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the-almighty-gob-john-langley · 8 months

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The Whole World's Going to Hell in a Handcart, it seems!

The entire world's going to hell in a handcart, it seems.

From someone who formerly had a reasonably high profile, both here, and around the world, my decision to step back from the torchlight, rather that spotlight to a more comfortable life of complete obscurity has provided me with a front-row seat to observe the lunacy of other humans I share this planet with: and it's a shit show, putting it bluntly.

Today I caught a brief, thankfully, glimpse of a shadow health politician proudly announcing the introduction of teeth-brushing classes in schools should his party be elected to govern the country, and this further reinforced just how absolutely on-point I was in my previous blog post when I referred to this country, never mind the rest of the world, becoming increasingly screwed by the 'Millennials' and their 'Gen X' offspring. Dumbing down on just about everything from music to even uni courses nowadays suggests the common denominator that joins the dots is to present everything at bottom of the barrel level so that understanding couldn't be any simpler. Frustrating for those with a higher level of common sense and intelligence, and a walk in the park for the majority who are taken to be as thick as two short planks.

I just ran a quick scan of useless university courses, more aptly described perhaps as studying for a hobby. Take, for instance, 'Viticulture and Oenology.' It sounds fascinating, right? Well, that is until you realise that to flog it to eighteen-year-olds as 'wine making and brewing' doesn't sound anywhere near as attractive as a selling point for probably a twenty of thirty grand course with a degree in getting pissed. My understanding as most students do this every weekend and don't need a bloody degree in it. All these Viticulture and Oneology students need to add is a Masters in cannabis plant growing, and let's face it, all angles of student life outside of studies I'd say were covered.

Okay, how about this for you? Floral Design. Now, I won't say too much about this one as Ricky Gervais has already covered it in his show 'Armageddon' and he is far better than I can ever aspire to be when it comes to jocular commentary - after all, it's his job and he gets paid for it! However, It's basic bloody flower arranging, that with a few self-help books and an artistic eye, a five-year-old could probably do with a little help from an older family member.

If, on the other hand, you're into saving people from swallowing poo, syringe needles, used sanitary towels, and toilet paper, then the following course for you is, wait for it, 'Surf Science.' Yes, believe it, or not, that white foamy stuff you see rolling in towards the beach is surf, and there's a science to it.

Now, personally speaking, in my obvious ignorance I wouldn't have thought there was too much science to this, as a quick search on Google informs me that "Waves come from the wind, plus, the wind blows strongest when isobars are close together in a low-pressure system," - and hey presto, I've just saved myself from three years of study and a minimum of just over nine grand for the foundation course alone. I wonder if they've created a degree course specifically teaching children to brush their teeth yet? Oh, wait, that's probably to come. You see, these courses are all, perhaps, very well and good, however, I somehow don't really see the best of them in flower arranging, or winemaking taking on the likes of Oxford's Magdalen College in a round of University Challenge - and if I ever do it will be the final confirmation that this country really has hit rock bottom and we are all well and truly fucked!

Trust me, by all accounts we're on the way right now because those millennials and their offspring have enjoyed the benefits of a relatively cushy lifestyle where needs have been met, for the most part by the state, and yet feel fit to complain that they are somehow still hard done by, and life is unfair. My heart bleeds for them, of course, and my advice, as always, is to find a hard shoulder to cry on - of which the M1 has plenty, and to make sure in doing so that rush hour would be the best time by far.

Better still, next time there is another of these ludicrous 'marches for Palestine, and those attending really want to get their message out there, the M1 starts at Edgware in north London and ends between Micklefield and Aberford, just outside Leeds. Trust me, they'll have news media flooding in from around the world to convey their protest. Why not, when the equally delusional 'Just Stop Oil' and similar protest groups have pioneered the way in respect of impeding traffic - and who knows, this may even be another useless university course in the making, along with basket weaving for other basket cases that will be specifically designed for Millennials and their Gen X offspring.

