They set a net for my steps;
my soul was bowed down.
They dug a pit in my way,
but they have fallen into it themselves. Selah
-Psalm 57:6

Whoever digs a pit will fall into it,
and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling.
-Proverbs 26:27

Our Lord sure can weave a good story and Mark is no slouch either.  The story of the man with a withered hand at the beginning of Mark 3 is a masterful work as part of a larger masterful work that is  Mark’s Gospel.

The Man with the Withered Hand, James Jacques Joseph Tissot.

After hearing this sermon I was reminded of something Peter Leithart wrote in his commentary of I & II Samuel.  In the Synoptic Gospels the story of the disciples eating grain on the sabbath always comes right before the story of the man with the withered hand.  That story connects us back with I Samuel 21 which is talking about David being given the shewbread from the tabernacle.  Leithart makes the point that the passage is full of the term ‘hand’.  David did not have food or a weapon in his hand, he asked if the priests had any bread or weapons on hand.  The priests put both food and Goliath’s sword into his hand.  When priests were ordained the flesh of the sacrificial animal was placed into their hands, they were then qualified to go about their priestly duties. Saul received a priestly portion of the sacrifice when Samuel anointed him king.  I know this might seem strange to us today but these close associations were common in Hebrew.  Jesus is making many points with his behavior on the sabbath but one of them is clearly that something new is happening.  David was a new king taking command. Not only is Jesus taking command, as the new prophet, priest and king he shows how capable his hand is, he is the hand giver.  A hand in scripture is a symbol of human and godly ability.  People are delivered into God’s hand God delivers armies into the hands of his servants.

This story is so great.  Jesus is know for his parables, but there is a sense in which every other event of his life is a living parable.  There is debate about whether the parables actually happened, I don’t really think it matters like any good story it is still real.  And this is the nature of our placement here on this earth by our God.  We are here to learn lessons, and prove ultimately if we are good or evil.  This story is a living parable, he makes the Pharisees feel how wrong they are.  Sadly instead of repenting, they double down on their evil. Now it’s one thing to think you are a good person in theory. Most people think they are good, but it’s another thing to prove it in your life.  These Pharisees thought they were fine, Jesus showed them they were not.

The Talmud, Jewish Common Law Tradition. A modest 6,200 pages.

Now it’s easy for us to mock the case law tradition of the Pharisees, just like they mocked Jesus.  It takes some imagination to make it more real for us.  This is what Jesus does he imagines a situation to show them their foolishness.  He shows them their guilt by their own law.  For us today, we really have no room to talk.  Our case law system is just as foolish.  We have laws that say it’s alright to kill a baby while it is still in the birth canal but a few inches further down and it’s murder.  We have laws that say if you rack up a bunch of debt you can just declare bankruptcy and basically steal all that money.  We have laws against children selling cupcakes and opening lemonade stands.  We have laws that protect animals and their habitat while human homes burn or flood.  Our laws are just as corrupt as the Pharisees because we are just as evil.

Atlantic Reporter case law books for only 10 States, 999 volumes covering up to 2010.  Those Pharisees sure made up a lot of rules.

This living parable starts out as a trap set for Jesus.  This is evident from Jesus’ words, “Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill.”  They were setting him up so they could kill him because they knew he would heal.  They think they are putting Jesus on trial before their law.  Instead Jesus turns it around on them, he proves by the situation that they are the sons of the Devil, he is the Son of Moses. He is putting them on trial before a Holy, Just, Perfect God, and they are damned for eternity by their actions.  God is not interested in good theology floating around in our head, he is interested in the way we act out what we believe.  Because that is the real test, good words are easy, good actions are difficult.

Federal Register of new Regulations for 2013 ONLY! 80,000 Pages. Good thing we aren’t like the Pharisees.

Keeping in mind Mark’s overall theme that Jesus is King really makes the last line of the story pop.  The Pharisees went out, and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”  At this time there were basically two factions of authority in Israel;  the Jewish Pharisees and the occupying Romans.  The other sect of religious leaders the Sadducees had basically aligned with the Romans politically.  So these Pharisees are proven to be wrong in their system by Jesus and instead of repenting and submitting to the authority of King Jesus, they go conspire with the Romans whom they considered their enemies.  But any alliance against King Jesus will do.

It can be easy these days, to get caught up in notions of angels and demons battling it out in spiritual warfare.  It was a Greek philosophy and an early Church heresy, the notion that what happens here on earth does not matter.  What matters, they say, is what happens on a heavenly level.  Well as this passage shows, God puts us to the test here on this earth. There was nothing mystical or anything from a Frank Peretti book here, just real life situations put before them, by Jesus, just as God does with us.  Jesus enemies conspired and they fought and killed him, but ultimately they lost and only condemned themselves.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V. Here are another 1000 pages of B.S. for good measure.  This will get you out of all kinds of sin.

Today we have another level of evil on top of our corrupt law.  We take the results of real life situations and work them backwards.  Failure in real life situations becomes proof of some sort of disease, phobia, addiction, or other mental or genetic propensity.  It’s not our fault we acted badly, it’s  just how we are made, it’s in the cards or the stars or whatever gets us off the hook.  We think we are ok on some spiritual theoretical level in heaven, even if the events on earth prove other wise. We think holding ourselves and others to this low standard loving.  Really it just makes us worse than the Pharisees. This is us aligning with the World, with psychology or social ‘science’ against King Jesus.

King Alfred ‘The Great’. c. 1815. Samuel Woodforde

We are horrible at arguing these days.  No one does it, or even tries to do it well and so no one is forced to do it, or compete to become better at it.  Most of what we deal with today are fallacies, which are basically cheap tricks to disguise the fact that we don’t know what we are talking about. Instead of responding to another person’s claims you can call them names, or attack a group they are associated with, or attack someone close to them, or make a joke, or you can just threaten them like the Muhammedans do.  Another strategy is to make appeals to emotion rather than actual arguments, this is all to common. “Give us money, it’s for the children.”  Or you can make a straw man which is creating something that looks like your opponent, but you design it in such a way that it is easy to destroy.  Obama is always doing this “some folks think the earth is flat.”  A form of this is just creating a whole army of straw men, or even a bunch of armies all fighting each other.  Then you can just throw up your hands at all the confusion as if the issues is now impossible because all these made up people are fighting in the first place.

Now argument is not all there is in the world.  There is a place for emotion and jokes and all of the rest.  But when it comes to people working out tough issues in communities, this is no way to behave. It is also no way to behave in understanding and proclaiming the word of God.  Now I don’t think the study and practice of God’s word is an argument, it is a story.  But when we make arguments about his word, in forming theology and preaching it to others, we should not use these cleverly devised tricks.

