Do it again

Sunday was a curious confluence of events.  We had a fairly prominent festival in the church year on Sunday, with the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple and the purification of Mary.  But it was also Candlemas, for those of you who celebrate that event.

But in case you weren't paying attention, there were some secular events going on yesterday as well.  We had the Big Game yesterday, in which the Kansas City Chiefs, representing the great state of Kansas, beat the San Francisco 49ers.  And if that wasn't enough, we also had Groundhog Day yesterday.  For those of you who don't know, Groundhog Day is a day in which certain towns have a celebrity groundhog who may or may not see his shadow when he emerges from his burrow.  The conceit is that if the groundhog sees his shadow, then there will be six more weeks of winter. If he does not, then there will be an early spring.

Now, as I said, there are several groundhogs all plying this trade, from Punxsutawney to Shubenacadie to Balzac, and they end up having varying predictions that are all over the map.  It's a fun thing to do, and to keep up with, but here's my prediction as a human being who lives in Regina SK.  Ready?

We will have six more weeks of winter.  Guaranteed.

How do I know? Did I see my shadow or something?  No, I sure didn't.  And for the record, 31st of January here in town I saw people wandering around the city in shorts, but I'm still predicting a longer winter.  And the reason for that is that I have lived on the prairies for almost my whole life, and after enough years of living on that Canadian prairies, you start to notice a pattern.  And that pattern is that beginning in October, things start to get cold, and they don't tend to get nice until April.  In reality, you can't expect things to get nice until the days start to get significantly longer in April, or sometimes into may.  The odds of having a spring that starts anywhere before the middle of March is extremely unlikely.  As I say, this is based off of almost 4 decades of the exact same results, over and over again.

If you repeat something often enough, you start to get a pretty good handle on it. And that's what the movie Groundhog Day is about.  If you haven't seen Groundhog Day, go ahead and watch it.  It's pretty good.  The plot centers around a weatherman, played by Bill Murray, who covers the Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.  He hates it, and has essentially open contempt for the entire festival.  After a day of having contempt for the people, town, and festivities, he finds that he and his crew can't leave town, and have to stay overnight.  And when he wakes up, the day starts again, the exact same way.  Over and over and over and over again. The day doesn't change, no matter what he does. He tries driving out, killing himself, going to jail, and nothing changes.  The day always plays out the exact same way.  And over a long enough time, after having enough repetition of the same day over and over again, Bill Murray starts to get it right.  He lives the day essentially 'perfectly,' and ends up finally leaving that day upon the realization that he has gotten it right.

This story is a good one to tell when we are thinking about the presentation of our Lord in the Temple. For in the Temple, Jesus meets up with Simeon and Anna, two people who had been in the Temple for years, dedicating themselves to the Lord and His service.  These are people who have been living out the history of Israel in their lives.  Simeon and Anna were older people, who had been hearing the same stories year in and year out.  And they had lived through numerous Passover festivals, and had seen lots of baby boys brought to the Temple to be redeemed as well.  And this redemption was a way of remembering and retelling the passover story again and again within the family, with the clear instruction that when your son asks you why you do these things, you tell him that it is because the Lord brought you out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and so on.  These were stories that the people of Israel told one another all the time, they were repeated every year, every time that they had a firstborn male, human or animal, of their household.  And these stories were told very frequently indeed, to the point that the Passover became the single most important, foundation story of the Hebrew people.  The story of freedom from slavery, the story of liberation from captivity, of God stepping into history with a mighty arm to free his people from captivity is a story that had to be told over and over again, or else the people of Israel would be tempted to forget it.  But more than that, as they continued to tell the story over and over again, as it was told not just through Simeon and Anna's lives, but through the lives of the nation of Israel as a whole, it became clear that the good people of Israel were not just recounting an event that happened in history, they were looking forward to what that event meant for all of them forever.  The story of the Lord's Passover wasn't just a story of a moment in time for a few people, it was a story that prefigured a much bigger conclusion.

Upon the arrival of Jesus Christ, Simeon recognized him for who he was, not just a child who would be redeemed with two turtledoves like all the rest, but rather the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  This is not a boy who had to be redeemed, but rather a boy who would, himself, do the redeeming.  Once you tell a story often enough, once you internalize it and make it a part of you, and you become significantly better at working out what it is all about, from every angle.  After all, if you hear the story of the Passover once, you may think that it is a story limited to a single moment in time, when God stepped into history and rescued a people.  But if you keep on telling it, you will realize that something else becomes clear as you hear it again.

A lot of people have a lot of ideas as to what the movie Groundhog Day is all about, but I'm going to let Harold Ramis tell you through God's gift of the internet.

