Posture is everything.

“25 And behold, a certain legal expert stood up to test him,” (Luke 10)

This line bolted off the page at me today.  Then a thousand thoughts ran through my mind and onto this page until it became a literary elephant seal which could barely lift its bulk out of the water to bark and make it’s “Port-o-john-at-a-chili-cook-off” noises.  So I clubbed it, skinned it and rendered the blubber down in my oven to what I hope, I hope will be the oil of essence to light a lamp of truth.

Coincidentally, that might be the grossest paragraph I’ve ever written.  Oh well, if you can’t be edifying, at least be provocative.

I hear the “hater” label a lot these days.  Christians are intolerant.  Their God is a baby-killer.  Jesus consigns people to hell because they just happened to live in the wrong country and never heard of him or they’re gay or democrat or what have you.  And all of this is missing the point and no different than what Adam did in blaming Eve or Cain did in saying his punishment was unfair.  Oh poor me, all I did was kill my brother in cold blood and now I have to go live somewhere else.  Boo hoo.  God is mean!

Let’s get something straight and ironed out right here and now.  No one goes to Hell where the worm never dies and the fire is not extinguished or the Lake of Fire that burns with sulphur or the Outer Darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth for any sin, ANY sin except this one…

Self righteousness.

That’s it.  It’s true there will be no gays in heaven, no adulterers, no murderers or pornographers or gossips or slanderers, no liars, fiends, addicts, bigots, racists, prostitutes, traitors, fornicators, perverts, brawlers, drunkards, witches, there will be no thieves, cheats, swindlers or greedy people there, no one who manipulates, no one who has been selfish, rude, arrogant, angry without cause, unfair, mean, or short-tempered, no one who has been disobedient to their parents or legitimate authorities, no one who sins at all will be there.

The new heaven and the new earth will however be full of former gays, adulterers, murderers, pornographers, gossips, slanderers, liars, fiends, addicts, bigots, racists, prostitutes, traitors, fornicators, perverts, brawlers, drunkards, witches, thieves, cheats, swindlers, formerly greedy people, manipulators, people who were formerly selfish, rude, arrogant, angry without cause, unfair, mean, short tempered and disobedient.  Heaven will be full of people who sinned, recognized their unworthiness and fell on God’s love, compassion and forgiveness. 

In former times and in far away lands, faith meant believing God could do this even though one didn’t know how.  How could a God who is fully fair, fully just, just …forgive our sins?  No matter how great?  No matter who I hurt?  He couldn’t!  He would have to punish sin!  He is holy!  Nothing sinful can enter His presence without being burnt down like a French fry shot at the Sun! 

But Jesus!  Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and took the punishment, the full punishment for our sins!  God took he who had never sinned, never been disobedient and put all our sins on Him and then killed him!  Killing all our sins!  And because Jesus did this willingly, did this perfectly, did this lovingly God raised Him from the dead!  For how could a just God, a fair Judge, a loving Father not reward such sacrifice!?

“21 For just as the Father raises the dead and makes them alive, thus also the Son makes alive whomever he wishes. 22 For the Father does not judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, 23 in order that all people will honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. The one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly I say to you that the one who hears my word and who believes the one who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” (John 5)

In former times and far away lands, rebellion against God’s mercy, love and sovereignty looked like idolatry.  Which is really worship of self.  God’s of our own understanding.  God’s we control and manipulate.  God’s who give us what we want which is to be our own gods.  Now, since Jesus, it’s exactly the same, only people can be more specific about it if they want.  All of it results in the same thing however, rejection of God’s plan for mercy in the person of Jesus.  Rejection of God’s love.  The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father.  All things were made by the Father, through the Son, for the Son and the Son has come and purified all things as a gift for the Father.  This has been testified to since the beginning by the Holy Spirit.  Rejection of this testimony is calling the Holy Spirit a liar.  Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  The one unforgivable sin. 

What does this look like?  Is it just saying you don’t believe once and your done like the kids and fools on a website created for atheists who can’t even be atheists without attempting to biblically insult the God they profess not to believe in?  Is it atheism itself?  Or do you have to be a pagan?  Is it anything in that list of sins at the beginning?