Satan loves the confusion trick.  Every time God does something, Satan comes along and creates a twisted copy or a bunch of copies.  He bends it just enough to cause confusion. God creates the church based on a martyr, Jesus Christ and so Satan creates a million false churches with a million false martyrs.  God creates his Word and Satan creates a bunch of false words.  God gives us commands for how to worship him and a million people create false worship. Satan even uses the truth in the mouths of the crazy to confuse the issue as in Acts 16:16-24.  Now this does not mean we abandon the Church or the Word or religion.  It just means we need to be more careful in distinguishing between the real and the false.  This is not a new concept or something due to sin, this is what we were made for, to make judgements, to choose between right and wrong.  Of course in the garden we grasped for more than we could chew, we wanted the knowledge to decide instantly instead of being given it on God’s schedule.  But the fact remains we were made to judge, we are like God and unlike the rest of creation, because we can chose.

Moses with the Ten Commandments. Philippe de Champaigne. c.1648

This applies to the Mosaic Law in two ways.  First a muddle surrounding the way in which we follow or don’t follow the law is no excuse for not sorting out the issues.  Just because some people worship the law and others misinterpret it in one way or another, does not mean the pursuit is pointless.  Far from it, good judgement is always praised in scripture, it is the virtue of leadership, it is the ultimate praise (Luke 7:43), it is our hope,  For one day God will judge every deed of every man and set everything in it’s place. But for now judgement is our task, which is the second reason for study of the law.  The Law is about helping us to make judgements.  It was a gracious gift from God.  We entered a world of sin a world in which we were not prepared to make the judgements that were required, so he gave us this help.  Without it we are just wandering in the wilderness with little hope, we are savages.

Christians have alway recognized various realms in which these judgements take place.  The first layer is individually. Then the corporate layers of the home, the Church and the civil government.  It is a patriarchal system because we worship a Heavenly Father.  The father makes judgements in the home, the elders make judgements in the Church and the civil magistrates make judgements for the state.  These elements were all combined in various ways in the Old Testament.  It is our duty to sort them out and apply them today. “Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases” I Corinthians 6:2

God not only gave us the rules of the law, but he gave us stories of the law in action.  This is true of our lives individually and corporately, because this is the reality of our world.  We are given God’s commands in theory but then we actually have to make judgements and apply them to specific events in our lives.  This is how a case law system works.  This is the nature of the Mosaic Law and the basis of our British Common Law Tradition.  

King Alfred (849-99) submitting his laws to the Witan. John Bridges.

King Alfred, know as Alfred the Great was the founder of the law tradition which we in America follow to this day.  In the 880’s he basically applied the Mosaic civil law to his people the Anglo-Saxons.  And it carried down as a blessing to all the English speaking peoples of the world to this day.  A case law system is one in which there is a standard of law in place and a judge makes a decision about each particular person accused of a crime, based on that law.  In addition he can look back on past judgements for help in determining how best to judge in the current instance.  This is a very wise way to arrange a legal system.  Humans are imperfect and they often make mistakes, they can be corrupted and full of evil.  Comparing cases can spread the power around, divided between past and present judges.  It can add a layer of objectivity as you look back on cases of people you know nothing about, you can be more objective.  But that does not excuse this system from being corrupt.  And that is the case with our legal system and the legal system of Jesus day.  But that is a case for another day.

The Daughters of Zelophehad. Illustration from The Bible and Its Story Taught by 1000 Pictures. c. 1908

I was struck recently by this case law system in action in Numbers 36.  The Law of Moses was designed to keep land in the family.  Land was livelihood, without it one tribe could be wiped out by another.  God told Moses to distribute the land to the 12 tribes by lot before they conquered it.  This is mentioned in Joshua and Numbers. Land was passed down to the male heirs, and the firstborn got a double share.  So those were the rules.  Then in Numbers 27 the daughters of Zelophehad brought their case to Moses and said “wait a minute, our father had no sons so does that mean our family doesn’t get any land?”  Moses took it to God and God told him that the daughters get the land.  Ok, fine.  But later in Numbers 36, the heads of households of this family brought another case to Moses.  Now that the daughters had the land, if they married someone from another tribe, then the land would would be passed down to that tribe.  Moses said according to the word of the Lord, apparently he went to God again, that these men were right.  From then on the daughters of Zelophehad and all daughters with land, were not allowed to marry men from other tribes.  You can see how these cases brought to light the reality of following God’s rules.  Essentially the Law was changed or clarified in practical ways and it was binding for the future.  Now, God knew this would happen, he could have just piled up these laws in the beginning, but he chose to let men be part of the process, because his goal is not a perfect system of rules.  His goal is to teach us to judge rightly.  And he repeated the same thing in the New Testament.  Jesus spoke and gave us the proper way of interpreting the Old Testament, and then he gave us some new commands.  Then in the whole book of Acts we see the Disciples applying those rules to new situations.  One of the prime examples of this is the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.  This council would set the pattern for determining orthodox doctrine by further councils.

So, we are called to think through all of scripture and apply it to our specific cases:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. -St. Paul to Timothy

And we don’t have to do the work alone. Women have husbands, families have the Church elders and even the world has the civil magistrates.  They are all in positions to judge.  They are all called to sort out the law standard and apply it to their particular situations.  They can judge by the standard of scripture or some other man-made standard.  But all judge.  It is unfortunate when even teaching elders of the Church, throw up their hands and lament the mess rather than using all the tools God has given us in the Old Testament. If we don’t judge rightly who will?  Satan of course!  He his happy to come in and fill the void with his standard.  He has been doing it since the beginning.  Shall we let him continue?  I don’t think so.  So, get to work!

Further Reading:  The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Unde est, quod non operatio propria propter essentiam sed haec propter illam habet ut sit.

The proper purpose is not in existence for the sake of being, but the being for the sake of the purpose.  -Dante, De Monarchia

There was always an old fear of men becoming slaves.  Slaves to this or that government be it his own or a neighboring tribe.  But there is a much more real thing happening these days, the sad fact that men are becoming machines.  And even less than machines because machines have a purpose, as do slaves.  But these modern rulers want to rob us of our purpose.  Instead, like the machine unaware of a creator, they think they exist to exist. This is not without cause.  They found this image, this idol, in their silly notions of ‘science’.  They worship a system which can only describe ‘how’ without the ‘why’.  The universe exists to exist, so they think, having rejected all explanations of ‘why’ because they reject the creator.  And as such they have become a people without why and they want to extend their mechanical tyranny to everyone.  At least Hitler had a why, he existed to fight it out for first place in the battle of natural selection.  Today people cringe at the results of that idea and back off a bit into notions of existing for the sake of existing.  Cold hard purposeless machines.

