“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3)

As you might guess from that quote, biblical writers tend to conflate “wilderness” with “desert.” Generally, when the Bible speaks of wilderness, it means a desert place—a solitary place, a lonely and desolate and often dangerous place.

The Book of Exodus recounts how Moses led God’s people from a land of slavery to a land of hope and promise.

However, that journey took them 40 years. In order to get from Egypt to the Promised Land, they spent all that time trekking through the wilderness. As the joke goes, Moses needed a road map!

Four decades. More than a generation. Those who were infants at the start would themselves have become grandparents by the time they reached Canaan. And all they would have ever known … was the desert.

These 40 years brought them through some difficult times—with God and with one another and with Moses.

The wilderness was a place of struggle—often life-or-death struggle. It was a theatre of transit—the in-between place through which they had to pass. To reach their final destination, they could not avoid the desert.

In the gospels, we read about Jesus spending time in the wilderness before he begins his ministry. Matthew and Luke tell that story in more detail, but Mark’s Gospel is succinct. Halfway through the first chapter, Mark tells us that the Spirit “drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan” (Mark 1:12-13a).

There, in the desert, he was tempted to reject God’s plan for his life and instead choose an easier path to instant success. Of course he resisted, and—some would argue—by so doing, sealed his own fate.

In the scriptures, the wilderness is a risky place to be—a frightening place to be. In the wilderness, you are alone and exposed and vulnerable. We may not live in a desert climate, but during the season of Advent, we do find ourselves on a journey. And it can feel very much like a trek through the desert.

Christmas is but two weeks away. In church and in our culture, this is a season of preparation. We are moving towards a day of joy and great celebration.

At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.

But sometimes, on the way, we get sidetracked. In the midst of all the hustle and bustle—in the midst of shopping for presents, preparing our homes, finalizing travel plans, and planning for activities at home and school and work and church …

In the midst of all that, we can easily lose our sense of direction.

And then it feels like we’re just wandering, doesn’t it? Like we’re lost in the wilderness, praying that Christmas will soon … be over.

The holidays are meant to be a happy time; but many people experience them as a season of distress—a time of loneliness, frustration, and hard work.

Plus … for many of us in what are still called “mainline” churches, there’s a whole other layer of anxiety weighing down upon us—and it’s beginning to feel like a layer of earth packed down over a casket. Declining attendance. Dwindling finances. Sagging enthusiasm. Lost relevance. For many of us in the long-established denominations, our reality looks like this: we are running out of money, and running out of energy … and running out of time. Tough decisions and difficult conversations lie just ahead of us. And in fact, some of the difficult conversations have already begun, as hard questions about the future demand brisk responses. Responses which, alas, do not lie close at hand. We know we need to plot a course forward. But sometimes it seems like our compass is broken.

Prophet and Evangelist: Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8

It is just when God’s people have lost their way that prophets are called to speak. In the lectionary readings for Second of Advent—the Sunday just past—we find two passages of Scripture, each with words meant for those who are struggling through a wilderness, and wondering what to do. In the words of Isaiah—and in the preaching of John the Baptist—we hear tidings of hope for desperate times.

The prophet Isaiah ministered during a time in Israel’s history when the Jews had been forcibly removed from their own land and exiled to Babylon. It was for them a time of deep pain and uncertainty.

Having been torn from their homes and transported to a foreign country ruled by hostile forces, the Hebrew people cried out for deliverance. They longed for the day when they could return home and end this time of displacement, of waiting, of wilderness.

Where was God? Did he care about their plight? It must have seemed to them as if the Lord had forgotten them—that they would never again see the holy land and the holy city. But God had not forgotten his people, nor had he ceased to care about them. And so the Lord spoke to the prophet Isaiah and told him, “Cry out!”

“What shall I cry?”  What, indeed?

Isaiah wants to know what he could possibly say that would make a difference to this defeated and demoralized people. Swiftly comes the response:

“Comfort, comfort my people … Speak tenderly to Jerusalem … In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God … the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together … Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him … He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.”

In the gospel lesson, Mark starts things off with a bang. Unlike Matthew and Luke—who report in some depth the account of Jesus’ birth—Mark gets right down to business. John the baptizer appears in the wilderness, in the way of Isaiah, proclaiming baptism, repentance, and forgiveness—and announcing that the Messiah is coming, that the Kingdom of God is about to arrive.

As in Isaiah’s time, once again the people of Israel found themselves in a kind of wilderness. Israel was an occupied country, under the heel of Rome. Although the Jewish people remained in their homeland, they were not free. Their lives were monitored and controlled by the occupying forces. It was a desolate time and place.

You often hear it said that, in times of crisis, people turn back to religion. And that may be partly true. At any rate, many were coming to John, repenting of their sins and being baptized in preparation for the one whom John said was coming—the one who would bring God’s Kingdom with him. The one who would save the nation. The one who would make all things right.

“Wait just a little bit longer,” John said.

Isaiah and John. Seven centuries apart, these two voices cry out to people who are lost in their wildernesses.

What did their words mean?

What did their proclamations mean for those who so desperately needed to hear them?

What do they mean for us?

Consider the Israelites when, led by Moses, they wandered in the desert. Forty years is a long time to live in transition, to ramble aimlessly, with no fixed address. And it certainly does not appear that the Israelites tried to make the best of it. In fact—if you remember the story of the exodus—they spent a lot of time looking backward, recalling that, even in their slavery, they at least had some measure of security in Egypt:

And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Exodus 16:2-3).

Remember that? Then they grew thirsty—and probably also sunburnt—and they recalled the lovely blue Nile, with its cool and endlessly refreshing flow. They were kind of like …

Kind of like church people remembering the good old days when services were packed full of worshippers, and there was money to burn! Trouble is, that kind of reminiscing keeps you stuck in the past and unable to imagine a better future. And it always makes the present time look as barren and parched and hopeless as the Sinai desert. It makes here and now feel less like transition … and more like … perdition.

Transition is a sketchy neighbourhood. In transition, I think, you always feel sort of like a squatter—even on your home turf—because you are never quite sure when you will have to pack up and move on.

Forty years is a long time to live in transition—but it is also a great amount of time to live. You can do a lot of living in 40 years. But the Israelites seem only to have done a lot of complaining, and wishing that they were already in the Promised Land.

The Advent season is like that, too. Only in part is Advent about reaching the destination of Christmas. Advent is also about the journey itself—the journey of preparation. Sometimes we forget that the process is as important as the product—that what happens on our way there is as important as what happens when we get there.

We can spend all of Advent wishing that it was already Christmas—or wishing, even, that Christmas was already past. Or … we can make the most out of every day of this Advent season—this precious time of getting ready, of preparing, and anticipating … and living.

The prophets tell us that we do not have to arrive at our destination in order to find meaning, or find peace, or find God.

Where God is, there also is peace, and meaning, and hope and love and joy.

God is in the wilderness.

God is on the journey.

God is in the wandering.

God is with us in the desert.

Isaiah cries out: “Here—here is your God!” That is the comfort, that is the hope, that is the peace God offers us, in the midst of our season of transit. We do not have to wait until Christmas to experience Emmanuel—the “God-with-us” who will arrive in the Christ Child. We do not have to wait until we exchange presents. We do not have to wait until the candlelight Communion on Christmas Eve. Or until somebody wins big on the lottery and puts half of it in the offering plate!

