It's not for sale.

Yes, it was this time again.  The time for the camel, and the eye of the needle.  It's a good passage, mainly because it's from the Bible, and everything's good, because it's the good book.  But it does give us pause for thought, as to who the rich people in the world actually are.  To help you out with this, here are some percentages of people who live on less than $1.25 a day.  That's one dollar and twenty-five cents per day.  I'll let that sink in....... ready?  Let's begin.

Only one of these animals is not in poverty.
My vote is for the Hippo.

Bangladesh:  43%
Burkina Faso: 44.6%
Central African Republic: 68.2%
China:  13.1%
India:  32.7%
Indonesia: 18.1%
Madagascar: 81.3%
Pakistan: 21%
Swaziland: 40.6%
Uganda: 38%




Those are not small numbers.  And numbers don't lie.  Now here's an even more interesting activity that you can try in the comfort of your very own home.  If you're reading this on a library computer, or on your smartphone while riding the bus, don't do this activity yet, you'll probably get thrown out.  Grab your shirt, pull it up and over your head, and check out where your shirt was made.  Mine today was made in Cambodia.  Cambodia which has a ratio of 22% of people living on less than $1.25 per day.  Go ahead, check your clothes and see where they were made.  And then cross reference that nation with this data.  I'll wait.

Odds are, like myself, the nation that produced your textiles has some grindingly poor people in it.  And that seems like an awful lot of folks who have to live in poverty just so I can wear my fashionable polar fleece.  So, if you break it down, that means that 397, 277, 427 people live on under $1.25 a day in India alone.  In China, the numbers are 174,736, 900.  Combined, between the two countries, you have  572, 014, 327 folks in grinding terrible poverty.  These are the countries that make your shirts, your pants, your plastic toys, and your smartphones.  You know what that is?  That's sixteen times the population of Canada.

Wow.  You rich yet?  Rather, do you feel rich yet?  You should, because it's appalling, really, how rich we all are, and yet don't even think about it.  But like many other things in the Bible, you and I read it, and we read it to seek ammunition against other people.  Who's the guy that we're likely to be targeting as a rich man who probably won't get into heaven?

Hi guys!  Miss me?

Hey it's this guy.  He's rich.  And he's someone we can comfortably point to from our massive houses, with central heat and central air, and water that won't give us cholera if we drink it, and hot and cold running water, and hi-def tvs, and we can say "Look at that rich git.  How dare he claim to understand the plight of the common man? How dare he say he understands for a moment that he cares for the poor!"

But you're distractingly rich. And I mean that very sincerely.  You are distracted by your wealth, which, because you don't think about it too often, becomes a problem for you, and your camel, and the eye of the needle.

Why is it so difficult for the rich (including us), to enter into the kingdom of heaven?  Well, what do we do with our time, and how much time do we spend acknowledging our blessings?  The more you have, the more difficult it is to remain humble, and the more difficult it is to realize your place in God's universe.  I know I made this point on Sunday, but it's still a good one, so I'm gonna use it again.  If we have a life filled with distractions, if we have an experience in which we're constantly being pushed and pulled in a variety of directions, how easy is it to even see or hear God at all?

The psalms tell us how to recognize God.  Psalm 46:10 says "be still and know that I am God."  And that's so much harder to do if you've got a million and one things pushing you here and there and everywhere.  It used to be that the wireless radio was going to intrude into homes and debauch them.  And then it was tv, and then the internet, and then smartphones.  And with all these intrusions, it gets harder and harder to be still, to know that God is God.  We welcome distractions into our lives like crazy, we live our lives in a constant state of distraction, being pulled here and there, and even for some of us, when we sleep, we're still moving and grooving.  Ever used a sleep timer on a radio or TV to fall asleep?  Even in those moments leading up to losing consciousness, we're still busy.  Is it any wonder then that God, when he sent angels to people to communicate things, did so in dreams?  Those who are rich and powerful, who can afford a world of distractions, who feel as though they've earned everything, the only time they're still is when they're asleep.

That's when God talked to Joseph.
That's when God talked to Pharaoh.
That's when God talked to the king of Babylon.

For us, we who are wealthy, we spend a lot of time doing a lot of stuff, we're busy busy busy all the time, too busy to even listen to what God says to us.  If you're poor, as a lot of folks were in the time of Christ, it's a whole lot easier to listen.  Also, you recognize everything you have as a gift of grace.  You don't take much of anything for granted.  You can't afford to.  We rich, that's exactly what we do.

So what to do now?  Moving forward, how best to deal with your outrageous wealth that you have, but that you don't remember that you have?  Well, John the Baptist has some advice for all of us, or rather, he is telling us what will be happening.

"Prepare the way of the Lord,

Make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall become straight.

And the rough places shall become level ways,

and all shall see the glory of God."               

                                                                                          -Luke 3:4-6

Aha.  Another reason that the rich don't much care for the Gospel of God is that it has in it a promise to level things off.  It promises full and complete equality before God (In Christ there is no slave nor free, no male nor female, no Jew nor Greek.  All are one in Christ Jesus).  This is great news if you're desperately, grindingly poor, if you're living on less than a dollar a day, if you're suffering day in and day out with poverty.  This is bad news if you're wealthy.  Then the smelly, dirty people of Bangladesh, the textile workers of India, the malnourished of the Central African Republic, and the toy assemblers of China, you're equal to all of them in God's eyes.  all those fancy things you earned, all those toys you bought from them, all the houses and cars and wealth, all of it means nothing.  Because you are exactly equal in God's eyes.  He sees a sinner in need of salvation.  

