Brutally Honest

Posted by guest blogger Tim Chesterton

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Posted by guest blogger Tim Chesterton

It seems a bit rash after the comment storm of the last couple of weeks, but after consulting with Rick I've decided to go ahead and post my sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent. Here's the beginning:

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Posted by guest blogger Tim Chesterton

I must confess to never having read any Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), but now that I’ve read Kim Fabricius’ ‘Ten Propositions on Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists’, I can hardly wait. Here’s a quote:

There are nine more, and they’re all good.

H/T to my friend Sam Norton.

Posted by guest blogger Tim Chesterton

Here's an excerpt from my sermon for today.

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Posted by guest blogger Tim Chesterton

‘He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’

So, have you started to ‘give like Santa and save like Scrooge’ yet?

At this time of year the Christian church – or at least, the parts of it that follow the ancient calendar of the church year – are at odds with the culture around us. To put the difference bluntly, in the secular world Christmas has already started, but in the Christian calendar we’re just starting Advent.

This orientation was brought home to me a few years ago when I realised that in the secular world, the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ is assumed to be about the twelve shopping days before Christmas. Is that what you thought too? Well, it’s not! ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ refers to the fact that in the Christian calendar, the Feast of the Nativity of Christ starts on December 25th and runs for twelve days until January 6th, which is the Feast of Epiphany. So the secular calendar starts Christmas before December 25th, but in the church the celebration starts on December 25th and runs for the twelve days afterwards.

Mind you, the secular calendar and the Christian calendar have this in common – they’re both about hope. The difference, of course, is that we’re not hoping for the same thing! The secular calendar is driven by the retail industry, which is looking forward to its most profitable time of year. In the retail industry, Christmas starts the day after Hallowe’en, because they need two months to persuade you to buy into the kind of ‘hope’ they have on offer – the hope of the most impressive looking gifts at the lowest possible price – ‘Only $999.99’ – hence, ‘giving like Santa and saving like Scrooge’. But in the church, we’re hoping for something much more important – the fulfillment of God’s promises for the coming of his kingdom, an end to war and injustice, oppression and greed, and the establishment of a world of justice and love, community and peace. Those promises are found in the Old Testament prophecies, and some of them are fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. But there is obviously a future fulfillment as well, so we think not only of Jesus’ first coming at Christmas, but his second coming ‘to judge the living and the dead’.

That phrase – ‘to judge the living and the dead’ – comes from the Nicene Creed, and over the next three weeks I want to explore with you three phrases from that Creed which sum up the biblical teaching we’re celebrating in Advent. Today we’re going to look at the theme of judgement – ‘He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’. Next week we’ll think about the kingdom – ‘and his kingdom will have no end’. On the third Sunday of Advent we’ll think about our future resurrection – ‘We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come’.

Today, then, we’re starting with the unpopular idea of judgement: ‘He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’.

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UPDATE:  Please click on the comments link folks... we've got us quite a discussion going.
 

Posted by Guest Blogger Tim Chesterton:

On any given Saturday, in any given city, you can be sure that there are a lot of couples getting married. Some of those weddings will be in churches, some will be in registry offices, some will be in private houses and back yards, some might even take place in the context of bungee jumps and parachute drops for all I know! Some will be religious ceremonies and some will be civil ceremonies. And of course there will be all sorts of couples who choose, for one reason or another, not to get married at all, but simply to live common-law.

We live in a world where there are many choices, but there are some who still choose to be married in a ceremony of Christian marriage, perhaps including the service of Holy Communion. A Christian wedding expresses a particular view of what marriage is all about, a view that isn’t just taken from the general wisdom of the culture around us, but from Jesus and his revelation to us of what God is like. And I think a good starting place for us is a paragraph from the ‘Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada’ that I read at the beginning of every wedding service:

‘Marriage is…a means of God’s grace’. The phrase ‘means of grace’ is used in the Christian tradition to describe ways in which God channels his love and strength to us. So we talk about Bible reading and prayer, coming to worship and receiving Holy Communion, as ‘means’ of grace’. The paragraph is telling us that in the Christian understanding, marriage is also a way in which God channels his love and strength to us.

