Timeless God

I had never really thought about what it might be like to be a casual worker until I lived in America. Driving around Tysons corner (off the main road) one day we saw lots of men gathered around the corners. They were sullen, sitting in huddles not saying much or scuffing the ground. As we watched a pick-up truck came and some of them got on, their expressions changed, they looked relieved, some even smiled - they had got the chance of work.

But it also struck me just how dangerous and precarious that was. A stranger would pick you up and you would trust that he had the work which he said he did, that he or she would take you there and bring you back and, most importantly, pay you something like a fair wage for your labour.

I cannot imagine it was very much different in Jesus day with the crowds of men gathering around the well in the early morning when it was still cool, hoping that they would get some work, get paid and get to eat today. We can imagine their relief when they are taken to a vineyard and begin a full day's work. But there is more good news for other workers - the landlord not only employs the men there at daybreak but continues to employ men all day until just an hour before the sun setting signals the and of the work day.

Imagine those workers, hot and tired, those who have been working since the early hours as they watch the late comers getting a whole says wages - imagine their excitement as they ponder just what they might be getting from this generous master, and then imagine their faces falling as the master goes down the line simply giving the same to each - a days wages. Suddenly, what had seemed at daybreak to be such a good thing, enough money to feed themselves and their families, now seems small and meagre.

"But you got what you came for, I paid you as agreed," says the master. But still the workers are angry and feel hard-done by.

The power of human greed and human imagination of justice are powerful in this story. It is a warning not to spend our time looking over our shoulders and comparing ourselves to others - God has in store what god has in store for each of us, and for each of us that is more than we could ever want or deserve - to compare ourselves to other people is not only a waste of time but it will take the shine off everything that God has done for us - God's Grace has nothing to do with fairness - and thank goodness for that!

Confusing Paul - Romans 6

When you mention Paul's Letter to the Romans people have the same sorts of range of reaction – that's complicated, or I never understood that one, it is hard to read and very rarely – oh I love Romans.

In some senses, Romans is the easiest of the letters, after all we are not deciphering such complex cultural and local inferences as we are in, say, 1 Corinthians. Romans is more pure theology but as such it hits head on two problems which Paul faces throughout his ministry.

Firstly, Paul struggles all the time against the impossibility of ever finding adequate words to express his experience of Jesus Christ. It is at the centre of who is is that he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus and has carried that experience with him. His view of Christ is one who is so glorious and so awesome that all creation must, if it has any sense at all, turn to Him. Paul ties himself up in knots in Romans trying to make sense of his experience in words and every so often it is as if the bonds which tie him loosen and he comes out with pure poetry – if you only ever read one chapter of Romans, read Romans 8 and find, shining out from the twisting theology these moments where Paul simply lets go and breaks forth – God is God, he proclaims, and how could things be otherwise, and how could we not trust God to be God.

Secondly Paul is struggling against an unseen enemy. This is more obvious in Philippians where he launches a vicious attack on Jewish missionaries, Christians, but Christians who are insisting that the only way for a Gentile to be saved by Jesus is for that person to be circumcised. We know that there was a pervasive and persuasive party within early Christianity who would have held this line – who moved around the Diaspora preaching Christ but preaching Christ with traditional Jewish rules and regulations. Peter and Paul had not long since reconciled over this matter, with Paul's view that Jesus alone, without the Jewish accoutrements, was enough.

Paul was well educated in both Jewish and classical thought. He was educated in Greek to a high standard and, no doubt, could have had a promising career ahead of him in the Jewish world. It is his very capability in theology which produces such a complicated book as he darts down alleys and byways of thought and then appears again only to start down another. But his thrust is the same – Jesus is Lord and that is enough.

Romans 6 follows some lengthy arguments about faith and Judaism and how it all fits together. Romans is a book which should be read as a unity if possible for whilst there are nuggets to be picked out there is also a comprehension of what Paul is saying which can only come from reading the whole book.

This passage falls into three sections – first present yourselves to God and not to sin. That we are slaves of God and not of sin and whilst sin presents us with wages the righteousness which we receive from God is always a free gift.