No. God is with us now!

To be sure, we are waiting—waiting for the baby, waiting for the Christ, waiting for deliverance; but while we are waiting, God says to us, “Here I am!”

In the wilderness, let us respond: Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37

“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and … causes water to boil—to make your name known …” (Isaiah 64:1-2a)

“Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come … And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” (Mark 13:33, 37)

Yeah … Christmas is coming! But for the most part, our Advent readings—as served up by the Revised Common Lectionary—will shake all the ornaments off your tree. And maybe some pine needles, too.

The Old Testament and Gospel Lessons for the First of Advent (Year B) are good examples of that. Isaiah flashes lightning, and Jesus echoes with thunder in Mark.

“… in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.” (Mark 13:24-26)

Together, these two readings catapult us forward in time; how far forward, we can only guess. As the season begins, we stand precariously at the furthest edge of history.

Each reading is startling—even jarring. Together, they bring us face-to-face with the unsettling contradiction of Advent. Throughout this season, we wait for Jesus’ arrival—both as a baby in Bethlehem and in a fiery cloud descending from the sky. It’s as if the hope of new birth and the terror of judgment share the same crib, fighting over the blankets.

The terror of judgment. Let’s call it what it really is: fear of the future. I think it has a natural association with birth—or with the anticipation of it.

If you’ve experienced a pregnancy—either as a mother or as a father—you probably know what it feels like to wonder about what kind of world this little person is going to be born into—about what kind of life he or she is going to have.

Will he have the opportunity to meet his own grandchildren? Or will he be cut down by illness or accident, way too early?

Will she have a chance to use her gifts—to pursue a fulfilling career? Or will she find herself imprisoned by other people’s expectations and agendas?

Will he continue down our path toward destruction, fighting over water and oil and religion? Or will he be part of a solution to the world’s problems?

Will she have hope for the future? Or will she despair for a world consumed by its own greed and self-interest?

Will they have a retirement plan that doesn’t involve a bottle of whiskey and a handgun?

Like I said, the judgment that surrounds a child’s birth is all about fear of the future. This judgment does not condemn, exactly … but it does ask pointed—and sometimes frightening—questions.

Even so—even in the face of troubling questions and worrisome forecasts—most of us are, somehow, able to remain hopeful (at least somewhat).

We may worry about our children, but we hope for the best for them, don’t we? Isn’t that what birth is about—having hope for the future? Isn’t that what we’re waiting for, really?

At its core, Advent is a season of hope.

By the way, the Advent One gospel lesson is merely the second half of a much longer discourse by Jesus, where he talks about how the world is going to see terrible suffering. You can read it for yourself, if you like, beginning at verse one of chapter 13. But  here’s a synopsis …

While Jesus and his disciples are walking out of the Jerusalem temple, one of them says to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus responds by saying that someday it will all be thrown down, with not one stone left upon another.

The disciples, naturally enough, ask when this will happen, and that’s when Jesus launches into his lengthy monologue about the end times. And it sounds pretty awful.

He laments for those who are pregnant because he sees terrible suffering awaiting both mother and child. He sees abject powerlessness for fathers who can neither support their families nor protect them. He sees cities crumbling and people dying. He sees false prophets offering false hope—a delusional escape out of the destruction. He sees the end of the world. And he asks his followers to “be on guard.” Sleep with one eye open.

“In those days … they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” (Mark 13:24a, 27)

This is what Biblical scholars—and students of literature—refer to as “apocalyptic imagery.” The Hebrew Bible contains a great deal of it. It is language that would have been instantly understood by Jesus’ disciples—or, for that matter, by any Jew within earshot.

For example, that phrase about “the Son of Man coming in clouds” … That’s taken directly from the Book of Daniel, where it says:

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14)

This language of visions in the night is a kind of shorthand—or a coded message—signalling the world’s imminent transformation. To us, it sounds bizarre—but not to a first-century Jew.

What may not be so obvious, however—and it wasn’t obvious to Jesus’ contemporaries, either—is that all this apocalyptic language really is not about an angry God bringing judgment upon a sinful world. That isn’t the point. No. The point is that Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming here. And if we rejoice in his first Advent, we certainly should not dread his second Advent.

Look—he hardly needs to bring hellfire with him! There’s already plenty of that here. Wars. Rumors of wars. Earthquakes. Famines. Doomsday weapons. Jihads.

Nothing is said here about condemnation. Jesus comes to bring transformation—healing, justice, peace on earth. And the Son of Man—“one like a human being”—stays here, transforming everything.

Change is coming … soon! The question is: what’s your role? What are you being called to do?

Well, here’s Jesus’ message: You are to keep awake, because a new world is about to arrive. It’s coming here, it’s coming soon, and you’ve got to be ready to be part of it at the first sign. At the first inkling, you need to fling the door wide open and get everything prepared for the big changes that are on the way.

Why? Because you are going to be part of the transformation that’s just around the corner. You are part of God’s plan for the world!

When we hear apocalyptic language—when we think about the “end times”—we may assume it’s all about Jesus rescuing us from a broken planet and lifting us up to safety in the heavenly realm. This is the idea which spawned that “Left Behind” series of books and movies that were popular not that long ago. But if we listen carefully to Mark’s gospel, we hear Jesus saying something else.

Jesus says he is coming down, not that we will be lifted up. Jesus is not saying that he’s going to pull us out of this world. No. He has promised that we will be with him:

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3).

And where will he be?

Right here. He has left us here—and he’s going to keep us here—to be his agents for change in this world. Jesus doesn’t say that he hates this mortal realm. Far from it. He says that he loves this world so much that he is going to fix it.

Will he bring divine justice? Yes. But remember this: in Christ, justice and mercy are reconciled. God’s wrath was satisfied long ago. We don’t need to be fearful. But we do need to keep watch for Jesus. Our job is to keep alert to what God is doing all around us. And when we do see God—with his sleeves rolled up, working hard—we are expected to join in, and support the cause.

Today, God is recruiting us to work alongside our sisters and brothers in Christ—to become part of his treatment plan for this world’s critical illness.

Jesus asks us to live God’s future today. So keep alert. Stay awake. Watch. Be part of the change that’s coming to this world. But always remember that it is God’s mercy that transforms—and it is God’s justice that brings renewal.

Throughout this season of Advent, let’s all keep our eyes fixed on the horizon … and our hands busy with acts of compassionate service … as now we watch and wait.

TEXT:  Matthew 25:31-46

[Jesus said:] “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”

(Matthew 25:31-40, ESV)

Ah, yes. The parable of the sheep and the goats from chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel—historically, a favourite sermon text in the United Church of Canada (and, I’d wager, a favourite in most of the so-called “mainline” churches).

Using this passage, it’s easy to forge a manifesto on how to live out the “social gospel” in today’s world, declaring that the mission of the church is to overthrow all oppressors and wipe out all injustice, by active engagement in political and social reform.

