Mercy and Muttering

I've always thought it was a great mercy that Moses didn't get to go into the Promised Land. Certainly it was a judgement to work so hard but then not go in to enjoy Israel's inheritance, only standing on a mountain to see what all the fuss was about before being gathered to your people. But it's like God jumped at the very first opportunity to keep Moses from going into the land, knowing that he had done a complete work and someone else needed to carry on from there. I sometimes wonder which of the disappointments I have suffered were actually a point of God's mercy. By refusing me something I'm pretty sure I need, it may be that I am not going to face something I would ultimately be happy not to face. 

Moses had worked very hard. Israel was going in to the land but they wouldn't be having a rest right away. They had to conquer and then build and plant and settle and put everything in order. Moses was an old man and full of days. Building and planting are more work. He was ready for a true eternal inheritance. Still, if it had been me up there surveying the landscape, I would have been muttering.

It makes more sense, or comes full circle....what is the word I'm grasping for....the sense of disappointment dissipates when you come to the Ascension. Jesus does a full work of atonement and redemption and oblation and satisfaction. He brings his sheep safely through. He conquers evil. He does what he came to do and then, as he rises up on the cloud, surveying the landscape, it's not a picture of muttering but of relief and joy to be going to sit at the right hand of the Father. It's the disciples who stand around covered in disappointment. What do you mean we have to go on without you? 

But Jesus going away was the greatest mercy. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us, living in us through the Holy Spirit, conquering and building and settling in and putting everything in order--he doesn't rest, though his glory must be a rest for us.

Either way it's mercy, and with it a measure of grace. 

men are human: the preach moment

I've been thinking about Jael the wife of Heber a lot lately. It's hard not to with a steady diet of P.G. Wodehouse and his Scripture Knowledge Prize. Every book you open there she is, so funny, so strong, so like Aunt Agatha who chews up broken bottles and the dreams of young men.

She, Jael, I mean, not Aunt Agatha, is an interesting portrait for our time. When all the men are freaking out, she picks up her tent peg and does what's required. Her warm milk, her soft words, her firm pressure and grip on the hammer, she has it together. She is strong and clever and what you want every young woman to be. Nevertheless she is an indictment against Israel. That she had to do what she did, that the men were all wringing their hands and fussing, is it's own judgement.

Place her in the pulpit and you have a sign of a world gone awry. I always thought this when I was on my way to and then in seminary, listening to young men and women preach and distinguishing no real difference in the quality of the voice, neither in content nor strength. Many times the women were indeed more forceful, more prepared to wield a word of judgement. That is until Matt stood up, in class, and preached an incredibly startling and glorious twenty minutes on how to escape the fire of God's wrath. The class, if I remember, was transfixed and then horrified. This was no tent peg but was a glittering sword. That same term I preached a long "poem" about The Road, and everyone thought it was so charming. Not desiring to shed blood, I gave out the milk and left the peg in my room.

Sometimes God tells the woman to stand up and use what's in her tent. She should not stand helplessly by when evil rides in longing for a rest and a drink. But that's the not the problem, anymore. There are so many women in the pulpit saying so many things in the same tone of voice and very little of it has anything to do with arresting evil. 

When you have the chance to listen to a man, week by week, wielding a sword, you have been given a great gift. The voice of the man should not have to be muted so as not to scare and offend. He should not have to speak very quietly. It is a great sorrow to me that when you finally get the chance of hearing a man preach the voice is often pallid and sorrowful, practically indistinguishable from a woman's (I long to name a number of actual preachers here but I don't want to be unkind nor get in trouble with anyone). 

Matt's preaching through Mark has been the true counter to the weak insufficiency of the modern Man. I think there are several reasons for this. For one, his voice is pitched neither too high nor apologetically. There is no whining timber anywhere in his delivery. For another, he works through a whole text so that a complete theological and exegetical thought is completed. He answers all the questions in the text. Most critically, though, he works hard to bring out the Psychology of the Individual, both the preaching voice of Jesus, the true and perfect man, and the weak and broken thinking and acting of the sinner. In a moment of shameless appealing, I commend the whole series to you--but most especially this last week, the 9th--which is on the internet, somewhere within the reach of Google. Surely you can find it if you look.

I think it was CS Lewis who likened a woman being able to preach to a dog riding a bicycle or doing tricks or something. (I'm not going to bother to look it up so everyone is welcome to correct me.) It's surprising that it is being done at all. It seems to me, all these years later, that the remarkable preach moment is a man really preaching as a man and not as a man trying to be a woman. When you hear it, you should stop and listen and be glad of the rest. Tent peg or no, a sword works so much better.

my talk at iv last night: independence

Some lovely person came up to me this Sunday after church, someone who had spent a few minutes with my fifth child, a four year old girl, and said to me, "Marigold" (that's her blog name) "is really independent isn't she?" 

"Oh yes" I said, laughing, and then I looked in this lovely person's eyes with a sinking heart, "you mean Rebellious, don't you? Not independent."

She laughed. "Well yes. Rebellious."

It's cute in a child, rebellion. And sometimes it's hard even to detect because it comes with a toothy grin and it's just so cute and you think, if you're a bad parent like me, "oh, she's just expressing herself. She's just being who she really is." And that's true, up to a certain point, but not the person she should be.

It's a thin line, between independence and rebellion, we might even say two sides of the same coin. They aren't opposite of each other, exactly, but more like two points on the same line. The question is which direction you are walking.

Independence, that state of thinking and acting for yourself, is a valuable quality, one which I think every parent and every child across the world has a relationship of necessity with. When you were born you could not live without the totalitarian and life giving choices and presence of your mother.  For food, for warmth, for safety, for everything, you depended on her, and probably your father, or some necessary care giver. But those closest to you, lest they loose their minds, needed you to grow and learn to do important things by yourself.  Walk, eat, speak, cross the road, drive a car, study for an exam, manage a check book, enter into relationships with people who were not them. Babyhood, childhood is so precious, so lovely, but there's a reason it needs to end before age 20. Your parents would have died of exhaustion if you hadn't grown up. They love you. They are probably willing to give their lives for you. But if you don't grow up and get a job, you will send their poor gray hairs is sorrow to the grave. I say this as someone who only began sleeping through the night this year. I stopped sleeping with the birth of my first child, eleven years ago, started sleeping again this year now that the youngest is 3. Indeed, with the youngest, long after she had stopped waking up to be fed, I continued to wake up from the memory and habit of it. This kind of dependence, though beautiful, is apt to kill you if it doesn't end. So Independence is good. It is necessary. And it is given to a child by parents who don't need the child. They maybe gain love, eventually, but it's not a reciprocal relationship where the parent gets very much back from the child.