 Harold Ramis was a Jewish gentleman, and according to him, the story of the movie was the story of the Torah.  That is, the stories of the Bible do not change.  If you're on a one year series, or a 3 year series, or if you're just doing your devotions, you'll notice that even though the stories don't change, you experience them differently.  That is, the story of Jonah moves from being a story about a man and a fish when you're a child, to a story of avoiding God's call as a teen, to a story of God's insistence on his love for your enemies as an adult, to a story of God's grace applying to his children as a parent.  Same story, but you find different things in them.  Simeon had heard the story of the Passover countless times, had seen countless boys come to be redeemed, and then all of a sudden, even though it was the same story, same ritual, this time it meant something different. This wasn't just the story of one child, or one nation, this was the story of the world being redeemed.  This was the story of the king of kings, the Lord of Lords, the salvation of the world, the light to the nations.  The Passover story was identical, had not changed, but now Simeon could see what it was about all along.

It had always been about the redemption of humanity.  The celebration of the Passover meal was a way of prefiguring the arrival of Jesus Christ.  Once Jesus had arrived, then the story became wonderfully clear, as though you had finally seen the two silhouettes instead of a vase, and now couldn't see anything else.

That's part of the reason we tell the same stories over and over again.  So that as your lives change, the grace of God can speak anew.  And if you don't believe me that that can happen, try a test case.  Go read Calvin and Hobbes if you're a parent, and see who you identify with now.  Apply that case to the scriptures next.  Think about the Lord's prayer when you were a child, how you understood that your daily bread came from God, and how he grants you all you need of body and soul.  But then, when you're a parent, go back and think about it again, and realize that the Lord's prayer means something more now.  You know what it is like to lay your life down an hour at a time for your family, to give to them without them noticing what goes into their survival.  All of scripture works that way, and the way that God speaks to you changes, even though the story does not.  It's why we, and Christ himself, tell you that you have to continue in his word, and if you do you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Titus

You could be forgiven for not knowing that Titus is even a book in the New Testament.

It isn't long, like the letter to the Hebrews or to the Romans.  It doesn't have a sequel, like the letters of Timothy or Corinthians.  It isn't divisive and exciting like the letter of James, and it doesn't have all the strangeness of Revelation.  It treads a lot of the same ground that the letters to Timothy do, so you may be forgiven for not knowing much about it, and for being overall not sure of its existence.

But Titus has an important part to play in the development of the Christian faith, that is, it is Titus who is used by St. Paul as a living example of what the church would eventually be.  The thing is, that we live in the world we occupy at the present moment, and we forget very quickly indeed that things were not always this way.  We forget that things used to be quite different indeed, and that for a long time, most of the time in fact, things were not the way they are now.  The Christian church has undergone a few changes since its inception, and one of the first had to do with who could possibly be a Christian in the first place.

This seems obvious now, because of the way we currently interpret the great commission that Jesus gave at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, that 'All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to Me, therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.'  I added the emphasis there, and I did so because of the nature of the great commission - that we are to go to all nations.  What does all nations mean?

Well, it means something different to us now than it did to the people hearing it from Jesus for the first time.  These people had never heard of places like Japan or Australia, had never conceived of places like Mexico or New Zealand, so were unlikely to make the connection between the great commission and their role to those places.  For them, "all nations" probably meant everything from Great Britain down to Pakistan inclusive.  And that's it.  The known world at the time wasn't that big.

But what did it mean for these nations to be fully, authentically Christian? Well, given the nature and character of the earliest church, and what you know about them, they were all Jews.  And they had grown up hearing and understanding that salvation is from the Jews.  No problem so far.  But in learning that, and in seeing that Christ himself was born a Jew, the disciples were all Jews, Paul was a Jew, you can understand why the thoughts in the earliest church were all about understanding the Christian church as a Jewish offshoot.  That is, the disciples for the most part believed that to be a Christian was to be a Jew first.  You had to keep the sabbaths, keep kosher, and be circumcised in order to become a Christian.  The early church split itself neatly into the party of the circumcision, and the party of the uncircumcision.  It seems strange to us now to hear about how the party of the circumcision was for sure the bigger and louder one.

Peter was drawn before the rest of the disciples, and had to defend his position as someone who was evangelizing Gentiles, because the disciples were living in a situation in which such activity would have been impossible.  They believed that a Christian life was an extension of a Jewish life, and to join the church would be to join the nation of Israel, physically and culturally.  And the big break to that was the person of Titus.

The feast day of Titus is borderline exciting because it is so dull.  If you remember the words of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, where he said that he was a feminist, and would continue to say that much until it was met with a shrug.

Say what you will about Trudeau, but when he vocalizes this, he is making clear that his vision is not just to declare that he is a feminist, but rather to have feminism be so thoroughly normalized that it is met with a lack of surprise as a declaration, because in his future everyone will be a feminist.  So declaring that you are a feminist would be as obvious as being a biped, or whatever.  If Trudeau's vision for the future becomes reality, then the future as feminist would be eventually so normalized as to be met with borderline indifference.  Think about your position vis-à-vis the circumcision party from the first century.  Do you care? Or have you completely forgotten about this first great schism in the church, because the party of the uncircumcision was so victorious as to create not only indifference, shrugging, but a lack of knowledge even of the dispute!  The party of the uncircumcision argued their case so conclusively that you may very well shrug at hearing about it.

