Mother's day

We have a problem in God's holy church.

Okay, we have several problems in the church, but there's one I'm thinking about specifically today.  That problem is the problem, the difficulty of living in the world, but not being of it.

At no time is this more pronounced than at the moment of a worship service on Mother's day.  For mother's day, as you may know, is not only a secular observance (which it is), but is also always on a Sunday.  And in case you weren't paying attention, the readings that we have in our lectionary don't have much to do with Mothers.  In fact, this Sunday, the reading from Acts was all about the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.  Not really one of those coddly mother's day readings.

Now, that's the eternal struggle, isn't it?  The eternal struggle that says of us as Christian people that we are looking towards Christ, that he is the be all and end all, but then we find ourselves in a situation in which we look to the culture to tell us what is important.  What is important on Sunday?  Moms!  What's the pastor going to speak about on Sunday?  Well, either not moms, or moms if he changes the readings.  That's about it.

The Gospel reading isn't about moms though.  The Gospel reading was cryptic instead, and featured a line from Jesus that ought to make us at least a little bit uncomfortable.  For we as Christians are used to the idea of Jesus as the greatest man who has ever lived, the only person to ever be perfect, flawless, the only person who has ever fulfilled the law, who has ever consistently done what is right and good, who has ever done what is right 100% of the time.  That's Jesus for sure.  And the rest of us, well, we can't even compete with that, can we? None of the rest of us can hang with that kind of history.  The best we can do is to do what Paul does, which is to repent, because the good we want to do is what we avoid, and the evil that we want to avoid is what we end up doing!  And yet, Jesus says something in the Gospel reading from Sunday, where he says that those of us who believe in his name will do greater works than him.

Could this be true?  This seems like a bit of a problem for us, given that Jesus is top dog who saved all of creation through the redemptive power of his death on the cross.  He raised the dead, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, he did all these things, was right all the time, and still told us that we were going to do greater works than him.  Possible how?

Well, what does greater mean?  For those of you who were wondering how this would be possible, think on this:  The greek word  μέγας is great, of course, but means literally 'Any extension in space and in all directions.'  Now that's interesting.  For it means that we are able to do a larger work than Jesus, not a better one.  What could this larger work be, in terms of size and scope?  You've noticed by now that there was a Greek word earlier in this paragraph, and it is there because the New Testament was written in Greek.  Why was it written in Greek if that wasn't the language of the speakers who were transcribing it?  Because it was the language of the intended audience.  There is a moment in the Gospels where some Greeks come to see Jesus, and as soon as they do, instead of holding court with them, Jesus begins his journey towards his death.  He is set to die at that point, and does not go and minister to the Greeks.  His mission is, as he has said, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and as soon as the opportunity arises to minister to those outside the house of Israel, outside of the community, the gentiles, he goes to his death.  Because Jesus knew something important that we have all assumed.

While he is still here on earth, the faith he is here to create cannot be a global one for all people.

We've all heard it, of course, which is that the stereotypical picture of Jesus that hangs in a great many churches doesn't look like what the real Jesus would have looked like.  No kidding.  

So that's not what the actual man in Israel would have looked like?  I had no idea.  Well, of course he wouldn't have looked like that (likely).  He also wouldn't have been speaking English.  Why do we have the Bible in English if Jesus wasn't speaking English? Because that's the language of the intended audience.  Why do we have Jesus looking white in this picture that hangs in North American churches? Because that's what the majority of parishoners look like.  And the average suburban church in North American doesn't have a monopoly on this, you know.  Consider the following images, all of Jesus.

 

 

  

How many of these pictures are authentic to what Jesus would have actually looked like?  Well, none, I would expect.  But that's sort of the point.  We obviously want the Bible to be in the languages of Africa, and Asia, and North America, and viewing Jesus as the same race as you, as the same culture as you, as your personal Lord and Savior, that's exactly what that is.  He wouldn't have been speaking English, but we translated his word so it means something to us.  He wouldn't have been a white guy, but in our art, to be our savior, he appears thus, the word made flesh has been translated for this audience, without losing the message.  That's a greater work.  Jesus, being middle eastern, being Jewish, was only ever going to reach the Hebrew people of the middle east, he said as much himself.  But if he dies, if he rises, and if he ascends, then the Gospel becomes not about the middle east, not about Israel and Palestine, not about light vs dark, but becomes about the Word of God made flesh, dwelling amongst us. 