Even when independence is given as a gift, it doesn't come easy. This American cultural is saturated with the message that you have the right to determine your own course in life. You can do anything! You've been told by Disney in every movie for the last thirty years. The most important person in the world is you and your choices are supreme over all things! Perhaps, as you struggled through adolescence, you made choices and pursued your dreams but you ended up feeling more dependent than ever on your parents and friends. Stupid Disney, perhaps you thought, as I did. Now you are here, self determining your classes and relationships and food choices and everything else, but still you probably write home, or maybe text, for money. I am so old, I used a fax. You want to graduate and get a brilliant job. Your parents are praying with all their souls that you don't have to move home any time soon. They want you to be you, an individual with thoughts and feelings and aspirations. The parent who doesn't want that, who wants the child to stay really close, who wants to make all the decisions, who obscures and muddies who you are, or the friend who does that, is muddying the water between good dependence, which only happens when two people are properly independent and weird bad dependence which happens when one person won't let the other person be an actual person. Independence allowing for the right kind of dependence, is good, even when hard won.

Let's turn the coin over and look at the other side, or the other point on the line. Rebellion. To see what this looks like we will go back to the ancient story of Adam and Eve.  You've maybe heard this story. Another time we could argue about how and whether this story is true. For now, go with me to my Christian paradigm. This is how God articulated the beginning of all things, and the beginning of humanity. 

In Genesis 1 and 2 God created Adam out of the ground--not a baby, crawling around on the garden floor eating bugs--no, a full grown human man, a man with a personality and identity. Adam had work to do. He was supposed to name all the animals and care for them and the garden. But God created Adam, independent walking around Adam, with a lack. He created him lonely. After naming all the animals and looking them over, Adam realized something was missing. There was him, and the animals, and God, hmm, something else was needed. And so God put him to sleep and took a rib and made Eve, beautiful, self possessed, different and distinct from Adam. WhenAdam woke up he was so delighted. You are the one I've been missing! he cried. You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Let's be together forever. And God married them and they lived happily ever after.

Just kidding. It's not Disney. There's another piece to the story. While Adam and Eve could walk and talk and eat food they actually were not supposed to be completely independent. They were distinct from each other but supposed to depend on each other--to work together in the garden, to help each other and relate to one another. They weren't supposed to absorb each other into their own beings, manipulating or managing each other, nor keeping each other at arms length, preserving a careful boundary around their own psychic space--no, depending on each other and even more they were supposed to depend on God. 

That's something Christians say a lot--depend on God. It's an easy thing to say and impossible to really do because of what happened next. Adam and Eve were hanging out in the garden, doing whatever they were supposed to be doing  when a great temptation came upon them. The serpent, Satan, came to Eve and said, God doesn't really love you. He hasn't given you everything you need. You would be happier if you had more independence. Wouldn't it be great to know things the way God knows you, to be like him.  He doesn't want you to really be who you are.  He's trying to obscure and muddy your true identity. He is a bad father. True happiness lies in independence from God. 

Now, this was a great lie, but a bewitching one. There were two kinds of dependence that Eve had on God up to that moment. The first was for her very existence. She was walking around on her own feet and picking fruit to eat, but she actually owed her very breath and existence to God. God was holding up her being alive in the palm of his hand, in his very breath. He sustained her existence materially and physically. The second was for her spiritual existence. God kept her spirit alive and he also loved her and she was able to perceive that love  and to experience it. And Adam with her. They could talk to God and be with him as one is with a parent and a friend. As long as they depended on God, they experienced true independence.

This relationship between independence and dependence didn't spring from nowhere, it's a reflection of God himself. God the Father is related in perfect love to God the Son. Everything the Father has he gives to the Son. Everything the Son has he gives to the Spirit and the Father. They are perfectly unified. The technical word is One. They are one in being and heart and purpose. But this perfect unity is only possible because God is three, the father, the son, and the spirit. They are perfectly distinct from each other. They are not weird outgrowth avatars of each other, the Son some kind of manifestation of the father. No, they are distinct persons within the Being of God. They have unique roles. The father is not the son. The son is not the father. Neither are the spirit. So they have something actual to pour out, to give to each other. Adam and Eve were a reflection of this distinction that produces unity.

Until the moment of temptation. Be like God but do it without him, said Satan. And so Eve took and ate the fruit she was not supposed to eat and became truly "independent". Except now the word is called Rebellion. It's doing things your own way as if there is no God, as if you yourself are God. And we all have it. If you see a child look in her mother's eyes and say 'no!' you are seeing rebellion. If your parents say, please come home for Spring Break and you say you have too many papers to write and go to Cabo, you are being rebellious, not independent. If a friend says, I really need you to have a coffee with me because I'm coming unglued and you say, get your own life together I have better things to do, you are really being kind of selfish and rebellious. If you say, to your friend or room mate or anyone really, I'm not going to let you be who you are, I'm going to manage and manipulate you to suit myself, you are being rebellious. But at the center of it, if God says to you, Love me more than yourself and obey me and be related to me, and you say, 

No, I love myself more than you and I will do things my own way,

That is true rebellion.

It looks like independence, it feels like independence in the moment, it probably feels good, but it's rebellion. 

Here's the trick, God created you to be you. He created you to glorify him and enjoy him and do interesting and useful things. But he always meant to be loved by you. He made you expressly to be in a relationship with him and to depend on Him.  Your "independence" is conditioned on your total complete unconditional and willing dependence on him. 

Your walking around and making your own life choices does not negate the fact that he holds your very breath in the palm of his hand. His existence sustains you. Were it not for him, you would be as dust on this gray floor. You might go around feeling awesome and empowered and alone, but that is not the fact on the ground. You depend on him for your existence. The question is will you willingly depend on him for your life. 

Will you trust him with yourself? Will to give your whole self to him to be his? Will you glorify him by depending on and being depended on by those around you?

Why would you want to? What's so bad about rebellion, you might ask. Well, one big reason is that the rebellion side of the coin is ugly.

I'm very sorry to say that the Sunday after my daughter was identified as rebellious, another friend asked me what I was speaking on. 

"Independence" I said. And the person spit his coffee out with laughter.

"What!" I cried. "I'm not independent! I'm not rebellious!"

But I am. I get irritated when my kids want me to do stuff for them that they can't do for themselves. When people articulate weakness, I am tempted to say, 'Just get it together why don't you.' When Matt isn't living up to my plans for him I want to manipulate and destroy him. When I am weak, I want to hide it from the world so that everyone will think I'm fabulous and independent and have it altogether. But really, I'm rebelliously making my own way to have knowledge and good things without God. 

The opposite of Rebellion isn't independence as I said in the beginning. They are two points on a line. The difference between independence and rebellion is which direction you are walking. The true opposite of Rebellion is Love. Love is acting for the good of a distinct other. It's not just a feeling of affection, it is an action for the good of another. So God, in pouring out himself for us, is acting in love. When you give up your own agenda and plans and give yourself to God or to another person, you are acting in love. 