First then, present yourselves to God. Paul sees coming to Christ as a complete and dramatic shift in a persons life. His language is reminiscent of that of the presentation of sacrifices in the Temple. Remember 1 Peter – present you bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable to God. Paul talks about the idea of dying to sin but this is not about switching off a small part of ourselves – the part which does bad things sometimes – it is about moving out whole selves into a different presence – into the world in which Christ reigns. For Paul conversion is not a trimming around the edges but a total paradigm shift.

Some people use Paul's mention of slavery as a sort of proof text that he somehow endorsed it. But there is nothing to say that he did any such thing – he is simply using a social norm – much as a Victorian writer might praise a woman for keeping a clean house or laud the Empire. Paul certainly steps outside his social norm when in Galatians he says there is neither male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free—all are one under Christ. But whatever Paul's views were on slavery, we know that the society in which he lived as rigidly structured – people were used to having other people in charge of them on one level or another. And so he talks into that structure and definition.

The Law, says Paul is one boss, this new way of living in Christ is another. It is not that there are no rules without the law but rather that the rules have a different focus and that that focus is a life of mercy and grace under Christ and not rules which seem to have an end in themselves and derive their validity from their own keeping. Move master, says Paul. Instead of fighting to keep lots of rules and finding definition in them, be a slave of Grace , of Christ.

And then Paul talks about wages. Most of us have, I am sure, seen a billboard or poster at some time with this famous line plastered on it – the wages of sin is death. When it is taken in isolation like that it sounds as though its corollary is going to be the wages of good behaviour is life – meaning that it is up to us, by our action, to choose life or death – but that is not what Paul says, what he says is that eternal life is the free gift of God – not that we have to bludgeon our way in by kind acts - but that is already given.

Imagine that – Jesus has already done the work, broken death and flung the door right open for us.

Paul talks a lot about freedom in Romans – he offers, if you like, a new slavery – not one of oppression and violence but one which bases itself in our free acceptance of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Just because the long list of rules and regulations are gone does not mean that we live in a free for all world, living in and with Christ should so profoundly influence everything we are and do that we truly taste eternity in the here and now.

I think the hymn writer sums it up well

Now is eternal life, if risen with Christ we stand

In him to life reborn and holden in his hand

No more we fear deaths ancient dread

In Christ arisen from the dead.

No cheap grace

The suffering in Haiti intensifies - it is hard to look at the pictures and video and see that as someone's reality. But it is.

When terrible things happen we want to understand them - we want to remove any thought that we are sometimes subject to the bad and unexpected. It is almost as if, if we can pin down the suffering of others and make some sense of it, then we will remove ourselves from the possibility of suffering.

I noted on Facebook yesterday that Pat Robertson said that the continuous trouble in Haiti was due to a pact with the Devil during the ousting of the French. I watched the segment today and he claims that the Dominican Republic, although on the same island, is spared the same fate because of better behavior. (watch the face of his co-host if you watch it).

I certainly gives an easy answer to a painful uncertainty. But it also seems sweeping and careless - especially as, in my memory, the Dominican Republic used to be a frightening place and has only recently been cashing in on the tourist industry.

Easy answers are not to be had in the face of human tragedy. God does not give them to us, not in neat packages which make blame the excuse for not mourning. But mourn we must and that hurts. As we look in shock and grief we will find God already there - read Psalm 139 - God is in the depths and the heights of human experience - God has knitted together each life so wonderfully.

Then why? We do not know - we will not know and the only answers which we can manufacture will denegrate both the humanity of those we answer for and, ultimately, our own. And so, we are asked to watch and wait with those who mourn. To reach out to those who live. To pray for those who suffer. This faith of ours demands much in these dark, dark places - more than anything it demands we allow the situation in all its gravity and that we pledge that we will work alongside those who seek to restore life and promote justice in the world.

Those who hide behind the false strength of judging others are cowards. They rely not on the strength of a merciful Savior but on their own abilities to concoct and pronounce judgments which maintain their own position regardless of the children of God who they crush in the process. This is not Christianity - this is not the love of Christ.

Those people who believe that Christianity is a road to simplistic one line answers have misunderstood it. Those who look to be told and skate along the surface instead of entering in deeply to themselves and to the world, have been misled.

Jesus says in the Gospel of John, of his disciples, that they are bound in, they are linked, He in them and they in Jesus - this is not cheap grace and there are not easy answers in this world of grief and hushed voices - but God is here, God is in Haiti - love not vengeance.