This is a bigger issue than you think it is, and it's the greater work that Jesus would have us do, as people who believe in him. We are called to be great commission people, and we honestly don't really realize how big of a job that is.  For we, as great commission people, are called upon to do the work of evangelizing the world, and it frequently happens one person at a time.  Sure, you have moments like you do in the book of Acts, where three thousand came to faith in one day, but you also have moments like that in Timothy, where we hear about Timothy's faith that was passed on to him through his mother and grandmother.  And that second one is usually where the heavy lifting of evangelism actually takes place.  For it's one thing if you're trying to evangelize a world, a disbelieving world, to bring them into the fold of your faith, but it's quite another to bring those who are of your family into your faith.  And if you're one particular type of evangelist, then you evangelize harder than anyone else, because you have so much to lose.

If you're doing door-knocking evangelism, then the people that you meet, who are all presumably nice people, well, if you don't know them then if they reject your message then it doesn't mean that much to you. You tried, you failed, and you move on.  If those random strangers reject paradise, well, it just doesn't make that much of a difference to you.  But if you are a mother, and you are rabidly, dangerously protective of your child, if you gave birth to that child, and if you are living for that child, to give it life and health and strength, if that child's tiny hands and shell like ears dominate your thoughts, if you would pour your life into that child an hour at a time, if you want them to have everything you could never have, to live better than you do, then you'd do something really important for them.

You'd want them to live forever.

It's usually our mothers, our grandmothers who bring us to baptism in God's house, and more than that, it's our mothers and grandmothers who tend to do the hard work of evangelism, not just getting us 'done,' but also bringing us to the services at God's house, leading us in prayer in the home, praying with us and for us, insisting that we say grace, helping us to read the scriptures, encouraging us in confirmation, and so on.  In other words, fulfilling the words of the great commission, to not only baptize, but to teach us to obey everything Christ has commanded us.  And that's the greater work.  The kind that Christ, by definition could not do, because he cannot and never will be called into that vocation as a mother.  It's a greater work in the sense of it being a bigger, a larger work, not a better one.  Obviously, we cannot do better work than Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who saved the world, but we can be part of a larger work.  Instead of bringing the gospel to 12 men in Israel, we can take it to the ends of the earth.  Instead of bringing it to Jerusalem and then to all of Judea, we can bring it to everyone.  And instead of going door to door with the message of Christ for a moment, we can go into our own doors, and build the body of Christ in that place, person by person.  And that, if it goes to the end of the earth, is a greater work.

Church growth and the liturgy

Church growth is a nebulous topic, primarily because there are so many opinions on how it should be done.  For you see, when you get a group of people together to talk about church growth, most of them will end up talking about what it is that they need, what it is that they are looking for, and what it is that brought them to the church and sustains them in it.  And that's no surprise there, because one of the great and abiding mysteries of human nature is that we don't have any real idea how to think like someone else.  That's why ads directed at teenagers always seem so lame and stilted, that's why marketing towards the kids these days always seems as though it was written by a corporate hack, because it was. And 40 plus year old guys can't think like teenagers.  It doesn't work.

So when you get together a whole bunch of well meaning evangelists together to talk about church growth, how to get people in the doors, it all ends up collapsing pretty quickly because you have two things going on at the exact same time.

Thing 1 - You are getting information and ideas from people who are already in the church, and
Thing 2 - You're getting zero input from the people you're trying to reach, because they're as of yet unreached.  And you're not likely to get information from them until they're already in the door and have signed on.

So what to do? It's a really good, really important question that can't be overstated.  You can't get input from people unless they tell you, and the only feedback you'll ever get is that you guessed wrong.