The trouble is that while God has the power to pour himself out to you, you don't have the power to pour yourself out for anyone, let alone God. Eve destroyed the perfection of dependence on God that brought true independence. You are carrying around a great lack. You aren't holding up your own material existence and you can't perfectly meet your own needs for love or anything. 

If rebellion and independence are two points on a line, and there you are on the line, maybe you're waffling between both or just fully in the grasp of rebellion. There you sit, knowing you ought to walk towards God, not really wanting to or being able to. Meanwhile, God isn't waiting for you to make up your mind and get it together. He came down to the line himself. The Son, the second person of the trinity, came down to show us his true identity, to cut through the rebellion. The Son, as you probably know, is Jesus. He is the true picture of love. He gives himself to you to be depended on, to give you what you need, so that you can stand up and be who you're supposed to be and then to actually have something to give to others. You don't need to absorb and obscure others because Jesus has given you his whole self.

To the outside world it may look like you are no longer truly independent. But really, you have walked away from rebellion towards God. You have given up yourself for another. You have said, maybe to God, not my will but yours, not my plans but yours, not my way but yours, not my knowledge but yours. Do you then loose your identity? Do you become a religious sap or nut who cannot think or act with any independence or creativity? No, instead what you have done, when you have given yourself in love to God, is become a true person, a person with no lack, a person who is free to walk closer and closer to God, a person whose identity is less and less obscured and muddied by temptation and sorrow, no longer alone, but bonded to another, closely, truly. 

men are human but what if the man is woody allen

Woke up with a bad headache and the shifting shadow of a bad dream confusing my angry morning darkness. Gladys was shouting that her head hurt and Baby (still nameless) was "patting" me sharply on the face and bellowing my name.

The dream wasn't about bad children, though, it was one of those horrid ones where you're trying to get away from a thug but you're too slow and stupid to enact any kind of plan. I think I was looking on in terror as some hulk with the features of Woody Allen set about to make like difficult. Then I was on a plane (another kind of nightmare) and then the children screaming.

I had gone to bed wondering how that small weasel-ly man, Woody Allen, can go on being famous and beloved all these years and prey on young girls like it's no big deal (assuming the charges are true) Hollywood double standard bla bla bla. Something must be done, I thought to myself. But what? 

The fact is, there are really evil men who have hurt and do hurt and will go on hurting women in unspeakable ways. Just read that weird and horrible story in Judges about the Levite and his concubine and you will see how very old and traumatizing and part of the whole human experience this is. It's no wonder that well meaning people look at the violence of the world, and even men in particular, and think, 'I must shield myself from that and I must make sure that my boys don't ever do that. Here, sit quiet and do as you're told. That will be a good solution.'  In the name of fairness and safety (that ridiculous idea, I'm sure you've heard it, that if women ruled the world we'd all live in meadows of butterflies and flowers) and equality and rights bla bla bla, women have banded together to do away with all the evil in men and in the world.

Except that it hasn't worked. For a hundred years it hasn't worked. Instead of a more peaceful society and world and less violence against women we have the same violence and degradation we had before but now we've managed to dehumanize the offending half--men. If you have to be a man, poor you, you had better be as gentle as possible and by that, of course, I mean passive. Don't Scare Anyone with your evil masculinity! Meanwhile the women are allowed to be as pushy as they want.

Don't get excited. I don't have a novel solution. The solution is as boring as the bible. If you run around looking for the evil in the other person, you unhappily miss it in yourself. And when you go about trying to fix that other person's evil, you actually end up trying to make them look like you and that's idolatry. 

So yes, I guess I'd have to say that Woody Allen is a human being. A really rotten nasty one like all the other ones. And it is so evil that men violate and degrade women. But that degeneration doesn't justify the dehumanizing of all men everywhere in all time. That was a poor solution to a bad problem. Too bad more people aren't more interested in the real solution--Jesus--but I guess I will leave that to him--the best and most human man ever.

a super day

We baptized a new Christian yesterday, in church--young man who has had a rough go it up till two or three months ago, made a lot of bad choices and had things turn out unhappily. If I'd wanted to engage in some nefarious and shadowy activity, he could have been my guide. In the gray light of day, on the feast of presentation of Jesus in the temple, he stood on the step facing the congregation renouncing Satan and all his works and turning to Jesus and embracing him as Lord. Then he turned around to face the altar and Matt called the congregation forward to lay hands on and pray for him. There was a sort of rush out of the pews and nearly everyone who could stand and walk seemed propelled towards him. Elphine, standing next to me in her bright red acolyte robe, turned red in the face and her eyes got teary and she looked like she was going to cry. Then he went up to the font and was baptized and handed and candle and anointed with oil and then Matt said, as he always does because it is written in the bulletin, "Let us welcome the newly baptized". There was a great corporate shout and whistling and applause and I think someone banged on a pew. And then the peace took forever because everyone. Everyone. came out to greet him. Later he stood around in the parish hall holding an enormous cake and being photographed with lots of people who were meeting him for the first time. 

The picture of him standing on the step, holding a candle and grinning broadly, came back to me as I watched what seemed like endless footage of poor Peyton Manning and his woebegone team in the third and fourth quarters of yesterday's game. It was no contest, really. The Broncos ran out onto the field and were suddenly and completely defeated. They stood no chance. But nobody knew before the game. People made predictions on both sides. It seemed like any outcome was possible. The complete routing, as I got more and more foggy because these games are so so long, worked itself into an icon in my mind of this young man's new life in Jesus. Evil, crowding in on him, has no chance. He looks vulnerable, holding his thin small flame, his grin and the expression of life in his eyes the only mark that a new great force dwells within, that he cannot be defeated, that evil has been vanquished. There will be attacks on all sides. But there won't really be any contest. 

And then the total and overwhelming rejoicing. I think those laboring on in the kingdom of heaven, like me, get so discouraged. It seems like we just work and work and pray and evil is so big and God doesn't choose to do what we want him to. He could solve the Syrian crisis in a moment. He could break Pastor Saeed out of prison. He could get that house sold or heal that person. To the world, and sometimes to me on the inside, it seems like it could go either way. Maybe evil will prevail after all. Predictions are made on both sides. The eyes full of life, the grin, the thin vanquishing light, the cake, the church full of rejoicing came at the right moment. A super day, a day of presentation and joy, a clear picture of how the battle will ultimately play out.

men are human

I've lately been saying to any about to be married couple we come across that they shouldn't worry so much about roles and headship and submission. Certainly, they should worry enough to try to obey the scripture. The man should be a man and should love his wife. The woman should be a woman and should respect her husband unconditionally, even if he doesn't deserve it. That's the whole point. He imputes love to her that she doesn't deserve. She imputes respect to him that he doesn't deserve. And there you are, they should both seek Jesus and love him and obey him and not worry so much. 

