Timng is Everything

Ok, I admit, I have a very caustic, sarcastic sense of humour. Most people seem to think I'm fairly funny, at least at times. I guess I have my moments. The trouble with this kind of humour is that timing is everything. Say something too soon and you've just insulted someone, too late and you've lost the moment and it's not funny. I'm afraid my timing has sometimes been less than perfect. My kids have inherited this sense of humour, but when they were younger it didn't always work because their timing was off. So I would remind them of the importance of timing. They're way better at it now.

I've often wondered why Jesus came when he did. Why that particular time in history. Was the world an especially bad place at the time? Was there something about the Jewish people that triggered it? Did God just suddenly say "well, now's as good a time as any"?

I have a lot of problems with the violence of the Old Testament and God's part in it. I also have problems with a lot of the rules and regulations in the Old Testament which can seem arbitrary and outdated.

Lots of very smart, published, people think that the Bible isn't so much a rule book as it is a giant narrative of God's people. A narrative that has a single overarching theme of Love. That it's the story of his people and how they progressed, and failed, and progressed again. How God led them, and his faithfulness despite their failures.

In Rob Bell's latest book he  points out that a lot of the less progressive rules that were instituted were actually very progressive at the time. How, given the culture, what seems like an arbitrary, or even backwards rule, was actually inching them forward.

All of which brings me back to sarcasm and Jesus.

Maybe God was moving his people slowly forward, baby step by baby step, until they had been brought to the point that he could send Jesus and they would finally get it. Perhaps, if Jesus had come sooner, it would have been too much of a difference for them and his teachings would have been rejected outright. Maybe God looked down and said "Now's the time. They're ready for the next step".

Which makes me wonder some more.

If the Bible is the story of progression towards Love, why do we keep quoting it when we're trying to deal with modern issues like homosexuals, divorce, and the roles of women. Maybe those were baby steps and the time has come to move on.

No Pigs Allowed

And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” And he said to them, “Go.” So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon-possessed men. And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region. (Matthew 8:28-34 ESV)

If you've gone to church very much at all, this is a familiar story. I have always wondered why Jesus was begged to leave, and why he sent the demons into the pigs.

It is unclear if these particular people were Jewish. And, if they were, what were they doing with pigs in the first place? Perhaps there is more to this story than meets the eye.

Jesus seldom did, or said anything that didn't have several layers of meaning. It occurred to me the other day that perhaps this was a living parable.

We as Christians tend to live our lives knowing that we aren't perfect; that there are all sorts of things wrong with the way we live the Christian life. We are willing to see, and admit to the common, acceptable, and perhaps visible wrongs in our life such as; jealousy, anger, selfishness etc. But when we start to let Jesus really work in our lives, he starts to point out the not so obvious things: things we may have buried so deep that we don't even see them, things that define us, and, sometimes things that have even been sanctioned by the church.

The pigs in our life.

And sometimes this becomes too much. We just want him to leave. To leave us and our life, and let us go back to living our comfortable, predicable lives. We're fine just the way we are - thank you very much - and we beg him to leave. But if we are serious about following Christ, we have to let him not only exorcise the demons that we can see, we have to let him get rid of the pigs that we don't see. We have to get rid of non-loving things like our attitudes towards gays and lesbians, people of differing religious beliefs, or that difficult person at work. They have to rush down the bank and into the sea.

Attitudes like this have no place in the Kingdom of God - just like a Jew had no business with a herd of pigs.