Now, we who are in the church, who want to share the message of meaning, of dignity, of purpose and of salvation that Jesus Christ brings, it's complicated to bring that to people whom we don't know, and who aren't giving us any clues.  And in that case, how on earth are we supposed to figure out what they need? How on earth are we supposed to work out what it is that the kids of today are into, given that they're not telling us, and they just roll their eyes when we talk?

Well, fortunately enough, we have been given a great gift in the scriptures, something that we don't often talk about, and really only in this period following Easter, and that is the book of the Acts of the Apostles.  The book of Acts tells you what the disciples were doing, and what they were doing to attract people to faith in Christ worked.  The book of Acts, chapter two tells us that

All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, and to fellowship

and to sharing in meals (including the Lord's Supper) and to prayer.  

Okay, that seems a little simplistic, doesn't it? Meet together, share meals, share the Lord's Supper, dedicate yourselves to the apostles' teaching and figure it out from there.  Simple enough.  Prayer, worship together, fellowship.  That's too simple.  What about a ten step program for teens? What about a fifteen point evangelism program? What about any of these things?

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about "church growth," but what I do know is that the book of Acts tells us how the early church operated, and they seemed to grow okay.  And if they grew okay in those days, without easy communication, with the church being under fire and threatened with calamity at any second, if that's the case there, then who am I to disagree? 

It comes down to a tale of two things, classic vs modern.  Look at these two buildings for a second.

 

These are both buildings from the University of Regina, one classic, the other contemporary.  But the problem with contemporary, is that it is dated.  And it is dated instantly.  Because things that are contemporary are by nature of a time, then usually, as far as buildings go, by the time they're finished being built, they're out of style.  It's inescapable, which is why so many modern buildings end up looking far more out of date than far older buildings that may be surrounding them.  Not because those older buildings are more timely, quite the opposite.  They exist out of time, and external to pressures of change in fashion.  Again, take these two cars.

One is classic, the other is dated.  I'm not telling you which one is nicer, you're free to like either, obviously, but hopefully you see that one has transcended time, and the other has not.  By trying to capture the moment, once the moment is passed, the item becomes dated.  And that leads us back to evangelism, and back to Acts.  Back to how the disciples grew the church.  Through prayer, through dedicated to the teaching of the apostles, through the Lord's supper and worship.  Through fellowship.  Those are all key details that you need to consider, and you also need to consider one more. One more powerful one.  And like with most massively powerful things, this one may be lurking underused.

Consider the walk on the road to Emmaus.  Consider the stroll that those two disciples were making when they encountered their risen Lord.  He greeted them, they responded.  He asked them what was on their minds, and they told him all their disappointments, all the reasons that sadness was etched on their faces.  They told him everything they had expected, and their frustration that it hadn't worked out the way they had planned.  Jesus was supposed to save them from everything temporal, and instead he had gotten himself nailed to a cross and killed.  So much for their liberation from worldly problems.  And then as they walk, Jesus goes ahead and explains everything from the scriptures concerning himself.  And the scriptures are long, you know because you've given up trying to read them all the way through a few times, right? The scriptures are long, and they are laced through, filled to the brim with references, stories, allusions and signs of Christ our Lord.  The Bible is about him, and everything in it points to him.  And after Jesus has explained to them everything from the scriptures concerning himself, then they invite him in for a meal, and he takes bread, blesses it, and breaks it with them, and they at that moment recognize him, and he is real before them.  Then he vanishes from their sight, and they carry the joy of having encountered him with them, and communicate it to others when they see them.

You know what that is?  It's the liturgy.

Think about that walk to Emmaus, and how closely it mirrors the liturgy in churches.  They meet up with Christ, tell him what it is that has given them sorrow, why they feel as though Christ has not lived up to his promises to them.  They tell Jesus why they are sad, angry, hurt, disappointed.  And then Jesus tells them about himself in the scriptures. He explains to them everything in the Bible about himself, from the Old Testament to the New, he tells them that the scriptures are all about him.  And then, he takes the bread, breaks it with them, and is suddenly recognized by them as their Lord.  And that is exactly what the church service offers.  What do we have to offer people in our churches? We have Christ to offer them, the word made flesh.  We have the real presence of Christ here among us, and if the idea of the walk on the road to Emmaus leading to encountering the risen Lord is something that you think you'd enjoy, then prepare to face the fact that that's exactly what happens every single week.