Let me try to unpack this. It’s as if God in his infinite love and kindness looks at one of the human beings he has created, and says to himself, “What can I do for her to help her experience my unconditional love and strength, day in and day out, for the rest of her life?†And then God has a brainwave and says, “I know what I’ll do! I’ve got just the guy for her! As he loves her in a gentle and faithful and unconditional way, she’ll experience not only his love, but my love as wellâ€. And then God looks at the man she loves, and says to himself, “Hey, this is a really good idea, because it’ll work the other way around as well! As they each love the other in a gentle and faithful and unconditional way, they’ll both experience my love through one anotherâ€.

This is a beautiful thing, and I hope couples can see how significant this makes their marriage and their love. It’s wonderful enough that they’ve found each other and that they have been able to care for each other and love each other in a special way. But this view takes their love even higher than that, because each of them has been given the sacred calling of being a channel of God’s love to the other.

However, there’s a problem here, and it’s to do with the definition of the word ‘love’. We live in a culture in which ‘love’ is mainly an emotional word; ‘falling in love’ is not seen as a choice you make, but as something that happens to you. you’re the helpless victim of it, and if it chooses to leave you, there’s nothing you can do about it; best leave your partner and find someone else.

But in the Bible love is not a feeling but a choice and a way of life. To love someone, in the Bible, means to choose to be a blessing to them by caring for them and helping them in practical ways, whether you feel like it or not. And that’s why we can ask couples to make promises to each other. It’s pretty hard to make promises about feelings; feelings come and go, depending on all sorts of factors. But actions? Yes, we can make promises about them.

But we can get even more clarification than this. If we accept the idea that Christians are called in their marriages to act out the love of God toward their marriage partner, we can go further and ask, “Well, what’s God’s love like?â€

God’s love is unconditional. It doesn’t depend on whether or not we’re good enough. We mess up every day, but God doesn’t give up on us in disgust; he forgives us and helps us get up and try again. He is infinitely patient and kind toward us. And thank God for that!

We all experience this in our marriages, if we’re honest. How many of us have asked ourselves from time to time, “Given the sort of person I can be when I’m not at my best, why on earth does she stick with me?†I’ve certainly asked that question, knowing how hurtful I can be when I’m doing my best grizzly bear imitation!

God’s unconditional love calls us as husbands and wives to accept the fact that just as we are not perfect, so our partners are not perfect either. Just as they forgive us, so we forgive them too. In another place Paul says, ‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger’ (Ephesians 4:26); in other words, be quick to apologise, quick to forgive, and quick to be reconciled. That’s what God’s love is like; we’re called to ask him to help us imitate his love.

Connected to this is the idea that God’s love is faithful. To be blunt, this means that God does not give up on us, or leave us when he sees a more attractive and deserving subject of his love around the next corner. God has pledged himself to us and he will be faithful to us throughout our lives and through all eternity as well.

So we’re called to live that out to one another as married couples, to be faithful to one another until death parts us. And here I want to declare war on a phrase that I hear so often: the phrase, “If it doesn’t work outâ€. I’ve been married for nearly twenty-eight years, and I have to say that I always knew that it was up to me to make it work out. I’m not a helpless victim of circumstances; I’m a free human being with the ability to make decisions and act on them, to say ‘No’ to my selfish nature and ‘yes’ to the way of love and gentleness and grace. So I say to the couples who ask me to officiate at their weddings, “Don’t sit back and wait to see if your marriage will work out! Rather, pray every day for God’s strength, and then you go and make it work out! You can do it, with God’s help!â€

Thirdly, God’s love is practical. It’s not just about high-sounding ideas or feelings, but concrete actions, giving us the things that we need for life and health and safety. When Jesus is expressing this, he says that God makes his rain fall and his sun shine on us, righteous and unrighteous alike. In his infinite wisdom and kindness God has designed his universe in such a way that our needs can be met through the good things he has provided for us.