This week we see it as the Obama Regime touts the benefits of living off of what the government stole from other people.  Robbing us of our basic pride in our work and calling it freedom.  Now we are free to sit around and do nothing without fear that our potato chip clogged arteries will result in the confiscation of our partially paid for big screen.  This is something Theodore Dalrymple writes about excessively.  He has watched it happen in the English welfare state, but it is not much different here.  When everything is given to you for free, there is no pride in living.  There is no sense of accomplishment or having earned anything.  We all exist to exist, which leads to many not existing, by their own hand.  This is worse than slavery, at least the slave can take pride in his work.  He does not own the fruits of his labor but at least their are fruits of his labor.  And usually he enjoys some of them.  Society for sure enjoys them.  But now we have a society of machines, existing, and producing nothing.  From the giant bureaucracies, to the wealth squandered on taking out loans for everything, to the money we waste on entertainment.  We have nothing to show for our existence, this is no way to live.

From what I have heard, this is one of the main things missing from the Nye Ham debate.  Creationism is not a mere scientific theory on origins, it is a narrative for all of live.  It is a pattern by which we set the tone of our lives.  Not that science is without a narrative.  Agnostic scientists like to think that it’s all concrete rock solid scientific method.  But really it is a series of experiments covered over with a narrative. A narrative that sets the tone of their lives.  You can’t have science without the narrative, without metaphor, without poetry.  The alternative is nothing.  What good is an experiment that you can’t tell someone about?  What good are statistics without assigning meaning to them?  And so they go about making up meaning as they see fit and then sprinkling it with the holy water of ‘science’ as if their claims were undeniable.  Arthur Balfour saw through the false narrative of Darwin, when he wrote is book Theism and Humanism in 1915.  He concluded that Darwinian Humanism was no way to live, he predicted Hitler.  But Hitler thought he would test it out anyway.  His false narrative was so shockingly bad that fascism has become merely a buzzword for all that is evil.  Of course that does not stop millions from repeating the same mistakes under different names.  Anything will do, as long as we aren’t accountable to the God of the Bible.  And so they go on without a ‘why’.  Scientist want to set up outposts on other planets.  Why?  So we can further the species when this planet is destroyed of course?  Why?  Oh because we exist to exist.  Is it any surprise that so many people commit suicide these days?

But we were given a why in Genesis, the creation narrative of our Lord, brought to us through Moses and carried down by the children of Abraham.  We are here to rule and subdue the earth, filling it with off spring and glorifying our God in the process. Jesus added to it in Matthew 28:16-20 telling us to go into all the world and make disciples.  Oh what fun.  It was in this pursuit, that science was codified in the first place.  It was in this pursuit that Columbus set sail from Spain.  It is the colonial spirit encapsulated in Robison Crusoe.  Turn the wilderness into a garden and it’s savages into Christians.  What a beautiful vision, what beautiful work.  But the world want’s to destroy this.  They want to shut down all forms of human production including pipelines, mines, logging, and human civilization of all kinds.  Because unlike the rest of creation we can choose to not do what God made us for.  So they fight the mandate of our God.  They try to turn the converts back into savages.  They try to turn the land back into a wilderness, for the animals.  And in order to do that they have to create false narratives.  False narratives of history, they must destroy all those who built the world we enjoy, who followed the narrative spoken in Scripture and were blessed for it.  And they must create a false narrative masquerading as science.  As if the age of the stage was the most important aspect of the elaborate drama playing out in front of us all.

But hey they play a vital role.  They may think they only exist to exist.  But in reality they exist to be our foes.  They are the dragons we get to slay.  They are the armies we get to vanquish.  They are the fools we get to subdue with the rod.  They make the plot interesting, far more interesting than the lame stories they write.  This is why our country doesn’t win wars anymore, we have nothing to fight for.  Fighting to exist is a flaccid narrative when you come up against Mohammedans, who have been told by their warlord leader that their purpose is to conquer the tribes of all humanity.  But we Christians should know better.  These Mohammedan heretics and the modern humanists provide fodder for a life worth living.  And so we fight the rise of the machines for our King!

Was that sermon a rerun?  I’m not just talking about the ongoing insistence that following the Law is the greatest evil around.  I’m talking about the way in which Jesus was a type of David.  For this was Jesus’ point at the end of Mark 2.  The type/ antitype relationship is a literary device used to poetically express one thing through another thing.  It’s kind of like an allegory.  Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the Church.  In this instance the marriage of Christ and the Church is the antitype and every other marriage is a type, or is should be.  The greater is reflected by the smaller, the main event is copied in the smaller events.  This device is used often in scripture but in a unique way.  Jesus is the antitype, though he came after the types, because he is the ultimate reality which they reflect.  So David is a type of Christ.  Insofar as he acted like Christ he couldn’t reflect Christ because he preceded him in history but he foreshadowed him.  And in reality we know Christ was and is and is to come he is the antitype of antitypes.  So Jesus was a rerun of David but ultimately David was the rerun.  This is a two way street of meaning.  We learn more about David from Christ and we learn about Christ from David.  Jesus loves making these connections between himself and the heroes of the Old Testament that the Pharisees claimed to respect.

August: Pharisees censuring Christ for permitting his disciples to eat on the Sabbath. By Abel Grimmer.
I’m not sure why they are harvesting in the background on the Sabbath.

At the end of Mark 2:24 the Pharisees accuse Jesus’ disciples of breaking the Sabbath Law.  They did no such thing, of course, but Jesus uses it as an instance for teaching.  Rather than just saying he loves the Old Testament Jesus dives right into it.  Lets do the same.  Jesus pulls out an Old Testament story with lots of connections to his present situation.  In this story David was a type of Christ.  In 1 Samuel 21 David was fleeing from Saul with a few of his men.  David had been anointed to be the rightful King a few chapters earlier, but Saul was still asserting authority.  Hmm does this sound familiar.  Mark lays out the story of Jesus, who was the rightful king yet was chased out of the city by the crowds and religious leaders.  He had the rightful authority but the religious leaders reigned.

David fled to Nob where the tabernacle was currently set up and the priests of Levi resided.  But the ark of the presence was not in the tabernacle at this time.  If you recall the Israelites had lost the ark to the Philistines because they thought it was a magic toy that could help them win battles.  They marched it out and the Philistines took it, and Israel was defeated.  The ark killed the fake god Dagon a few times and started giving the people cancer so the Philistines put it on a cart and let it go.  It made it’s way back to Israel, but the Israelites who looked at the ark died.  They were afraid so they told the Gentiles of Kiriath-jearim to take care of it.  The ark stayed here 20 years until David brought it back to Jerusalem.  This was a Gibeonite city which should have been destroyed by Joshua but he didn’t seek the Lord and they tricked him into signing a treaty with them.  So the Gentiles have the ark much like in Jesus’ time when the Gentile Romans ruled the land.  Both situations were a time of transition from old leadership to new.