How did this party win so conclusively? Part of it, not all of it, but part of it falls to Titus, and how instrumental he was as a case study for the disciples to observe.  Something you will notice about the letter to Titus is that it is not vastly different in what it says to Timothy in Paul's letter to him.  But Timothy is a Jew, and Titus is a Greek.  It's the lack of difference between the two that actually makes this interesting - Titus doesn't have a separate set of instructions, a different approach, he isn't a second class pastor and confessor, he is functionally the same as Timothy.  This means, according to Paul, according to the way he treats these two men and the responsibilities he gives them, that there is no Jew nor Greek.  Titus was brought about with Paul, sent by him, displayed by him in the world, and Titus was able to live and teach in such a manner that nobody could possibly speak against him. 

Now, this wasn't a matter that was only settled by the presence of Titus, but it partially was.  And what Titus helped to do was to take the Christian faith from being something relegated to being for the children of Abraham, and made it known to everyone.  This was the means through which the great commission was lived out and realized, and the way that the church began to understand itself in the same way that Jesus Christ of Nazareth did, that it was for all people.  When Paul discusses Titus in Galatians 2:1-3, he says that Titus was not compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek.  Titus was the great test case that Paul was able to bring to the party of the circumcision, and that made the instructions that Paul had for Titus so important:  "If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of insubordination. For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach.  He must not be arrogant or quick tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined...Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say against us."

Famous First Words

If you go onto the Texas department of criminal justice website, you can find the repository of the last words of executed prisoners.  It used to record their last meals as well, but for now, you just have their last words recorded for public posterity.  I have discussed these words in the past, contrasting them with the last words of Jesus Christ from the cross, and I will be using them today, but just as a frame to talk about something else.  For someone may very well have their last words recorded, for good or ill.  Some of these last words are relatively famous last words, that you could possibly identify by looking at them for a moment.


“Kiss me, Hardy.” Was said by Horatio Nelson


“Honeybun, how do I look in the face?” Were the closing words of Jeb Stuart.


“Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.” Those were the last words of James Wolfe on the plains of Abraham.


Now, the final words of these men were recorded, but nobody recorded their first words.  Nobody recorded their first words because their first words would likely be something incredibly straightforward, and rather dull.  It’s always exciting when children speak their first words, but it’s rarely something overly meaningful.  In fact, it’s likely going to be something along the lines of babble, possibly ‘mama’ or ‘dada,’ but nothing too terribly important. 


Now, we don’t have the actual first words of Jesus Christ recorded, but what we do have are the first time he speaks in each of the Gospels.  Luke’s gospel, I suppose, carries the first words of Christ that would have occurred chronologically, that is words that he speaks as a boy in the temple, where he says “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?”  Each Gospel gives you a different facet of the same story, though, and the Gospel of John flat out tells you why it was written.  The famous last words of the Gospel of John says “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name…Now there are also many other things that Jesus did.  Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  Not everything was recorded, but the things that were recorded are there to let you know who this Jesus is, and what he’s all about.  Not all of his words will be recorded, but the important ones, the ones that lead to faith and life in his name, certainly will be.


So the famous first words of Christ are a question.  In our Gospel reading, He is there, walking on the shores of the Jordan river, and John points him out, identifying him as the very lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And when Jesus is identified as such, two of the disciples of John begin to follow him.  Jesus turns and asks them an important question:  “What are you seeking?” 

It’s an open question, and a question that can be asked in a multitude of different ways.  For those who are boomer-tier, you have probably had multiple occasions in which you’ve walked into a room, or downstairs or whatever, and stood there, looking perplexed for a moment.  There’s a good chance that you have been rifling through a drawer, either drunk or clothes, and have had someone come up behind you and helpfully ask what you’re looking for.  But this question, just taken on its face value, is deeper and broader than just that particular moment.  It reminds me of this moment from Star Trek IV, the voyage home, where Spock is answering a number of questions correctly that all have to do with science, logic, history, all that sort of thing.  But then the computer asks him, at the end of the test ‘How do you feel?’  Spock doesn’t know how to answer the question.  The question is not a logic question, a science question, a question about sine waves, but a question about how Spock himself feels.  If you’re actively looking for an item, or a person, or whatever, then you will be able to answer the question of what you are seeking relatively easily.  But if the question is bigger and broader than that, if the question is about what you are seeking, big picture style, it’s much harder. 


When Jesus asks that question to his disciples, he is asking it to you as well.  What are you seeking? What are you looking for? What are you hoping to find?  You spend your days working, expending effort, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, all those things, and you must be doing them for a reason.  What is that? What are you looking for overall?  Honestly, we are usually too busy working, driving, drinking, smoking, watching Netflix or sleeping to consider the large metaphysical questions, so when Christ asks this question in the words of the Gospels directly to us, we stand there, like Spock, blinking and staring at the page.  We may as well repeat Spock’s answer “I do not understand the question.” 