Romance is wonderful and every marriage needs it, but if there isn’t a huge helping of practical love too, no marriage can survive. One of my favourite books about marriage is called Sex Begins in the Kitchen. And the title isn’t talking about kinky sex either! It’s saying that if the partners aren’t willing to serve each other in practical ways like sharing chores and cleaning up and that sort of thing – well, don’t be surprised if things don’t go too well in the more intimate parts of their marriage, either. That’s a special challenge to me, I must admit.

But finally, and in contrast to that, we also need to say that God’s love is pure magic. I mean, imagine if a famous person who you really admire was coming to town, someone who is looked up to by hundreds of thousands of people, but someone who doesn’t know you from a hole in the wall. Now imagine getting a card in the mail from that person saying, “Could we have lunch while I’m in Edmonton? I’ve always wanted to get to know you better!†Wouldn’t you be amazed? Wouldn’t you just be thrilled out of your socks?

But the Christian gospel has even better news. The one who is responsible for everything that exists – the one my friend Rob Heath calls ‘The Chairman of the Board of Existence’ – loves you personally and wants to be your friend! Doesn’t that just blow you away? It’s hard to believe that such a thing could be true, but Jesus assures us that it is!

Married couples who are deeply in love with each other have this same sense of wonder. “How did I get so lucky? I mean, she could have picked anyone, but she picked me!†Of course, in the early days of our relationship this sense of wonder is very strong. In most marriages, as time goes by it wanes a bit – the emotion isn’t as strong as it once was – but wise Christian couples know that this is natural and so it doesn’t scare them. What they do is to concentrate on living out the other aspects of God’s love for their partner – accepting one another unconditionally, forgiving one another, being faithful to one another, caring for one another in simple and practical ways, day in and day out. And as they do this faithfully, as the years go by something deeper and more lasting starts to grow, and one morning you wake up and think “Wow! No one told me about this!†That’s why you see elderly couples in their seventies walking down the street holding hands like teenagers: they’ve found the magic.

I hope that all of us who are married will continue to find that magic as we live out God’s love for one another. God has brought us together, and so, as we pray for his help every day, God will help us to grow into the sort of relationship that is his dream for us – a relationship which will cause other people to say, “You want to see what God’s love is like? Look at that couple and the way they live together – that’s what it’s like!â€

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A popular song of a few years ago says:

Since I first heard this song, I’ve often thought that we should add it to the Christmas carol books. This is exactly what the Christmas story is all about; it’s God becoming one of us, God sharing our human life, God experiencing all the things that we experience. The technical word for it in Christian theology is ‘incarnation’ – God taking on himself our human flesh.

But is God absolutely crazy? If God is the almighty creator of the universe, what would possess him to allow himself to be born as a helpless baby, to put himself in a position of complete dependence on human parents, to make himself vulnerable to all the pain and suffering of life on earth? What on earth would be the point of it? What sort of God decides to do something like that?

Well, certainly a God who believes in the power of love and not the power of force. There are a lot of people in the Christmas story who believe in the power of force. There’s the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. The story tells us that ‘In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered… All went to their own home towns to be registered’ (Luke 2:1, 3). Imagine having that kind of power! Caesar sits on his throne in Rome and sends out an order that all the millions of people in his empire are to be registered – presumably for tax purposes. Immediately thousands of public officials and soldiers leap to do his bidding! That’s the sort of power that can get things done!

Or think of King Herod – he hears that a rival king has been born in Bethlehem, and immediately sends a death squad to kill all male children under the age of two years. That’s decisive action! No one would dare to question the authority of a man who could give an order like that!

