Shepherds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   

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

And the child was not spared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filet o fish

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

stare it down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what about me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, you will be with me in paradise.

The remainder

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

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

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

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

People.

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

Jesus and people.

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But why?

Don't let me tell you how to vote, and this post is not about trying to influence anyone politically.  I'm fairly apolitical in talking about matters ecclesiastical, mainly because, as Jesus says 'My Kingdom is not of this world.'  He's not interested in forming government, He's interested in forming Christians.  Having said that, we've been seeing a new reason for doing things lately, a new rationale for getting stuff done, for making decisions, and that is that it is the current year. 

As promised in my apolitical opening, this really got going with this clip from Justin Trudeau, where he talked about why it was important to have a gender balanced cabinet. 

Now it's a bit flippant to just stop at 'because it's 2015,' that's not all that he said, there is more, of course, and there is more to be said, naturally.  But that feeling, that sentiment that is expressed that we should do what we are doing because it's the current year, that's a bit of a meme these days.  This has been the reasoning for a lot of things these days, sort of equivalent to last generation's 'we can put a man on the moon, but we can't fix _____________.'  You know, insert male pattern baldness, proper pH balance for our hair, using beet juice as a de-icer, anything you'd like into that blank.  The implication is that if we can put a man on the moon, we should be able to solve literally any problem at all, no problem.  And the idea today is that because it's the current year, we should be able to dismiss anything that came before us, change up anything topically, because it's today.  It's now. 

And this brings me to the Gospel reading for today, and to the nature of the world as shifting as sand. The easiest way to view this is to think about fashion and style.  Why are you getting massive ear gauges put in? Because it's 2012.  Why are you getting a tribal tattoo? Because it's 2008.  Why are you getting a tongue ring? Because it's 2003.  Why are you wearing flannel and khaki? Because it's 1998.  There are other things to talk about, but those are just thing that have happened in my lifetime, and each of things were largely done because they were popular, but nobody recognized them as a trend. Pet rocks, pogs, fidget spinners, they're all things that were popular once, and their popularity faded, and we were left with useless cardboard circles that had massive value five minutes ago, and are worthless today.  The fads come and the fads go, and none of us sincerely think or believe that we are doing these things because we are being led around and directed by other people.  We all think and believe that we are making these decisions for ourselves, and doing what we want to do. 

But there are a lot of things we do because other people tell us to do them, whether directly or indirectly.  There are a lot of things we get up to because people tell us to do them.  "People," tell us to do things, and we go along with it because, well "everyone" is doing it.  And this has not changed one millimeter from the time of Jesus until now.  When Jesus was talking about the issue of wanting to know who the disciples said that he was, he asked them, 'who do "people" say that I am?'  It's a part of the story that we don't often think that much about, but give it some consideration - who are the people? Because the "people" Jesus is talking about haven't changed in two thousand years.  Heck, they haven't changed in ten thousand years.  This is old.  Really old.  This concept of taking your cues from "people" is the same as it ever has been.  You think it's new, fashions and trends and the like, but it's old as dirt.  There's a reason that you can identify fashion over time, that houses and buildings trend differently, that you can correctly predict the decade a photograph was taken based solely off of a man's facial hair, that kind of thing.  Do you really think that all these men spontaneously decided to wear muttonchops? Or perhaps it was a style they were following.

Now, to the question.  Who do 'people' say that Jesus is today. And ask yourself as you are answering that question, who are these people? Who are they, can you name them, or is it just sort of 'everyone?'  Because odds are, if it's just sort of 'everyone,' then odds are that you're looking at a trend more than anything else.  You need to think long and hard about why you hold the opinions that you do, why you think about God the way you do.  For if it's just a matter of 'everyone says he was a good man,' well, you need to give your head a shake.  It's one thing to insist on wearing flared pants because it's 1975, and to pretend you came up with the idea even though there were no straight pants in the stores; but it's quite another thing to insist, up and down, that Jesus was nothing but a nice guy but 'people' had nothing to do with that conclusion.

 The disciples had that question to answer, as to what were the popular things that Jesus was called, how did the crowd refer to him, and they gave their answers.  They gave their answers, saying that he was Elijah, or John the Baptist, or one of the prophets.  That is what the 'people' were saying, and they were getting at, that Jesus was some kind of godly man, a holy man, a prophet, a great teacher, or something of the like.  That's all good, to be sure, but that's not who Jesus actually is.  The only good answer is the answer that Peter gives, that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.  Peter only has that answer because Jesus has first revealed it to him.  In other words ,the right answer of who Jesus is is not to be found in what is popular, but rather what is true.  The right answer will be found in what Jesus says about himself, his testimony that is trustworthy and true.  And that's a different matter altogether.

