be substantial? Do you want to be corporeal, or do you want to be incorporeal? Do you want to be able to see and associate with, and to love your family, or do you want to be swatting at ghosts forever?

The resurrection of the body, as part of the creed, is actually one of the most important parts of it as far as what we are hoping for, and Jesus manifested that brilliantly in that room, and as usual, it comes down to an order of fish.

stare it down

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, or if you follow the lectionary, the Sunday of the Passion, and on this Sunday, we are used to a lot of action.  It's busy, it's occupied, there is a focus on things happening.  Rapid action, boom boom boom.  If it's the Sunday of the passion, it's all action, Christ being led away to his death, being crucified for the sins of the entire world, being nailed to a cross, being beaten and scourged, and finally being lanced through the side by Saint Longinus.  All that happens.  And if it's Palm Sunday, it's the triumpal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem, moving into the space surrounded by crowds, waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna to the son of David.  These things are all action packed, which is why the most striking thing comes in the stillness.

The stillness is at the end of the Gospel reading that we had from Sunday, the reading about Palm Sunday from the Gospel of Mark. 

Jesus entered Jerusalem, and went to the temple.  He looked around at everything,

but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

 After the rush of Palm Sunday, the crowds, the hosannas, the palms, the cloaks, you might almost miss this moment, but it's an important one, it genuinely is.  It might be hard to see, but it's there, as large as life.  And it's important because of what it signifies, and that, my friends, is the total dedication to seeing the mission through.  

If you've never seen it, there's a great Batman movie out there that isn't the Dark Knight, it isn't Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice, it isn't Batman and Robin; it's Batman:Mask of the Phantasm.  Beginning to end, it might be my favorite Batman movie ever.  For those of you who don't know, in the '90s there was a Batman animated series that had a fascinating art deco aesthetic, lots of firm lines and hard edges.  It was moody and brooding, and presented Batman in a serialized, 1940s crimefighting way, locked in a space and time that obviously never existed, with old aesthetics alongside computers; sort of like retrofuturism or future past.  The Mask of the Phantasm exists in that universe, and has Bruce Wayne (who is Batman, spoilers) dating a woman named Andrea.  There's a scene that happens later on in the movie, a flashback before Bruce goes full Batman, where he sees thugs accosting a vendor, and he feels as though he has to step in.  Andrea wants to stop him, but Bruce is compelled to act. Here's the scene.  Let's watch it together, then discuss.

Okay, there are a few things I need to talk about here.  First of all, I love love the narrowing of the eyes moment there.  Bruce Wayne saying to Andrea 'What do you expect me to do, just stand here?'  There are crimes being committed right in front of him, and Bruce can't just stand there and watch it happen.  But it's the narrowing of the eyes, the focus, the determination, the single-minded purpose behind what he does.  This firmness allows Bruce to defeat the majority of the thugs, knocking them out and tackling them as he does.  But if you keep watching, close to the end of the scene, when a thug is driving towards him with a baseball bat, the eyes stop being narrow, the focus goes away.  Bruce's eyes widen as he look over towards Andrea who is concerned, who is troubled, who wants him to stop being involved so he can stay safe.  In that moment, wide eyed, Bruce is struck with the baseball bat, and the confrontation is over.  The thugs ride off with the loot, and Bruce is defeated.  

This is the moment in which he knows that he has to choose.  He can't stay in a relationship with Andrea and be a crimefighter.  As long as there's someone waiting for him, as long as someone cares, as long as he has someone who is watching for him to get home every day, he can't go out and fight crime.  He has to choose, one or the other, and that's all.  The eyes show it: narrowed and focused he can deal with his mission, but wide-eyed and concerned, he can't possibly keep to the plan.  His loss is caused by the divided loyalties, the lack of purpose.

And this is where the Gospel reading comes in.  That moment of stillness at the end of the Gospel reading, Jesus staring down the temple, looking at it with a single-minded purpose, setting his face like a flint towards that space, knowing that that, for sure, is where his death is going to spring from, that dedication is intense.  For those of us who know where the story is going to to (again, spoilers), Jesus is going to be sentenced to death after his role in clearing the temple.  Once he comes back to the temple (which happens the next day after the Palm Sunday reading in Mark), he overturns the tables, casts out the moneychangers, and drives out the den of thieves.  And in that passage, after he harrows the temple, it says 'When the leading priests and teachers of religious law heard what Jesus had done, they began planning how to kill him.' Once Jesus returns to the temple, once he overturns everything, the die is cast, and it's essentially game over for him.