It’s a rare occasion in which we deal with the question as printed.  It’s a rare occasion in which we deal with the implications of answering what it is that we are looking for.  What are we looking for, what is the pearl of great price that we seek? What is it that we desperately want to find, what is the focus of our lives and effort?  Well, most people would have hard time answering that question.  Even the disciples who find Jesus that day don’t have a clear answer – instead, they say “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  They follow him to where he is staying, and stayed with him that day.  Whatever he said to them was important enough for them to find others and to bring them to Jesus, with the promise “we have found the Christ.”


So, you who are reading this blog, the question comes to any of us who read the scriptures, where Jesus asks us “what are you looking for?”  What do you hope to find in the person of Jesus Christ? The world by and large is confused by this question, and will approach it the same way as Spock, not understanding it. But why the Christian faith at all?  Why do we go to church, venerate the Lord, listen to his word, any of it? What is the purpose?  For a great many people, their understanding not just of God, but of the concept of gods in general, comes down to hoping to find something that will operate as a justification for what they do . For what the human heart wants and craves is to be justified.  The human heart desires to hear the voice from heaven that says to us ‘you are already doing the right thing.  You have nothing to change.’  But we want to hear that when we do have things to change.  We want to hear that voice when we have a large number of things to change.  We want to hear that voice no matter what.  And when you want to hear that voice from God, even in the midst of your own imperfections, in the midst of your sins, then you aren’t looking for God at all.  You’re looking for an idol.


The big question any of us Christians have to ask ourselves is how we would handle it if Christ were to speak words against us directly.  What would you do if Jesus spoke directly against you, with some degree of anger or wrath that would humble you? What if the most important thing Jesus came to do was not to reinforce the view that you have that you are the best and have nothing to change?  Part of the revitalization of the faith is to realize that for too long the dialogue from the church was only to say to people that they were super, and had nothing to change.  Morally, says the church, you are an exemplar, and have nothing to alter.  Even Jesus of Nazareth, the lamb of God would agree.

But if he is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, then John the Baptist has in mind something different than what we normally think.  If you are seeking a god who will agree with you all the time in every way, then Jesus will have nothing for you.  But if you have in mind the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, then you have to deal with the fact that there are sins to be forgiven . That’s an incredibly hard question to deal with.  By and large, we want to have all of the benefits of justification without the mess of dealing with the sins that exist.  But all that does is to make us into what we tend to be – creatures that believe so powerfully that they are right that they will earnestly resist anyone who tells them otherwise.  There have been lots of people who have left their spouses, left their churches, left their families because they were confronted at a certain point and told that they weren’t 100% correct on everything.  But in the pages of the Bible, Jesus tells you where you have gone wrong frequently and consistently.  He calls the one who he named Peter, the rock on which the church would be built “Satan” just a few moments afterwards, so you know that he’s not all about ignoring problems.

He’s all about fixing them. 


Christ is all about making you perfect as God is perfect.  He’s about giving you abundant life, and full joy, that’s his role and his job.  But this only works if your sin and imperfection is encountered, dealt with, and removed by Christ at the cross.  This only works if what you are looking for is not an idol, not a cheerleader, but a savior.  And that’s Christ. The very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.


That question posed to the disciples, ‘what are you seeking?’ is asked to us as well.  What are you seeking?  I hope it is forgiveness.  I hope it is salvation.  For you will find that in Jesus Christ.

The new Herodians

In the Epiphany periscope, we hear about Herod's interaction with the Magi.  This interaction, from one king to the others, is very telling about Herod, and if we're being honest, about ourselves as well.  For Herod, when he hears of the birth of the King of the Jews, is troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.  On the surface, we can assume that Herod is a bad guy who doesn't want to give up his hold on power.  That is very likely true.  But it really isn't quite that simple.  I'll explain.

Herod doesn't want to give up power because Herod knows what's up as far as power goes.  It's easy to forget that the concept that we are all used to by now, that of a peaceful transfer of power, is relatively new.  Before that, and for most of human history, what would happen would be that you were in power, and on the throne, but your family would tend to go from the throne to the graveyard, or into exile.  You wouldn't do that thing where you retired from public life and retired to work on your chalk fossils.  The way it tended to go, was that your dynasty would take over violently from the one before it, and your dynasty would last until your family was murdered and another dynasty took over from you.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  If you want proof of that concept, think about the family who was in power before the Herodian dynasty, that of the Hasmoneans.  What happened to them?  A lot of executions..  And if Herod knows how his family came to power, he has every reason to be suspicious of an up and comer looking to take over from his dynasty.  Especially if this newfound king of the Jews is the real deal.

If this is the real deal, if this is the inheritor of the throne of David, if this is the real King of the Jews, then Herod is through, he and his whole family.  And if Herod is done being King, he's not going to go back to peanut farming.  If there were a Wikipedia at the time, probably carved into stone tablets or whatever, then almost every ruler's 'later life' section would just state that they were murdered, or died of a surfeit of lampreys, and then their heir or rival took their place. Herod had no intention of being added to that statistic, especially not to have a rival who had an actual claim to a throne that Herod himself had only through treachery and collusion.  So, Herod went out of his way to find out from the Magi, from the scribes, where this King of the Jews was.  And here comes the lie - "Go and search diligently for the child" said Herod, "and when you have found him, bring me word, so that I too may come and worship him."