“Social justice” is a huge part of what my own denomination has always been about, and I’m glad for that. I celebrate it. Over the years, I have taken part in outreach programs for disenfranchised and excluded people. I have said “Amen!” to campaigns against nuclear proliferation, against logging in old-growth forests, and against the continuing marginalization of the poor. Every one of those causes achieved significant victories in the name of Christ—and I’m not ashamed of my association with them.

However, there is another side to this whole thing.

If you wanted to parody typical mainline responses to our “sheep and goats” passage, I think it would go something like this:

• “I was hungry … and you petitioned the government for better social programs …
• “I was a stranger … and you recommended funding new community initiatives …
• “I was in prison … and you urged the Minister of Public Safety to review the penitentiary system.”

Yet, the people who are rewarded in Jesus’ description of Judgment Day are not commended for running programs or writing to politicians—they are commended for personally extending hospitality:

• “I was hungry and a stranger and you welcomed me to your own table …
• “I was in the hospital, and you came and sat with me …
• “I needed a warm winter coat, but couldn’t afford one—and you bought one for me …
• “I was in prison and you came to visit me; you went through the security checks and emptied out your pockets and got frisked and scrutinized … just so you could see me.”

Just so you could see me. Just because you cared about me. Wow. That is “do-it-yourself” social action! It’s much smaller in scale, but it can have a profound impact. Inviting one person to dinner may not seem very significant—but love and hospitality are what heal people’s souls and turn their lives around.

Of course, things are never as simple as they appear. If you operate as an isolated individual, trying to recognize Christ in the face of every needy person you encounter, and responding—every time—by opening your own home and your own heart … The truth is, that is arduous. And it will very quickly wear you down.

Before you know it, you’ll be hiding! You’ll be intentionally avoiding contact with needy people, in order to reduce your workload; and—more than likely—you’ll find yourself weighed down by guilt, as a result.

Here’s the thing: Christian hospitality should be a community effort. At the Lord’s Table—and at our banquet tables—we share food and drink. Corporately, we share in worship, and in fellowship afterwards. That’s all good. However, we must also share—corporately—the responsibility to care for those who live and move outside our sanctuary walls. If we take Jesus seriously, hospitality requires us to expand our definition of community.

How can we accomplish that? From my own very small congregation, I offer two examples.

First, I want to hold up our “Advent Bassinet Project,” which aims to support the clients of the Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre. The idea is simple. During Advent, we seek to honour the Christ Child and his mother by caring for babies and moms in our larger community. Throughout the season, we collect gift items (and necessities) for babies and mothers—anything from diapers and formula to children’s clothing and toys to photo albums and makeup kits and bubble bath to gift certificates for restaurants or groceries or …

I’m sure you get the idea. Anything you yourself might enjoy finding under the Christmas tree, you can place in the bassinet on display at chancel front. Near to Christmas, all these items are packed up and delivered to the Centre, for distribution at their Client Christmas Party. Personal gifts, with a personal touch.

Second, we have a dedicated group of volunteers who convene regularly to make loaves of sandwiches—many loaves of sandwiches—which they then deliver to one of our city’s homeless shelters. Like the Bassinet Project, this is outreach with a personal touch.

The folks who take part in these and other compassionate ministries will tell you that they find this sort of direct action infinitely more satisfying than merely signing their names to a petition or participating in a focus group. I suspect it is also—spiritually—an infinitely deeper experience.

And these things are doable precisely because … many hands … make lighter work.

May God grant us wisdom for the living of our days, as we await the coming of his kingdom. Amen.

 

“This is very important … I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.”

Perhaps you’ve heard some variant of the story, “Keep Your Fork.” It has in recent years become a kind of internet meme. One version of it can be found here: https://www.guideposts.org/inspiration/life-after-death/why-do-people-say-keep-your-fork

In a nutshell, it’s about a woman who—having been diagnosed with a terminal illness—is meeting with her pastor to plan funeral arrangements. She tells him she wants to be buried clutching a fork, and the minister is understandably puzzled.

So she explains that—over many years of attending socials and church suppers—she noticed that whenever the main course dishes were being cleared away, someone would always tell her, “Keep your fork.”

“Then I knew that something better was coming,” she said. “Like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful, and with substance!”

As her pastor listened, she went on: “I want people to see me in that casket with a fork in my hand, and I want them to wonder, ‘What’s with the fork?’ Then I want you to tell them: ‘Keep your fork; the best is yet to come.’”

How can you not love that story? It’s touching. It’s adorable. And it reminds us that our Christian faith is forward-looking, regarding the future with hopeful anticipation. If you’re looking to pair it with a Scripture passage, a good one might be 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10, where the Apostle Paul writes:

“… God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”

Whether we are awake or asleep—whether we are living or dead—we are alive in Christ. We live with Jesus. In this world and the next, we belong to the Lord. Of course, in the world to come, Jesus will be even closer to us than he is now.

As Paul wrote elsewhere, “… now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).

Keep your fork. The best is yet to come.

Keep a tight grip on your faith. Keep hold of your relationship with the Lord.

Destruction and chaos may be all around you. There may be “wars and rumors of wars,” and disasters—natural or otherwise—may throw down everything you’ve worked for. Don’t be alarmed. Something better is coming.

The day of the Lord is coming, when all of earth’s problems and conflicts will—with justice and mercy—be finally sorted out. So keep your fork. Keep hold of your optimism, holding fast to God’s promises.

That is good advice not only for the next world, but for this one, as well. Optimism and hope, surely, lay the foundation for dynamic faith.

In chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel (vv. 14-30) Jesus tells a story of his own. It’s about a man who has three servants. He’s about to go on a long journey, and he needs them to take care of his business while he’s away. So he entrusts his property to them. Specifically, he opens up his treasury and hands over to each one of them a sizeable amount of cash: five talents, two talents, and one talent, in turn.

Now, a “talent” amounted to roughly 15 years’ worth of wages for a common labourer. At least, that’s what the note in my study Bible says.

According to the Alberta government, the average annual wage for a construction labourer in this province is about $58,644.* So even the guy with only one talent was left in charge of an impressive sum—well over three-quarters of a million dollars, in today’s money. That’s quite a pile of cash. There’s a lot of things you could do with it.

However, this last servant—the guy who was given one talent … Well, he doesn’t do anything with it. In fact, he is so worried about losing it that he digs a hole and buries it! He doesn’t even put the money in the bank.

Why? Because he doesn’t want to take any kind of risk with it, however small. That, my friends, is the very definition of pessimism.

If any of you have money invested in mutual funds, or annuities, or something like that … you expect your investments to grow over time, right? You expect the fund administrator to do something with them, don’t you?

Instead of digging a hole to hide your money, you want the person managing your funds to dig in to the market. You want that person to take a calculated risk. That is optimism. Optimism does not shun risk.

The first two servants did not shun risk. And each one of them managed to double their employer’s money. The man who was put in charge of four million dollars returned with eight million. The one who had two million came back with four million. Either the market was really hot, or their boss was gone for a very long time!

Anyway, they both got promotions—and, I think we can assume, hefty bonuses. They did well.

Why? Because they realized they’d been invited to a banquet—a banquet of possibilities. More importantly, they were not afraid to take their forks and dig in to the opportunities that lay all around them.