In contrast to them, Jesus did not have the authority to order a million people to interrupt their lives for an income tax registration, and he killed no one during the thirty-three years of his life. He spent his life teaching the truth and reaching out in love to everyone he met. He didn’t concentrate on the movers and shakers of society (although he did not ignore them, either); rather, he hung out with lepers and tax collectors, blue collar workers and prostitutes, and everywhere he went he brought transformation into people’s lives. Jesus touched them, and they had the sense that they had been touched by God. It wasn’t the power of force; it was the power of love – God’s love. He modelled it for us in the way he lived his life, and even when human beings rejected him, he did not strike back, but allowed them to kill him by nailing him to a cross. In that act, he was saying to us, “You may be able to kill me, but the one thing you can never kill is my love for youâ€.

Christmas tells us about a God who believes in the power of love, not the power of force. Christmas also tells us about a God who thinks you make a difference by coming close, not by standing far away and yelling instructions.

Religious history is full of stories of gods who give their wisdom at long distance – gods who aren’t crazy enough to get close to this dangerous human race, but stay safely divine, far away in heaven, and send their messengers to give us their words of advice. But the Christian story is not that sort of story. In the Gospel for Christmas Day St. John calls Jesus ‘The Word’; he says, ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory’ (John 1:14) – or, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases it, ‘The Word became a human being and moved into our neighbourhood’ (‘The Message’). This God is not a general who barks orders at his soldiers by radio from a safe headquarters miles away from the front lines; rather, he comes right to the front lines and knows what it’s like to wade through the mud in the trenches: ‘What if God was one of us?’ Well, he was!

And the thing is this: by coming close to us in this way, by living as one of us, he showed us two things. He showed us what God is like, and he showed us what a real human life is meant to be like.

There’s a story about a little girl who was drawing a picture in Sunday School class one day. When the teacher asked what she was drawing, she replied, ‘God!’ The teacher said, ‘But no one knows what God looks like!’ The little girl replied, ‘They will when I’m done!’ And when Jesus was done – when he had lived his life of love for God and others, when he had gone all the way to the cross to show us the true extent of God’s love for us – then we humans finally had a true portrait of what God is like. God is like Jesus.

But Jesus not only shows us what God is like; he also shows us what human life is meant to be like. We have a common saying, don’t we? ‘I’m only human’. Usually we use that saying as an excuse for the times we mess up, the times we fall short of what we know we should be. It’s as if we’re claiming that being human is an excuse for being bad! And, of course, you and I have never seen a human being who wasn’t flawed in some way.

But Jesus came and lived the sort of life that God dreamed for us humans when he created us in the first place. He told us that the two great commandments – the ones everything else depends on – are that we love God with all our heart, and we love our neighbour as ourselves. And then he lived that out in his daily life. To learn to follow him is to learn to be truly human, the way God intended human life to be lived. It’s not about who has the most toys, or who is the most popular, or who can force the most people to do what they want. It’s about right relationships - with God, and with our neighbours. Get that wrong, and we’ve missed the whole point. Get it right, and we’ve grasped the reason we were created in the first place.

But there’s another aspect to this as well. Jesus knows what it’s like to be tempted and to suffer as a human being, so he can sympathise with us in our suffering and our weakness. Listen to how 'The Message' Bible translates Hebrews 4:14-16:

The song ‘What if God was one of us?’ also has this question: ‘If God had a name, what would it be?’ The Christmas story tells us that when God came to us in his Son, he chose a name for himself: ‘Jesus’, or ‘Yeshua’ in Hebrew, which means ‘God saves’ or ‘God to the rescue’. This name tells us so much about the character of God. The old saying, ‘God helps those who help themselves’, is completely wrong; the Bible tells us that God helps those who can’t help themselves! That’s why he came: to save us from sin and evil and death and to lead us into freedom and joy and goodness and love.

I’ve been asking the question, ‘Is God crazy?’ and of course my answer has been ‘no’. But there’s a sense in which God is crazy: he’s crazy about us! He loves us so much that he was prepared to come and live a human life, to save us and show us the way. The Son of God became human, so that we humans could learn to be like the Son of God. And that starts today, as we put our trust in him, and as we commit ourselves to following him. Perhaps these familiar words are a good prayer for us to use:

Cambridge Anglican priest Maggi Dawn is posting a series of poems for Advent and Christmas on her excellent blog; the authors include well known poets like T.S. Eliot and Edwin Muir, along with some lesser known names. Check it out, along with the other good things Maggi has to offer, here.