Every week we encounter the risen Lord.  Every week when the words of institution are spoken, and the bread is broken, Jesus Christ is literally every bit as present there in that meal as he was on the road to Emmaus.  That's every week.  Every liturgy, every Holy Communion, every time we meet together and break bread, Christ is present.

So when we're thinking about church growth, it's always good to consider and to ponder through the fact that the Holy Scriptures already told us how to get it done, and in both cases, it involves breaking bread. Breaking bread in fellowship, and breaking bread at the Lord's table.  And in both those cases, those are places that Jesus promised to be, and to be found.  So when you're thinking about church growth, and thinking about what it is that people are looking for, it's a good chance they're looking for Christ.  The big secret that we have in our churches is that we know where to find him.  He is found in the breaking of the bread.

The end of Lent

Easter is something that a lot of people celebrate as a thing in itself, that is, they have a party, have a ham, have chocolate and eggs, and all that sort of things.  It's even getting to the point where people give pets and gifts at Easter time, running it as a rival to Christmas.  But the two celebrations aren't the same thing, and celebrating them in the same way really doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

I'll elaborate. At Christmas, what are we celebrating? The birth of a baby in Bethlehem.  In a manger.  But that's a thing that celebrates something new, something that hadn't been there before.  At Christmas, the wise men show up, to offer gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, this is all stuff that happens, and so it makes sense that we celebrate Christmas with gifts, with parties, with celebrations of new thing, new and exciting things.  But Easter doesn't work like that at all.

If you have ever given something up for Lent (which maybe you haven't.  It's not scriptural, so don't worry if you have or haven't), you will have noticed that one of the best things about Easter is not the arrival of anything new, but rather the return of the things that you used to enjoy, but had given up.  And that's a different feeling altogether.  For those of you who have given something up, if you've given up something that you are relatively attached to, something you enjoy, something that has, for a large part, been working as a crutch, that you feel very much like you can't or won't do without.  When you've gone without something for a while (alcohol, meat, sweets, dessert, chocolate, tv, the internet, facebook, whatever), returning to it is a distinct reminder of how great your life, as it has been for a long long time.  Returning to that, to your life as it had always been is a wonderful, semi-ecstatic experience.

It always reminds me of some guys that they had to come in and talk to us in Junior High school (which Saskies don't have) all about why we should stay off of drugs. And something that he said stuck with me for a long time, a long time until now.  He spoke to us about his drug use, his heavy drug habit, and how he'd been taken away and locked up behind bars.  Now, as you know, you can't get drugs behind bars, but depending on what you've been using, you can't just stop using drugs without some serious side effects.  Withdrawal is a real thing that will hurt and affect you, and will damage you from the inside out.  It's a matter of potential dangerous injury, because your body has taken on a dependence to a substance that you have all of a sudden ripped away.  And that dependence will make itself felt as soon as you withdraw the substance.  He couldn't get the drugs that he was accustomed to using while in jail, and so he had to tough out withdrawal, and all the difficulties that came along with it.  But the withdrawal wasn't a permanent thing.  It didn't nor was it ever going to last forever.  And the day that the withdrawal lifted, the observation that this guy had was that for the first time in years, he was 'high on feeling normal.'  Feeling normal, feeling regular, was such a wonderful feeling that he couldn't get over it.

Most of us will never go through that level of withdrawal, we will never experience the nature of drugs leaving our systems, we will never have that buildup or that addiction, nor will have to overcome it.  That's a far cry from most of us in our experience, but you know what is fairly regular, and fairly commonplace? Recovering from a cold.