But then it seems that sometimes young couples, and sometimes even older married ones, are confused and troubled and get into tussles and difficulties. And then I think the trouble is that neither of them knows how to be human. Try being a human being and letting the other person be human, I say, waving my arms around. That's one of the things that's being torn asunder and ruined in this declining civilization. So confused is the question of gender the very humanness of each person is actually obscured.

Last century Dorothy Sayers wrote so cleverly, "Indeed, it is my experience that both men and women are fundamentally human, and that there is very little mystery about either sex, except the exasperating mysteriousness of human beings in general. And though for certain purposes it may still be necessary, as it undoubtedly was in the immediate past, for women to band themselves together, as women, to secure recognition of their requirements as a sex, I am sure the time has now come to insist more strongly on each woman's--and indeed each man's-- requirements as an individual person."*

I would say that the time has far far past for women to band themselves together on that score. Sayers is quite right. The time has come to stop doing that. And having done it too too much, and for a century wallowed in a falsehood that being a woman is a great trial and every man must give way to the Woman, to the furthest possible extent that he even stops being a man, every woman should turn around and walk in the other direction and let the poor man be human. She has not loved him as she loves herself. She should repent. He is a human being and she should open her eyes and heart and see that he is one. Her life is not a great trial or burden. She does not suffer more than anyone has ever suffered because of her gender. He has not destroyed her by being a man, any more than the child she could or has born has destroyed her. 

It was a great shock, so long ago, for the west to discover that women are human. It will be a shock, now, a seismic shift, to learn that men are too.

*Are Women Human? Dorothy Sayers, 1938

and they rose up to play part two

In my tired fog yesterday I went winding my way around Work and Play straight to children which is what I think about most often since I am so covered with them. But of course, when we are told "and they rose up to play" the intimation is that they rose up to do lewd and inappropriate things with one another all around the golden calf. It's not the playing of children that we're seeing, but the 'playing' of full grown idolatrous adults and it shouldn't, in this day and age be hard for you to imagine what I'm saying without me having to lay it all out. 

But the distinction I made yesterday is still helpful, I think, and so is the garden. Adam and Eve were given to each other for knowledge, intimate knowledge, companionship, mutual help and comfort, and that was not so much about recreation as about work. The person who plays around with a lot of other people is worshiping himself. Whereas the person who sets about to know another is doing work, self denying and sometimes hard, though hopefully very rewarding work.

The kind of idolatrous adulterous play manifesting itself around the golden calf leads necessarily to the opposite of things like mutual help and comfort. At the end of such a play you have ruination, hurt, and in the case of this tragic anniversary of Roe v. Wade, murder. God's mercy in that moment was extraordinary, that only 3000 perished and not the whole camp of Israel. We have endured a similar mercy as a country, as God has forborne our lewd play, our murder. I pray he has more in his hand and will rescue some from the fire of his wrath.  

they rose up to play

Somehow managed to push play on the bible without really being awake and so climbed into a partial consciousness as Israel was eating and then drinking and then rising up to play in the presence of a little gold in the shape of a calf. No big deal. Except then Moses and the Levites were killing anyone with the sword that looked crossways. (That's just my own early morning paraphrase.)

Obviously it is very stupid to be that idolatrous so soon after seeing God's rescuing power but it is the usual human way. We have the staying power of fleas and love to worship whatever we can find as soon as we can possibly get our grubby mitts on it.

The part that jumped out at me, again, was 'rose up to play'. I have a whole gaggle of lovely new little people in my Level One Atrium (Sunday School, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd)--two and sometimes three little boys, and five little girls twirling in their pretty dresses and shouting at each other. My first and main task, apart from the lesson and the singing, has been to develop a culture of Work. The child walks (not runs) into the room and fixes on something to Work with. Sometimes a child will walk in and stand about not landing on anything and then I come along on my hands and knees (feeling very old) and say, "Let me help you find some work. Would you like to work with the Good Shepherd? Would you like to polish? Would you like to trace? " and I run down the whole list of everything in the room that was put there especially for the child. It takes two months, usually, to get children to stop saying 'Play' and start saying 'Work' (longer for grow ups) but the difference is important.

Adam was given useful work in the garden. Useful, that is, for him. The work was prepared for him ahead of time. But the people of Israel rose up to play. They were hanging around not doing what they were supposed to do, and they landed on play. The atrium is supposed to be more like the garden then like Mount Sinai. The child gets to the mountain eventually, but when he is little, the garden of work is prepared specially for him. 

Of course, children should play. But even I know that the playing of children is useful for them as they grow. Their play is a kind of important work that sets them up to do real work later on. But now, in our culture, it is so hard to get anyone to stop playing and do any work. Even me, I chafe to think that I feel like I am always working and never playing. But there, in Exodus, the people were given work and rest, not work and play. But they didn't work or rest, they played. And they worshipped other gods.

This is, I am sorry, an incomplete sketch, but I have to go work so it will have to do.  

the old year, the reckoning

I've been all wrapped up in the apocalypse lately what with being in the last days of reading the bible this time. Job, Isaiah, Revelation. All at the same time. It doesn't help that I'm usually very tired, trying to wake up, sometimes falling back asleep and dreaming something profound and strange, pulled back awake somehow, wondering what I just missed, trying to read it again. The words wind themselves together in catastrophe and woe--we're all going to die!!--with occasional sweet morsels--but I have come to save you. It's a comforting place to be as the rest of the world starts looking back at the  year and judging what has been good and what has been bad. Who were the winners and and losers? Who is the person of the year? What movie was absolutely the best? Who arrived out on top of the political scramble? Everyone evaluates and writes and makes a pronouncement. Meanwhile, God has already kept his own council. The people who think they've won by December 31 are possibly going to be deeply surprised and unhappy when they look at their maker and find out he didn't think it was all that good.

John writes, "And the kings of the earth, 

who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her, 

will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. 

They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,

“Alas! Alas! You great city,

you mighty city, Babylon!

For in a single hour your judgment has come.”

The line 'lived in luxury' hurt my head rather as I was waiting for the sun to turn the black night at least to gray. We're probably going to get snow, eventually, sometime. A judgment on all my ungodliness. But I'm sitting here in a bed made up with elcheepo Egyptian Cotten, warmed by a dog who has no purpose other than to accompany and heat my every sitting place, adored by a husband who places a tray with a teapot and only one of three cups lest I tantrum about setting my delicate lips to a china too thick, or a shape that doesn't fit well in the hand, about to put my feet into fuzzy slippers and shuffle across a floor that is the color and kind I felt I required, then to turn on the lights of a vast green fir tree whose scent has transformed the foul decay of the basement wafting up through the vents to be as though we actually live in heaven. Or, to put it another way. I am in so much luxury. I am so comfortable. 