Mark gives us the short version connecting us with the story.  Matthew fills in the details which give us better insight into what the Pharisees would have realized. We are not as adept in the Old Testament as the Jews so we need all the help we can get.   So the bread of the presence was there but the presence of the ark was not.  Not only did David and his men eat of the sacred bread just like the disciples ate of bread, but the Levites were commanded to replace the loaves every Sabbath. This was Sabbath breaking commanded by the Law for the sake of the temple.  But Jesus is greater than the temple, any Sabbath breaking would be justified.  But no one had broken the Law.  The Pharisees were incorrectly judging by the Law.  Jesus judged rightly and showed them their error.  He used the Old Testament as the basis of his argument.  The Law was never meant as a weapon to cause more harm than it prevented.  The same with the Sabbath.  They were designed to be a blessing. There were always more fundamental authorities than the Law.  Hosea 6:6 says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”  They made it all about the application of their rules.  But we should beware lest we do the same thing.  We can make “we are not under the Law” into a rule.  We can defend it at all cost to the point of silliness to the point of forgetting love.  We are all guilty under the Law, especially as Jesus read it.  The grace he has extended to us by pouring out his wrath on his son in our place is the most incredible thing this earth has ever seen.  But the fact remains that we are like sheep without a shepherd.  Even the church can be thrown into great error.  The Church fell into the error of slavery to the Law, Paul addresses this inGalatians.  But there is another error of leaving people without the instruction laying right there in the Old Testament even the Law.  God gave every one of those rules for a reason.  He wasn’t just making stuff up, he wasn’t just putting on a show with flaming hoops for his people to jump through.  We should search the Law to understand what he meant by each one of them.  What was at the heart of the matter?  How was he loving his people and trying to get them to love in return?

How can we mock the Laws of God?  How do we take pride in the fact that our civil laws have strayed far from the Law of God?  Why wouldn’t we want the rules of God to be the rules of our people?  What are the other options, manmade laws?  We screwed up God’s Law, how much more our own?  I was just reminded of how Jews during the spread of the black plague were often spared because they washed so often, because they followed the Law.  Few Jews died which actually lead to anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories that the Jews caused the plague.  I’m sure all the washings were a hassle, but it sure beats your limbs turning painfully black and eventually death.  Like any laws they must be justly administered, why wouldn’t we want that?  Don’t we pray “for his will on earth as it is in heaven”?  We sure aren’t doing too well with this new “all I need is my bible” garbage.  Sin is rampant and out of control in the name of Christian liberty.

The sabbath was meant to be a blessing, can’t it be a blessing today?  Can’t we take one day a week off and trust God that he will provide for us even if we don’t work every day?  I think so, most of the Church throughout time thought so.  Sunday was never a time for work, yet Saturday was for most people throughout Christendom.  They were blessed and blessed and we enjoy our current prosperity on their shoulders.  Talking about how we are not under the sabbath because it is not repeated as a command in the New Testament is to take the Pharisees at their word.  It is to take the sabbath as a burden that they wanted to apply on everyone woodenly and we want to unapply to everyone just as woodenly.  God want’s to bless his people with a day off.  He want’s us to love him by enjoying his bounty.  So pick the heads of grain as you flit through the fields with your savior, or tell your boss you can’t work on Sunday, both have judged rightly, and work hard to judge correctly under the Law the other six days of the week.

Further Reading:  A Son to Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel by Peter J. Leithart

Further Listening: Mercy Stands Taller, Douglas Wilson

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”  -Mark 2:17

So I am still reading this and trying to figure out how these verses are a prescription to attack people for trying to follow the Old Testament Law.  Was that Jesus point?  Our pastor took a position that is common these days, that the old wineskins and the old cloth were meant to represent the Pharisees.  And the old wine was the Old Testament.  The new wineskins are the disciples of Christ and the new wine is the Old Covenant.  The problem with this theory is that he lumps the disciples of John in with the Pharisees.  So ok let’s say they are both part of the old school.  In a sense John the Baptist was the last Old Testament prophet, it’s probably more accurate to see Jesus as the last Old Testament Prophet.  So, fine they are currently or temporarily still under the old Covenant.  So how are the apostles exempt?  They are Jews, just because they follow Jesus around they aren’t under the old covenant?  I think we can conclude by the limited attacks on Jesus that the disciples followed the Law.  Basically all they accuse him of was blasphemy, eating with sinners, not fasting and violating the sabbath  The last of which was merely a violation of extra biblical sabbath rules they made up.

An even bigger problem is the fact that Jesus didn’t criticize anyone in these verses, either the disciples of John or the Pharisees.  Jesus’ whole point is that we should go easy on the old wineskins, because they are. . .old.  We shouldn’t expect them to accept new wine.  These days we automatically assume that ‘old’ equals evil and that new is better.  That is not a popular notion with most of humanity or most of the church throughout history.  Most people have had respect for those who have gone before them.  That is what separates us from the animals, we can learn from past mistakes and pass them on.  But today we have become darwinians, we think that what is new is that which has evolved.  New is always better, despite a fossil record replete with millions of creatures we no longer have.  So we throw out the past whenever we can.  It’s a clever trick by the enemy to separate us from our roots, after all we are people of the book, the Bible is an ancient text, maintained by the tradition of an old Church. He didn’t have to disprove the Bible, he just convinced everyone that all old stuff was uncool.  Jesus didn’t say the old was bad, the old wineskins did what they were supposed to do, now is a time for new wine and so we need new wineskins.  If anything he was attacking the harsh treatment of old wineskins.  So I’m attacking the harsh treatment expressed last Sunday.  It had nothing to do with this verse and seemed to be a previously provoked rant waiting for a verse to justify it’s exclamation.

So, as far as the task at hand.  What was Jesus saying?  Most of the early Church commentaries thought Jesus was referring to his disciples as the old wineskins.  This was a new thing and they were infant disciples.  They were not to be burdened with difficult fasts, because that might burst them.   It is natural that he would want to show them grace.  It is not clear whether Jesus was talking to the disciples of John or the Pharisees, but it is clear he was defending his disciples.  Looking at the larger context, not only were Jesus and his disciples not fasting, they were living it up having a feast with the sinners and tax collectors.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all have the events connected. First they objected to his company, they then objected to his feasting.  First Jesus calls himself a physician and then a bridegroom.  Sure the disciples would fast and mourn plenty after his death.  In fact they would prove that they were old wineskins by the fact that they all fled the scene after his arrest.  Now was not the time to mourn, they were with the bridegroom on his wedding night, it was feasting time.  He goes on with the cloth and wineskins comparison.  Why would he put the burden of a fast on his disciples?  Why are you asking me to do that? Jesus didn’t force this new wine into old wineskins, he first made new wineskins then he added the new wine.  And these skins did become new and were filled with that new wine at Penetecost.  Acts 2:13 says the towns people said of the Apostles “These men are full of new wine”.

