Wednesday, April 27, 2016

            I fully intended to pay for my sin – a $25 parking ticket. No argument – mea culpa. I tried to get away without putting my toonie in the meter. It was supposed to be as quick in-and-out, but I was much longer than expected. I got caught. But that’s sin for you – trying to get away with something and not get caught doing it.

            Anyway, the back of the ticket offered me a convenient way to pay the fine, right from the comfort of my home. No fuss, no muss.

            I discovered that paying for one’s misdemeanors is never convenient.

            The first way was to pay on line. Just type in the license plate and the ticket number and pay with your credit card. Sin on easy credit; interesting concept. Except that the website couldn’t find the ticket.

            The next best, easy way was by phone. Just dial the 1-800 number and pay by credit card.  Except that after about 20 rings I was sent to voice mail, telling me that I should try during office hours. I tried several times through the morning; same result, same message. Try again during office hours. I am saying to myself, Hey sweetie, (I hope she hates being called sweetie), that’s what I am doing.

            This left me with snail mail. My sin was no longer all that conveniently atoned for. I wrote the cheque but then I had to get in the car to go buy envelopes as we didn’t have any at home; then drive to the post office, purchase a stamp and finally mail it. My luck, it will get lost in the mail and then the fine is doubled if not paid in seven days.

            The address should have alerted me. It was “South Slope” and if that is not akin to the slippery slope of sinning, then I don’t know what is.

            There is a lesson in all this, and not just next time, put a toonie in the meter in the first place. Although avoiding sin to begin with is never a bad idea.

            The concept of Sin has become outmoded in the secular culture we live in.  People make mistakes, fall short of the mark, trip up, make unfortunate choices, have bad luck, even get caught, but we have become very reluctant to use the word sin as a way to describe some of the messes we get ourselves into. Sin may be deemed as being a very negative, judgmental, disapproving indictment of our human condition.

People, including Christians I know, find the allegation of sinful living to be harsh and severe. Nobody’s perfect; almost everybody is trying their best; mistakes happen. If you believe in God, you take solace that Gods loves the sinner, no matter what.

Now I don’t want to revert to the old days when every preacher preached sin and damnation from the pulpit. But Sin is a bone-fide term to help us engage and understand the limitations and failings of our humanity. “But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it,” (Genesis 4:7).  Sin, however defined, is that which distances us from God and usually one another.  There is nothing convenient about it; no easy way to atone for it; no comfortable way to deal with its effects upon us.  Unattended, sin festers and doubles its cost very rapidly. 

Sin can’t stand up against personal honesty, truthfulness, confession and the gracious love that is given to us by God as lived out by Jesus Christ.

Jesus once told a broken woman to go and sin no more. Easier said than done, perhaps; but I am confident that he said these words, not as a threat or a warning, but spoken with supreme compassion and his sacred kindness, as a way to alter the woman’s life journey and get her back on track.

It beats getting the ticket!

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

 

When I was watching the Masters Golf tournament a week ago or so, they were interviewing Tom Watson, one of the older golfers at age 57. In fact, he was retiring from the Masters after this one, because as he said, “It plays too long.” He can’t hit the ball as far as he once was able to do. The young bucks are out-driving him by considerable yardage. Thus, it plays too long.

 

Have you ever been in a situation in which the circumstances played too long? You may have felt that you didn’t have the stamina, the energy, the durability, or the strength to carry on. You may have thought about giving up or quitting. You may have resigned yourself to the inevitable. Perhaps, you regarded any real, meaningful change as next to impossible. You can’t do this. Life played too long. You don’t have the drive you used to.

 

I don’t think we would get a lot of sympathy from Paul, although even he admitted he was once so down that he feared for his life. But for the most part, Paul toughed out the worst of it. “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the death of Jesus, so that life may be visible in our bodies, “(2 Corinthians 4: 8-10).

 

This capacity to endure was more than keeping a stiff-upper-lip or being stoical or becoming a martyr or resignation as a passive and submissive sufferer. Paul believed in a power that help him to stand tall and face the nasty parts of living, especially in being a witness to Jesus Christ. Being a follower of Jesus didn’t absolve him from pain, suffering, hardship or life’s challenges. But his faith equipped him and sustained him and fed him during those times.

 

It has always been challenging to read these words: “So if you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with testing he also will provide a way out so that you may be able to endure it,” (1 Cor. 10:12 – 13).