I can just see myself, clad in the latest of the day, my eyelids and lips painted with the season's color, my graspy fingers clinging to my crystal vase of carefully arranged evergreen and berries, standing afar off, 

"weeping and mourning aloud,

'Alas, alas, for the great city 

that was clothed in fine linen,

in purple and scarlet,

adorned with gold,

with jewels, and with pearls!

For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.”

I am inclined, like Job, to always be explaining to God how it is good and right and fair that so much wealth should properly belong to me. To justify myself and my "suffering" in his eyes. But justification is wrong, and so also is guilt, if it's the wrong kind. God gives us good and beautiful and lovely things. If we wait for him, in his own time, he gives us goodness and beauty and kindness and humility and sometimes a goose at Christmas. I just never want to wait for it. I never want it to be a free gift from him. I'd like to deserve it so that there's no reasonable way he can take it all away at his good will and pleasure. So I wind myself up into a froth of guilt (I have so much! I don't deserve any of it!) and self justification (My life  is such a trial! I must treat myself in order to make it through the day! I'll just have this extra cupcake because I deserve it!). The fact is, at the end, it is all going to go up in a ball of fire. The intentions and state of every heart will be visible and plain. The extent to which I made my own way and grabbed my own stuff and walked all over the feelings of others is going to be clear to me the way it is already clear to God. It behooves me to hold it all with an open hand now so that my weeping is consolable later. The Lord gives and The Lord takes away. He's giving and giving and I'm so blessed. Even if he doesn't take away until I breathe my last, he will give more than I can possibly imagine when the smoke of the fire is cleared away and everyone is fresh and clean and new again. 

There's the snow, now, covering all the brown and gray, hiding the ugliness for a while. What a blessing.

seven spiritual quick takes

one

Plowing through Job in the last remaining days of my bible reading plan. Job crosswayed with Isaiah and John. So Job lost everything yesterday and Jesus was crucified. And today Job was struck from his head to his foot and Jesus rose. And in Isaiah the Phonecians are a mess. Really disturbed, again, how it is God who draws Satan's attention to Job. I can see why Jesus would tell us to ask God not to lead us into temptation. It sure looks like that's what's going on with Satan in Job 1.

two

 On the other hand, the depth of Job's grief is really wonderful. We are too quick, I think, to jump to 'oh, I'm fine. There's no problem. I'll be fine.' I am so guilty of this with myself and of orienting my children that way. I'm always happy for them to tell me that they're fine immediately when something terrible happens to them, like being struck with a block by another child. Occasionally lying in sackcloth and woe on the ground and admitting that things are not ok would not be a bad idea.

I'm pretty sure that if Job were around today no one would be prepared to deal with his grief and he would be encouraged to take something and go to counseling to manage his problems. It doesn't feel like to me that the human person is allowed, in this culture, to properly account for great suffering and black evil. Certainly Job saw his problem as God's problem and turned his grief toward God, not towards a solution of feeling better. He was physically and materially destroyed but he recognized all the troubles as spiritual, as being in God's hands to deal with. 

three

I keep running across Christians--on the internet so not personally, I'm just reading what they're writing--who are really sad, unhappy, and not desirous of dying on the hill of upholding biblical marriage in the face of a whole world who wants 'marriage equality'. The trouble is, we Christians weren't super desirous of dying on the divorce hill, we let that hill melt underneath us and went on living. We didn't die on the abortion hill, however many of us would have been willing to die on that hill. So now the hill is marriage equality and while many don't want to die on this hill, many have finally been willing to. None of these hills are what anyone would pick. But eventually the hill will just be owning a bible, as we saw in North Korea this week. Will Christians be willing to die for just owning a bible, never mind if they open and read it? 

four

Speaking of suffering, the heating contraption in this house, I believe it's called a furnace however ridiculous that appallation is at this very moment, what with the ice cold air blowing all over everywhere, is malfunctioning. When I'm cold I feel in my flesh that God has rejected me and is getting ready to cast me into Sheol, gray hairs and all. I just can't stop being angry when I'm cold. And when people who enjoy the cold, who come in on a brisk Sunday morning into the church kitchen to rejoice over the biting wind and sloshing wet snow, it's hard for me to understand how Jesus can be Lord of us both.

five

Matt is preaching on the Widow's Mite on Sunday. Vaguely under the impression that he will be preaching against her. Good times, good times.

six

Me, I'm getting ready for Advent. Advent candles, prophecy cards, maybe even that Jesse Tree I sarcsstically considered earlier in the week. I do love Advent, almost in proportion to how much I loathingly tolerate Christmas. Not that I dislike the Incarnation. I think that part is swell. It's all the tinsel and the wrapping paper that stresses me out. And it is all about me. Me me me. See, I can get into the Christmas Spirit.

seven

Seven may be a perfect number, but it's too much for me this morning. I have to get up and make the children do school. How many times shall I make the children do school, O My Father, seven times? Woe is me, not seven times but seventy seven times. 

Everything gets jumbled in the morning.

Have a great weekend and go check out Jen!

that the body thou hast broken may rejoice

Romans 12

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

All summer, rattling round in my dim distracted mind, there had been a jangling feeling of distress and alienation about my own physical body. For those of you who have had any number of babies you might know what I'm talking about without my even saying it. But I'm going to try to say it anyway.

After being pregnant with Elphine I felt like I better understood the new knowledge of a baby discovering the presence of a hand or a foot for the first time. You're born, you take your body for granted because, well, there it is, and then you start to wake up and discover things, one of the first being a strange waving hand or foot. Being pregnant for the first time is maybe not exactly the same but similarly sort of wondrous and strange. Your body, that you're so used to, becomes a swollen and pain delivering alien, and then after you are delivered of the thing you so long to have, your body is given back to you broken and different. Of course, you don't have time to think about it because your body is still totally required for the life of the other. But after the nursing is done, and the house is cleaned a few million times, and supper is made over and over, and you start figuring out how to teach children to read, then finally the fattest baby of all is delivered and starts running around shouting at you and flinging blocks around the room forcing you start seriously exercising so that you can out pace that baby when she makes a mad dash across the church parking lot. She doesn't have a prayer, of course, because you met the challenge, chugging up the hill for a year and a half. You can take a whole breath, or swim for twenty minutes without becoming winded, or rearrange all the furniture in your school room without even thinking about it. Then arrives another moment of strangeness where you feel like your body might be your own again, but it's seriously not the body you knew before.