That's a whopper.   It is absolutely, categorically untrue, and is violently so.  I don't use the word violently as a metaphor, either, for Herod seeks violence against the newborn king, to kill him and to bury his rivalry.  Herod is lying to the Magi, to try to get them to deliver the location of Christ, so that Herod can have him killed.  If Jesus is dead, then the threat to Herod's home, family, dynasty and life all go away.

But here's the thing.  This attitude has not changed at all.  Consider this: Christmas is the biggest racket of them all.  It's a glutton of a holiday that lasts from late October all the way to the end of December.  So, pretty much a quarter of the year, including boxing day, is devoted to the observance of this festive season.  Now, nobody I know loves and is attached to the Christmas shopping season, and the longer it goes, the less we all like it. I hope we can all agree on that.  There's a great essay from CS Lewis that talks about Christmas being separate from Xmas, which I've quoted before, and which still retains its poignancy.  And what we learn about the season is that everyone is dragged about, hither and yon, to try to make up the shortfall that retail outlets suffer through over the course of a year.  Profits start on Black Friday, if you will.  But the longer that goes on, the more we begin to understand that we are being played largely for suckers, but we don't seem to be able to stop.  And that's the key right there, that somehow, the celebration of Christmas became wholly co-opted by commercial interests.

Stop me if you've heard this one: "Go and worship this newborn king, and when you have done so, tell me when you are doing so, so that I may worship him too."  Oh, sure.  Different person, but same lie.  'Tis the same deception, the one that says that I too, would like to worship this king, when I have zero intention of doing so.  But I do want to co-opt his worship for the sake of power, wealth, and control.  And that's the punchline.  The punchline that says that the crowded marketplace, the modern Herod, ever had any interest in the worship of Christ.  They never did, and they never will.  It was all in aid of profit, and the increase of the same.  Many people have bemoaned the retreat of the words 'Merry Christmas' from stores and markets. Many people have been disappointed that the retail landscape is dominated by a profoundly secular ethic even and especially at Christmas, but the big question is to ask what you expected from the new Herod? What did you expect the new hegemon to do when his power is threatened?

For the only thing standing firmly against the weight of commerce is the one who flipped the tables and scattered the coins.  The system we have today views human beings as economic units, a resource to be used, and then discarded, while Christ focuses on the unique vitality and essential dignity of every individual human being.  But who else at this hour is intending to understand human beings as spiritual rather than economic units? That conversation is silent save for the voice of Christ who calls us by name, and tells us that our worth is not dependant on our output or on our utility.  He in fact warns us that we cannot serve two masters.

Herod knew that Christ's claim to the throne was more valid than his own, and were he able to take the throne, Herod would be deposed.  How right he was.  But the modern Herod knows the same - seeking to give the illusion that they wanted to worship Christ as well, they did so only to debauch and to destroy, to eliminate the presence of the one who transcends purchase at all.  Christ stands as the central figure of this debate, and stubbornly resists the reduction of humanity into a service to money, and reclaims the dignity of a creature born for eternity, and born for a world without the scarcity that drives the market.  He stands at the centre of it all, and makes you into more than a value on a balance sheet, more than a bottom line, and more than your economic utility.  And at Christmas, we ponder anew that what he gives isn't something that we, or the new Herod can buy, because we couldn't possibly afford the price that it cost.  The blood of Christ that purchased eternity for us.  It is worth more than the gold, the incense and the myrrh. The wise men acknowledged it, and wise men today still do.

Please wait

I bet you think you're easy to shop for.

I bet you think that you're the easiest person to shop for, and your friends and relatives who don't feel that same way are wrong, and probably fools.

I bet you're also the person who sees things that you would like to have everywhere you go.  I bet that you go into stores, shops, marketplaces, boutiques, and see things you would like everywhere.  That's why you think you're easy to shop for, because you see so much that you like.

And I bet that while you are out shopping, and you see those trinkets and baubles that you think are precious, that you pop them into your cart and buy them as a little treat for yourself, instead of telling someone about it right ahead of Christmas.

You should stop doing that.  You should stop shopping, or at least, stop shopping for yourself right before Christmas.  For Christmas is a time of year in which you will be surrounded by people who will want, or who will feel obligated to buy something for you, and even though you think that you're an easy person to shop for, if you're buying everything for yourself, nobody can possibly get to something that you want before you do.  And that might mean that you may have to exercise that most complicated of all things, you may have to exercise patience.  And we're not good at that.

If you're not great at being patient, well, take a number, because the people of the Scriptures weren't exactly hyper-patient either.  Think for a second about Abraham, who was promised by God that he would have children, descendants as numerous as grains of sand on the beach, or as stars in the sky.  Now, Abraham was already getting on a bit in years, and understood that there is a ticking clock when it comes to fertility.  So although God had promised him that he would be the father of a multitude, Abraham wasn't seeing a lot of movement on that, so he figured that since he knew where babies came from, he would just cut God out of the equation altogether.  Which he did.