Now to go off on a Lutheran tangent for a second, this is pretty much straight up Law/Gospel stuff.  Law and Gospel tell us something - namely that God seeks to redeem sinners.  When he looks at you, he sees a sinner in need of salvation.  That's good news if you have already seen your sin, then you see the salvation offered.  If you don't know that you have any sin, then it's terrible news, because it dares to mention that you're not perfect.  And that's a problem for you.  If you've been gliding along up until now with nary a thought to your sin, then it's a problem, because it tells you that you've got a problem, you've got a flaw that needs to be fixed.  You have to be humble, you have to be forgiven, beginning and end.  It's easy to do if you know that you're sinful, then the word of God is a joy.  If you think you're essentially okay, then the words of God are offensive and raw, even though they could be the very same words.  It's the same deal with wealth.  If you think you've earned everything, and it's yours by divine fiat, then you'll be disappointed when you depart this earth with nothing, just as you arrived with nothing.  If, however, you realize that everything you own is a gift, and every opportunity you have is a gift, then you're a whole lot more grateful for everything.  Lest we think that it only applies to material goods, the biggest blessing, life everlasting, is as much a gift as anything else.  Once you've worked out that what you have is a gift from God, then it becomes much easier to be thankful for everything.  House, home, family, and faith.  

PJ.

Inheritance, zombies, and wrestling moves.

I have a long and sad history of bringing something up with my parents every once in a while.  You see, they live in a palatial palace, which they earned through decades of hard work and sacrifice.  And whenever I go to their place, I like to mention that I have in mind to move them into a home, and to take their house for my own living quarters.  I know, for shame, right?  I'm a dreadful son.  

But here's the scoop.  I can either take what they own by force, or failing that, I can wait to inherit their stuff after they pass away and go to be with Jesus.  This concept of inheritance is one that crops up in an awful lot of the mystery novels my mother is fond of reading.  For those who are paying attention, I've mentioned her terrifying mystery novel covers before, but in case you're new here (and if you're new here, then welcome, Billy), here's another particularly terrifying one.  But here's the plot of a lot of murder mysteries:  Someone has something of particular value. You want that item.  You off that person, and get their item.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

But wait!  This is how the perp in question ends up getting busted:  it's not too hard to work out that if you inherit the sum of ten thousand dollars money shortly after your great-aunt Agatha has been bludgeoned to death with a golf trophy, you may come across as a bit suspicious.  If you've got something to gain from the murder of another party, and you subsequently gain that item, then it's a wee shade suspicious.  Now, that's the problem with inheritance.  It's the problem that lurked at the heart of the 'monkey's paw' story, which says that your wishes to have more money come at a terrible price: the death of someone you love.  

Now, let's extrapolate this to Jesus, because guess what:  his story is one of inheritance and murder.  Just because murder is accomplished through judicial means, that doesn't make it any less of a lynching sometimes.  When Jesus is arrested, it's in the garden of Gethsemane, where he had been praying with his sleepy disciples.  And the crowd who comes to arrest him is from the temple authorities, bringing him back to the temple courts.  And what gets decided there?  Only that Jesus gets railroaded, and that he has no defense.  But the temple authorities, legally, can't execute anyone.  They don't have authority under Roman rule to carry that out, for good reason.  The Roman government didn't get to be the leading empire of the world for five hundred years by allowing two parallel legal systems to run at the same time.  So they have to take him before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, who is well aware that Jesus has not committed any crimes against the Roman state.  If he's blasphemed against the Temple, or against the majesty of God's holy house, what problem is that for the Romans, who worship Jupiter, Apollo, and Uranus?  So Pontius Pilate is being asked to crucify Jesus of Nazareth for breaking laws that the Romans don't even have.  This is what I mean when I call this a judicial murder: just because you kill someone through ostensibly legal means, doesn't mean it's not murder.  

Now, this is where the story gets kind of funny.  Remember in the reading from Sunday where the rich young ruler asks 

"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" And he said 

to him, "Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.  If you wish to

enter into life, keep the commandments." He said to him "Which ones?" And 

Jesus said "you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery,

you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and 

mother.  Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

The young man said to him "All these things I have done from my youth.  What more 

do I lack?" Jesus said to him "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell

your possessions, and give the money to the poor, then you will have 

treasure in heaven.  then come, follow me." 

When the young man heard this, he went away grieving, for he had

many possessions.

Matthew 19:16-22

"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Well, honestly, what do you to to inherit anything?  Normally, you wait until the person who has what you want dies.  Sometimes you kill them.  But hold on for a moment, because the story gets even stranger. The vast majority of people who had assembled to execute Jesus Christ, the vast majority of people who assembled themselves to shout for the crucifixion of Jesus, they had no idea what they were getting into.  Pilate tries to set them up for it, by saying to them 

So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot

was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before

the crowd, saying 'I am innocent of this man's blood.  See to

it for yourselves.' Then the people as a whole answered 

'His blood be on us and on our children!'