I had the shadow of Jesus' broken body, there on the cross, hanging over me as we drove from place to place all summer, as I fit into clothes I'd been long wishing I could wear, as I applied layers of eye shadow and lipstick (because we were in the south). The fact is, I'm a broken person, my body a broken container for my broken and sinful soul. My broken body properly reflects my broken soul. I try really hard to make sure no one can see how broken I am both outside and inside, which is not always a good thing. I've noticed lately that when I say, 'I'm a bad person and I'm really struggling to let go of such and such....' I'm met with cries of horror. 'No,' people say, 'don't say that! You're not bad!' But I am full of evil and if others think that's not true than I must be lying to myself and them.

Jesus' perfect body was horrifically broken. His perfect and sinless soul made his broken flesh the perfect injustice. But his broken flesh was one of the means by which he gave life to me. The destruction of his body was a perfect gift. He was a perfect sacrifice, in life and in death and in resurrected life. 

My body has broken in a smaller, much less devastating way as I've given life to So Many (oh my word, there are just so many of them, twirling and shouting at me right this minute) others. And it's not the same thing, of course, but it's such a helpful picture for me, a helpful, life giving shadow, hovering over me. That I could give my body, that I could let it be broken, to give another life, to serve, to build up, is good and right, even as most of the brokenness is not the result of giving life but of sin. The strangest thing of all is God being able to eradicate the sin through suffering and to make whole the broken heart through the breaking body.

Nevertheless, the world presses in, lying to me, telling me that I ought not break, that I ought to be physically perfect, but not giving a fig for my soul. So the text above, which came up for me this morning in the regular course of reading, suddenly made the shadow into a clear form.

And with that clear form in view I am going to post this because it turns out if I sit blogging all day I'll actually be sinning. We'll see if I ever get to complete this thought. Maybe tomorrow, maybe when I'm eighty.

7 quick takes

one

One reason I like a few quick takes on a Friday is that it buys me 20 minutes to think of food for the children for breakfast. And at the end of writing, I always discover that they'll just be eating toast because that's the way it is.

two

Solomon, in my bible reading just now, consecrated his new and majestic temple, and as you know, he prayed that when the people sin and are expelled out of the land, God should have mercy on them for the sake of his name. From which passage I flipped over to Romans 7 and the cycle of sin and death and frustration that is at least some part of the Christian life. As usual, I would never have read these two back to back except that that's the way they came up and I'm surprised, as I am every morning because I'm stupid, by how much it's always the same thing. I think, in the course of praying of working or whatever, that maybe I'm advancing into a wonderment of glorious spiritual depth and enlightenment, but then I beat my way through the day and discover that I sinned all the same sins I did before and that a lot of the Christian Life is trying to get rid of the same sin over and over and over again. For example, I quickly, almost every day in fact, spiral down in a cycle of fake guilt that I create for myself by comparing my house to the houses of other people. I read some beautiful blogs where the house and homeschool room looks gorgeous and clean and pristine and clearly the blogger is going from strength to strength and beauty to beauty, and then I go read good sensible blogs where the rooms and the writing are comfortable and real. And then I look around at my life and feel Guilty for not cleaning the house AND Guilty for cleaning it.

"That's definitely the Holy Spirit," said Matt yesterday when I described my cycle of death to him.

"Really?" I said woefully and gullibly.

"No, you fool," he said, "what kind of God are you trying to serve."

Well, clearly the god who will congratulate me on all my doings. But that god really hates me and so I should stop doing that and serve the God who gives a way out of the cycle of death, as Paul so helpfully articulated in his letter.

three

Please don't worry about my mental health based on take number two and send me emails about what I ought to do to make it better. If you're worried about my sanity start a blog where you take pictures of how awful your house looks at the end of a real day and then I'll link you on the side.

four 

Gladys finished her big book of letters and gets to start reading Little Bear today. So Exciting! 

Also, for the first time in her life, Elphine found a book that she couldn't put down, read it all the way through, has to go back to the library This Second for the next one. PRAISE THE LORD. All this time she's been reading books like I clean the house--dutifully, happy for the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, but not for love. Color me relieved.

five

My mom and dad get back this evening from their Visit to the West. I'm so happy the mum in the back bloomed yesterday so they can have flowers all over their room. May all their flights be safe and swift. May that be the case for anyone traveling today for any reason.

six

The children have decided they're all going to be ninjas for Halloween. I managed to find six ninja-like costumes for about 40$ which I count as an extraordinary triumph. The two little girls look really funny dressed up all in black with their heads and mouths all tied up in the mask part. Elphine fussed with hers for what seemed like hours trying to make herself truly into a ninja. Now I want them to practice ninja like moves so I can play that Adele song with the ninja in it. I long to fill a room with glasses of water and then throw bits of flaming paper around. Srsly, rather than cleaning the house again today it sounds like a dream and a joy. But impractical, I totally get that it's impractical, so I guess we won't do it. Sob.

seven

Arguing with Fatty Lumpkin this very minute about who this is. She believes strongly that it must be Marigold and cannot possibly be "my E", her words not mine. It occurred to me yesterday that all I do is talk about Fatty Lumpkin and take pictures of her but we spend So Much Time Together. You know, you write about what there is, and that's what there is, almost every second of the day.

man is born to trouble

I've just come to the end of David's life in my ordinary way of morning bible reading, which is to listen to it as I wrestle back sleep and try to cope with the reality that morning is truly upon me. This usually occurs with Fatty Lumpkin present, shouting and writhing around. Last week she was lying on top of me and she sat up and then flung her full weight back and landed on my lip causing me to bleed for quite a while and have the strange sensation that my teeth were actually rattling around in my jaw. It still hurts quite a lot actually.

Where was I...

Oh yes, David. 

So this morning David hurriedly made Solomon king because of the threat of Adonija, who, glancing forward to tomorrow, will be struck down for asking to marry the young Shunimmite girl who had the dubious job of keeping David warm. But last week it was that he, David, was running away from Absalom. And shortly before that was all the trouble he brought upon himself with Uriah and 

Bathsheba. And it occurred to me, in all the rushing around to bring Solomon in on David's donkey and anoint him with oil, that man is indeed born to trouble as the sparks fly upward and that that trouble usually goes on until the point of death. 

We don't like this, in our day of glorious and comfortable retirement opportunities. We work hard, but then we're supposed to have a fun rest where we travel, maybe, and do all the stuff we didn't have time for when we were working and shoving kids through to adulthood. But so often it doesn't pan out that way. Some find themselves raising grand children or dealing with catastrophic illness in themselves or others. And many, now a days, carry on working long after they expected to. I, obviously shouldn't be thinking about retirement (although it has replaced My Wedding as my go to day dream) but in my day to day troubles, I seem to get one solution carefully and neatly tucked away only to discover thirty more are jangling their way in to ruin my plans.

And at every moment along the way the precarious cliff of devastation or failure seems if not imminent, than at least on the near horizon. I mean, for heaven's sake, God promised David that he would establish his throne forever but that throne was constantly under temporal threat. Every time David had a few minutes to get comfortable, someone would plot to wreck it all, even at the very last moment when he should have time to just die quietly in peace. 