Even if we were to suppose that Jesus meant the Pharisees by the old wineskins, they still had their place.  They did their job, they held the old wine. The Jews held their Old Testament.  Was this for nothing?  Paul tells us in Romans 3:1-8 that being a Jew was not for nothing.  They benefitted much in every way, they kept the Old Testament faithfully.  We can even see this today.  Sadly most Jews have missed their Messiah, but the Jews continue to be blessed by their old wine, the world over.  Despite everyone trying to wipe them out, they maintain wealth and influence unparalleled by any other people group.  So don’t be dissing on them!

Calling of St. Matthew, Caravaggio, More info HERE.

I think the sermon last week on the calling of Matthew was very good, applicable to our current culture and basically what the text was concerning. Our idea of sin is messed up.  Sinner was a sarcastic term used by a God who is often sarcastic, and it’s for our own good.

I recently heard an excellent sermon on the idea of calling which is a big part of those verses.  The call of God is abrupt, it is effectual and it is permanent.

http://parishpres.libsyn.com/gospel-adventuring-pastor-george-grant-on-acts-15-36-16-10

I did have one question.  Is if fair to characterize the people as being for Jesus and the religious leaders against him?  In the beginning of his ministry at Nazareth Luke tells us it all started out pretty well, “all spoke well of him and marveled”  but then he kept talking and,

When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away

So as he said no prophet is accepted in his home town.  I don’t think that just included the religious leaders the crowd seemed pretty large.  Interesting these events lead to an early rumor that Jesus was some sort of shape changer, which is why Judas had to kiss him to identify him. Anyway, the majority of Jesus’ ministry was in the area around the Sea of Galilee.  Yet in Matthew 11:20-24 he says:

Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you

So I think those people are out.  In Luke 9:51-56 the people of a Samaritan village:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village

That doesn’t really speak well of those people.  They weren’t exactly beating down the religious leaders to get to Jesus.  In John 6:15 after Jesus fed the people they wanted to make him king, but Jesus kept talking and 45 verses later they abandoned him.

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him

In John 8 “Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them”  then a few verses later in v.59 they picked up stones to stone him.  A similar event happens in chapter 10:22-31.  Then of course we have the crucifixion.  At least here there is a hint that the religious leaders had incited the mob.  But still they are all on the same side.  Mark 15:6-15

Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” And they cried out again, “Crucify him.” And Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.” So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified

So people did flock to Jesus for various reasons, but it seems that overall the Jewish people were allied with the religious leaders in rejecting Jesus.

Zachary Hale Comstock. He looks just like Moses because he wants to ruin your life with rules. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Who knew Comstock was a real person?  It’s not something your average 20 year trip through our educational system is likely to reveal.  Well, you might encounter him as a term of derision, for his “excessive opposition to immorality in the arts; prudery”.  No, seriously, it is a term, Comstockery.  Named for Anthony Comstock who should be a hero.  Instead Bioshock Infinite gives us Zachary Comstock, fanatic extremist cult leader extraordinaire.  Instead of telling the true story that admires this man for his unwavering commitment to protect the eyes of innocent children, we create a world which we can blame him for all the ills of the planet.

This is a disturbing trend in our culture. Current historians spend most of their time on seek and destroy missions of historical heroes.  Current would-be heroes are nit picked by the media until putting a pet carrier on top of your car is the same thing as clubbing a baby seal.  Myths and legends of heroism are decried as not real and damaging to children.  I think much of this is just an attempt to justify the moral slide of our culture, as things get worse and words we don’t want to feel bad about it.  The worset people these days are those who have the audacity to judge us.  And even the dead judge us from the grave as their history is retold, so we rewrite that history.  This is such a tragedy, most cultures have had heroes, sure they weren’t perfect but their peers knew there was something special about them, something worth preserving and emulating.  They stood up to evil and defended the innocent, often against all odds.  Men like Robert E. Lee, George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther,  and many more.  Anthony Comstock was just such a man.

Outlawed!: How Anthony Comstock Fought and Won the Purity of a Nation, by Charles Gallaudet Trumbull

Much of this story I learned by reading a book that was recently republished, Outlawed by one of Comstock’s friends Charles Trumbull .  He started out humbly as a shopkeeper in New York shortly after the Civil War.  At the time, photography was becoming prevalent, and so obscene photography was beginning to be spread widely.   Such material wasn’t technically illegal illegal, but a more sensible culture understood the damage it was to the fundamentals of society.  It exploits women, and objectifies them to all who partake it this filth.  These twisted views of women undermine  marriage relationships which are the building blocks of a healthy society.  As with most evils they get their talons into children at a young age and are difficult to remove.  Comstock understood this and so did the people selling the material illegally.  They knew there was huge profits to be had and had no qualms selling to children.  Comstock’s love of children is what first lead him to devote his live to stamping out all such filth. There are many stories of his going out of his way to trade stories or stamps with children. He saw the damage that feeding these lusts caused as men destroyed their lives chasing women instead of responsibly caring for their wives.  It was just such a friend that led Comstock to act.  He tracked down the seller of the material and had him arrested.

Today we have the same ideals but we are just too lazy to really fight for them.  We all believe that pornography should not be shown to children, but we plaster it everywhere.  We say it’s wrong and have some laws but we don’t really do anything about it. We have been lulled into believing that 12 foot posters of scantily clad females plastered over our malls and billboards isn’t pornography.  We have been lulled into thinking that catalogs of female underwear are completely ok. We think todays bikinis are fine.  Do we really think that these designers didn’t create these things to entice?  Do we really think that children won’t get a hold of them?  Do we really think that these are personal sins that don’t affect a whole culture? Obviously we don’t care.  But Comstock did, he risked is life day in and day out to fight this evil.

After a few of his early arrests he and his wife decided that this was to be his life’s calling. He got the YMCA and some other pastors involved to supply the support he needed.  He pushed for federal legislation which made all such material illegal.  The Comstock Act passed March 3, 1873 and Comstock was appointed as the first enforcer of the law under the Post Office.  Though it was a paid position later he worked without pay for over 30 years.  Over the course of his service he tracked down hundreds of publishers and brought them to justice.  From time to time this even involved bringing down corrupt policemen and judges.  He developed such a reputation for fairly executing the law that lawyers of those he arrested would simply ask him if he had a case.  If he did they would plead guilty and try to get the lightest sentence for their client.  Comstock always assured that those arrested were treated justly and advised them in their own best interest. I was surprised to learn of how he melted down the plates used to print obscene books and returned the money to the owner or his wife, so that he might have a fresh start.  What a difference from how we pursue criminals today seizing everything we can get our hands on, ruining their livelihood and forcing the public to supply their room and boar as they relax in prison.