It looks like three crosses.  Jesus in the center with a thief on either hand.  One thief looks at the guiltless lamb of God and mocks in anger and impotent fury.  The other, guilty of the same crime as his brother, confesses his guilt, looks at the guiltless lamb of God and asks for mercy he knows he has no right to receive unless the one in the center is loving.

“Today if you will hear his voice:

8 “Do not harden your heart…” (Ps 95)

“You warned them so that they would return to your law. Yet they acted arrogantly and did not listen to your commandments but sinned against your judgments that a person must do so that they may live. They turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not listen.” (Neh 9)

Paganism?  Atheism?  Murder, adultery, greed?  No.  Those are just symptoms.  Symptoms of a hard heart and stiff neck.

How Do We Do?

“17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.  18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1Cor 1)

I fell asleep on my face in my prayers this morning.  It’s not the weird patterns of the carpet left on my forehead or the thought of someone finding me in this undignified state which bothers me.  It’s this: if this is how my day starts, how can I hope to accomplish the works of God?  Where does the believer, the saved, the saint get the energy to live a life set apart?  A holy life?  A life lived for God?

I make lots words.  I draw funny pictures.  They have a point and I spend a lot of time and effort on them and I want to see their impact.  I believe they are at least in part, my calling.  When I don’t see direct ripples from the pebbles I’m tossing I get discouraged.  When I’m reminded I’m not doing enough to pay the bills, I doubt my calling.  To make matters worse, the sinful side of me wants to be glorified for them.  Where does the power come from to keep going?  To trust?  To overcome myself?

I was deeply effected in church on Sunday.  The hymns, the music, the words, the power of fellowship with so many others… it was worship!  Moments like those, where God feels so close and life makes so much more sense, are precious and few.  Like time alone in nature.  Like time spent holding a sleeping baby.  Life has such a clear purpose and meaning then.  How does one keep going when so much of the rest of life is Scottish?  Cold, wet, gray and ruled by someone else.  Paul, who knew something of hardship and suffering, tells us…

The Cross. 

For all its doctrines, for all its teachings, for all the volumes of words in the myriads of books printed about it, ours is a simple faith:  “8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5)  Get knocked on the noggin and forget everything else but keep this deeply tucked away and engraved in the center of your life and you will be just fine.

Pray it in the morning.  Repeat it at night.  Say it over every meal.  Whisper it before every fight.  Write it on every check, dollar and bill.  Cry it in the valley, sing it on the hill.  I love the way a cross marks a spot.  It draws the eye.  It centers.  It focuses.  It says, “Here!  Look here!”  The Cross sits in the center of History.  Hardly noticed by the residents of a single city at the time, it is now and forever the single most important event ever.  We must not grow weary of it.  We must not take it for granted.  We must remember!  It is the source of our strength, the source of our joy, the source of our faith!  It is by what we judge and why we don’t.  It’s how we forgive and why we’re forgiven.  Even the strength we use to remember it comes from it.  Wheels within wheels.  The Spirit testifies continually about the blood of Jesus, the grace of Jesus.  The Spirit is in us!  “7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2Tim 1)

So do whatever you must to keep this center!  “18 “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.” (Deut 11)

 “3 Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;


    bind them around your neck;

write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Prov 3)

“14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Heb 5)

Amen.

Violent Love

“36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. 37 And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.” (Luke 7)

Ta-Dah!  The violent taking the Kingdom by force!  Was this woman invited?  A woman?  A sinner?  To a pharisee’s home?  Are you kidding?  She is unclean!  She is impure.  No doubt our Pharisee, later named Simon, is thinking he is going to have to fumigate the whole place once this Jesus takes his rabble elsewhere!  He most likely only suffers her presence for the sake of his guest.  An odd concession since he has made no effort, beyond feeding him, to welcome Jesus into his home as yet.  Again we’re reminded of Jesus’ warning in Luke 13, “26 Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’”  You can have Jesus in your home and still not have him in your heart! 