I wonder if readers of BH would join me in praying for Angela? She is our Diocesan Youth Co-ordinator in the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton. At a very young age (in her early 20's) she has just begun treatments for leukemia. She is blogging about the experience here.

Loving God, please look after Angela, and bring her safely through this difficult time.

Forgive this piece of blatant egocentricity, but in case anyone's interested, a friend of mine has posted a couple of my songs on his blog. You can find them here. I don't quite understand all the technicalities of how he gets them to play, but he tells me they'll be up for three or four more days, so go and have a listen, if you feel so inclined.

(Strictly speaking, one of them is a song and one is a guitar instrumental)

Tim

I'm sure Leslie and I and many other Canadians are thinking and praying for our American neighbours as they go to the polls tomorrow in mid-term elections. This prayer seems appropriate:

Hello everyone, Tim Chesterton here again. On October 13th Marci and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary. The day afterwards we went for a walk in a ravine not far from our home, and the following song lyric has been evolving gradually since then. I hope you all enjoy it.

Tim Chesterton, Oct. 16th, 22nd 2006

Posted in its original form at Tale Spin on Oct. 16th, and modified almost daily since then!

Tim here again. Patrick Mead was kind enough to ask me for more of my song lyrics, and being a normal egotistical musician, that's an invitation I can't refuse. Here's another one for your listening - well, reading - pleasure. For the musicians among you, it's in a slow 3/4 time, mainly in C but starting and ending on an A minor which gives it a bit of an air of pathos.

By the way, this is a true story. The name of the town is Arborfield in northeastern Saskatchewan.

Well, perhaps it’s time for me to stir the pot a bit.

Before he left, Rick suggested to me that I might like to post on a couple of specific topics. The first of them, not surprisingly, was Christian pacifism. It’s no secret that Rick and I disagree strongly on this issue. The specific question Rick asked me was this:

I think this short paragraph raises a whole host of issues. Three that come to mind would be:

The second question is beyond my expertise. My relatively uninformed opinion is that the war in Iraq has very little to do with terrorism, but of course I only have to say that and a hundred people will post all sorts of evidence to the contrary – and then a hundred others will produce evidence to refute this – and off we go again, everyone confirmed in their previous prejudices! So I’ll leave that one to the politicos and I’ll concentrate on the first and third questions. I’ll address the first question in this post, and then go on to the third in the next (assuming I survive the experience…).

The question I want to address is ‘Should a Christian be involved in war?’ It is not ‘Should a secular state wage a war?’ Jesus and Paul are not on record as having given Caesar advice as to whether or not he ought to wage war. They are, however, on record as directing Christians to love their enemies and pray for those who hate them.

Christian pacifism flows from our beliefs about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, and about the call of the Church.

First, Christian pacifism means imitating a God who loves his enemies. This is a core belief of the Christian Gospel. Paul tells us that while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son. God’s response to his enemies was not to blast them off the face of the earth in a pre-emptive strike, but to reach out with the offer of forgiveness and reconciliation through the death of his Son. This offer is made to everyone, even the most unlikely candidates. And Jesus tells us that it is part of our responsibility as Christians to imitate our heavenly Father in this. ‘You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbour and hate your enemyâ€. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous’ (Matthew 5:43-45 TNIV).

Second, Christian pacifism flows from a commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. When the early Christians called Jesus ‘Saviour and Lord’, they were using terms that were politically loaded in the ancient world. These were official titles of the Roman emperor, but the Christians boldly claimed them for Jesus. In doing this, they were proclaiming that they had an allegiance that came before their allegiance to all worldly rulers and states.