So He released Barabbas for them, and after flogging Jesus,

he handed him over to be crucified.

Matthew 27:24-26

Pilate tells them as clearly as he can that he's not responsible for the death of Jesus that they crave so badly.  He's committed no crime, and can't be punished by Roman law.  But Pilate is savvy enough to know what happens when people riot, so he allows them to have their wishes, and turns Jesus over to be crucified.  So everyone's complicit in his killing.  Pilate lets it happen even though he knows that Jesus is innocent.  The Roman soldiers nail him to the cross, thus actually striking the fatal blows of nails and spear.  The crowd is responsible for calling for his death, and threatening riots all over the place.  Nobody gets a pass on this one.  Nobody gets to say that they had nothing to do with the execution of Christ, not even us.  Even now, if you've botched anything in your whole life ever, it was sufficient for Jesus to go to his death.  Even if you were the only one.  

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the

unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

1 Peter 3:18

You're as involved in the death of Jesus as anyone else, because you helped to make it necessary.  Remember what Jesus says to the rich young man: If you want to be perfect, if you want to have life, then you have to keep everything perfectly, and live a life of wiling service.  And we don't really do that that often.   But as I say, this is the really strange twist of fate: The people who killed Jesus, calling for his execution, crying for his blood, meekly allowing him to die, nailing him up, whatever, what they didn't realize was that they were killing someone who had willed them the greatest inheritance ever.  They were murdering someone who has a pearl of great price, beyond anything else that could be purchased, a treasure hidden in a field, something worth more than anything else, he had this.  And the only way they could get it was to have the person who owned it die.  And they did that through killing him, taking away everything he had, and leaving him to die on a block of wood somewhere in a middle eastern desert.  And as he died, Jesus had this to say:

Forgive them, Father.  They know not what they do.

Luke 23:34

He died.  And upon his death, what he owned, that is, his right to stand before God, his sinless life, his righteousness and holiness and grace and perfection, not to mention eternal life, is what we inherited.  

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave,

though he is the owner of everything, but he is under

guardians and managers until the date set by his father.  In the 

same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the 

elementary principles of the world.  But when the fullness of time had 

come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem 

those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as 

sons.  And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of 

his Son into our hearts, calling "Abba, Father!" So you are no

longer a slave, but a son.  And if a son, then an heir through God.

Galatians 4:1-7

We are inheritors of the greatest prize of all time, from someone we murdered.  And if that isn't crazy enough, take a second to go back to the story of the monkey's paw that I included earlier.  First wish, they wish for money.  For that to happen, the couple's son has to die in a horrific accident.  Then they get the compensation that they required.  Second wish, they wish their son back to life.  But he doesn't come back to life just right.  He comes back, presumably, as a terrible zombie, smashed by his accident, and having been buried for a number of days.  So they have to wish him back to being dead.  And thus are their three wishes.  End of story.  With the story of Christ, he has something we want.  We kill him. We inherit his life and grace and eternity, as the rich young man asked for.  And then he rises from the dead.  Not as a zombie, not as the walking dead, not as something less than human, not as an abomination, but as a resurrected being, put right again.  Not just dead flesh walking around, but a living body, risen to die no more.  And that's the inheritance we all get too.  

Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?  Kill the one who has it, and find out that he willed it to you.  And now, you are children, and heirs of the promise, and of the life won for you by Christ Jesus.  Through inheritance of what he has that we want.  Life.  Everlasting.

PJ.

The B o C

It was an incredibly mind-blowing experience for me, learning that there was a reason that the small catechism was called the small catechism.  Mainly because there was a large catechism that I'd never heard of.  Now, unlike the vaaaaaaast majority of my blog readers, I didn't grow up exclusively in the Lutheran church.  When I got going in the Christian church, it was in the Anglican church, and we moved over to the Lutheran church when I was about seven, I guess.  Is that right?  Seven?  Whatevs.  The point is, that I didn't grow up exclusively in the Lutheran church.  There was no book of concord in our home.  Instead of the BOC, we had the BOCP.  That is, the book of common prayer, common to the Anglican church.  And here's where I get on my high horse, because of the disconnect between church and home.

Okay, here's how the Lutheran church works.  You have a Bible.  Your Bible stays at home, typically. Why does it stay at home?  Because it's big, clunky, and was given to you as a present from your godparents the day you were confirmed.  So, clearly, you can't be bringing that around.  And you may have a book of concord, but it is also thick, clunky, and not easily transportable (and yes, I do have a copy of the pocket one).  But even if you do have a copy of the pocket one, and even if you do bring it around with you, it isn't really a prayer resource, not proper.  The orders for the day aren't in there.  Your only other choice is the hymnal, but that's never really made the crossover between home and church life.  Right or wrong, it's still and perhaps always will be seen as for corporate, congregational worship only.  It's not a home devotion tool that the majority of our people use.

Why do I bring this up?  Because there's a significant shift between home and church worship, between home and church devotion.  We're not plugged into the same thing.  And it shows.