This is not a rare story. God makes a promise to people, and people get tired of waiting for the promise to be fulfilled, so they either abandon the promise altogether, or decide that they can happily find another way around it.  When God promises a Messiah, a savior, the people get sick of waiting and appoint a few to be the messiah while they wait.  Again, this isn't new at all.  And as I say, you're in good company.

But part of being a Christian, especially being a Christian in Advent, is that you have to get used to waiting.  Things are not going to happen on your schedule. In fact, it won't even be close.  And of course, it's easy to want things on your schedule, why wouldn't you? It's easy to want things on your schedule, especially because the things promised in the scriptures are good things that you ostensibly want.  If you have been paying attention through this Advent season, you will have noticed that we have been looking at Isaiah a lot in the Old Testament readings.  And all the readings have been looking forward to perfection.  They have been looking forward to a return to the garden, a return to paradise.  Whether it be the swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, lions eating straw like oxen, or streams of water flowing in the desert, all these things are looking forward to fulfillment of the end of all things, the new heaven and the new earth.

And that doesn't work until Jesus returns.  You may kick and scream and say that it should, but it doesn't.  Only once Christ returns will everything be set right.  Until that moment, in this world you will have trouble.  We are dealing with flawed ingredients, you know.  We are dealing with broken material, and the overall desire for justice, for perfection, for all of that will not happen while the ingredients are still of dubious quality.  Human beings are that ingredient, and from the moment they turned away from God, committed sins, and fallen from grace, they would be unable to have any kind of paradise, given that we, as humans, are fundamentally flawed.  There can be no perfection as long as we are a part of it.

I talk about the garden, because it was in the garden, while Eve was on her way out, that God gave a promise of a savior for the first time.  Right after the first sin, right after a need for a savior first appeared, the savior was promised.  But it would take a long time for that savior to arrive.  Even though Eve thought from the word go that a savior had arrived, it would take a long time to happen.  Generations of people would live and die in the promise, never seeing the presence of the Lord on earth.

Now, here's how to deal with the fact that there are tons of things you want, and you kind of want to buy them now.  Take a moment to think about the gifts you got last year for Christmas.  Think about all those things that you were given, and think about the fact that there are probably still all sorts of things that you haven't used yet.  There are still boxes you haven't opened, there are still books that you haven't cracked, all these things that you were super excited to get at the time, but haven't gotten around to since.  If you're starting longingly at what you want, maybe at this time it's the occasion to think about what you already have.

Take a moment to open that book that you were happy to get last year.  Take a moment to open that bottle of scotch, to play that game, to use that paint or that wool.  Take a moment to enjoy all those things, and to delight in them instead of only thinking about what you don't have yet.  And this works in the church as well, you know.

I know, you're looking forward to a time in which everything is made right, where those who died are alive again to die no more.  You're looking forward to a time in which all scarcity is gone, where all issues are resolved, and where tears are wiped away from every eye.  We all want that.  But you need to wait.  We're broken material, and you can't make perfect out of the imperfect.  For there to be perfection, we would have to be perfect. Which we will be, but not yet.  For now, you have to wait.  But while you wait, you get to think about, and take joy, in what you already have.  House and home, clothing and shoes, spouse and children, food and drink, all these things that you can enjoy this side of heaven . All these things that are gifts of God for you, that you can enjoy in the here and now.   Forgiveness, life, salvation, sanctity, salvation, a good conscience through forgiveness of sins, these things are all things to be enjoyed now, and will make waiting much easier for everyone.  For then you're not thinking only about what you want.  You're thinking about what you have.

Chaff

Let's discuss the nature of wheat and chaff.

This should be incredibly straightforward to everyone, but we are so divorced from the natural world from which we draw all our nutrients, that we have largely forgotten where our food truly originates.  Allow me to bring it to mind.  There was, or possibly is, a show that was on TV a while ago called 'alone.'  And that show has contestants living by themselves in hostile environments until all but one quits.  While you watch the show, you become painfully aware of something, which is that even when someone is doing their absolute level best to forage for food really efficiently, they will find that they can't eat the vast majority of what they see.

This woman is foraging a lot of food, and appears to be doing it very efficiently, getting the absolute maximum out of the world into which she has been placed.  But there's something that should drive you up the wall watching that, which is that she is surrounded by greenery, surrounded by plant life that is everywhere, but there is very very little of it that she can actually consume.  Some berries, fireweed root, mushrooms, that sort of thing, but all the trees, the grass, the moss, all of that is functionally worthless to her, because her body absolutely can't process it into nutrients. So for the berries that she picks, the berry itself is only one tiny part of the plant.  The rest of the plant is no use to her.

I bring this up, because I would like you to look at this image of wheat.

That's wheat, as you would know if you were from God's country of Saskatchewan, the breadbasket of Canada, etc. And wheat, or some kind of grain, is vital for civilization to exist, moving us beyond being hunter / gatherers and moving us in to being stable, and civilized.  Having grain and grain stored between harvests, allows you to specialize labor, not think beyond just your next meal, and to let you have a society in which people can have a bigger picture, and a better perspective.  It was grain storage that the Israelites were compelled to build in order that the Egyptians could have Pharaohs, armies, magicians, and so that every single role was not just one of subsistence gathering.