On Palm Sunday, when he walks up to the temple, that's the last time that he will have the chance to turn back.  He won't have another shot, won't have another chance, that's the end of it, it truly is.  After he has overturned the tables, he won't have another shot, his enemies will be seeking his life, and seeking to destroy him.  Jesus has said many times that he has to be killed, that he has to be slain, he must be executed at the hands of sinful men, and his disciples try to talk him out of that mission.  Look at Peter in that passage, trying to talk Jesus out of fulfilling his mission, trying to talk him out of doing what he has to do, and Jesus telling him to get behind him.  That seems an awful lot like the interaction between Bruce Wayne and Andrea, doesn't it?  The difference ends up being that the narrowing of Bruce's eyes stops, while the setting of the face of Christ like a flint towards what he must do continues, all the way to the cross.  

Palm Sunday is a wonderful day partially for this reason - that Christ enters Jerusalem with single-minded determination, knowing that it will be his last time entering that city.  Every step he takes towards that city, whether on a donkey or on foot, shows his determination towards what will inevitably kill him, what will lead to his death, what will lead to his corpse being taken down from a cross and he keeps going anyway. That purpose, that will is what we are lacking, which is why we need him.  If we could, by our own reason or will believe in Jesus Christ or come to him, then the problem would be solved, and we actually woudn't need him at all.  If we could just choose Jesus, could choose God and his commandments, if we could set our faces like flints, narrow our eyes and just get the job done then the problem would completely go away.  But we can't, and we don't.  We are wide-eyed like Bruce Wayne in that scene, with our concerns split, troubled about many things.  We don't have the will to stare down the temple, to commit, to move towards what has to be done for our salvation.  We are always going to be doubleminded.  Palm Sunday shows us why we need Christ.

He rides towards his death.  He stares down the temple, he endures the arrest, the cross and shame, he does not speak up in his defense, but like a sheep before its shearers is silent.  He moves towards the cross, does not despise the shame, and carries the mission, the plan of salvation out to completion.  We didn't do that, and we weren't ever going to.  But that's why we have always needed him.  We did not choose him, but he chose us.  At Palm Sunday, as every Sunday, we remain grateful that he could will and do that wonderful work that we were unable to do.  To see things through, and to complete the mission.

But what about me?

You can tell when someone wants something from you, because they're people who rarely call you, and then when they do, all of a sudden, and they exchange a quick couple of words with you before all of a sudden saying something along the lines of this 'Okay, so the reason I'm calling is.....'

And then they give a reason.  A favor they want, a need they have, something they need you to do for them.  That's the reason they called, and that's why they weren't exactly 100% interested in what you had to say right off the hop.  There was something that they wanted out of this exchange, and that was the focus from the get go.  The asking of how you were doing, that was just so much deception, really, and just a means to an end.  How quickly can the conversation be steered into you giving them what you want?

Now, this is similar in many ways to what happens between Jesus and the 'sons of thunder' in the gospel reading from Sunday.  In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to die, he is going to be killed, he is going to be slain, and removed from the world.  He is going to be spat upon, beaten, killed and then is going to rise.  James and John, when they hear this, sort of immediately segue into 'so, Jesus, about us for a second.'  Jesus gives them the platform that they're looking for, letting them explain themselves 'okay, what is it that you want to say?' 'Grant us to sit, one on your right, and one on your left, when you come in glory.'  In other words, now that Jesus has gotten it out of the way where he has told his disciples that his work is about to be fulfilled, that he is going to be killed, that he is going to be slain, they sort of turn that into talking about what they are going to get out of the deal.  Jesus, as he does, answers their question with one of his own 'can you drink of the cup that I drink? Or be baptized with the baptism with which I will be baptized?'  And they responded 'we can.'

Of course they answer that way.  Can you drink of that offered cup? Sure.  Why not.  That sounds easy enough.  It's easy to say that until you know what's in the cup, or how much it holds.  This is a similar sort of question to what we have in weddings in our church you know.  In our church ,we have our couples go through vows, commitments, they make promises to one another, in the sight of God and the congregation.  And this is the sort of promise that they make, and they actually don't know what they are promising, not really.  They think they do, of course, in the same way that James and John thought they knew, sure we can drink that cup, no problem.  No difficulty at all. 

But when couples get together, when they get married and promise to stay together in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, and when you're all fancied up to ya-ya, when you're wearing special underwear that you're probably expecting to see each other in later, when you're in the middle of a party that you have been building up to for months, it's almost an iron clad guarantee that you'll say 'sure, I can drink of that cup, no problem.'

If you were to know that one of your children would die, if you would know which of you would get sick and how sick they'd get, if you would know when your spouse would get Parkinson's disease, or Alzheimer's, if you would know when cancer would set in and the money would run out, would you drink that cup? Would you drink of that cup if you actually knew what was inside?  Based on the divorce rate here in this nation, I would say that people wouldn't. People break up for a number of reasons, but because people get sick, because the money runs out, because people aren't having fun anymore, those aren't rare reasons.  They're shockingly common.  And this is a matter to really take carefully.  Can you drink of that cup? Can you follow through with your promises? 