Living optimistically—living hopefully—requires us to be good stewards of the resources that God has entrusted to us. Living optimistically involves taking risks, sometimes. Living hopefully means stepping out of our comfort zones. Optimistic people—hopeful people, faithful people—do not shun risk.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to embrace risk, confident that—if we are doing God’s will—the Lord will bless our efforts. And the Bible promises that he will equip us to take those risks in his name. Writing to the Christians at Ephesus, the apostle Paul describes this equipment as “the whole armour of God.” Here’s what he says in the sixth chapter of Ephesians:

Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph. 6:13-17)

What an evocative and imaginative writer, Paul was! The whole armour of God. The belt of truth. The breastplate of righteousness. The shield of faith. The helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.

If Paul had described not only the soldier’s armour, but also his mess kit, he might have added, “the fork of hope.”

It is the fork of hopeful anticipation—which we grasp firmly, as we wait for dessert. But before it is that, it is the fork of hopeful diligence, with which we dig in to the meat and potatoes of Christian discipleship. You know what I mean—that hearty fare which is the diet of every servant of God.

In another letter, Paul reviews the menu, thus: “great endurance … purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God” (2 Cor. 6:4-7).

Stick a fork in any one of those dishes, and you’ll find yourself with plenty to chew on. As Eugene Peterson has put it, “Our work as God’s servants gets validated—or not—in the details” (2 Cor. 6:4, The Message).

Purity? Well, that’s about minding your table manners, because the world is watching just where you stick your fork.

Knowledge? That’s about understanding why it’s important to eat all the food on your plate.

Truthful speech is the yeast which rises into a trustworthy loaf.

And as for patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, and genuine love … Along with all the other ingredients, these things complete the recipe for bearing faithful witness.

Just like working all day—and every day—in a busy restaurant, the life of discipleship requires great endurance. Because the truth is—in the here and now of this present world, we’re not only called to sit at the table; we’re also expected to cook the meal.

Yeah. That’s right. It’s like a never-ending church supper!

It’s not easy to get volunteers to work in the kitchen, is it? And the few who do show up to start the coffee perking … and heat up the oven … and put up the tables and set out the chairs … Well, they can easily wind up exhausted. Feeling discouraged, and taken for granted.

And yet, strangely, somehow these faithful few keep coming back for more—more work in the kitchen, more miles on the road, with ever-heavier loads upon their backs. I think these must be the ones whom the Bible refers to as “the elect.”

Through sheer endurance, they display the power of God. And always—always—they take care to do the best they can, the most they can, with what their Master has entrusted to them.

Maybe it’s five million dollars. Maybe it’s five loaves and two fish. But whatever it is, the faithful ones get out their forks and dig in.

Even when the journey has been arduous, even when the kitchen’s been too hot and the burden’s been too much; even when they’ve done far more than their fair share, putting their talents into service while others seem content to just sit on theirs … even then, these saints persevere.

And why? The only reason I can think of is that they know something better is coming.

Maybe it’s a heavenly banquet table where somebody else is going to serve them dessert, and pour them coffee.

But I think it’s more than that. I think it’s more “here and now” than that. I think it’s the reward that comes when they behold the gratitude of a hungry one being fed. Or when they watch the spiritual growth of Sunday School kids as they progress in maturity and in understanding. Or witness the expression of joy on the face of a lonely person who is just so, so glad to have a visitor.

You saints—you know who you are! (At least, I hope you do.)

I think you persevere because you remember Jesus saying that when you care for the least, you are caring for him. I think you do what you do because you know you are making a tremendous positive difference in someone else’s life.

You find peace in your heart by working peace in the world.

“Something better” comes to pass—before your very eyes—all because, in your hand, you grasp the fork of hope. And because when—with both your hands—you put that hope to work, it not merely doubles, or triples; it expands infinitely.

That is the economy of heaven.

_____________

*https://alis.alberta.ca/occinfo/wages-and-salaries-in-alberta/construction-trades-helpers-and-labourers/7611/

TEXTS: Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:1-14

For out of Zion shall go the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. (ISAIAH 2:3c-4)

Since long centuries past, humanity has longed for the fulfilment of Isaiah’s vision—of a world at peace, where all the nations walk in the paths of the God of Jacob. That beloved Scripture passage looks forward to the coming of God’s righteous Kingdom, where hope and joy and peace abound.

Alas. It remains a vision of the future. Here and now, as Jesus said, we hear of “wars and rumors of wars” (Matt. 24:6). Nation rises against nation, and false prophets lead many astray. As lawlessness increases, so do hatred and violence. And the end is not yet, unfortunately.

As much as world leaders seek resolutions to earth’s many conflicts—as much as preachers like me strive to deliver hopeful messages—people seem bent on destroying one another.

If you wonder why our religious tradition declares that humanity is “fallen” … you need look no further than the latest murder reported on the nightly news. Or any of our numerous battlefields.

During the week preceding Remembrance Day, we always hear a lot of 1940s-era music being played (at least, that’s the way it is in Canada. I wonder if the same is true of the lead-up to Veterans’ Day, in the United States).

Not that this is a bad thing. I like Vera Lynn as much as the next guy. But the truth is, our world is always creating brand-new combat veterans.

Canada’s role in the Afghan conflict, for instance, cost the nation dearly; 158 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in that theatre of war—and over 2,000 more were injured. ¹ American losses have been astronomically higher—close to 3,000 killed, and more than 20,000 wounded. ²

The number of Canadian Forces’ fatalities resulting from military activities in Afghanistan is the largest since the Korean War. And even though we’ve managed in this case to repatriate our war dead, the grief of friends and family members as they stand at the graveside of a loved one …

Well, their sorrow is every bit as deep as that of the man who penned “In Flanders’ Fields” on a battlefield in Belgium in the spring of 1915.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

That famous poem is an enduring legacy of the terrible battle fought near the village of Ypres 102 years ago. The poet’s name was John McCrae. He was a Canadian army doctor, and already a veteran of the South African War. Even so, the carnage at Ypres left him shaken. The suffering, the screaming, and the bloodshed almost overwhelmed him. In his field hospital, he had witnessed enough suffering to last him a lifetime.

As a surgeon attached to the First Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae had spent 17 days treating injured men—Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans—in the trenches at Ypres. It had been an unimaginable ordeal. Of it, McCrae later wrote:

“I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days … Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.” ³

One death hit McCrae particularly hard. A young friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on May 2, 1915. He was 22 years old. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day, and—in the absence of the chaplain—McCrae himself officiated at the funeral ceremony.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. In the nearby cemetery—where the young Lieutenant had been laid to rest—McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he quickly scribbled 15 lines of verse in a notebook.

Another young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a 22-year-old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly.

“His face was very tired but calm as he wrote,” Allinson later recalled. “He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.”

When McCrae finished writing, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his notebook to the young soldier. Allinson was greatly moved by what he read.

“The poem,” he said, “was an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.” ⁴

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England.

The Spectator, in London, rejected it—but Punch published it on December 8, 1915. The rest, as they say, is history.

“In Flanders Fields” remains to this day one of the most poignant war poems ever written, and—even after all these years—it continues to touch hearts in all generations. It is John McCrae’s legacy to us.