A Christian is a disciple of Jesus – which means that we take Jesus’ words and example as our rule of life. Those words are clear and unequivocal on the issue of our response to our enemies. He told his disciples to turn the other cheek, and if the Roman occupier commanded them to carry a soldier’s pack one mile, they were to take it two miles (Matthew 5:38-42). They were to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, bless those who curse them, pray for those who mistreat them (Luke 6:27-31). When Peter used a sword to defend him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus rebuked him and said, “all who draw the sword will die by the sword†(Matthew 26:52).

It is sometimes said, “Jesus had several dealings with Roman soldiers and he never told them to leave the armyâ€. This of course is an argument from silence; we have no idea what he might or might not have told them. However, it is also true that Jesus had dealings with prostitutes, and he is nowhere recorded as having told them to leave their profession. Are we to argue from this that prostitution is an acceptable calling for a Christian disciple?

Third, Christian pacifism is energized by a belief in the power of the Holy Spirit. Saul of Tarsus was an enemy of the Gospel who had participated in the murders of Christians, but the Holy Spirit was able to save him and make him a missionary. What would have happened to the cause of the Gospel if the early Christians had felt it acceptable to defend themselves against his persecution with the sword, and someone had killed Saul of Tarsus before his conversion? How would that have been a victory for the Kingdom of God?

Love of our enemies gives room for the Holy Spirit to work in people’s hearts. Christian pacifism refuses to believe that human resources are all we can depend on. Rather, it entrusts itself to the power of God and lives in obedience to the teaching of Jesus.

Fourthly, Christian pacifism stems from a clear understanding of the distinctive mission of the Church. Christians are Christians first, citizens of their country second. In fact, Peter tells us that we are a holy nation, a people belonging to God, and Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. The Church of Jesus Christ is not called to be involved in the wars the non-Christian world wages against each other. Rather, we are called to be an outpost of the Kingdom of God, living by the standards of that Kingdom even now. Paul spells out for us what that looks like:

I find it interesting that the early Christians almost unanimously interpreted the New Testament as forbidding followers of Jesus to participate in war. For example, the ‘Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus’, dating from about 215 AD, has the following to say about those who wish to become catechumens (i.e. those who are learning to become Christians):

Many other early Christian writers take the same line. Tertullian wrote,

Origen wrote,

Justin wrote

To sum up: Christian pacifism rests on the example of a God who loves his enemies, on the call of Christians to follow the Lordship of Jesus Christ and put his teaching into practice, and on the power of the Holy Spirit to work in the hearts of the most evil of people and turn them to God. Christian pacifism also takes seriously the call of the Church to be a distinct society with a special mission to bear witness to the Kingdom of God. In the early years of its life, before Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire, this mission was almost unanimously interpreted as excluding participation in war.

No doubt many readers of 'Brutally Honest' will disagree with the position I have outlined here. I’m fine with that, and I will attempt to answer your objections! However, be patient with me – like everyone else here, I have a day job as well, so I may not get to your responses immediately!

Next time I write, I hope to address the second part of the question: Is it possible for a sincere Christian to (a) support the just war theory, and (b) support the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq?

I follow a discipline of daily prayer known as the ‘Daily Office’. This involves setting time aside for prayer twice a day, morning and evening, using a set form which includes psalms, scripture readings, and prayers; the form I use is found in the Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada. I find this discipline helpful, because there are many times when I’m feeling too tired or lethargic to really have the energy to make a prayer life for myself on my own steam. The Daily Office gives me enough set material to ‘prime the pump’, if you like, and also leaves space for me to add my own prayers and intercessions as I'm able. I don’t choose the psalms and readings; they are set in the ‘daily office lectionary’ and I simply have to read them and deal with them as they come my way each day. This is also helpful; without it, I’d probably make the rounds of my favourite Bible passages and miss out all the difficult bits. If you’d like an example of what a Daily Office looks like, look here.