But the woman.  We were talking about the woman.  Look at her.  I’m sure everyone in the room that day was.  Even those affecting to ignore her.  She is only named as a sinner.  What is her sin?  We don’t know.  Simon knew.  Apparently her reputation preceded her.  Small town.  Everyone knows everyone else’s business.  Like the Samaritan woman at the well, she feels the judging eyes all the time.  There is no anonymity.  There is no relief.  There is no forgiveness.  The best she can do is hide herself from them so as not to feel.  Maybe she drinks to numb the pain.  Maybe she indulges in sex to feel loved, even for a moment.  All the while, adding to her guilt in their eyes.  Adding to her shame.  We don’t know but we probably know many like her.  We might even know exactly what she feels ourselves.

Our modern culture knows.  We understand feelings of shame and guilt… and we have worked hard to abolish both.  No one, we have decreed, should feel judged by anyone.  How can this be accomplished?  By making everything anyone wants to do, perfectly acceptable.  Remove the moral standard or at least, lower it until it is meaningless and all can hold their heads up in pride.  You are the soul arbiter of right and wrong for you.  No one can or should or has the right to judge you.  It sounds lovely.  It sounds like Utopia.  So much so it has even crept its way into the church.  There is a strong resistance to God as Judge now.  Universalism is taking root.  There’s only one problem with it.

It’s a lie.

It’s like saying you can fly because you deny the law of gravity.  Like saying you are a cat because you believe you are a cat.  You can toss off clothes and bathe yourself with your tongue.  You can annoy your friends by speaking exclusively in meows and purrs.  You can even poop in a litter box but you are still just a person pretending to be a cat.  And we are now a culture pretending to be guiltless. 

And we know it.  There is a standard.  It exists apart from us and would be there even if there were no humans to think of it.  There could be no such thing as moral indignation without it.  And yet, when something heinous happens, we all feel it.  Instantly.  It’s not taught.  It’s not learned.  It’s innate.  We know instinctively what is fair and what isn’t.  We know there are things that are inherently “right” like sharing and hugs and M&M’s and we know there are things that are inherently “wrong” like hatecrime and kicking puppies and political ads.  Heck, we have words like “heinous” just because it’s there!  It’s the reason why those who believe most strongly that there shouldn’t be a universal moral code to judge by get so angry when one says there is!  The only thing you’re allowed to judge someone for is judging! 

The Jews in Jesus’ day had no problem with such questions however.  They had the Law of God and they believed it.  Some, like our buddy Simon, actually had the opposite problem.  In their pride, they not only thought they could do God one better by fencing the Law in even further, some thought they could actually keep it!  Some actually believed they could achieve the holiness of God!

Some however knew better.  The woman in Luke 7 is such a one.  She is not ill.  She is not lame or blind or deaf or demon possessed that we know of.  She does not come on behalf of a child or husband or sibling or parent who is.  She comes for healing yes.  But not for her body.  She comes to be healed in her soul. 

The purpose of the Law was to show us holiness.  True holiness.  This should have left us in tears!  For if even Moses could not look on the face of God then what hope did we have?  We only inhabit these bodies for under a hundred years.  What is that to eternity?  If dying removes the veil between God and us then we are undone and the best we could hope for is to be buried in the earth and hidden from His sight!  Simon the Pharisee doesn’t get this.  The disciples with Jesus usually don’t get this though Peter came close on his boat one day.  Here in Luke 7 we’ve seen a Gentile Centurion who did and we’ve seen the compassion of Jesus to the widow. 

Here, our sinful woman puts the two together.  She sees her sin.  She sees God’s Holiness.  She knows the great gulf between them.  She senses it as a black abyss separating her from all she’s wasted her life to find. 

And she sees Jesus.

She sees his mercy, his compassion, his worthiness.  By her act of anointing him with ointment, she calls him Christ, the ‘anointed one.’  Not just a messiah, but The Messiah!  The one who can save her from the chasm, from the dreadful separation!  The one who can forgive sins!  She does not wait.  She does not hide.  She does not preserve her dignity.  She barges in where she is not welcome!  She serves him in the most menial way possible, humbling herself to the dust in front of everyone!  Wasting not even her tears!  This is not religion.  This is not pride or denial.  This is not rite or ritual.  This is not waiting for God’s grace on your terms.  This is violent faith!  This is vehement love!  This is the only proper response to Jesus!  This is the Way.