Now, believe it, or not, I have nothing against protests per se. However, to us sane people, you'd think that even the micro-iota of common sense would inform those marching for Palestine are giving Hamas: a proscribed terrorist organisation, by the way, the kind of global publicity they couldn't buy if they hired the world's best publicists, and make this group appear like normal, rational, human beings when their modus operandi could be described as being somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, and terrorism is the new 'cool'. Having said that, I'm in no way dismissing the fact that there are two sides to this conflict and there are questions to be asked of Israel's IDF also. However, apart from the feeling I have that Israel is very much the underdog given that Islam extremists insist on death to all Jews, it's the very same extremists who don't care who dies in their war, and this includes women and children, as it's all in the name of Allah anyway.

Do you remember in my previous blogpost, how I referred to language now more commonly being distorted from its original meaning to whatever someone chooses it to be nowadays? Well, here's yet another word to add to the collection, 'genocide.' You see, I would call Hitler's eradication of the Jews to be genocide, which oddly enough, seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to that of Islam versus Jews: and purely coincidental, of course. Or am I being my default cynical self?

Look at it this way, is Israel carpet-bombing Palestine? I think not. Are Israeli troops mowing down every Palestinian in sight? I think not. Is Israel deploying deadly chemicals over Palestine? Again, I think not. Yet, language has now become so confusing in interpretation that Israel is facing a charge brought to a top United Nations court by South Africa. So, do you not find it more than a little odd that among the judges hearing this case is one from Russia (don't mention the war on Ukraine, among other things). One from China, which, of course, is the bastion of human rights issues. Another from Somalia, where terrorist attacks targeting places frequented by civilians are commonplace and indiscriminate, and lastly, let's not forget Uganda, who seem well on their way to an entry in the Guinness Book Of Records where their human rights are concerned:

Significant human rights issues include credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; forced disappearance; torture, and cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by government agencies; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative; serious abuses in a conflict, including unlawful civilian harm; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence, threats of violence, and unjustified arrests or prosecution of journalists, and censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations; serious flaws with citizens’ ability to determine their government through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government corruption; serious government restrictions on or harassment of domestic and international human rights organizations; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including domestic and intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and child, early, and forced marriage; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; and the existence of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults, albeit not fully enforced. Well, I'm surprised this Kangaroo court didn't include a Saudi judge too! Aren't you?

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johnhardinsawyer · 1 year

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Where are you headed?

John Sawyer

Bedford Presbyterian Church

4 / 2 / 23 – Palm/Passion Sunday

Matthew 21:1-11

Matthew 26:17-30

“Where are you headed?”

(Straight to. . . Wherever Jesus Goes)

When I was in High School, there was a rock band called Drivin’ N Cryin’ that made it big, regionally, touring across the Southeast. Just in case you’re wonderin’, yes, both the words “Drivin’” and “Cryin’” end with apostrophes and these two words are connected with the letter “N,” as opposed to the word “a-n-d.” Anyway, probably the most enduring song from Drivin’ N Cryin’ is about this kid who lives kind of a wild life and comes from a neighborhood and a home where a lot of people are living wild lives. The song definitely wasn’t written for church. It was written to be sung really loud in crowded bars and theatres – and, I won’t ask the choir to join in with me this morning – but the chorus goes like this: I’m goin’ straight to Hell, just like my Mama says. I’m goin’ straight to Hell.[1]

Now, I hesitated to sing these words in church this morning, but the title of today’s sermon is “Where are you headed?” And this song was the first thing that came to mind in a week when children and teachers and a tortured soul with too many guns were all shot dead in an elementary school in Nashville, thirty-nine migrants were killed in a riot at an immigration facility in Mexico, and people were picking up the pieces after catastrophic deadly storms in Mississippi. . . and that was just on Monday. By Wednesday, someone had text messaged everyone in the church, posing as me, using my name and asking for money, and I was like “What in the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks?!?!”

Over the years, there have been many people who have said that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, or a handcart, or in a handbag, but sometimes, it would appear that the world has eschewed the need for a carrying receptacle – like a handbasket or handcart – and is just going to hell on its own. . . We’re goin’ straight to. . . without a handbag. . . Lord, save us. . .