Lately in the daily office lectionary we’ve been reading through the book of Job. In the past I’ve often found old Job a bit irksome, but this time through I’ve been captivated by him – a man going through senseless suffering, and yet refusing to take refuge in old platitudes about God blessing the good and punishing the wicked. I’ve found that I’m purposely adding to the readings each day – reading the chapter before and the chapter after as well, to get a better sense of the big sweep of what’s being said.

In the past couple of days I’ve been struck by Job’s picture of the godly life in chapters 29 to 31. Job is not being self-righteous here; he’s asking ‘God, why have you punished me so severely, when I’ve done the things you wanted me to do?’ Which one of us hasn’t felt that way at one time or another?

But it’s not the problem of evil I want to address here; it’s Job’s picture of a godly life. Listen to this:

And how about this in chapter 31:

I get the sense that Job was a man of power and influence, but as a godly man he thought it was an integral part of his faith to use his power and influence to bless the poor and needy. Godliness for him wasn’t just a private compartment of his life; it didn’t just mean not swearing, not cheating on his wife, not telling lies or stealing. It also meant doing all he could to help those who were less fortunate than he.

I also am a person of power and influence. I am in the richest 3% of the population of planet earth, and I live in a country with a democratic government, which I can influence through my vote. What would it mean for me to live the way of life Job describes?

What to write for my first post at ‘Brutally Honest’?

Readers of this blog will already know that Rick and I come from very different places politically. And Rick has suggested to me a few topics that will make those differences even more obvious. But it seems somehow ungracious to start off by posting a political challenge to the prevailing culture here.

So – given the fact that Rick and his Good Woman are setting off on a wedding anniversary trip this week, I think I’ll start by posting a wedding sermon, preached at the wedding of a couple called Trevor and Natalie about three weeks ago…

Maybe it’s the age I’m getting to, but I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that a number of my friends seem to be celebrating twenty-fifth wedding anniversaries; Marci and I celebrated our own twenty-fifth in October of 2004. My best man, Paul Thoms, married Helen DeVries exactly one week after our wedding; Paul and Helen live in Newfoundland now, and we rarely hear from them, but we got a nice surprise on the evening of our twenty-fifth - a phone call from Newfoundland, letting us know that Paul and Helen hadn’t forgotten the significance of the date. Our kids threw a little party for us to help us celebrate the day, and our oldest daughter gave us a beautiful card on which she had written the following words: ‘Love is ninety-nine percent persistence; you two are the most persistent people I know’.

I think she was on to something there. Of course, I know that there are lots of circumstances that complicate things, but I also know that if you were to ask me what was the most important lesson I’d learned about marriage in my almost twenty-seven years in the married state, I’d give you my answer with no hesitation at all: love is a choice, not a feeling.

Of course, there is a feeling we call ‘love’, and it’s a wonderful feeling, too. People write songs and poems about it; Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan star in movies about it, and it sells millions of dollars worth of magazines and paperback books. But last year at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival David Francey made an interesting observation on this subject at one of the small stages; he said, “There are lots of songs about falling in love, and there are lots of songs about falling out of love, but there aren’t many songs about just being in love, and all the ups and downs of it, how you make it last foreverâ€. I think that’s true, and I think the reason there aren’t too many songs about how you make it last is simple: in order to make it last, you have to go beyond love as a feeling to love as a choice.

The truth is that the Christian understanding of ‘love’ is very different from the popular version, and this is illustrated by a subtle difference in the wording of the wedding vows Trevor and Natalie will make to each other today. In soap opera land, when a couple get married, the words they say to each other are “I doâ€. “I do†is an answer to a question about your feelings: “Do you love this person?†Now, I don’t have to ask Trevor and Natalie that question today: I know they love each other! That’s why they’re here!

But all of us who have long-term marriages know that, sooner or later, the intensity of our feeling for each other begins to fade. When this happens, some people get terrified; they think their love for each other is dying. This is the point at which many people bail out; “I don’t love him any moreâ€, they explain, which means, “I don’t have the same intense feeling for him that I had when we first fell in love. So I obviously married the wrong person, and I need to get out as fast as possible and find the right personâ€.