It is also, I believe, something like a Last Will and Testament. For, even as McCrae urges his readers to “Take up our quarrel with the foe,” he also tells us to hold high “the torch.”

If we would indeed hold high this torch—if we would keep faith with those who died in that long-ago conflict—we need to reflect upon just what it means to do that. The “quarrel with the foe” of which McCrae wrote was, after all, settled before any of us were born. Unless …

Unless he had another foe in mind.

I’m sure we all know that World War One was called “the war to end all wars.” We’ve all heard that, right?

I have always assumed that phrase was uttered in retrospect—that it was applied after the war was over, as people contemplated the horrors of trench fighting and mechanized warfare, and told themselves that this atrocity surely could never be repeated.

But I recently learned that, in fact, that phrase was applied in advance—at the very beginning of the conflict. In an article published in The Daily News on August 4, 1914—and titled, “The War That Will End War”—the British futurist H.G. Wells wrote:

This is already the vastest war in history. It is a war not of nations, but of mankind. It is a war to exorcise a world-madness and end an age … For this is now a war for peace. It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever … This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war! ⁵

Wells’s optimism would, of course, be trashed by the events of coming years. But his phrase, “the war to end all wars,” was quickly adopted as a slogan by the Allied powers.

The dream—the vision, the “torch”—was not about war, but about the end of war. The goal was always to establish peace on earth. And this should be no surprise. I’ve met quite a few combat veterans over the years—but I’ve never met one who thought that war was a good thing. Or a glorious thing. Those who have seen battle up close—like John McCrae did—have no illusions about that.

And so, as we consider what it means to “hold high” the torch passed to us from failing hands … Here’s how I think we can do it.

In a world filled with violence and conflict, we must hold high the vision of peace that Isaiah proclaimed.

In a world filled with tyranny and oppression, we must strive to establish justice for all.

In a world filled with hunger and greed, we must celebrate—and work to fulfil—the promise of abundance for all.

Today, we are called to keep the dream alive. We are called to be dreamers who dream of a better world. Today, we are called not merely to dream, but also to work.

May God increase our compassion, our generosity, and our hospitality toward the least of his children. And may God grant us the courage, the patience, the serenity, honesty, and gentleness of spirit required to mend this broken world. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

_________________

¹ www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/canadian-armed-forces/afghanistan-remembered/fallen?filterYr=2011

² www.defense.gov/casualty.pdf

³ www.canadiangreatwarproject.com/searches/soldierDetail.asp?ID=6009

⁴ www.flandersfieldsmusic.com/thepoem.html

⁵ mentalfloss.com/article/58411/wwi-centennial-war-end-all-wars

“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

For this reason they are before the throne of God,
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

(REV. 7:14b-17)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven … those who mourn, for they will be comforted … the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled … the merciful, for they will receive mercy … the pure in heart, for they will see God … the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

(MATT. 5:3-9)

Those of you whose tradition follows the Revised Common Lectionary may recognize the above Scripture passages as the Epistle and Gospel lessons for All Saints’ Day (Year A). Both of them contain depictions of “the saints”—in the first case, martyrs; in the second … well, Jesus could have been describing saints in heaven or on earth. Or both, which was probably his intention.

Several themes weave their way through those two readings. But the one that spoke most loudly to me on this particular All Saints’ Day was the theme of reconciliation. Of life in a realm where all things are made right. Where there is no more hunger, no more thirst, no more forced labour in the noonday sun. Here the poor in spirit rejoice with the meek and the persecuted, as earth becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. Here, mourning stops because there is no more death. Weeping ceases, for there is no more sorrow. Here is the fulfillment of all that has been promised to the children of God.

Here, everything—and everyone—is reconciled, and all things are made new. Here is atonement—“at-one-ment”—as all divisions and borders and barriers fall away. And with one voice, saints and angels sing together:

Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honour
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! (REV. 7:12)

Reconciliation. Peace. Joy. Unity. Harmony. Because God’s people form one big, happy family … right?

Or, sometimes, not so much. Whether we’re talking about congregations or clans—or any other kind of human “family”—harmony is too rarely the correct descriptor.

Every family has its measure of discord—of conflicts and frictions, resentments and grudges. Over my years in pastoral ministry, I’ve watched families gathering for all sorts of reasons. And—not surprisingly, I guess—when the reason has been associated with severe illness or death, I’ve witnessed family dynamics at their best and at their worst. Maybe that’s because tragic circumstances tend to strip away our veneer of civility—thereby forcing the kind of emotional honesty most of us find terrifying under normal conditions.

Funerals and memorial services … and deathbed visits … they are, very often, occasions when rough feelings get smoothed out and crooked ways are made straight, when long-festering wounds get healed, and long-ago slights and insults are forgiven, and estranged people are reconciled.

But not always. And never completely. And let’s face it, one person’s saint is another person’s devil.

Yeah. Families. They’re peculiar. These days, we like to label them as dysfunctional. Which is a fancy way of saying that people just cannot—or will not—get along. It sets me to wondering what heaven is going to be like once all of the feuding siblings and sullen children and warring spouses and other adversaries arrive there. Will we like each other any better then?

How will souls be reconciled if they carry their grievances and resentments with them? And if they do that … how can it be heaven?

Maybe it isn’t.

Clive Staples Lewis (1898- 1963) was a British novelist, poet, academic, theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist. He wrote many books. One of them is called The Great Divorce.

The Great Divorce is a work of fiction, wherein Lewis uses a dream motif to reflect on the Christian conceptions of Heaven and Hell. He begins by introducing us to a narrator, who is never identified.

The narrator finds himself in a grim and joyless city—the “grey town”—which is either Hell or Purgatory, depending on whether or not one stays there forever. Eventually, he comes across people who are boarding a bus. The bus is there to load passengers for an excursion to another place, which—we find out later—turns out to be the edge of Heaven. The narrator enters the bus and engages his fellow passengers in conversation. As they travel on, the people on the bus—including the narrator—are gradually revealed to be ghosts. When they arrive at their destination, the passengers disembark into the most beautiful country they have ever seen.

However, every feature of the landscape—including streams of water and rolling meadows—is unyieldingly solid compared to themselves. The land is material; they are not. And this is a huge problem. Even walking across blades of grass causes them excruciating pain, and a single leaf is much too heavy for any of them to lift.

Suddenly, luminescent figures—men and women whom they have known on Earth—come to meet them, urging them to repent and enter Heaven proper. They promise that as the ghosts travel onward and upward, they will become more and more solid, and thus feel less and less discomfort. These figures—who are called “spirits” to distinguish them from the ghosts—offer to guide them along the journey toward the mountains and the sunrise.

But here is an amazing thing: almost all of the ghosts choose instead to get back on board the bus, giving various reasons and excuses. What kind of reasons and excuses? Well, they sound very familiar.

An artist refuses to stay, after learning that he cannot sell his paintings in Heaven; a bitter cynic claims that Heaven is just a hoax; another is offended by the presence of people whom he considers undesirable; a nagging wife is upset because she will no longer be able to dominate her husband.