Think about your home devotional life.  If you have one.  Think about how it operates, and about how it tends to be if not in a separate room from what's going on in church, then perhaps in a different universe.  There are the readings for Sunday that exist in sort of a vacuum, and not in the real world of your daily life.  The hymns sung in church on Sunday don't exactly carry over to your home life, and the prayers you say at home don't show up in the prayers you say on Sunday.  And what this leads to is to a view that your church life is sort of separated from your home devotional experience.  And what does that lead to?  To a world in which, as usual, church and regular life run parallel to each other.

This breakdown in worship / real life is not limited to just how your worship life operates, it has to do also with your view of church and God as well.  Like it or not, typically we Lutherans view God and the real world as existing completely apart from each other.  God lives in church, and we go visit him once a week, like he's an ailing parent or something.  A shut-in, who needs us to stop by and spend an hour with him once a week.  And this is a problem not just with how we see the world, it's a problem with how we see God.

If you're a Christian (and reading this blog has automatically made you one, so congratulations), you don't have the luxury of believing in a God who lives in a temple, or who exists only in a monstrance or whatever.  You believe in an incarnate God.  What does it mean to have an incarnate God?  It means that when you come to worship God in church, it's not as though this is where he lives.  It's not as though he lives in palaces made with human hands.  Ask yourself what happened to the temple where God was thought to live.  It got torn down by the Romans, and will likely never be rebuilt, at least not as long as things stay the way they are.  You see, Jesus talked about this specific issue when he was speaking to a certain Samaritan.  And this passage is really telling, because it talks about our view of God, and where God lives.

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.
²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, 
but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, 
“believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father 
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know;
we worship what we do know, 
for salvation is from the Jews.
²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come 
when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, 
for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

John 4:19-24

Not the smelliest or drunkest, but an
unexpected place to find God.

Jesus is the incarnate word of God, and as such, he knows that it's not about going to a specific place to find God.  He's everywhere.  Absolutely everywhere.  Now, we want to restrict him to churches, to where the paraments are ironed, and the albs are crisp.  We want to restrict him to nice places where nice people dress up nice, and sing nice songs.  But that's not the reality of things.  The whole point of the incarnation is that God is where you don't expect him to be.  He's everywhere.  He's spirit, and it's not as though he's in a temple or on a mountain.  We have to worship him in spirit and in truth.  What does all that mean?  It means that when you go home, when your devotional life continues, it's not as a parallel to your church life, as though it's something completely different.  It's all part of the same thing. The same God who is there with loud hosannas on Sunday morning is the God who hears your grace before meals, and the God who listens to your evening prayers.  Maybe you're not the type of Lutheran who feels disjointed by this, and in this case, you're a fortunate one.  The rest of us need to get our heads straight as to what the incarnation actually means: that God is in the dirtiest, smelliest, drunkest places on planet earth, because that's where the people who need him actually are.  

People probably like you.  People who aren't always proud of who they are and what they do.  People like me, too.  

PJ.

If a Skywalker's hand offends thee...

Darth Vader helps his son stick to Jesus' words.

It's funny, isn't it?  We Christians have a part in service in which we 'share the peace' with one another.  And in that sharing of the peace, we trot about shaking hands with one another, wishing each other God's peace.  It's all well and good, but after the reading that we just had for this Sunday, I'm personally and professionally amazed that any of us can possibly manage it.  We shouldn't be able to manage it, because Jesus tells us that if our hands cause us to sin, that we should cut them off.

⁴² “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. ⁴³ If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. ^{[44] [a] 45} And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. ^{[46] [b] 47} And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell,⁴⁸ where

“‘the worms that eat them do not die,
    and the fire is not quenched.’^[c]

^{-Mark  9:42-48 (NIV)}

Oh, really.  That's one o' them readings that we tend to take with a grain of salt.  Jesus tells you to lop off your offensive hands?  Yeah, blurgh, he didn't mean that.  It's funny, that we as Lutheran Christians can say that the earth and everything else was created in six calendar days, that there was a literal worldwide flood that killed everything, that Jesus literally walked on water, that Jairus' daughter was literally returned from the dead, and that the disciples literally spoke in a multitude of languages on Pentecost.  No problem with any of that.

But the moment Jesus gives us a straight commandment on how to avoid hellfire, all of a sudden, that bad boy's an allegory.

Surely, Jesus didn't really mean to cut off your hands, did he?  He didn't mean to tear out your eyes, or remove your feet, did he?  Well, he seems to say so, and he's God, so two things.
1 - who are you to argue, and
2 - why do you still have ten fingers?

We don't think about this much, do we?   But we don't think too much about much of what Jesus says.  We're real good on Pauline Christianity, because it's about doctrine.  We're much shoddier on Gospel Christianity, because it has a lot to do with what you do.  Jesus really cares about what you get up to here in this world.  He has an eye for the poor, for the outcasts, for the hard done by.  And he has in mind your sin.  Jesus is concerned about your sin in a way that you might not be, for a very good reason. 