But the truth is that the waning of those high intensity feelings is normal; it doesn’t signal the end of a relationship, but rather the beginning of the next phase of the relationship. That next phase is about learning that love is a decision. This is signified by the promise Trevor and Natalie will make to each other today, which is not “I do†but “I willâ€. This is not a question about feelings, but about choices. The word ‘love’ in the Bible very rarely refers to feelings; it usually refers to actions. To love someone in the Bible means to serve them, to bless them, to do good things for them, day in and day out, whether you feel like it or not. And the good news about marriage that I want to share with you is that when couples make this choice, day in and day out, something deeper and far more lasting grows inside. It’s different from the early feelings of romantic love that bring us together; it’s deeper, stronger, more stable – it’s the experience Jesus talks about in our Gospel for today when he says “The two shall become one flesh†(Matthew 19:5).

Love is a decision. Today Trevor and Natalie will make some radical promises: I will ask, “Will you love him, comfort him, honour and protect him, and forsaking all others… be faithful to him†– not “as long as the feeling of being in love lastsâ€, but rather, “as long as you both shall live?†And they will each answer, “I willâ€.

This is hard work, as all of us who are married know. There are many days when we don’t feel like delivering on this promise. I’m a naturally selfish person; I may be the only one like that here today, but I suspect not! As a naturally selfish person I’d far rather be loved than love; I’d far rather be the main character in my own play than be a servant in someone else’s. But if I take this promise seriously, it means that day in and day out I will be constantly on the look out for ways to do acts of kindness and compassion for my wife – whether practical things like doing my fair share of the work, or relational things like being there to listen and care when she needs a sympathetic ear and an arm to support her. That’s what I signed up for when I said, “I willâ€. A good, lasting marriage is built on thousands of little decisions to say ‘no’ to my own selfishness and ‘yes’ to the decision to love.

Where does the strength to do this come from? Listen to these words again from our first reading, from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes:
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one may prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).

What is this ‘threefold cord’? It could be interpreted as referring to husband, wife, and God. Marriage was God’s plan from the beginning, as Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel: “From the beginning of creation ‘God made them male and female’. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’†(Matthew 19:4-5). This is not something Trevor and Natalie are making up today. Rather, it’s something God has designed, and they are entering into it together. God has a stake in the success of their marriage. God is ready and willing to help, if we are ready and willing to ask for his help.

So God has called Trevor and Natalie to this day, and we’re here to rejoice with them. As they  make their vows now in God’s presence, we will pray for them, that God will help them to truly live out what is happening today, as they leave this place, as Jesus says, ‘No longer two, but one flesh’.

I gave those particular words some pondering as I wondered what exactly to do when I'm away for a while next week enjoying my bride all to myself as we belatedly celebrate  25 years of marriage.  But then I decided to just relax and let my guest bloggers do what they do best, blog their bottoms off.  So next week, you'll enjoy Leslie's grace-filled prose and Nick's thought provoking posts while I enjoy spending some much needed time with Mrs. Brutally Honest.

But wait.  There's more.  Joining the Brutally Honest guest blogging honor roll will be Tim Chesterton of Apprentice on the Way.  Regulars will remember this post where I announced Tim's removal from my Religious Left blogroll, a special place for... let's just say... 'special' people.  That's not to say however that Tim isn't special.  He is exceptionally special because he happens to represent well the kind of leftist I can tolerate.  Oh, I may not agree with him much and rarely, frankly, do but I have respect for the man because he shows respect to me first and he has a way of disagreeing with me in a most agreeable fashion.  Some days ago I think I stunned him by inviting him to guest blog and he then stunned me by agreeing to do so. 

By way of introduction, I'll post this autobiographical piece:

I think Tim also loves engaging in civil discourse and I ask those of you who regularly visit and who will likely disagree with Tim's views to do so with the utmost of respect and decor.  Hey, he's a priest and has friends in high places, why would you want to do anything but?

Stay tuned.