One man, however—who while on Earth had been enslaved by lust, which takes the form of an ugly lizard—permits an angel to destroy the reptile … which is then resurrected as a great and beautiful stallion. At the same time, the man is transformed into a shining being who mounts the horse and rides triumphantly into the everlasting dawn.

But he is a rare exception. The majority of the ghosts choose to return to the grey town. Why? Because—as it turns out—life in Hell is not that different from the life they led on Earth. Early in the story, as the narrator rides the bus, we hear the following exchange:

“It seems the deuce of a town,” I volunteered, “and that’s what I can’t understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?”

“Not at all,” said my neighbour. “The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbours—and moved. So he settles in. If by any chance the street is full, he goes further. But even if he stays, it makes no odds. He’s sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he’ll move on again. Finally he’ll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house.” *

This is the opposite of reconciliation. And this, according to Lewis, is a vision of Hell. It’s like a city that expands continually, as its citizens move further and further away from one another—all because they cannot get along. They are as quarrelsome in the grey town as they were on Earth.

Today, Jesus offers us, instead, a vision of Heaven. He also provides us with a travel brochure with tips about how to prepare for our destination. If we would receive mercy, we must show mercy. If we would see God, we must strive for purity of heart. If we would be God’s children, we must embrace peaceful living.

On All Saints’ Day—or any day we stand before our Lord’s banquet table—we should ask ourselves: is unity our heart’s desire? Is reconciliation something we truly want? And if we say it is …

What are we doing about it, right now? How are we actively pursuing reconciliation, here on Earth?

I wonder … will we heed the advice in Jesus’ travel brochure? Or … will we simply … get back on the bus?

___________________________________

* C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 9.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14:12)

Not long ago, on our local CBC Calgary radio morning show, medical contributor Dr. Raj Bhardwaj—speaking about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to relieve the symptoms of menopause—provided some insight into why this particular treatment has been surrounded by controversy.¹

Dr. Bhardwaj began by stating that, today, only about 10% of post-menopausal women are receiving HRT, compared to about 30% of them some 20 years ago.

In other words, doctors used to employ HRT much more frequently. Why the change?

The history around this is fascinating. Back in the 1960s, Dr. Bhardwaj explained, physicians reasoned that—since menopausal symptoms are caused by decreased estrogen production—it made sense that replacing the estrogen would relieve those symptoms. And so, doctors began prescribing estrogen pills for their middle-aged female patients. However …

“After about 10 years of giving estrogen to women,” Dr. Bhardwaj said, “research started to show that doing that actually increased their risk of uterine cancer!

“So then they changed things around, and another 10 years of research showed that if women took both estrogen and progesterone—another hormone that’s in most birth control pills—it actually decreased their risk of uterine cancer, and it looked like it decreased their risk of heart disease, as well. So in the ‘80s, a lot of middle-aged women were getting put on hormone replacement therapy to protect them from heart disease, not because they had menopause or any kind of menopausal symptoms at all.

“And then, [in] 2002, this big study called the Women’s Health Initiative Trial hit the media.² And it hit hard, because it was actually stopped early, because they found that the effects of hormone replacement were significantly different from what they were thinking. So they found that not only was there no big protective effect of hormone replacement on heart disease, it also showed that there was an increased risk of stroke, breast cancer, blood clots—all sorts of bad things—for women who were on hormone replacement pills, compared to women who weren’t.”

That totally changed the “risk/benefit equation,” and physicians began thinking that HRT’s dangers outweighed its benefits. As a result, hormone treatment for menopausal symptoms fell out of favour.

But that was in 2002. As the good doctor put it, “Science marches on!”

Closer examination of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Trial revealed a problem: it focused exclusively on women between the ages of 50 and 79.

“But menopause happens sort of in the 48- to 52-year range,” Dr. Bhardwaj said. “And the perimenopause—that four-or-five years when women approach menopause—that’s really when a lot of them get their symptoms. And there were no women in their 40s in this study.”

As medical scientists investigated further, they discovered some facts that were not emphasized in the WHI results. For one thing, there was no evidence of increased heart disease risk in women under 60. Plus, the breast cancer risk seemed to virtually disappear if HRT was used for less than five years.

So the HRT pendulum, Dr. Bhardwaj said, has swung from “Use it in everyone” to “Better not use it in anyone” to “now, it’s sort of panning out to use it judiciously, not for too long, and expect bigger benefits in women in early menopause rather than in late menopause.”

In other words—based on the most up-to-date research—the bottom line for HRT is that it’s safe if carefully administered. As Dr. Bhardwaj went on to say, “This is why science is science and not alternative medicine … As [new] evidence comes out, we change. We change our practices.”

“That’s why science is science.” Indeed. And that is why, for the most part, we can rely upon scientific methods to produce accurate results and beneficial applications … in the end.

The trouble is, it’s not always clear when that “end” has been reached. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that future research—reported next year or next week—will yet again point to HRT being unsafe or ineffective.

Or so it seems to this layman. Like most people, I am not scientifically trained, and so I rely upon science journalists for my information about new medical advancements, or about developments and discoveries in other scientific fields. And so, when I hear about the latest Killer Asteroid hurtling toward earth—or when I hear conflicting “expert” opinions about the efficacy of flu vaccines … Well, that gets my attention. But it doesn’t always satisfy my appetite for clarity.

That’s why—despite the number of high-profile scientists appearing in the news media to assert the absolute perfection of the scientific method—I’m unwilling to embrace science with the kind of almost-religious fervor of folks like Richard Dawkins.

I can only judge scientific advancement according to the information I’m given. And much of that information points to a very widely- (and often wildly-) swinging scientific pendulum. Which means that (again, I think, like many other people) I tend to take much science reporting with a grain of sodium chloride.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not preaching some kind of anti-scientific gospel here. Obviously, the benefits of science to humankind far outweigh its detriments. Science has provided blessings in abundance: improved agricultural methods yielding greater harvests; jet transportation that has brought the world closer; internet technology that’s brought the world to every desktop; surgical techniques that can repair an infant’s defective heart. Plus smart phones, espresso machines, and microwave ovens. Not to mention penicillin, organ transplants, and emergency defibrillators. The modern world is much better off because of science.

However, I would argue that science—being, after all, a human enterprise—will always be less than perfect. I refuse to make an idol out of the scientific method, or to build a scientific religion around it.

Yet it’s true that science and religion have much in common. They both seek Ultimate Truth. Yet, inevitably, each falls just short of its goal. Or, sometimes, very far short of the goal. Often, each one just plain gets it wrong.

When science gets it right, it yields all the benefits named above, plus a cornucopia of life-enhancing fruit.

When religion gets it right, we are blessed with ethical systems of law, love of neighbour, equitable sharing of resources, ways of reconciliation and peace, spiritual enlightenment. Salvation.

When science gets it wrong, we get thalidomide babies,³ radioactive fallout, biological weapons, bogus racial theories and Nazi eugenics.

When religion gets it wrong, we get suicide bombers, pogroms, crusades, doomsday cults and residential schools. We get false prophets forecasting specific dates for Armageddon, rejection of needed medical treatment, entrenched bigotry and racism.

Yes. Science and religion do, indeed, have much in common. When we get it right, human existence is made better, Ultimate Truth is more closely apprehended, society benefits, and lives are saved. When we get it wrong, truth is obscured. And people die.