In today’s first scripture reading – the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem – we are not told if he carried anything like a handbasket on his borrowed donkey and colt, but I’m sure there were those who wondered where this miracle-working Rabbi from Nazareth was headed as he rode into the city. Who was this guy, riding on borrowed livestock? What had he come to do? Where was he headed?

To be clear, Jesus was always clear about where he was headed. Three times in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples something like:

We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised. (Matthew 20:18-19)[2]

This never goes over well with the disciples. We see Peter, in Matthew 16, greatly agitated with Jesus. And in Matthew 17, the disciples are greatly distressed when they hear Jesus talking this way. Where is Jesus headed? Well. . . to Jerusalem. . . to die. . . One of my favorite sayings of Jesus foretelling his own death – if one can have a favorite saying of Jesus foretelling his own death – is when Jesus is on the way toward Jerusalem and he gets word that King Herod wants to kill him. Jesus responds by laying out his agenda:

Go and tell that old fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing. See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ (Luke 13:32-35)

“Listen,” Jesus says, “I’m going to go about the work of bringing healing and wholeness to people who are sick in mind and body and spirit, and then I am going up to Jerusalem because that is the place that kills prophets. I have wanted to gather you people together and protect you with God’s loving protection, but you don’t want what I have to offer. I’m on the way to you, though – threats or no threats – and there just might come a day when you will say, ‘Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

In today’s story, we find Jesus heading into the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it with people literally shouting, “Hosanna! . . . Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Matthew 21:9) “Who is this?” the people of the city ask. “This is the prophet Jesus,” the crowd responds.[3] As the story goes, the whole city is stirred up – “in turmoil”[4] – “quaking with agitation.”[5] Just so you know, this is the same word that gets used just a few chapters later in Matthew to describe the quaking of the earth when Jesus dies on the cross.[6]

We who hear this story, two thousand years later, and re-hear it again and again year after year on Palm Sunday – Passion Sunday – can’t help but think that we are watching a car crash happening at the speed of a donkey and a colt making their way through a large crowd. We, who already know the whole story, know where this is headed – whether the crowd or the disciples know it in full, or not. We know the hell that awaits – the false accusations by those afraid of losing power, the petty politics of the Jews and the Romans, the betrayal, the arrest, the beating, the mocking, the crown of thorns, the cross, the nails, the spear, the cry of abandonment, the slain body laid in a tomb.

“Hosanna!” the people cry out as Jesus rides into the city – a word that means, “Lord, help us! Lord, save us!”[7] “Where are you headed Jesus?” Straight to. . . Well, just where he said he’d go.

The great Reformed theologian Karl Barth writes about this:

Who was God and what did God do through the suffering and death of this man Jesus?

It so happened that in. . . Jesus, God. . . came into the world, which God had created and against all odds still loved. God took [on] human nature. . . and became human, like the rest of us, in order to put an end to the world’s fight against God and also against itself, and to replace our human disorder by God’s design. In Jesus God’s name was hallowed, made God’s kingdom come, God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven, as we say in the Lord’s Prayer . . . To accomplish this, God not only bandaged, but healed the wounds of the world; God helped humankind not only in part and temporarily, but radically and for good in the person of God’s beloved Son; God delivered us from evil and took us to God’s own heart as God’s own children. . . It happened through this man on the cross that God canceled out and swept away all our human wickedness, our pride, our anxiety, our greeds and our false pretenses, whereby we had continually offended God and made life difficult, if not impossible, for ourselves and for others. God crossed out what had made our life fundamentally terrifying, dark and distressing. . . God did away with it. It is no longer part of us, it is behind us. . .

God saved us and made us free to live in God’s everlasting kingdom; God removed the burden and took it upon God’s own self. God the innocent took the place of us the guilty. God the mighty took the place of us the weak. God the living One took the place of us the dying.