The idea that God has everything in hand, that all the threats to our lives and success are within his control and will not overwhelm us because he has promised not to let them, doesn't usually suffice to deter total panic when things get hard or appear to go 'wrong'. It's only afterward that you look back and see, Oh! He had already accounted for this and provided a way out. That's why looking back is so important, to build a more and more solid reserve against panic. 

It seems discouraging to me, at first glance, that David was never allowed to rest on his laurels. But knowing what is ahead with Solomon--the great immense complacency and unfaithfulness that Solomon brings into the picture--I have to conclude that all the trouble in David's life was due to God loving him so much and his loving God, so that his first instinct was always to cry out to God for help and mercy and God's gracious will was always to give it. As Marigold so astonishingly prayed on Sunday, 'Thank you Jesus that the sheep got lost so that the Good Shepherd could find him.'

Given that all this is true, and my, and perhaps others, penchant to panic in the face of trouble, I find it irritating and am resentful, even, of the deep wellspring of panic available on Facebook and Twitter. I am by no means addicted to Facebook but when I do log on, at the time of my choosing, I am immediately confronted with fifty million devastating crises around the world and some exclamation points to let me know that I ought to drop everything and devote my life to them, or at least sign the petition. Is it my job to fix all these problems? Is God not God? If I forget to pray can he not act? I panic enough on my own without needing the entire internet to help me. Pacing myself to endure trouble and woe until the day of my death is challenge enough. 

Nevertheless, I will, shockingly, post this on the internet, including Facebook and Twitter and also wish you all a trouble free, if it's God's will, weekend!

for a Saturday evening

OMW I'm so tired. And so is everyone else. I swear, if we have to clean the kitchen even one more time we will all die. 

We are up to our ears in packing and junk but mostly just fatigue. Maybe it was the stupidity of going to Walmart on a Saturday to look for impossible items like a "flashlight". They do have them, but they don't really want you to find and buy them. Anyway, I really do want to go away on a holiday but also, Whatever. 

So, in light of that discouraging word, here is a more encouraging one from someone who had sense enough to know Jesus much better even than I do. 

47. WOULD IT MATTER?

His thoughts said, My work is not important. Would it matter very much if a floor were left unswept or a room untie died? Or if I forgot to put flowers for a guest, or omitted some tiny unimportant courtesy?

His Father said, Would it have mattered very much if a few people had been left without wine at a feast? But thy Lord turned water into wine for them.

And the son remembered the words, Jesus took a towel.

--His Thoughts Said...The Father Said

       Amy Carmichael

my sermon from yesterday: pentecost

We're going to be in Leviticus 23 and Acts 2 this morning. 
So let’s pray together.
Merciful and heavenly Father, we praise you for incorporating us into the mystical body of your Son, Jesus Christ, and making us heirs thorough him of your everlasting kingdom. Help us this morning to see this gift more clearly and to give ourselves over completely to the work of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Long ago,

after rescuing the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt,

God gave a series of feasts to help them commemorate

and remember how great their deliverance had been,

but also to be a picture of what he would do thousands of years later.

These pictures are prophetic. 
So you're a person in first century Jerusalem.

You've wandered around with Jesus for the last year.

You're one of the 120 that comprise the broader group of disciples

at the time of Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on the Sunday before Passover.

You're an observant Jew,

so, looking at Leviticus chapter 23 verse 2

you keep the Sabbath.

You don't work on Saturday and you go to synagogue on that day. 
Second, you keep Passover.

Verse 5,

In the first month,

the very month that God delivered the people out of Egypt,

on the fourteenth day of that month,

as the sun is setting,

the Passover begins.

That's when Jesus celebrated the meal together with the twelve.

Then on Friday,

as hundreds of lambs without blemish were being slaughtered in the temple-

-imagine the noise and the stench,

the blood running down the altar

into the stream the runs underneath the temple and out into the city—

at that very moment

Jesus hung on the cross

and his blood flowed down.

The fifteenth day, verse 6,

is the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Not only does your bread not have any leaven

but there isn't even any in your house.

If you are a woman

you have scrubbed every inch of your house

and washed every single solitary piece of clothing

to keep the commandment to get rid of the leaven.

Why?

Because leaven is a picture of sin.

A little bit goes a long way,

spreading itself through the whole loaf.

Jesus is the unleavened bread,

he is without sin.
So then you have to rush around

and prepare to keep the Sabbath

because from sunset on Friday

to sunset on Saturday

you can't do any work.

You don't want to anyway

because Jesus' body is lying in a tomb

and you're exhausted with grief.

What comes next?
The feast of first fruits is next.

So way back in the early spring,

if you are a man and you hadn't been following Jesus around,

you would have planted all your crops,

barley and wheat especially,

and around the time of Passover,

the first barley shoots would be just ready.

Verse 11,

You cut them

and bring them tied into a loose sheaf

to the temple that Sunday,

after the Passover Sabbath.

What does Jesus say about his death before he dies?

John 22:24 Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies,

it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Inevitably, necessarily,

the grain that falls into the ground

will rise out of the ground.

The loosely bound sheaf of barley is a guarantee of the harvest to come.

Jesus walked out of the grave

on the day

that the sheaves of barley were brought into the temple.

Paul writes in first Corinthians 15:20

'But in fact Christ has been raise from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man, Adam, came death, by a man, Jesus, came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all day, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ, the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

Jesus, the first fruit,

risen,

is the guarantee of future harvest,

in this case,

of us rising again when he returns in glory.

It is inevitable. It will happen. 
So then what happens?

Verse 15.

You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, that's Resurrection Sunday.You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath, that's another Sunday, today, the day of Pentecost. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to The Lord. You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven, as first fruits to The Lord.

This is the Feast of Weeks,

called Pentecost on the New Testament,

the celebration of the wheat harvest.
So now let's look at Acts.

The whole group of disciples, numbering 120,

are altogether in one place.

The place is probably the house that has the upper room

where Jesus celebrated the Passover.

Everyone in Israel

is bringing their two loaves commanded in verse 15

to the temple.

The disciples are praying and singing

because this is the forty ninth day after Jesus rose again.

And that day has changed everything for you.

Ten days ago, on a Thursday,

Jesus left you again ascending into heaven,

shouting down from the cloud that everything would be fine,

just wait for the Holy Spirit,

which was very confusing.

But because he told you to go wait that is what you've been doing.

Every day, in the temple and in each others homes,

with the other believers, waiting. 
So then, on the Feast of Weeks,

which we call Pentecost,

as you're all praying and singing,

there is the sound of a mighty wind,

like a hurricane force gale.

The sound of a mighty rushing wind.

The wind during the Exodus drove the water back all night

so that the people could pass through the sea on dry land.