In fact, it seems to me that—for all of their shared positives and negatives—neither science nor religion can afford to view the other with scorn. Of professor and priest alike, smugness is unbecoming.

“Without the Way, there is no going; without the Truth, there is no knowing; without the Life, there is no living.” —Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471)

___________________________________

¹ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/programs/eyeopener/dr-raj-bhardwaj-on-menopause-1.4358646

² https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/press-releases/2002/nhlbi-stops-trial-of-estrogen-plus-progestin-due-to-increased-breast-cancer-risk-lack-of-overall-benefit

³ http://www.thalidomide.ca/the-canadian-tragedy/

 

 

“Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matthew 22:17)

Consider, if you will, the Canadian 10-cent piece; or consider, even, the lowly nickel—or almost any other Canadian coin. You will see on one side a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, surrounded by the inscription, “D.G. Regina” (or “Dei Gratia Regina”), Latin for “By the Grace of God, Queen.”

This design mimics the coinage of imperial Rome in Jesus’ time. The portrait then was that of the emperor. The inscription, in Latin abbreviation, included the emperor’s name and his titles.

The coins of the Roman Empire circulated over a vast area populated by people of many races and languages. It was an empire which included Judea and Galilee—troublesome regions at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea; troublesome, because they were never docile in their subservience to Rome.

In the days of imperial Rome, back before photography and television and modern travel, coins and sculpture were the only ways that most of the residents of the empire had to see what their emperor looked like. These coins also played an essential role in the empire’s sophisticated economy. They were essential to trade and taxation.

And so the stage is set for the dramatic encounter in Matthew 22:15-22, where Jesus embarrasses his opponents by making reference to the Roman coin he holds in his hand.

Two quite disparate groups come gunning for Jesus. First, there are the Pharisees (or at least, a faction of them). They are devout Jews scrupulous in their observance of God’s law as they interpreted it. Then, there are the Herodians—Jews who support Herod Antipas—referred to most often as a Jewish King, but in reality nothing more than a Roman puppet.

Pharisees and Herodians differed on several issues, one of which was the question of whether to pay taxes to the occupying power. It is remarkable, therefore, to witness representatives of these opposing camps working together. Evidently, both groups feel threatened by the rabbi from Nazareth.

So they approach Jesus over one of the “hot-button” issues of the day. After a sickly-sweet overture (“Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth …”), they present their toxic question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

They hope to trick Jesus into siding with one group or another—either with the revolutionaries who are plotting to drive out the Romans, or with the collaborators who benefit from the occupation. If Jesus disallows payment, he leaves himself open to charges of sedition. If he encourages payment, he loses credibility and the people’s respect.

Jesus, however, is onto their game immediately, and challenges them: “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” Then he asks to see the coin used to pay the tax. He is handed a denarius—a silver coin about the size of a modern dime. The particular denarius shown to Jesus would have borne the likeness of the reigning emperor, Tiberius. It would also have had a Latin inscription, translated as follows: “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus.”

Remember, the Latin inscription on our modern coinage proclaims that Elizabeth is Queen “by the grace of God”; but the inscription on Roman coins claimed divinity for the emperor. If Caesar Augustus was a god, so is his son Tiberius, according to the Romans. Tiberius is depicted as heir to his divine predecessor. The Romans gloried in these titles; the Jews were scandalized by them.

Now Jesus asks what seems like an unnecessary question: “Whose head is this, and whose title?” The answer is simple: “The emperor’s.”

Jesus then gives his famous response. He lifts the tax controversy to a different level, well above the deadlock between revolutionary and collaborator. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s.”

In other words, you can pay him this coin and others like it, for after all, his name and portrait appear on them. He has a just claim to property of this kind.

“And give to God the things that are God’s.” What belongs to God? Consider!  If the emperor claims a coin that bears his image, then certainly God claims whatever bears his image.

But what is it that bears the image of God?

Certainly, the Pharisees and the Herodians are familiar with the Scriptures. They remember the Genesis account: “So God created humankind in his image …” (GEN. 1:27)

They know that God has made humanity in his own image. It is right to pay the emperor taxes using coins with his image. But it is an even greater responsibility to give God what bears his image—namely, one’s own self. Even as the coin bears Caesar’s image—and so belongs to Caesar—we bear the image and likeness of God. And so, we belong to God. Jesus both affirmed the tax … and made it irrelevant. His meaning is clear: though we do owe the state, there are limits to what we owe. But he places no limits on what we owe to God. God calls us to be the embodiment of his Kingdom—the picture of it, if you will. The likeness of our Maker is supposed to be stamped upon us as indelibly as Caesar’s likeness was stamped upon that denarius.

Jesus refuses to become embroiled in a futile controversy. More than that, to each person present—and to us—he makes it clear that we must return our lives to God. Each one of us is made in the divine image. Each one of us owes final and complete loyalty to God. Tiberius may claim to be the son of divine Augustus—but the truth is that each human being is a child of the true King, Israel’s Lord. Thunderstruck by this realization, the Herodians and the Pharisees slip quietly away.

To be sure, this gospel drama does not answer all our questions about what it means to be—at one and the same time—citizens of earth and of heaven. It does not resolve every dilemma about obedience and taxation and resistance. But it does point out the sort of moral inquiry that must inform all of our difficult choices:

• Have I given myself—fully and completely—to God?
• Am I in right relationship to God?

If the answer to these two questions is “yes,” then I have a shot at making my other relationships work—complex and challenging though they may be. But if the answer is “no”—if I have cheated or shortchanged or forgotten my Creator—then everything else in my life will be out of whack, and whatever my good intentions, I will not be able to live justly or happily with others.

Our humanity is, after all, constituted in that way. Unless I do right by my relationship with God, I cannot do right by any of my other relationships. But if that most important relationship is somehow healed and made whole—repaired by the One who established it—then my other relationships have a hope of being set right, as well.

Fortunately, hope abounds for us! Why? Because “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

In Christ, humanity and divinity are reconciled. And the message of reconciliation has been entrusted to us. Friends, we are the coinage of heaven. Let’s spend our lives so that others may see—in us—the image and likeness of our Lord.

 

TEXTS: Jonah 3:10-4:11 and Matthew 20:1-16

So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord … And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. (Jonah 3:3-5)

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.” (Matthew 20:1)

 

The Book of Jonah. One of the 12 “minor” prophets of the Old Testament—and easily the most widely-known. Even if you’ve never opened a Bible, you’re probably familiar with his story. Jonah was the guy who got swallowed by a whale. Right?

Well, sort of. The Book of Jonah is largely allegorical, and the text nowhere mentions a “whale.” However, it contains one of the most fascinating accounts in Scripture because of what it does tell us.

This is a story about somebody who really did not want to do what God was calling him to do. His name was Jonah, and he was a prophet of Israel.

We presume Jonah did not mind preaching to his fellow Israelites, warning them about sin and urging them to stay on the straight and narrow. After all, that’s what prophets do!

But now God was asking him to do something quite different. God had commanded Jonah to preach repentance to a faraway city called Nineveh —a place whose evil was so great, it rose up heavenward like a stench.