This, my friends, is the invisible event that took place in the suffering and death of the man hanging on the middle cross on Golgotha. This is reconciliation: his [condemnation] our liberation, his defeat our victory, his mortal pain the beginning of our joy, his death the birth of our life.[8]

In Jesus Christ, God was (and is) bringing the kingdom of heaven into the world, bringing all the world into the kingdom of heaven, and being willing to go through hell to do it. There are some traditions in which Jesus literally goes down to hell, to bring out those who have been imprisoned there.[9] In church, whenever we say the ancient Apostles Creed, we are invited to say the words, “He descended into hell” as part of this tradition. There are many people, throughout many centuries, who have thought, and written, and imagined many things about a literal place called “Hell” that is the opposite of “Heaven” and is supposedly where bad people go when they die.

For my own part, though, I don’t spend much time thinking about this kind of stuff. There is enough hell for us to see and experience right here in this life. Besides, I’m convinced that the hell on earth Jesus encountered takes the teeth out of any hell – whether it is in this world or in the world that is to come – so that we might encounter some of heaven, instead. We don’t always see it this way, usually dwelling more on the hell we see than the heaven that is always being offered to us. But Jesus offers us a glimpse, a taste, maybe even a full-on vision of more than we can see when we read the news, or get the test results from our doctor, or look at our bank balance, or get caught in whatever personal hells this world might throw our way. Yes, this life can be so hard – hard as hell. But we have a God who knows how hard it can be for us – a God who is for us when life is so hard for us.

We see this at work in today’s second scripture reading, when Jesus – in the face of the hell that lies ahead and the betrayal and denial of the friends who are sitting around the table with him – says, “Take, eat; this is my body. . .” and “. . . this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:26-28). Here, Jesus is offering his very self to give his friends – to give us – the strength, and the Holy presence of mind, and heart, and spirit to face all the hell that lies ahead. . . until the kingdom of heaven can be seen on the earth, until earth starts to look more and more like heaven. . .

There are some days when heaven is so hard to see, and yet we long for heaven, we pray for heaven, and as followers of Jesus, we are called to work for heaven until it is on earth as it is in heaven. It just so happens that tomorrow evening, the Monday of Holy Week, the Session of this church will be meeting to discuss – and possibly vote upon – a new vision and mission statement for the congregation. This is just a rough draft, but the first line for the new vision statement is:

With God’s help, Bedford Presbyterian Church envisions a congregation, community, and world that is more loving, peaceful, and whole – on earth as it is in heaven.

There is more to it, of course, but to envision and work for a better world – to have hope even when confronted by hell – is a bold stance to take. We live in a world that could definitely be more loving, peaceful, and whole – and we claim to follow the One who humbly rides into this world to make it on earth as it is in heaven. Would we dare to be part of God’s Holy purpose? Would we be open to following the One who came to bring an end to the hells that threaten to undo us? If we do dare – if we are open – this Table is a good place to begin. . . or to begin, again – trusting in the loving, strengthening presence of the One who knows what it means to sacrifice, and suffer, and then. . . in the end. . . triumph over any and all suffering – even death and hell.

In the end, as the story goes, the disciples finish their meal, sing a hymn and go out into the night – to the Garden of Gethsemane, and all the hell and all the heaven that lies ahead. In just a little while, this morning, we will do the same.

Hosanna. . . Lord, save us. . . May we envision heaven here on earth, trusting in God’s saving power to make us – and the world, through us – more loving, peaceful, and whole, until it is on earth as it is in heaven.

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

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_to_Hell_(Drivin_N_Cryin_song), https://genius.com/Drivin-n-cryin-straight-to-hell-lyrics.

[2] See also Matthew 16:21-23 and 17:22-23.

[3] See Matthew 21:10-11.

[4] See Matthew 21:10.

[5] Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) 746.

[6] See Matthew 27:51.

[7] Walter Bauer, 899.

[8] Karl Barth, Deliverance to the Captives (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001) 79-80. Edited by JHS for gender neutrality.

[9] See Ephesians 4:9 and 1 Peter 3:19.

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