'People' won't really go along with this though.  They won't care for it, they won't like it too much, and they won't really be into the idea that Jesus is The Messiah, the Son of the Living God. They won't like that he is serious about sin, about righteousness, about grace and hell, they won't like that he has a lot to say about leaving a life of sin and moving on from that, that's never going to be a popular opinion, and if you hold to Jesus as he has been revealed in the scriptures, that position is never going to fall in line with what the world wants, because the world changes.  But ask yourself two questions: Why do you believe what you believe about Jesus Christ, and secondly, why do you care so much about what 'People' say?

Don't say you don't care.  We all do, to some degree or other.  We all care what people think as much as we may say we don't.  We all want to be well thought of by people, want to be liked, and none of us want to go too far beyond the crowd.  We want to fit in with things, and fit in with the way things are going, the cultural zeitegeist, if you will.  But I ask you something else, which is, when has that actually fulfilled you? When have you been content, when has your heart been at rest when you have chased the interminably moving 'people' around you.  Has that ever satisfied you? When you have done what you were told, when you have believed what 'everyone' thinks, were you ever finally pleased? Or had things moved on? By the time you caught up, did you find that your positions were now outdated, had now been dismissed, discarded, and altogether replaced? Likely.  Likely you couldn't keep up, and never would be able to.  So, perhaps we need to look at things in a different way.

"People" will always be looking for something different, something new.  By the time you've caught up, they've moved on.  Jesus started as the son of God, then was Elijah, one of the prophets, John the Baptist, he was a great moral teacher, a conflicted, indecisive man, a married man, the king of France, an Atheist, a Muslim, gosh, any one of a number of things, and it keeps on changing.  But every once in a while, things are right to begin with, and don't have to change.  Things like Chuck Taylors, the Rubik's cube, Star Wars, Tube socks, the Bible, Ghostbusters,  all that stuff that gets worse the more you change it.  It meets a need, and the need is met so well that it doesn't need to change.  Let Jesus be who he is.  You don't need to ask other 'people' who Jesus is, because the need that he is there to meet is one that can't be improved by changing things.  He's not here to be a good teacher, a prophet, a confused gentleman or anything else - he's here to be the messiah, the son of the living God.  He's here to be the savior, the one who takes away the sins of the world, the one who lets you admit fault, have it be forgiven and to grow from it.  The most important person to listen to is Jesus on this question, as he will tell you, quite directly, who he is, and what he is here for.  To fall into the hands of sinful men, to suffer, to die, and on the third day, rise again.

If you have anything to add to that, any further queries, have a word with Peter on that one.

The same old story

It's one of my favorite songs by Doug and the Slugs, the same old story.  The idea behind this song is that nothing ever seems to change in the life of Doug, and the woman he's singing about.  Nothing ever does, and nothing ever will.  Understanding when you're hitting patterns is a good thing to do, it's useful to know when you're hitting patterns, and when you're running into things that aren't and don't change.  But to do this, you're going to have to look at the details, and understand when things are the same, and how to tell where these patterns are.

For example, if you have a husband who likes to have a drink after work, that's fine, and it might help him to unwind. But if he needs to have a drink after every workday, you may be looking at a pattern.  It's the same with your wife.  Does she enjoy to flick through Facebook in the evening? Okay, fine. But if she only does the Facebook thing all evening, and it's every evening, well, you have a different matter to deal with, don't you? 

Patterns are important, simliarities are important, and sometimes things are more simliar than you might think.  You might not notice it, but your brain does.  The story that we have from the Old Testament is one of those, the story of the binding of Isaac.  This is a story that is largely hated by, well, mostly everyone, really, Christian or otherwise.  People have lost their faith over this story, have drifted away from God, from faith, from everything because of this story.  It's funny, really, because we know for sure that the knife wasn't used in this situation, that Abraham and Isaac both walked right back down the mountain again, with no troubles.  Sure, things are fine after this story, no harm, no foul. But the distaste that everyone feels about this story has to do with the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son.

It represents a failure in keeping the essential, core contract that we all know, and of which a violation is an absolute scandal to all of us.  Parents should protect their children, that is the way it is, that is the way it always should be.  When we hear about parents not protecting their children, or worse, hurting or harming their children, we are outraged.  It bothers us, it hurts us, and we react violently against it.  We look at these situations and we are so bothered by it that lots of the times we can't even stand to look at it.  And Abraham, having been told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, his only son whom he loved, took him up the mountain with the express purpose to plunge a knife into his son, and kill him, slaying him as an offering to God.  His son, Isaac, who trusts him, is being led up the hill to be killed.  You look at this, and it bothers you.  It troubles and angers you.  It angers you even though everyone survives, and God provides the sacrifice, as Abraham said he would.