When Jesus asks James and John if they can drink of the same cup, and be baptized with the same baptism the answer that they give is that they sure can, don't worry about it. That seems like an obvious conclusion, but we already know they can't .  we have the perspective to know that James and John are going to leave, they're going to run, they're not going to be crucified to the left and right of Jesus, that honor belongs to bandits and insurrectionists.  They are about as good at following through with that promise as we are to following through with any of our promises, marital or otherwise.  We don't keep our word, we don't stick to our covenants, we don't follow through with the promises that we make, which is why the vague threat that Jesus makes in this passage is so important.  He promises James and John that they will drink of that cup, that they will be baptized with that same baptism, that will happen.  But that isn't a threat.  It's a promise.

The thing is, that we are bad at keeping our end of the bargain.  we are people who make a wreckage out of promises and dust out of covenants.  We have made countless deals, given our word countless times, and disappointed countless people.  This is how we do things in the world, how we have always done things, we have made promises and failed at keeping them, entered into covenants without knowing the details, this is who we are.  But this is why the cup, the baptism are promises, not threats.  Think about Jesus in the Gospels, asking God if the cup of suffering could pass from him.  That cup didn't pass from him, it didn't pass to anyone else.  In the garden, it became clear that the cup was going to rest with Jesus, and he would have to drink it to the dregs.  That was his job, his role, his duty, and he fulfilled it.  And instead of drinking that cup, instead of drinking the cup of suffering, the wine mixed with gall, James and John were given another cup.  They were given the cup of salvation, the cup of the body and blood of Christ the cup of salvation.  It's the same with baptism.  Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, and when he came up out of the water, it was with the sin of the world on his shoulders.  All that sin was washed off of people like James and John, and clung to Christ. 

They drank of the cup, they were baptized in the baptism, and we are too.  This is because we are in a new covenant with God, a covenant not guaranteed on our obedience, on our follow through, but instead based on the work of Christ.  He gets the gall, we get the glory, he gets the dirt, we get the divinity.  And this is part of why we need the sacraments so much, because Jesus knows who weak our faith is, how we need a sign, we crave it, we require it, we need the guarantee of the covenant, and that's what our sacraments are.  They're marks, signs of the fidelity of Christ. When we say the words of institution, we repeat the promise of Jesus, that this is his body, his blood, that he is giving us as a mark, a sign, of the forgiveness of our sins.  We need this in such powerful ways.  Baptism saves us through the water and the word, communion forgives through the body and the blood, this is the way through which Christ continues to show his constancy to his end of the covenant, and this is the only end that really, genuinely matters.  If we could drink that cup of gall, all the way to the end, then it would be possible for us to ascend to the left and right hand of Christ.  Instead, because only Christ can drink that cup, can make peace and mediation between man and God, we gain his forgiveness and his salvation.  He doesn't say to those who are at his side on earth that they will be at his right or left when he enters his kingdom, but instead, he tells them of a completely one-sided covenant.  A covenant based on what he has done, on how he has borne the sins of the world.

Today, you will be with me in paradise.

The remainder

There are four basic math signs.  +, -, x and /.  There's a quick math lesson for you there.  Of the four signs, three of them make sense.  If you multiply, there's a straight answer.  If you add, there's a straight answer.  If you subtract, there's a straight answer.  If you divide, all bets are off.  You can divide by zero, and break logic.  You can divide by the same number and always get one.  You can get into the realm of imaginary numbers, all that stuff.

But the biggest brain buster of all is the issue that comes up when we first do long division, and that is the issue of the remainder.  And what is the remainder? None of the other math signs have that.  You don't add 5+3 and have 7 remainder 1.  But in division, that most accursed sign, we do.  The remainder is the matter that always seems to stand in the way, it's an impediment between you and the right answer, you know.  We all want the right answer to be tidy, to be neat, with no additional threads dangling off of it.  You want the answer to be a number.  No decimals, no fractions, no remainders.  That's what you want, and the sign of division doesn't allow it most of the time.

Consider the story of Jesus in the Temple.  We're used to the image of our Lord making a whip out of cords, driving the moneychangers from the temple, and scattering their coins.  We're used to the idea of him clearing out the animals, and driving the sacrifices away.  This is all good, it's all common knowledge, that's all fine, to be sure.  But, like with any good story of division, what's the remainder? What's left after he's done all of that.

Well, think about the things that don't get driven out, and  the things that remain.  Because for the people like you and I who would spectate this event, it's good to not stop when you get to one answer, and to continue to go until you find the remainder.  Ask yourself, when you read this passage, what it is that doesn't get driven out.  The answer is fairly clear, if you look at what happens after everything is removed.  For in this passage, we see the scattering of the coins, the driving out of the animals, and then we see people asking Jesus by what authority he does these things.