Jonah did not want to do it.

Why not? Well, you see, Nineveh wasn’t just any city. No. It was the capital of a ruthless empire that was bent on expansion, gobbling up its neighbours on all sides. In fact, within a few decades, it would obliterate the kingdom of Israel. And since Jonah was a prophet, I guess he could see that coming.

Jonah figured that, if he left the Ninevites to their own devices, God would get fed up with them and wipe them out—maybe with a Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style nuclear blast!

Jonah did not want to preach repentance to these people, because he knew that—if they did listen to him, and did repent—God would have mercy on them and spare them.

But mercy for Nineveh would one day spell destruction, death, and deportation for Jonah’s own people. I think that’s why he wanted no part of God’s plan. That’s why he got on a boat going in the opposite direction. He was trying to run away from God—or, more specifically, from this thing God was calling him to do.

Well, we know how the story of Jonah plays out. The Lord causes a storm to toss the boat violently around, Jonah finds himself in the water, and then … he is swallowed by a big fish. After three days inside the fish’s stomach, the prophet cries, “uncle!” He agrees to do what God wants, and the big fish vomits him out onto the shore.

Fortunately for Jonah, prophets are hard to digest!

Grudgingly, he makes his way to Nineveh—which, by the way, was nowhere near the Mediterranean coast. Nineveh lay on the east bank of the Tigris River, near present-day Mosul in northern Iraq.

From that beach where the fish deposited Jonah, it was 745 kilometres—or 463 miles—to Nineveh. And that’s as the crow flies. By road, it was over 900 kilometres (577 miles). Today, at highway speed, it’s about a nine-hour drive … but for Jonah, it would’ve been at least a 13-day journey on foot.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Jonah finally staggers into Nineveh and urges its people to repent … and they do! In spite of himself, Jonah has carried the salvation of God to a people that seemed utterly beyond redemption.

But the prophet is not rejoicing about this. He exits the city, and stations himself a safe distance away, waiting to see what will happen next. Apparently, he hopes that God may decide to nuke them, after all!

Of course, that’s not what happens. Instead, the Lord tries to reason with the angry prophet: “How can I not care about Nineveh? How can I not care about 120,000 people who don’t know right from wrong? I’m glad they changed their ways. I did not want to destroy them. They are my creatures, after all!”

But of course. To us, I guess, (I hope) it makes perfect sense that God cares about the people of Nineveh. Why wouldn’t he care about them?

To Jonah, though … the question sounds like this: why should God care about Israel’s enemies? Why do they deserve mercy? Why do they deserve to be saved? Where is the justice in God’s grace?

Well, where is it?  Where is the justice in God’s grace? The same question is raised in another Biblical story—this time from the New Testament. In Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus tells a crazy parable about a landowner who pays all his labourers the same amount, no matter how many hours of work they actually put in. How can you run a business doing that?

Imagine the corporate executive’s reaction to this story: “If reimbursement is not commensurate with hours worked, then how will I motivate my employees? And if I can’t motivate my employees, how will I sell my product, serve my customers, and turn a profit?”

Or imagine the reaction of the committed workers who put in the long hours. Well, we do not really need to imagine this, since Jesus tells us what they said: “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (Matt. 20:12).

They are indignant. And who can blame them? It’s just not fair. If that’s how it’s going to be, why shouldn’t we just laze around all day long, and then punch in at four o’clock?

Well … look. This is a parable. Personally, I think the story of Jonah is a kind of parable, too. Parables aim to teach us important truths—and often, they get our attention by setting up the most bizarre situations. When Jesus tells us about the landowner and his workers, he’s not trying to answer questions like: “How should I run my business?” or “What kind of wage should I expect as a farm labourer?”

No. He’s dealing with another question altogether: “What is the Kingdom of Heaven like?” And in describing the kingdom to his disciples, he has to use human categories and analogies. It’s “like” this; and it’s “like” that. No single parable—not even all the parables—can fully capture the kingdom of heaven for us; but we can learn something about it if we listen carefully.

If this parable is about Jesus’ kingdom, then it is really not at all about “reimbursement” or “fair wages.”  In fact, it’s not about any of the principles we normally associate with hired labour. Rather, it is about a gracious and undeserved gift. It is about what Jesus brings to the world and how he transforms it.

It is about the economy of heaven.

Notice that even the workers who were hired early in the morning—the ones who later complain about their employer’s fairness—roll out of bed un-employed. But the landowner finds them and gives them work. I imagine they were, no less than the nine-, or three-, or five-o’clock-hires, “standing idle in the marketplace.”

Whatever they were doing, they weren’t getting paid for it. They had no livelihood prior to the vineyard owner seeking them out. But, by the end of the day, they seem to have forgotten this. Or perhaps they never really understood. Clearly, come payment time, they are thinking only in terms of just reward. Pay must be commensurate with the hours worked—as if the work itself was not the real “reward.”

Jesus’ parable is not so much about a landowner looking for help from others as it is about a landowner who looks to help others. More to the point: it’s about an employer who gathers up idle people and gives them a purpose. Indeed—given that this is a parable about the kingdom of heaven—what we’re talking about here is the purpose of our lives; the purpose we’ve been looking for all along. Or, if we’re like Jonah, the purpose we’ve been avoiding all along … namely … God’s purpose for us.

The landowner’s rationale for payment is extraordinarily simple: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

I’m reminded of Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” (1 Cor. 4:7). How easy it is, over the course of the day, to forget that every good thing comes to us as a gracious gift from God! And yet, God is not required or compelled to do anything for us at all—not even to give our lives a purpose.

Atheists tell us that life has no inherent purpose—even as the universe itself has no purpose, no grand reason for existing. And if you take God out of the picture, that does appear to be the truth. However, God is in our picture, and God knows that our lives need a purpose. We need a purpose. The work God gives us is his gift to us. It’s not about us doing God a favour. It’s not about working for a wage or a reward. It’s about receiving a gift of divine love.

Yet, how often we seem to miss that point! Maybe that’s because answering the call of God—doing the work God gives us to do—is seldom easy, or convenient, or even appealing. Most often, it causes us discomfort—like when it demands that we go out of our way to do good to our enemies, or face up to our own prejudices … or to be reconciled with someone who’s wronged us. Jonah was given an opportunity to become not just a prophet, but also a saint. But it seems to me that he missed it. He missed the point of God’s grace, just as we miss it when our ideas about “fair play” keep us from recognizing the will of God.

When does that happen? Well, unfortunately, in the church, it happens all the time:

• It happens when old-timers resent newcomers taking leadership positions.
• It happens, sometimes, when we resist change.
• It happens when someone decides to sulk because they feel their hard work has not been properly acknowledged.
• It happens whenever Christians—who should know better—refuse to forgive someone for a real or imagined slight, or fail to embrace a repentant sinner.

In other words, it happens whenever we turn away from the grace-work God has given us to do. Christian discipleship is challenging. Confronted by God’s boundless love—especially when we witness it being poured out on people we think do not deserve it …

When that happens, we must choose how we’re going to respond. We should choose carefully, for the Lord is watching. And the way we respond shows how we view our own labour in his vineyard.

May God help us live according to the grace we have received.