This story bothers you, troubles you way down, and upsets you.  You don't think about it too much, because it's such a troubling story that you want to skip it.  Fine fine fine, so let's think about a story that, as a Christian, you do like.  How can I pick the one story out of the entire Bible that I can be sure every Christian will like? How about, given that this is lent, the crucifixion of Christ.  Now, the crucifixion of Jesus may not be a fun story, but it's a good one.  And sometimes good things aren't fun.  Sometimes filling a tooth or extracting a kidney aren't fun, but they're good.  They can be really good, really powerful, really, intensely amazing things.  And the crucifixion of Jesus, if you don't appreciate that story, then you really have no business being a Christian.  The Christian faith is, at its core, one about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to get to that, we have to get to the crucifixion.  Getting to that crucifixion of Jesus Christ, that takes us to another hill, with another Son, but this time, the child isn't spared.

For you see, the story of Isaac, and the story of Jesus, they're the same story, and that's kind of the point.  Think about it for a second.  The sacrifice of a beloved son, in whom, the father is well pleased.  The son having to haul the wood up the hill, the binding of the son, the knife and spear, the sacrifice with its head in the thorns.  This is the same story, but you love one of them, and hate the other.  Why is that? Why do you reckon that you do this?

We Christians, we are honestly a bit too laid back when it comes to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  We don't feel much outrage, we don't experience much anger, we don't get troubled by its effects.  We think about it as a guarantee, right? Of course Jesus would die on the cross for your sins, naturally he would, why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he be slain on the cross for you and for me? He was obviously going to die, and the specter of the cross, the spear, the crown of thorns ,well, we just don't think about it too much anymore, because we are so used to it, it no longer shocks us.

In horror circles, it's usually wise to keep the monster under wraps.  If you show the moster too much, if you give too much away, you'll find that the audience will normalize the creature, and won't be afraid of it anymore.  That's part of the reason that Jaws was such a big hit, because the shark was under wraps for most of the film.  If you would have seen Bruce for the entire film, the reaction would have worn off pretty quickly.  If you use him sparingly, though, the shark has the power to shock all the way through the film.  It's the same with the cross of Christ.  If you get comfy with it, you need to be shocked back out of that again.  For a lot of us, the movie "The Passion of the Christ" by Mel Gibson was a pretty big shocker out of that.  It showed the suffering of Jesus in a way that we don't often think about.  We gloss over the whipping, the flogging, the nails, the spear, we don't think about it, and we rush to the conclusion.  Jesus dies and rises again. 

Well, it's Lent, and since it's Lent, it's time for us to think about the suffering of Jesus anew.  And what we need to think about is the suffering and death of Jesus Christ in a way that can still shock, can still appal.  How do we do that? Well, this week sets it up quite nicely for you.  The story of Abraham with Isaac, and the story of Jesus, realizing that they're the same, that sets things up perfectly.  For with this matter, you can channel the outrage over the binding of Isaac towards the cross of Jesus.  Don't run from the revulsion you feel at the story of Isaac, but understand that the sacrifice was provided by God, not just that ram, but the full, perfect and complete sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of the whole world.  Usually, we want to think that that element is too light, too frivolous.  But today, I want you to think about the cross of Jesus through the lens of the binding of Isaac.  Does it bother you that a father would be asked to offer up his son, his beloved son for forgiveness of sins?  If it does, then let the cross of Jesus bother you just a bit more.  Does it  trouble you that a son would walk up a hill carrying the wood to which he would be lashed? Then think about Jesus in that same way, staggering up the hill with the cross.  Does it bother you that a knife is held over a son with the intent of ending his life? Then it should bother you that the spear actually plunged into Jesus, causing water and blood to flow out.

In other words, let the cross of Christ have the weight it deserves.  Let the work of Jesus be as large as it is, let the sacrifice of Jesus have the meaning that it does. It's awful. It looms large.  It should bother and trouble you,for this is the end of the life of a perfect man, one who had done nothing, and one who could have avoided this death at any moment.  This is the death of a man who had no reason to die except that he knew that this was the only way through which you could be saved.  Back to the beginning, we all know that the obligation of a parent is to do whatever it takes to ensure the survival and well-being of their children.  If a parent fails at this, it is a horrible failure of what has been a promise between parents and children for as long as parents and children have existed.  And we are God's children, and we know that he is supposed to do whatever it would take to ensure our survival, our well-being, our eternity.  This is what God is supposed to do, and the only way to work that out is to pay the debt in full that we all, through our sin, owed.  And this is the work of Christ.  It should trouble you, it should bother you, you should never grow too relaxed in thinking about the death of Jesus.  Channel the revulsion you feel at the binding of Isaac, and think about the death of Christ in that way.  Think about the price that was paid for us to be adopted into the family of our father.  Thanks to Jesus, when God looks at us, he says something phenomenal to us, the same words spoken to Jesus as he came up out of the baptismal waters.

You are my beloved children, in you I am well pleased.