People.

Yes, there are people left in that space after the great expulsion. Now, I know that we want to think about math problems as tidy, but this is one of those points in which we have a remainder.  Jesus plus moneychangers plus coins plus animal sacrifices plus people minus moneychangers minus coins minus animal sacrifices equals?

Jesus and people.

All those things that people had brought in to obscure the line between them and God, all those things that they had brought in to take the place of an actual relationship with God, all the things that they hide behind to make sure that they never have to be too honest with the other people who are there, and with God.  Think about the coins at the temple, what the moneychangers were dealing with. They were serving up coins in much the same way as they do at chuck e cheese, where you have to deal with their tokens. You have to bring your money, change it to chuckie change, and then use it there, no refunds.  You can't use real tender at a chuck e cheese, and they won't take it in any of the machines.  They do take your money for food and drink, though, beer too, but not for the machines.  Those just use magical chuckiebux.  The temple was the same way.  If you had regular Caesar money, it was no good in there.  Can't bring the things of the world into the temple.  You can only use temple money.  The sacrifices, the same way.  You can't bring your sins into the temple, you have to offer up sacrifices and oblations to get away with it.  You have to hide and cover over your sinfulness, and pretend like everything is just fine.  There's a real break at the door that says that you're doing okay, you don't bring the stuff of the world outside into God's holy house.  After all, what would the people say if they knew what you were up to?



So, you drop your life at the door.  You dress well, you look good, your kids are reasonably well behaved for the duration of the service.  You hold hands, and smile.  Things are good, or so you want everyone to think. In all actuality, though, nothing is anywhere near as good as you're making it out to be.  Things are falling apart, the relationships are not as strong as they should be.  The marriage is hanging on by a thread, the kids are getting into all sorts of trouble,there are addictions, pornography, licentiousness, it's like we're living on gin lane over here, but we all sort of want to hide that. We all sort of want to drop all that at the door, and not bring it into the church.  Change the money, buy the sacrifices, and divorce yourself as much as possible from the things that actually happen in your life.  That's a big desire that you want to have, and you don't want to be the only one in church that has problems, you know. 

Everyone else looks pretty good.  Everyone else looks fine, they all seem to have their lives together, whether in church, on social media, on social media, or on social media.  Happy families in pastel shirts and jorts, everyone looking good, looking happy.  People go to a lot of effort to look good, and something strange happens when that happens, which is that you feel as though you have to keep up.  So you only post the good stuff, you only show the best, you only display the absolute best parts of your life and nothing else, because everyone else is, but you for some reason don't feel as though they're faking it, or just showing the best of their lives.  Which they are.

At the end of the Gospel reading, it says something profound about Jesus, which is that he didn't need anyone to tell him what people were all about, because he knew what was in men.  He knows what you're all about.  If you leave your real problems at the door of the church and refuse to admit them to yourself, to God, to anyone else, then the only person you're hiding it from is the people around you, who are all doing it too.  This is a real, serious problem that is going to affect you, and it is going to lead to you desperately clinging on to your sin, because you figure that church is no place for that kind of nonsense. 

But I want you to look at this picture.  Look at this picture of Jesus in the wilderness (it's a lent picture, clearly), and tell me what you see.

You know what I see? Only Jesus.  With nothing else.  No distractions, no clamoring, no moneychangers, no coins, no animals.  Just Jesus, or as we Lutherans would say, Christ alone.

When Jesus drives everything out of the temple, he does so to remove everything that people were using to hide behind.  All that veneer of respectability was driven out, chased away, scourged with whips.  Everything people were hiding behind, everything that they were using to have that aura of doing well, all that got violently pushed away, and only Christ and the people were left.  Nothing else.  Can you imagine what that would be like? To go from noise and clamor to deafening silence? To have the bazaar replaced with just Jesus alone?

Well, friends, that's what this time of year is all about. For most of the rest of the year, you can hide behind your respectability, because the cross of Christ seems awfully far away.  It seems like it may as well be a long time ago in a galaxy far far away for what it matters.  It purports to deal with sin, but heck, most of us don't have any sin, so it can't be that big a deal, right?  But Lent, it drives all those masks away from you, it smashes the coins, the sacrifices, all those exchanges that you make at the door before you go in, and leaves you with only you, only Jesus, and only the cross.  Worried about what would happen if you actually did confess your sins? Why? Jesus already knows what's up, the reading today is quite clear about that.  Scared of what would happen if everyone found out? Hopefully the illusion would be shattered, and you'd realize that they were lying just as much as you were. 

This time of year, all the distractions go away, all the illusions vanish, all the excuses disintegrate, and you're left with only you, and only Christ.  Cling fast to that, because in the temple, in the church, that's really all that matters, that Christ Jesus came to save sinners.