Ezekiel was told to prophecy to the breath,

the wind,

and say,

let these bones live,

and the valley of dry dead bones was filled with living people.

Jesus spoke with a Pharisee very late at night,

and said, 'the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it's sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with the spirit.'

Nicodemus, likely standing in that room,

should have heard the sound and known what was happening.
Then the tongues,

as of fire,

descended on the heads of each of the disciples.

The Lord spoke out of the fire to Moses

to call him to work to free the people of Israel.

He appeared as a pillar of fire at night to lead them through the desert.

Here tongues,

as of fire,

alight on the heads of those in the room,

all the believers in the whole world gathered in one place.

No one is excluded.

All see and receive the sign.

This is the baptism of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised in Acts 1:9.

So, then

verse 4,

they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues,

as the spirit gave them utterance. 
So, in short order three amazing things have happened.

There has been the sound of the wind,

the appearance of fire

and now they are all speaking in other languages as the Spirit leads,

and here it becomes a little unclear in the text

but it seems like they are propelled out onto the streets of Jerusalem

because Luke describes the various people who are out there, verse 5.
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem, devout men,

that means men who fear God and who are paying attention,

Devout men from every nation under heaven

and at the sound they all came together—

So they heard the sound and it drew them

and then they were bewildered,

confused,

because each one was hearing them,

that is the 120 disciples,

speak in his own language. 
Let's pause for just a second and clarify under what circumstances the Spirit came. 

What were the disciples,

the 120, doing when the Spirit came?

they were together worshipping.

Did they know and perfectly expect how and when and what was going to happen? 

Did they play any kind of big organizational roll?

No.

the Holy Spirit came to them when it was the right time

After thousands of years of preparation.

They didn't summon him by the excellence of their prayers.

They were obediently waiting and he came when he was ready..

I am belaboring this point

because I think sometimes we get confused about the Spirit.

We know God the Father and Jesus don't depend on us to do their work,

but when we come to the Spirit

we think it depends on us praying in the right way

or being in the right place at the right time

Then we somehow get the Spirit to give us what we want

knowing that the Father would never give it to us.

Suffering with Jesus,

but glory with the Spirit.

But that's not true.

The work of the Spirit and of Jesus and the Father is the same work—

the redemption and sanctification of human beings for the glory of God.

The Father wants you to be saved and to be holy

and so the Spirit brings it about

through the work of the Son.

They all have the same end goal because they are One, they are God.
But the Holy Spirit does his part of the work in three stages.

First, he regenerates you.

He brings you alive where you were once dead.

We see this in John 3.

You are first born of the Spirit which allows you to see the kingdom of God.

Then you submit yourself to Jesus in faith

and the Holy Spirit comes to live in you.

The technical word is 'indwell'. 
For some,

the point of being indwelt by the Spirit isn't particularly experiential.

I don't even know the exact moment this happened for me.

Matt, on the other hand,

can tell you a whole story about what it was like for him.
Which brings us round to the third stage of the Holy Spirit's work

and to the word 'fill'.

Those who were all together in one place were 'filled' with the Holy Spirit.

It implies that they weren't before.

To be filled, there has to be a lack,

there has to be some room. 
The Holy Spirit moved in to your dark cold stone like heart

and set up his little fire there to burn

and try to shed some light on the subject,

that is you,

he's in there, that's called indwelling ,

but he could take up a lot more room.

He would like to fill you.

So

often,

at the initial point of faith

some big things that are killing you

need to go right away.

But after that,

his work is much slower.

One room at a time,

one dirt pile at a time.

And this is where you cooperate with him,

this is where the filling comes in.

Sure, he is going to have to pry some things out of your vice like grip,

but other things you're going to give him

and then you'll have more room for him,

more room to be filled with him.

And as he fills you,

guess what kind of experience it is?

The best word to describe it is the dreaded word 'Submission'.

You submit,

you yield,

you give in to the work of God in the person of the Holy Spirit.

It is an experience of joy and forgiveness and letting go of grief and hurt,

but it is also an experience of doing some things

you might never have done before,

or doing some things you don't feel like doing,

or doing some things that seem really beyond you.

Why? Because it’s not just you doing them,

it's the Holy Spirit doing them in and through you.

You can make it harder by not cooperating,

or you can give in,

cheerfully doing what God calls you to do.
The birth of the church,

this moment where the disciples are spit out into Jerusalem

in an amazing rush,

preaching the gospel so that everyone understands,

people of so many languages

who are going to go all over the world with this news.

What is being fixed here that was horribly broken?

Remember, at the Tower of Babel,

how language was confused?

Now the confusion is made into understanding.

Now all the languages speak to the glory of God.

So they rush out and the church suddenly becomes huge.

They baptize 3000 that day.

You think you're tired now,

doing whatever it is God has given you

to make the Kingdom of God real to this city?

Imagine if 1000 people walked in and we had to do hospitality,

coffee hour

integration into mission groups

discipleship

and then also cleaning the kitchen floors

and the bathrooms.

So let's tie in the harvest and the Feast of Weeks/Pentecost.

Remember the barley first fruits were brought in bound in loose sheaves,

but not so the wheat harvest.

At Pentecost, the birth of the church,

the wheat is picked and beat out for the grain

and then the grain is pounded,

milled into flour

and mixed with water and leaven,

that's right, guess what there is in the church?

Sin.

There is sin here.

It's being gently removed but it’s here.

And then heat is applied

and the grain is forged into a loaf of bread.

All warm, and comforting,

bread,

except when you think about the pounding and the mixing and the heat.

And it's being all together in one loaf.

This loaf is also called Jesus' Body.

A body where everything is connected.

Your decision to sin affects everyone else

just like my decision to sin affects you.

It's not Easy. Sometimes it's very Hard.

But, Jesus says, 'nothing is impossible with God'.

He can and he will make us holy.

He can and he will spread the gospel through us to the world.

He can and he will make us alive together in himself.

But he's not a battle ax.

He brings light to you and woos your cooperation.

He wants to fill you with himself.

He wants to use you to build up his kingdom.

He wants to use you to bring healing to other people.

He wants to use your prayers,

your conversation with him,

to bring about his plans and his desires.

He wants to be with you.

And he wants you to be holy. 
Just like the first fruits,

the resurrection of Jesus is a guarantee,

this harvest,

the gift of the Spirit,

is a guarantee, an inevitability.

Paul explains in Ephesians 1:13-14,

in him, that is Christ, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Sure, there's the beating out of the grain

and the pain of the fire

as we are forged into a loaf,

a body through the one Spirit

with Christ as our head.

And it's messy

because the leaven is all mixed in,

but this isn't the ultimate harvest.

We are still planting seed.

We can work and be filled up because we have the guarantee,

the Spirit,

alive in us.

……………let us pray.