Remember a time before your first car? Remember when you had to drive around in the 'folkswagon?'  Your mom or dad or whoever let you use their car back when you were sixteen, and you got to drive it around and stuff?  Remember how your parents seemed really paranoid about you driving it around? Remember how terrified they were that you might crash the car, scratch it, fiddle with the radio stations, whatevers.  Everything had to be just so.  You had to wipe your shoes before you'd get in.  Why exactly?  Because your mom or dad or whoever paid for the car.  You didn't care so much.  You were happy to drive that car until it fell apart, because you did nothing for it.  It's the same way with the free gift of salvation.  And yes, my wife does still not exactly care for the term free gift.  But it's the same way with the free gift of salvation.   this gift that someone else paid for, and really squander it.  You see, we do that with free stuff all the time.  If you worked for something, if you saved up earnings, if you sweated away hours and hours, if you worked as hard as you can, then you appreciate what you have, and you take care of it like crazy.  It's the difference between renting and owning a home, or between renting and owning a car.  Have you ever wondered why, when they sell cars from budget or whatever, they go for so cheap?  Because people drive those into the ground, until they almost don't exist anymore.  People do things with rental cars that they'd never do with their own vehicles.  Why?  Because they did nothing to own this car, and they don't have to pay to maintain it, fix it up, nothing.  Nothing whatsoever.  There's no wonder all this stuff gets beaten up, as typically we're really bad at caring for stuff we didn't earn.

What goes around comes around.

So when Jesus points out the seriousness of our sin, when he talks about cutting hands off, cutting feet off, gouging out eyes to keep you free of hellfire, it should stand as a shock to our Christian sensibilities.  You, as a Christian have gotten too soft on the reality of what you do.  If daddy Jesus will take care of it all anyway, then why bother caring about what you do?  None of it matters because God will blot it all out anyhow, right?  Once you point out to Sunday School kids that Jesus forgives sins, all sins, every sin without cost or weight to you, then their first question always seems to be 'so, we can do whatever we want, right?'

Well, wrongo.  Jesus cares so tremendously much about what you do because he's the one fronting the cost.  He's supplying the hands, stretched out on the cross that you refuse to cut off to avoid hellfire.  He's the one supplying the feet that you refuse to remove to keep you free from the worm that never dies and the fire that never goes out.  He's the one whose eyes closed in death to cover all the stuff that you happily observe that you know you shouldn't.

What's the point of this passage?  Not to give you a how-to to remove your body parts, but to remind you complacent Christian about the price paid for you.  Yeah yeah yeah, Jesus died for your sins, big whoop.  But think about cutting off your hand to stay away from the internet porn, or cutting off your foot to keep from driving to your mistress' place, and you'll realize very quickly that you're not willing to do any of that.  Not one bit.  You're not willing to inconvenience yourself even in the slightest to avoid damnable sin, while your savior has his hands and feet nailed to wood, his side pierced, and his last breaths drawn from his body for that sin.

We Christians are particularly notorious for this issue, in which we say to ourselves, to each other, to whatever, that we're not really on the hook for this stuff, sooooooooo it doesn't really matter.  And it's true that Jesus will forgive everything, but think on the price. Think what it costs to keep you free from hell.  If it won't keep you away from sinning, it'll at least make you think a little harder about what you've done.

PJ.

Bonus decapitation.  Nothing to see here.

Pride Parade

There is a story out there about a Bible Study at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, that happened thusly:

The Bible study leader stated that pride is a sin.  One of the attendees asked if pride was still a sin if you were proud of your family, proud that they'd turned out so well and how nice they were.  And the leader replied that pride is always a sin.  The end.

It's a good story, right?  You all love it, yes?  Well, perhaps not.  But pride is a confusing thing.  It shouldn't be, but it is.  The reason, I suppose, is that it's like food.  There are a lot of things you can be addicted to that you can always say that you're recovering from.  Alcohol, drugs, whatever.  All that.  Gambling, too.  And once you've revealed that you're an addict, you can never go back to that issue.  You can never go back to drinking socially, because you are an addict, and you always will be.  And it's sort of all or nothing on this stuff.

But with food, it's different.  You can't just go cold turkey on food.  If you stop eating, then you're going to die, so you've got to eat, and you've got to eat in moderation.  You can't just quit. Now, it's the same thing with pride.  Pride is a problem.  It's a huge problem for us, especially as Christians, because we fall prey to it so frequently.  We fall prey to it so easily because it's a natural by-product of doing a good job.  And it's actually a good feeling, and is useful for us.  It's sort of like the mythical runner's high, in that it's a bit of a payoff for doing what you're supposed to do, a nice little treat.  But you'd be a fool if you ran a marathon just to get a runner's high.

So too, the pride that you feel in doing a good job is good.  It's a good feeling, but only when very specifically measured.  That is, pride is good for some things, but absolutely dreadful for others.  And when it crosses over, that's when you've got yourself a problem.

I'd like to claim this as my own, but this is a CS Lewis thing.  He said it best, and I'd like to just parrot what he said, because he got it right.  You see, Lewis' issue with pride is that it exists for its own sake.  Pride is pride on its own.  If you are afflicted with pride (and believe me, we all are to some extent), you want to be the best, bar none.  You need to be better than anyone else, and you can't stand anyone to be impressed with anyone other than yourself.  It is this feeling that kicks in when you're at a party, and everyone else is gathering around someone else who is telling a particularly interesting story in some way, and you barge right in and insert yourself into the conversation.  You can't stand anyone else being the centre of attention.  And you need to have the focus on you.  You need to be reminded of your own greatness.  Now, this doesn't just drive a wedge between us, making it impossible to be happy for someone else, making it phenomenally difficult to have gentle admiration for the achievements of another, but it also makes it impossible to appreciate God in the slightest.