You know what having a cold is like, where you are suffering, runny nose, aching joints, sore throat, all that stuff. You can't sleep, you can't taste anything ,you don't feel like eating, it's all that all the time.  And while you're in the throes of the cold situation, you start to long for feeling normal.  Feeling like you do everyday is exactly what you want, what you crave, and when you finally get there, it's an amazing feeling.  That morning when you wake up, and you can breathe through both nostrils, when the fever is gone, and you feel overall really really good, that's what you want, it's what you crave, and it's all about feeling normal, back to the way things should be.

Now, I'm talking about this so much because of the nature of the resurrection, of the glorified body, of the defeat of death, all that.  And when I talk about this, I'm talking about the resurrection of Christ as so thoroughly mundane.  The most alarming, most exciting thing about the resurrection of Christ is how easygoing, how dull it all is.  When Jesus appears to his disciples, when he is seen by them, he's not showing up with thunder and lightning, nor with lights and sound.  He is showing up, and says to his disciples 'greetings.'  That's it.  In his other resurrection appearances, he shows up and walks with disciples on the road to Emmaus, he shows up to his disciples and asks them for breakfast, it's a fantastic thing, an amazing story that Jesus is so absolutely commonplace about his resurrection, and how mundane and ordinary it is.

And that's because it is.  The thing about the resurrection, the glorified body, life everlasting, all that, is that it's a return to the way things should always have been, not the addition of anything unusual or out of the ordinary.  It is a return to the way things always should have been, and to the way we all know they all should have been.

On first glance, you may not believe me, but if you're a Christian, you will know that we as human beings were designed for eternity.  When we were formed out of the dust of the ground, it was with the idea that we were forever people, that we would be eternal, with no interruptions.  It was the idea built into us that we were going to last for all time, that we were going to be forever people.  When Adam and Eve sinned, and were cast out of the garden, part of the punishment that was leveled on them was that they were dust, and to dust they would return.  Something had gone wrong, death had entered into the world, and we would, from that time on, be stung by it and tormented by it.  And you know what a sting is, right? It's something that hurts because it's bad, because it's not intended for you to have it happen to you.  Death stings in that way too.  Whether you're religious or not, you feel the sting of death when it happens to you, to someone you love.  That sting of death that tells you that something has gone wrong, desperately badly wrong, that things are not going in the way they were supposed to.  Nobody has children really honestly expecting them to die.  Nobody is ever really truly ready to lose someone from their lives.  Nobody is genuinely prepared for death, especially when it happens to someone else.  To that end, the work of Christ Jesus our Lord is the work that tells us that he has come not to do anything new, not to do anything absolutely shocking or different, but to return us to where things were always supposed to be.

That's what makes his greetings to his disciples post-resurrection so fun, is that they're so mundane, that they're so easygoing.  What does he say to his disciples? Greetings! Hello! What's new? Do you have any breakfast? Can I have a snack? Peace be unto you.  Do not be afraid.

All of his reactions, his greetings, his statements to his disciples are so thoroughly mundane as to be laughable, if they weren't so fascinating in their nature as being commonplace.  Because that's the end goal of the Christian faith, to have resurrection, glorification, reunion with God be completely commonplace.  It's the nature and goal of the Christian belief that glory, through Christ, would come to common people like you and me, that Jesus would bestow his grace on the most ordinary people, the most mundane people you see every day.  The majesty in the 12 disciples is that they weren't majestic.  They were just guys.  A great deal of criticism leveled against the work of Christ was that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, that he wasn't spending his time with the most majestic, most outwardly religious, most well thought of people in the world, and that criticism was absolutely true.  It was accurate, and on point, and that's what makes the work that he does so wonderful and so compelling.  Christ's work, his resurrection work, his work of making all things new, is what applies to all of us, you and me, people who aren't perhaps the most majestic, most well though of, most spiritually well assured.  The great gift of the Gospel is that when God looks at us, he sees Christ, and therefore even the mundane is robed in glory everlasting.

So commonplace, but what was always intended is what is actually good. 

Lazarus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know, to you.

How sweet the sound

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To know, in the Biblical sense

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

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

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

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

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

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

He told me everything I had ever done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(over)Turning the tables

John 3:16.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go ahead and ponder it.  I'll wait.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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