 

So when life plays too long, our faith enables us to stand where Christ once stood, facing the worst of horrible way to die. He cried out, yes; but he also grabbed the hand of God in his darkest times, and God pulled him through.

 

‘So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?” (Hebrews 13: 6).

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of those cutesy, church-lawn signs that try so hard to be amusing or warm and fuzzy to send the message that Christians do indeed have a sense of humour. I concede that the signs are popular, although I have never heard of anyone deciding to attend a church because of said, witty signs. Some are O.K. and cause a chuckle every now and then.  But sometimes, they end up being trite, trivial, or, worse of all, just downright bad theology.

But having said all that, there is a sign that has caught my interest, here in the city. It is on the sign board of the church where my wife works, St. Luke’s Anglican Church

“Jesus lives in the community. He only visits the church.”

            Right on!

             It reminds us that Jesus never sat in the synagogue or Temple waiting for people to come in to see him. He never held office hours. He never expected people to schedule appointments with him. He never invited anyone to come to church with him, although there are a few times he told someone to scurry off to the local priest to get their approval or blessing and confirmation of healing. He never counted attendance, although we know that someone in the group of disciples was counting on occasion, 5000 here, 4000 there. He did not base his ministry or mission in the basement of his church, hoping the poor would find him.

Jesus went to “church”, often, but during the rest of the week he was found in the community, rubbing elbows with the people, connecting with them where they lived, creating relationships with them by meeting them where they worked, shopped, and congregated, and where they were dealing with the daily tasks of their living.

Jesus was a go-getter! His ministry was on the streets. He was found on the corner of Front St and Main. He sent his disciples back out into that world time after time, even though it was risky.  “Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves… whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you… cure the sick who are there and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’” (Matthew 10:3, 8-9)

                Jesus never ever put himself behind some sort of stone-wall. Therefore, the ordinary man, woman and child never ever had any problem finding him.  Compare the results of his type of ministry with the declining results of the institutionalized church.

            It should make you stop and think!

            Maybe, you’ll see the sign.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

What’s in a name?

Our yet-unborn grandson has a name waiting for him, come August; being kept secret for now by his parents.  My “helpful” suggestion of Ebenezer Aloysius was met with wise, if sarcastic, rebuff – “Sure, Dad, you guessed it.” I guess that means that Shadrach, Meshach or Abednego (book of Daniel) are out, too. Some are suggesting that since our other grandsons are named (unintentionally, I think) after British royalty, why not carry on the tradition?

Baby names can be tough to come up with. It is important to get it right. The child has to live with his or her name for the rest of their lives. It is more important that they will grow up liking their name than just for the parents to like it.

In ancient, biblical times names were very important, too. For example, some ancient cultures believed that if you knew the name of a god, you could have power over that god.  This may, in part, explain why our Creator God was very careful to put some fences up around his name. “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name,” (Deuteronomy 5:11). The name God revealed to Moses through the burning bush is full of mystery, power, and even elusiveness, dancing like the fire from which the revelation came, (Exodus 3).

This is a God who is not going to come at our beck and call, to do our wishes. We are not exactly on a first name basis, quite yet. That’s Mister God to you, thank you very much. God is not our best buddy. God enjoys some personal space, now and then, even though God loves us all.

In fact, when God shared his name with Moses, it turned Moses inside out. God’s name changed Moses’ life forever. And it led to God’s intervention for his people, the Hebrews who lived in slavery in Egypt, and set them all on a new mission and journey. Rather than giving Moses power over God because he knew the name of God, God reversed the cultural and religious normalities and, instead, knowing God’s name gave God the power over Moses.

“From the bush comes the utterance of the holy, hidden One. This utterance is completely unexpected by Moses, ungrounded in any of his categories of expectation, a vocation-creating novum [newness] in which Yahweh makes promises that set the world in a new direction. The promises are grand and evocative of Moses’ hope. From now on, Moses will be a hoper, completely convinced of a coming future for his slave community that falls outside the known world of Egyptian exploitation. The promise is a serious, first-person, self- announcing declaration by Yahweh…” (W. Brueggemann, Truth-Telling as Subversive Obedience, p.31).

It’s not so much that we know God’s name; it’s that our God knows your name and my name.  That’s when it gets really, really  interesting…