If you're committed to being the best, the best ever, then you'll miss what Christianity is all about.  It's funny, really, because Christianity calls out pride in a way that the secular world does not.  Read through some Ayn Rand for a bit, and you'll get the idea that pride is actually a really good thing.  The great should not be constrained by the small, those who are not as good should admire those who are excellent, and as long as the wonderful are allowed to pursue their goals, then the world will function as it should.  The rich will prosper, and the poor, well, they shouldn't be poor now, should they?

But we Christians are called to be humble, and that's harder to do.  Harder to do, of course, because it's the one virtue that you can't fake. And you know this, because you've seen people try to do it.  And it fails every time.  That insincerity, that fake attitude, that piety, all that is poorly hidden conceit.  As though you know you're better than anyone else, but you have to pretend that you're not so they don't catch on.  But it always ends up smarmy and horrible, because you really have no time whatsoever for that other person.  Why?  Because it's a competition in your own head, one in which you invariably end up winning.   Because pride style, you have to be the best.  And the more into the church you get, the more of a problem this becomes:  It becomes more of a problem because your sins are forgiven, and you know what you should and should not do.  And so you begin to judge.  And you become very proud of who you are.  And it's dreadful, because it focuses attention on yourself as the shining example.

Why is that so bad? Because you're not as good in real life as the trailer you present to the world.  You have flaws.  Have you ever wondered why people get as divorced as they do?  Because we are good at presenting to others something they want to see, but after a while of living with you, they'll find your faults.  You can't hide them forever. And what's the best way to deal with them?  The way we rarely do.  To repent, to be humble, and to apologize.  How are we to accomplish this most difficult task?  Concentrate less on us, and more on each other, and more on God.  And it's tough to do, I admit that.  But without getting that done, there's never going to be a way out.  We'll just end up as a perpetual people focused on ourselves, in the way that Ms Rand would love.  But Christianity pushes you further past that, telling you that the best way to live is to live for one another.  In doing so, we end up living the way we knew we were always supposed to, but always fell short.  And the most perfect thing about Christianity is not that it tells you to live for others, but it gives you a way out when you mess that up.  It's not just having an ideal and falling short.  It's having and ideal, falling short, and being pulled up from it again.  You can struggle with pride your whole life and never overcome it, but it's a sin like any other, like theft, like adultery, like coveting.  What do you do with those?  Then what do you do with pride?  Same thing.  Always.  It's just harder to do with pride, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.  Turn it over to Christ like you do everything else.  He'll take it away.  The only thing you have to lose is the burden of your false perfection.

PJ.

The tongue is a fire

Hey folks.  Where the heck have I been over the last few weeks?  Well, long story short, blogger was having some issues.  Even though I did write entries, they're old now (or as my son would say, old and gross), so I've decided to not post them.  Trying to stay topical.  Trying to stay on the cutting edge of what the kids think is cool.  So, I'm going to talk about what we had for church this last Sunday.  Whether you were there, or whether you were somewhere else, pick up with the topic, and enjoy what the Bible said about gossip.

The text for Sunday was all about talking.  Talking and saying things we probably shouldn't. Yes yes, words are words, and they're not actions, but the content of the letter of James tells us just how important all our words are.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body,

setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can 

be tamed, and has been tamed by mankind.  But no human being can 

tame the tongue.  It is a restless evil, a deadly poison.  

James 3:5-8 (ESV)

Yes indeed.  And the aspect of fire is something that I think we do need to talk about here.  Fire, as you know, is good and useful.  It's absolutely vital for us in our attempt to survive in the world.  Fire was so important that Prometheus in the Greek myths was sentenced to getting his liver ripped out once a day for eternity for bringing it to humanity.  Fire is something that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, in that we can control it, and use it to our advantage.  We can cook food, boil water, smelt metal, burn stubble, burn garbage, heat metal to bend it in blacksmithing, and sterilize unsterile things.  Fire is incredibly useful, but as a wise man once said:

Build a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day,

Set a man on fire, and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.

Fire is good, but fire is also dangerous.  It's dangerous once it gets out of your control.  It's good up until that point, it's great up until that point, but everything after that is deadly awful.  That's when houses get burned down, that's when forests light up, that's when bodies start to pile up.  Now, our words are like this.  They're good and useful.  We are able to do stuff like bless people, praise God, build up our sisters and brothers, give thanks for nice stuff that is done for us, and give credit where credit is due.  And that's all great.  

But have you ever had it happen when some stuff you'd said had gotten back to you?  There was a certain pastor who went back to his office after a service, and when he was pleasantly out of sight, he began to complain to a certain other pastor about some things that had happened that day.  While his microphone was still on.  All of a sudden, the cooking food turns into a grease fire.  And you know what happens with grease fires, don't you?

You try to put it out, and it just gets worse.  Much worse.  And that's our careless words.  A small fire starts, and we try to put it out by tossing water on it.  And then the panic sets in, because you realize that what you put out there is now completely and wholly out of your control.