Comstock was often in danger.  There was lots of money to be had in evil, as is often the case.  He received letters with infections, hate mail and even a letter bomb.  He was threatened, beaten and shot at. A large cut to his face was why he always wore large side burns from then on.  But that didn’t dissuade him.  He was bribed and pushed to compromise, but he never did.  He was a real hero.

Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 – September 21, 1915)

Stories like these were the stories you told to your children, it made them better people.    Just as often these were stories of the faithfulness of God.  God tells us time and again to remember what he has done.  Our lives are much easier when entering difficulties, if we remember how he has carries ourselves and other through.  Christianity is not a blind faith, God has proven himself faithful time and again, but we isolate ourselves when we don’t know history.  We think we are the first ones to ever go through such difficulties, and it seems impossible.  That’s why we need good stories.

Bioshock Infinite, like much of our post-Christian world tells a false story. They want to destroy people like Comstock, labeling him as a Puritans medeling in the private affairs of everyone and destroying their freedom because he is a fundamentalist fueled by religious hate.  In the end it turns out that the hero of the game, the part you play in Infinite, is the unbaptized version of Comstock.  So, get baptized and you end up destroying the world as a cult leader, don’t get baptized and you destroy it by being a murderer.  So, in the end the only solution is suicide, what a great message.  Instead of viewing the abilities of man as either potential for good or evil, Infinite says that some people are just beyond hope, if good is even possible, it’s just in the cards.  Have a nice day.

So, please, don’t let our increasingly Godless culture rob us of these great heroes of the past.  Don’t let them rob us of our faith.

Boy did I feel stupid when wandering around in a utopian floating city I am suddenly confronted with absurd violence, for this is the plot line of Infinite.  I wasn’t aware this was a first person shooter and part of a franchise of such games. I’m not opposed to violence as such, or accurate portrayals of good vs. evil, those often make for good stories, but this is ridiculous. You start out being launched to the utopian floating city of Columbia, as I mentioned before.  Only to wander a bit and to be welcomed to the festivities, some sort of fair.  Their game consists of a raffle, the winner of which get’s to cast the first stone as it were at the local interracial couple.  But before you can throw they discover that you are the false shepherd. And we know the only thing a bunch of backwards religious hicks hate more than black people, is a false prophet trying to wreck their utopia. So, of course, you must start bashing the heads of cult police to save yourself. But this is nothing compared to bashing of US history as racist. This theme is present through the whole game, which again is no surprise, it is forced on us by the media an academia constantly these days.

Of course banning marriage based on skin color is silly, and mocking people for doing so is easy.  But the the historic reality in the country is much more complex.  There were laws banning interracial marriage but they might just as well have banned intercultural marriage or interreligious marriage, because that was the issue.  I know I’m treading on thin ice, but that’s because we have all been programed to react every time race is brought up.  Everything is viewed in terms of race with no real historical context or biblical understanding being allowed.

At stake is not the happiness of two star struck lovers who happen to have different colored skin, but the health of a whole nation.  At least that’s what I draw from the biblical texts.  So there are quite a few verses about marriage. The first few are rules for priests, then in Numbers 36:3-6 an issue of case law comes up.   God commanded his people to keep the land he had given them in their respective tribes.  But if a female inherited land and married someone from another tribe that land would be transferred.  This was decided to be correct, so from now on God said women with inheritance were only allowed to marry within their on clan.  God is clanist, he just hates diversity. Or if we assume that God is right and we are wrong, the property and livelihood of God’s people was more important than romantic attachments of teenagers.

Also in Deuteronomy 7 he lays out the rules for when Israel enters the land he had given them verse 3 says “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods” So we learn that intermarriage will turn the people of Israel away from the one true God to the gods of these nations.  We are quick to bristle and reject Old Testament rules as if they were written by Muhammed but we should stop and think.  This is part of what we believe to be sacred scripture, we should pause and let this teach us.  God was a racist by the modern definition, but which is right the definition or God’s word?  It is clear the issue was religion and not race.

In addition the same idea is repeated by Paul’s command in II Corinthians 6:14-18 “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.”   We are a people in the same sense as Israel was, we may not be tribal or racially linked but we are set apart. “For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God”   Then he appeals to the Old Testament, with a combination of verses:

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty”

I think it is fair to conclude that Paul has more respect for the Old Testament than we do.  His point is almost the same; don’t marry unbelievers, it is the most intimate thing a person can do, why would you want to corrupt the church by being one flesh with the world?

So, lets look at the historical context of early America, which is the intended target of this mockery by Infinite.  Interracial laws were first passed in the 1660s, yes that’s right before we were even our own country, that means that British colonies passed laws banning interracial marriage.  Perhaps this is a British problem and we should just label them racist and walk away.  There were primarily three groups of people in the colonies at the time, white protestant europeans, native indian pagans and black pagan slaves.  The first laws banning intermarriage were specifically against marrying black slaves.  (There were also many white slaves, indentured servants who sold themselves into slavery so they could get to America. Slavery wasn’t about race either.) Later laws would ban marriage to Indians as well. In light of the scripture above this makes perfect sense.  It also sheds a lot of light on the issue of voting and the 3/5ths compromise.  These were issues of culture or we might say religion and not of race.   You can’t allow pagan influence into your bed and expect it to remain Christian.

It doesn’t mean they are not people whom you must love with the love of Christ, it just means you don’t marry them.  And it’s not an issue that goes away instantly.  Even pagans who are converted to Christianity don’t assimilate instantly.  And groups that stick together often never do, as was the case with the Amish, Indians and Africans. As George Washington said “The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.”  And as he knew you can’t have two groups of people bound by two different ideas living together at peace, this leads to strife and even war.  If we judge these groups by the content of their character they are often found wanting, as was the case with the blacks in this country, which lead to todays’ racism. As Thomas Sowell, also black, points out in his excellent book Black Rednecks and White Liberals.  Animosity towards blacks, which was worse after the Civil War, was often the result of their deviant behavior, which happened en masse to the point that their race got a bad name.  Essentially they remained pagan.