But look at that wheat, and you will realize something, which is that although things like grains are absolutely required, mandatory, and civilization is real hard to get without it, the majority of the biomass of that wheat is not useful for you as a human being.  The wheat grain is all that really matters for you, the rest of the plant is not useful at all.  You can't harvest your wheat by bringing an entire plant into the elevator, they'll throw you out for doing it.  All that the elevator wants, all that the market wants, is the grain, the part that you eat.  The rest is what we will call chaff.  And most of the plant, for human beings, is chaff.

I bring all this up because of John the Baptist standing on the banks of the Jordan river, calling out to everyone, compelling them to be baptized.  And as he does so, he brings stark warnings to the people who come to see him to be baptized.  The  axe is at the root of the tree, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hands, and he will gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

This is all stuff you know, of course, being wise and educated Christians.  But hold on a minute, because I would like to point out that if you are winnowing your grain, then you are separating out the majority, which is chaff, from the minority, which is the wheat grain itself.  Most of the wheat plant is straw, it is chaff, it is not usable for human consumption.  The majority of this plant, and almost every plant, is not usable for us.  If you have rhubarb, you're only eating the stalks.  If you have raspberries, you're only eating the fruit.  If you have potatoes, you're only eating the tubers.  There are very few plants that you are going to eat all of.

I'm bringing all this up because when it comes time to assess the life of the Christian, I'm not asking you to think too much about the sheep from the goats here.  Instead, I'm talking about separating people from their sins.  This is tougher than we think it is, primarily because we are living under the impression that people want their sins to be forgiven.  We tend to think about people as understanding that they are sinful, and that they would very much like those sins to be taken away, but the opposite is, in fact, true.  People in general have no desire for their sins to be forgiven, and in fact would very much like to hold onto them and cling to them forever.  Part of this is born out of an idea that you are good, and what you do is good per se, but another part of it is an inability to perceive that what you do is not who you are.  Those are different things.  An awful lot of people, perhaps including yourself, may think of their sins as being unforgivable, not because Christ is incapable of forgiving sins, but rather because they do not approach their sins as something to be forgiven.  They will approach their sins as something that make them who they are.  And if that is the case, people can and will ask the big question, which is that if all these things are sins, if what I have done is sinful, and so much of what I have done has been sinful, then if I were to be forgiven, what would be left?

That's a question that people ask themselves as they grow up, as they grow older, and as they start to take stock of their lives in general.  As a child, you are disciplined by society, by your parents, by your school, and you are expected to repent, and to repent pretty sharpish.  But when you grow, you end up thinking about yourself as being generally pretty good, and as your decisions as forming you into who you are.  And thinking about your decisions that have made you who you are, that have formed and fashioned you into the person that you are today, thinking about those decisions as things you should repent of is a hurtful thing . For if you repent of those, cast them off, repent and are forgiven of them, then what will be left once that threshing is done, and the chaff has been burned?  

Well, the answer is you.  You're left.  You are what continues to exist after all this has been divided from you.  It may seem like there would be nothing left at all, but look at the wheat, and marvel at how little of that plant is kept vs how much is discarded.  The grain is very small.  There is a lot of chaff.

When it comes time to divide the wheat from the chaff, to separate out sin from saved, that's work that involves purging away an awful lot of what you have fooled yourself into thinking is you.  But it is not.  These sins are not you, these bad decisions are not you, and you don't have to be captive to them.  Rather, you can be forgiven, and can begin to understand who you actually are.  Not the layers that you have cased yourself beneath, not the dross surrounding the silver, not the stains on the cloth, not the chaff that is all around the wheat.  

No, you are the part that is worth saving.  Not your sins, not your misdeeds, but you.  When John the Baptist, after calling out all these things as problems to be addressed, continues by pointing out Jesus the Lord, and saying with a loud, clear voice, what the Christmas season is all about:  

'Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.'

Swords into plowshares

We have finally had the reading from Isaiah that talks about beating swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks.  And it's a nice reading.  It's a nice reading because it speaks to what everyone wants when they talk about wanting peace.

But true peace, world peace, it isn't as straightforward as you might think it is. For example, it isn't as though all the governments of the world just haven't thought of trying peace out yet, if you see what I mean.  It isn't as though humans just haven't considered the idea or the concept of peace.  Honestly, we all want peace, but we don't live in a peace universe.  We live in a war universe, governed by war rules.  Competition reigns.  There are not enough resources to go around, and there never will be.  It seems as though there will always be too little for everyone to have, and as people tend to bring up frequently, if we were all to live in the manner to which we have been accustomed in North America, we would need something like three earths to make that happen.  But we don't have three earths, we just have the one.