So what's to be done?  Well, I suppose the best place to get going on any of this is to really think through what you're about to say.  I know, I know, sounds totally simple doesn't it?  Of course it does.  But we Christians tend to view sin in the same way as referees in the National Hockey League view penalties.  That is, no harm, no foul.  You get more time in the penalty box if you draw blood than you do if you don't.  Which always seemed silly to me.  Surely, something is wrong whether or not it causes serious injury.  If high sticking is an offense, shouldn't it be punished with the same penalty minutes as it would if you busted a guy's head open?  It's this sort of thing that leads to the awesomeness of soccer injuries, as players tumble to the ground, desperately clawing at their legs, in absolute agony.  It's that sort of thing that is almost encouraged by the desire to only give penalties if some actual bodily harm has been perceived.

Well, as Christians, we don't have that luxury, because the whole idea is to check yourself BEFORE the grease fire happens.  That is, look at the potential for the grease fires, and know the signs.  It reminds me so much of the awesome tips we got in driver's ed.  We had to watch a video on skidding out of control, and they told us 'the best way to get out of a skid is not to get into one.'  Thanks, informative video.  Doesn't really help me when my car's skidding out of control, does it me old mate?  That is, if it's all you can remember, it's not a useful tip.  But the philosophy is still sound.  As frustrating as it can be once it's too late, the best way to get out of talking yourself into a terrible corner is to not talk yourself into a terrible corner to begin with.  It's why we talk about sin that lurks in thought, word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.  It's not about who did it hurt, it's about was it right or wrong.  And in our idle words that get tossed around, that don't seem to hurt anyone, that don't appear to be causing any fires and if they did, we'd totally put them out right away, it's not about is this making a fire that's too big for us to handle, but is it right or wrong to begin with?

Of course, you wouldn't think much of me and my awesome advice if my only advice was 'the best way to get out of putting your foot in your mouth is to not put it there in the first place.'  Not too useful there pastor Jim, we need something a little bit more by the time we've screwed up and eaten so much foot we now cough up odor eaters.  Okay, fine.  I dig.  So here's the process for once the grease fire has begun.  And it's the same as with an actual grease fire.  It seems counter-intuitive, but don't do what you want to do, ie talk your way out of it with more deceit, denial, clever responses, whatever.  Don't do that.  That's the throwing of the water.  In this case, you want to put a lid on it, literally as well as figuratively.  If you've got a grease fire on your stove, put a lit on the pot, and turn off the heat.  The fire will go out.  In the same way, if your words have gotten you into a bunch of trouble, the best course of action is to get the oxygen away from the fire.  In other words, sometimes it's time to do the course of action that is recommended in the Bible. Take what you've done, confess that you shouldn't have done it, recognize that it was wrong, and apologize.  If you say you have no sin, you deceive yourself, and the truth is not in you.  But if you confess your sins, God who is merciful and just, will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.  It's beautifully liberating to be able to say 'yes, I said that, and I shouldn't have.  I'm sorry."  It's honest, it's true, and the truth shall set you free.  Then you never have to worry about mental or verbal gymnastics, you can just be truthful.  Then the fire gets put out. Then the problems go away.  It gets worse the more water you throw on it, but stop it, turn the heat down, and it goes away.

Good luck out there.

PJ

Wives, submit to your husbands

Wow.

I was not looking forward to this topic.  And can you blame me?  Most of the time when something like this comes up, I'm rather tempted to pretend like I didn't see it.  You know, like when you see something gross at the back of the fridge, really old spaghetti or something, and you just sort of like pretend like it's not there?  You just stack stuff in front of it, and hope that magically someone else will take care of it?  Or the cat makes a noise like a breadmaker, and you just KNOW he's throwing up on the floor somewhere, but you act like you can't hear it?  Or if your baby is starting to smell bad, but you pretend like everything's fine and dandy, and you can't smell a thing?

Yeah.  Like that.

Of all the passages in the Bible that are gonna get me into some srs trouble, this was the big one.  Ephesians 5:22-33. Oh boy oh boy. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, here it is verbatim.

Wives and Husbands

²²  Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the

 Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife 
even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, 
and is himself its Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, 
so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
²⁵  Husbands, love your wives, 
as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
²⁶ that he might sanctify her,
 having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
 ²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, 
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, 
that she might be holy and without blemish.^[a]
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. 
He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹
 For no one ever hated his own flesh, 
but nourishes and cherishes it, 
just as Christ does the church,
³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ 
 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 
and the two shall become one flesh.”
³² This mystery is profound, 
and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
³³ However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, 
and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

                         (ESV)

This is how it appeared Sunday morning, and it scared the heebie jeebies out of me.  And why not? This passage seems designed in a lab to tick off as many folks as possible, those in the church as well as those outside it.  Ain't nobody wants to hear that one, except for a whole buncha out of date dinosaurs who want to control women.  Do regular people want to hear it? Nah, well-meaning Christians want to pretend it's not there, and anti-theists love to point it out as a failing in the faith.  How could a loving God endorse such a backwards, stone age idea, that women should be submissive to men?  For shame.

Of course, I naturally live in a home in which I am well in control all the time, and my wife is totally submissive to me in everything.  I'm the head of the household, and we do what I want all the time.  Don't believe me?  Ask my wife.  Okay, maybe I don't.  Maybe my wife sometimes gets her way, and maybe I get mine.  Or, more likely, maybe neither of us do, because our children tend to dictate how things are gonna go for the majority of the time.  So how do I reconcile all of this with the Biblical idea of headship?