God’s theory of intermarriage is bourn out by a simple study of geography.  In North America we generally did not intermarry, either the pagan slaves or the pagan Indians.  Our faith has remained fairly robust, economically we have prospered, blessing the entire world.  South of the Mexican border in Latin America, the story is different.  They were colonized by Catholic Christians in much the same way as the Protestants here.  Yet they intermarried, there were no intermarriage laws passed and today it is difficult to tell a Spaniard from a native.  Latin America is known the world over for it’s hollow Catholic religion and it’s disastrous governments, the banana republics.  Prosperity today is directly related to how close these people live to the Protestants.  You don’t have to take my word for it.  Even wikipedia trumpets the virtue of intermarriage in Latin America as unprecedented.  They think it’s a virtue, I guess like most people today they feel good about their morality without looking at the reality or God’s word.   A recent study found similar results, if social research floats your boat. 

This is the dangerous work of being in the world but not of the world.  Jesus said:

“Ye are the salt of the earth:but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven

These are the two ditches we can fall into. We can marry the world and lose our saltiness or we can hide under a bushel and not do the world any good.  I would say our forefathers did a very good job of preserving the balance.  Believing the lies of Bioshock Infinite will only ensure that our future is saltless.

Manifest Destiny, John Gast, 1873. Columbia lays telegraph wire as she leads the American expansion westward. Manifest destiny is the idea that God had given us this land from sea to shining sea. So he has, and the world has been blessed ever since.

By most standards the video game of the year is Bioshock Infinite.  I would say it deserves this honor.  The plot is complex and engaging at every turn, the gameplay is flawless, and the graphics are beautiful.  I have a hard time justifying the wast of time that video games are but some early graphics piqued my interest.  While doing some research on Columbus a few years ago, I found some early art about Bioshock’s ‘Columbia’.  Columbia is the dystopian cult city where Infinite takes place.  What does this have to do with Columbus, you might ask.  Well Columbus was once the foremost hero of our country.  His daring exploration is what made civilization on this continent a reality.  Columbia is a New Latin toponym, combining a stem Columb- based on the surname of the explorer Christopher Columbus and an ending -ia, common in Latin names of countries (e.g. Britannia “Britain”, Gallia “Gaul”). The meaning is therefore “Land of Columbus.”  This was once the nickname four our country, personified as a woman. Our first national anthem was Hail Columbia.  But this imagery and much of the other imagery from the game is lost on most people.  Many reviews have been written and even Christian reviews.  But ignorance of such imagery has lead to most of them giving the game a pass.  I will not do so, I think the games message is ignorant or damaging and often both.

Some of you may already be reacting negatively to my characterization of Columbus.  But it is a historic reality.  He is woven into our culture because millions of people thought it worth doing so. They invented CBS, Columbia Broadcasting Company, Columbia Pictures and Columbia University, to name a few.  But if you go to Columbia University today you will hear a much different story.  They invent a Columbus who was the first anglo-white male to bring evil to this continent, destroying the noble savages with imperialism, sexism, racism, and homophobia all wrapped up in the religious extremism of Christianity.  This is the message of Infinite, and it is lost on most because this message is so pervasive, but it is wrong.  The ideas today attacked by Columbia were hardly defended before they came under attack because they seemed so obvious.  But today a defense must be made because such fictions cloud the once clear waters.

The following from Cecil Chesterton’s book A History of the United States, couldn’t say it better.

In the year of Our Lord 1492, thirty-nine years after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks and eighteen years after the establishment of Caxton’s printing press, one Christopher Columbus, an Italian sailor, set sail from Spain with the laudable object of converting the Khan of Tartary to the Christian Faith, and on his way discovered the continent of America. The islands on which Columbus first landed and the adjacent stretch of mainland from Mexico to Patagonia which the Spaniards who followed him colonized lay outside the territory which is now known as the United States. Nevertheless the instinct of the American democracy has always looked back to him as a sort of ancestor, and popular American tradition conceives of him as in some shadowy fashion a founder. And that instinct and tradition, like most such national instincts and traditions, is sound.

In the epoch which most of us can remember pretty vividly—for it came to an abrupt end less than five years ago—when people were anxious to prove that everything important in human history had been done by “Teutons,” there was a great effort to show that Columbus was not really the first European discoverer of America; that that honour belonged properly to certain Scandinavian sea-captains who at some time in the tenth or eleventh centuries paid a presumably piratical visit to the coast of Greenland. It may be so, but the incident is quite irrelevant. That one set of barbarians from the fjords of Norway came in their wanderings in contact with another set of barbarians living in the frozen lands north of Labrador is a fact, if it be a fact, of little or no historical import. The Vikings had no more to teach the Esquimaux than had the Esquimaux to teach the Vikings. Both were at that time outside the real civilization of Europe.

The First Landing of Christopher Columbus in America. 1862 Teofilo Puebla Tolin

The nature of Columbus and his mission is not hard to decipher.  Like most men before our time, he wrote considerably in his journals.  Columbus was clearly a Christian taking bold action in quest of ruling and subduing the earth for his Christ.  He sought to convert peoples to Christianity, claim land for his king and secure wealth to fight the enemies of Christendom. From his diary:

 

Your highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes, lovers and promoters of the Holy Christian Faith, and enemies of the false doctrine of Mohomet and of all idolatries and heresies, you thought of sending me, Christóbal Colón, to the said regions of India to see the said princes and the peoles of the lands, and the characteristics of the land and of everything, and to see how their conversion to our Holy Faith might be undertaken.

Your Highness should take much joy in that soon you will make them Christians and will have instructed them in the good customs of your realms, for neither better people nor land can there be. . .

His High Majesty brings about all god things, and tha everything is good except sin, and that one cannot praise or think anything which is not with His consent, I know, says the Admiral, that, in the circumstances of this voyage, he has miraculously made this manifest, as one may understand through this writing, through the signal miracles that He has performed during the voyage and for me, who much of the time that I was in You Highnesses’ court, met with the opposition and contrary opinion of many important persons of your household, who were all against me, allegin my enterprise to be ridiculous, I hope in Our Lord that it wil be the greatest honor to Christianity that, unexpectedly, has ever come about.  These are the final words of the Admiral Don Cristóbal Colón concerning his first voyage to the Indies and their discovery.

These were not new goals. He was born in a time when Moorish Muslims had attacked and occupied his homeland in Italy and Spain for upwards of 700 years.  Modern historians like to pretend that the world was always as it is now, but the fact is that even now, war is common.  As the Constitution lays out the rules for declaring war, it was not a matter of if but when.  Peoples conquered other peoples, it took place in civilized and uncivilized cultures.  Often the victors made slaves out of those they captured or wiped them out completely.  That is normal on this earth.  But the opposite message comes through in Infinite.  War is a sin, slavery is about racism etc..  I will get to this more in another post. But this is the reality Columbus was born into, it is not ours.  As evaluated by his peers he was a hero, for generations.  How arrogant that we think we know better, having no understanding of his world’s past or of him.  This uninformed arrogance is the hallmark of our time, so of course it comes through in Infinite.