Given that there is only one earth, and only so much to go around for an ever increasing number of people, you can understand that this condition isn't going to get any better, I can guarantee that it's going to get worse.  If there wasn't enough to go around then, there sure won't be enough to go around now.  Look at the oft mocked stampedes for cheap goods and electronics that you find on or around Black Friday, or Cyber Monday or whatever.  These low level riots that you see are built around the fact that there are only so many doorcrashers to go around, and when they're gone, they're gone.  People will crush one another for the Nintendo Wii, or a cabbage patch doll, or a tickle me elmo, or whatever, because there are not enough of them to go around.

Given that this is for sure the case, I ask you as a question that we will all have to face one way or another, the question of why are we not beating our swords into plowshares, nor our spears into pruning hooks?  Well, honestly, the best tool that I have to talk about this is another 'mountain of the Lord' passage, which comes to us from Isaiah, talking about how the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and so on.  That passage, if you take it seriously, represents a far bigger issue than just what the lion chooses to eat at any one moment.  Do you think that lions chase gazelles just because they enjoy the exercise?  Why wouldn't they just eat the hyper abundant food source of grass that is all around them?  For that matter, your house is likely surrounded by a ton of grass all the time, why do you bother hunting, fishing, going to the grocery store, or whatever else, when you could just eat grass?  Well, it's not just the flavor of the grass, the lion can't just sit down and eat grass while getting any nutrition out of it at all.  Cattle, who stay alive by eating grass, have four stomach chambers, and are ruminants who chew the cud, which is designed entirely around grass consumption.  How many stomach chambers do you have? How many does a lion have? Do you really think that lions just haven't figured out that grass doesn't run away from them?  Or do you think that a lion eating grass would end in a dead lion because they can't digest the food?

I bring this up, because when we think about the nature of the swords into plowshares, we think about this as an ideal that we can and should strive towards, to make peace and to have people know war no more.  And that's a nice idea, but it's not as though people just haven't thought about peace yet, you know.  Everyone, including known warhawks, always say that they want peace.  Nobody says that a war would be totally fun, and we should just have one already.  At least in public, people claim to want peace.  But if everyone wanted peace the way they say they wanted peace, we'd have peace. The only problem with peace is you can't make no money off it.  We don't have peace because we are in a fallen world, a broken world, that operates on scarcity, and insufficient supply.  It is a war universe with war rules.  It's a sin universe with sin rules.

So what is this passage about then?  It's not about wasting your time, surely. What it is about, though, is about making a universe that is not based on war anymore.  It is about a world without the rules of war and the conditions of war.  It is about a world where scarcity has been abolished, where the military industrial complex has been dismantled, where all those problems have been fully and completely addressed and fixed.  And that's the return of Christ.  That's what his return looks like.

The reason it's impossible right now is because you know what would happen to a country that disarmed. It's not as though everyone would follow suit and the world would be at peace.  If Ukraine disarms, it stops being Ukraine. That is the same for literally every place on earth.  If you have the gall to stop defending yourself, or to not have a strong ally to defend you, then you will be subsumed, sooner rather than later.  Someone will take over, someone will take what you own, someone will drive you to poverty or death.  You many not think about it, but your property is preserved by guns right now.  They may not be your guns, but if someone threatens your home, your family, or anything like that, someone with a gun will show up to put an end to the problem. While we are still in a world where lions can't eat straw, they won't.  While we are still in a world where nation will fight against nation should it become undefended, swords will remain swords, and will not become plowshares.

Why do we talk about this, then? Becuase this is what the return of Christ will look like, and it's what we have to be prepared for.  We have to be ready for his return, and the accompanying beating of swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. And you have to be prepared for him to turn your sword into a plowshare, and your spear into a pruning hook.  That's the real trick now, isn't it?  The only thing stopping all of this is that we won't let it, so understandably the return of Jesus will be a horrible event in which everything is put right, and wars cease.  Given that we don't want to give everything away now, given that we don't want to share our entire lifestyles now, what makes us think that we're going to be very much into it upon the return of Jesus?  The return of Christ to make everything right and good will be a painful thing, it will be a hurtful thing indeed for the rich.  Which probably includes you.

The rich have much more to lose, because they have taken far more over time.  When we think about justice, especially end times justice, it is a matter where every hill will be brought low, and every valley raised up.  If you have taken over the course of your life, you will have lots to give.  When you ask about swords being changed into plowshares, ask yourself why you want to hold onto your swords, and why you want to keep your spears.  Then you will understand what it is that God will make right upon his return.  It will be a hard time, and a difficult time, mainly because it will involve us having everything returned to where it should have been from the beginning, and confronting that it was our sins that stopped it from being there.  That's why Advent is a penitential season, not a joyful one.  It's a time to reflect on our sins, on why ther is war on earth, why we have rules for wars, why we defend and protect our property and why we have so much more than everyone else.  When Jesus returns, and confronts you for your sins, will you let him take them away, or will you defend them as not being sins.  That is the big question about swords nd plowshares.  Do you want Jesus to make everything right? Do you want a course correction? Or are you comfy being rich, happy and full of yourself?

He is the prince of peace.  He will make peace for eternity.  The question is, for all of us, where do you align yourself with what he will do? Do you welcome him as king, or will you insist that you have nothing to forgive?