Well, I have an opinion.  And y'all ain't gonna like it.  You're not going to like it, because this whole thing ends up being a little bit close to home.  You see, we Christians, and people outside the church are no different, we tend to conflate a couple of things.  We tend to conflate the idea of righteousness with righteous deeds.  And the two are worlds apart.  We (and by we, I include me) tend to think that if we think the right things about the poor, if we believe that it's in everyone's best interests to help the unemployed, the poor, the downtrodden, all that, then it's as good as helping them. Right?  The reading that I used on Sunday is a classic example of that.  The image that Christ himself paints of the final judgment (and this is the only image Christ paints of the final judgment).  It's from Matthew 25.  

The Sheep and the Goats

³¹ “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
⁴¹ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
⁴⁴ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
⁴⁶ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. ”

Get that.  And who is this about? Poor people, right?  Poor people, sick people, people in jail, all that. But the point I was trying to make on Sunday is that this is also about your husband.  Yes it is.  We think about this reading as only applying to people we've never met, never seen, and who live in some foreign country somewhere.  A problem that we can solve by throwing money at.  But Jesus doesn't say that.  He doesn't say "as long as you did this for poor people, people you've never met, people who you have never seen in your whole life, you did it for me."  No, he says 'the least of these.'  And maybe, just maybe, the least of these is that oaf who lives in your house.  That klutz of a husband who can't cook, can't clean, and stinks up the bathroom.  Maybe part of your call to service to those created in the image of God is to do things for your husband that you'd rather not be doing.  And maybe, just maybe, charity does begin at home.  Maybe when the Bible tells you to submit to your husband as the church submits to christ, it's telling you to model this kind of behavior.  When your husband is hungry, do you feed him? When he is thirsty do you give him a drink?  Do you care for him when he's sick, do you clean his clothes when he's out of clean ones?  All the stuff that you think you should theoretically do for complete strangers, yet quite frequently something you don't do, or at least don't want to do for someone who lives in your home.

Likewise, Gentlemen, don't think you're escaping scott free. Don't think that this is a lesson for ladies only, and you can just say 'yeah ladies.  Get to work!'  Nah, the idea is there that you have some tough stuff to do, too.  Again, as I said on Sunday, the idea is that husbands should love their wives as Christ love the church, giving himself up for her.  And you think that this is a matter of dying for your bride in a crucial romantic, action packed way.  But if it's loving your bride as Christ loves the church, get ready for things to not be a one time thing.  How did Christ love the church?  Yes, by dying for her on the cross, but it's more than that.  It was also an entire life of loving service.  Using his skills and abilities, his power for them, not for himself.  When there were fishes and loaves to be multiplied, it was so others could eat.  It was a life filled with literal and figurative washing of feet.  Making sure that everyone else was well fed, forgiven, renewed, healed and cared for, though it meant that he had no place to lay his head.  He spent so much time telling people what was good and true, even if it wasn't popular, telling folks to pay their taxes and to worship God only.  It was a matter of never going where he wanted, never doing what he wanted, always working for the benefit of other people, and rarely having any time to himself.  It was a life in which he laid down his life not just all at once, but an hour at a time.  A minute at a time, until there was nothing left. It went as far as him being led away from everything he'd held dear, abandoned by everyone, with not even the clothes on his back, bleeding his life out for all mankind.

And we complain if we don't get to watch sportscentre.

Maybe your injunction is just as difficult as that of the ladies.  Maybe everyone has something to do.  And maybe, just maybe, we're each being told to live a life of service, one to the other.  Maybe it's using different language, but amounting to the same thing.  Maybe we're each told that the time for looking out for our own interests is over, and the time for working together is beginning.  Submission and service, working for the other, and laying down our lives a minute at a time.  None of this means that we're supposed to be a doormat, or to allow ourselves to be abused, or neglected, or whatever.  But it does mean that we're supposed to serve the other person.

I realize how unattractive that must sound to modern sensibilities.  I realize that many of you will not be happy with the idea of marriage as a life of servitude, but that's what it amounts to.  But it's not just that.  After hearing all about how perfect you should be as a spouse, there's something else lurking in the background.  The knowledge that you're going to mess it up.  That you're going to say something stupid.  And you're going to have to do the ultimate.  You're going to have to repent, and you're going to have to forgive. 

The best fights are the ones that don't end with a winner.  The best fights are the ones in which everyone ends up repenting, and everyone ends up forgiving.  The best fights are the ones where you aren't keeping score, but realizing that you're probably only hurting yourselves. And maybe the best way forward is to take a step backwards, and admit that you were wrong, or if not wrong, then probably a bit spiteful.  Maybe in this case, competition doesn't make a horse race.  Maybe the two who are as one flesh need to act like it. And you won't get to that point by focusing on who is right.  You'll get to that point by the very very unglamorous notion of service, repentance and forgiveness.  

Do you like this? Probably not.  But ask yourself how far you think you'll get in a marriage in which it's one pitted against the other. If you take it seriously, you're one flesh now, one family.  And your left side doesn't keep score against your right.  You need to work together, and when you can't you need to confess, forgive, and move on.  Wives and husbands need to look out for each other.  They need to bear one another's burdens, and by doing so, fulfill the law of Christ.

Have a good week everyone.

PJ.