When you first enter Columbia in the game it is a wonder to behold. It is a city floating in the clouds, clean, beautiful, advanced and everything appears to be in perfect harmony.  Stylistically it is set sometime around the turn of the 20th Century, though many elements are futuristic or mysterious.  This is not far off from how the world viewed the real Columbia, and many who don’t live here still do.  For many escaping religious persecution or other forms of aged doctrine, America was the ‘city on a hill’ from Matthew 15:14.  Some people of late have carried the doctrine into the extreme believing the U.S. to be a sort of new Israel, but at the time it way more of a typographic description.  But there was always an idea held in the millions of it’s inhabitants, and millions more trying to get here, that America was different. It was a country not united by common heritage or ancestry but by an ideal.  There was a testing process just to make it here, which refined it’s inhabitants.  Alexis de Toqueville came to study what made it so different and his book Democracy in America is a testament to the unique Christianity that was Columbia.  It was called American Exceptionalism, but it is wholly lost on the creators of Infinite.  In choosing this name for their floating city they choose to ignorantly assail our past.  Like Elysium they paint this city as having been bourn on the backs of the poor and minorities. It’s religion is a cult of personality for a certain Zachary Comstock, who was also a real man but that is another post.  Comstock claims to be a prophet thought his knowledge of the future is really just advanced physics.  Subtle message here is that there is no religion only science, but that’s not the first time you have heard that.  The ways of this city are quaint outdated morality which are ultimately about slavery to it’s leader’s backward teachings.  This is what American history is to these people and they work hard to ensure that this is how it will remain for future generations. “Time rots everything.” Says the heroine Elizabeth as she watches New York burn.  And so time is rotten for these people and they can’t seem to believe anything else is possible for the hero of the game other than assisted suicide.  Hail Columbia.

Yeah you probably never heard of this sacrament, if you have even heard of a sacrament at all.  We evangelicals have very little use or understanding of such things.  The dictionary says that a sacrament is an outward sign of a spiritual reality.  I think that is a fair definition.  In one sense everything is sacramental.  This world and everything in it are the incarnated words of Almighty God. He didn’t just create something, he created a world with meaning directly related to his character.  Christ almost always taught by parables or by metaphors from nature.  This was easy because he created the world to do so. Not only are we in this world but we are in a world designed to speak to us.  Psalm 19:2 says “The heavens declare the glory of God // and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. // Day to day pours out speech //and night to night reveals knowledge.

Jesus Heals the Paralytic, Harold Copping

Greek philosophy under Plato attempted to separate the world into the seen and unseen, physical and metaphysical.  The seen was just a shadow of the actual unseen world.  The seen was on a lower plane, below the unseen.  Matter was evil, this was the Gnostic heresy of the first century, and the idea persists today. But that is not the Christian belief, though it seems like it sometimes.  Matter was created by God and he said it was good repeatedly in Genesis 1.  Matter will persist, Christ received a new body and there will be a new earth. And it’s not necessarily bad to divide the world up in this way.  We understand that there are seen and unseen aspects to this world.  The problem comes when we discount one or the other.

I think our pastor did just this in his exposition of Mark 2, this week.  In always searching for a spiritual message he minimizes the physical reality of the story.  How interesting is a story where someone comes to Jesus and Jesus tells him his sins are forgiven?  Not very, I would say.  Theoretical discussions with no physical reality are bo-oring.  But God gives us a story where there is an outward sign that sins were forgiven.  And we love it, because we are sacramental creatures who live on the incarnate word of God known as planet earth. It’s a good story.  It’s the same reason God gave his people the physical acts of following the Mosaic Law.  It’s the same reason Jesus gave us the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  It’s how we are made.

Baptism isn’t just a sign of what is going on inside, we are actually cleaned on the outside.  The bread and wine are not just symbols of Christ’s body and blood, they actually nourish us.  Jesus didn’t just tell people their sins were forgiven he showed them by acting it out on their bodies.  And God is praised.  Who cares if no one got saved on the scene?  There is no proof that is true, but who cares?  God’s creation was restored and God was glorified.  That’s more good than I see on a given day.  We need to get away from this all-or-nothing Christianity, it’s really just that dualism I mentioned earlier.  Things can happen on this earth without someone getting saved and they can still be good.  Christ went out of his way to curse a fruitless tree Mark 11:12-14.  Isn’t that a waste of time since all that really matters is the spiritual level?  He could have been getting someone saved, instead he is off talking to trees.  But the point is that creation was not doing it’s job so Christ rebuked it.  Take the reverse, when creation is doing it’s job it is a good.  God was glorified when this story happened and he has been glorified every time it was told, because it was a good story.  The heroes and villains were all in the right place, there was conflict and the meaning is clear.

It might be hard to hear but the most important thing is that God is glorified.  It’s not that any one person is forgiven or that he receives real salvation. It’s not that all the good people are safe and the bad people are locked up in cozy ACLU approved prisons.  Sometimes the good guy gets killed, sometimes Jack Bauer shoots his partner.  It makes a good story.   Romans 9 tells us that God appoints all the characters in the story, heroes and villains.  He appointed Pharaoh to make a good story, to make God look good.   In Mark’s story, Christ the king is walking on the earth and conquering everything in his path.

Cosmo Kramer as the Paralytic Pimp of Capernaum.

I also had some other questions about the narrative presented.  How do we know that this man was only interested in being healed?  How do we know he cared about that at all?  Maybe he just wanted to hear Jesus’ teaching and he couldn’t get in because some leper went around blabbing and now the religious leader got all the good seats next to the superstar.  While we are making stuff up, why don’t we invent a whole story for this guy?  Ok. He was a pimp and he ran a large brothel.  It was three doors down from the synagogue, surprisingly the Catholics have not built a church over this house, but that’s how it goes.  Coincidentally it was frequented by many of the religious leaders, when they weren’t dragging adulterous women into the temple.  So, anyways, he was pimping along and everything was going great and then one day he ate some bad mutton and woke up paralyzed.  All he could do was drool and all his harlots were being taken away.  It was horrible. So, four compassionate gay Samaritans from a neighboring homosexual brothel carried him to see Jesus.  That’s four doors down from the synagogue, in case you were wondering.  Once they got him healed he was a superstar and he went back to pimping and business was better than ever. No one was saved,  Jesus loves sinners, the end.  Sure great story but it’s not the one Mark wrote.  Now, I don’t have a problem with making up stories, the more the better.  But do it the right way, don’t read your story into the scriptures, because you need sermon material.  Every sermon should be a new story, a retelling of the gospel in light of the people you are speaking to.  But there is no need to confuse the two.

Jesus Heals the Paralytic, Stained Glass, St. Vincent de Paul Chapel, St. Louis, MO, photo by Jeff Geerling