Just forget it, Arthur.

Robert Capon on Luke 14:1-14 and Christ’s lesson on dinner party etiquette:

At the end of his speech to the host, Jesus specifically ties this condemnation of bookkeeping to the resurrection. 

‘You will be happy,’ he tells his host in verse 14, ‘precisely because these losers and deadbeats you invite won’t be able to repay you.’ 

He says, in other words, that happiness can never come in until the bookkeeping stops, until the hand that clutches at the dance goes dead and lets the dance happen freely. And he says that the place where that happy consequence will burst upon us is at the resurrection of the just. And the just, please note, are not stuffy, righteous types with yard-long lists of good works, but simply all the forgiven sinners of the world who live by faith — who trust Jesus and laugh out loud at the layoff of all the accountants.

And the unjust? Well, the unjust are all the forgiven sinners of the world who, stupidly, live by unfaith — who are going to insist on showing up at the resurrection with all their record books, as if it were an IRS audit. The unjust are the idiots who are going to try to talk Jesus into checking his bookkeeping against theirs. 

And do you know what Jesus is going to say to them — what, for example, he will say to his host if he comes to the resurrection with such a request? I think he will say, 

“Just forget it, Arthur. I suppose we have those books around here somewhere, and if you’re really determined to stand in front of my great white throne and make an ass of yourself, I guess they can be opened (Rev. 20:12). Frankly, though, nobody up here pays any attention to them. What will happen will be that while you’re busy reading and weeping over everything in those books, I will go and open my other book (Rev. 20:12, again), the book of life — the book that has in it the names of everybody I ever drew to myself by dying and rising. And when I open that book, I’m going to read out to the whole universe every last word that’s written there. And you know what that’s going to be? It’s going to be just Arthur. Nothing else. None of your bad deeds, because I erased them all. And none of your good deeds, because I didn’t count them, I just enjoyed them. So what I’ll read out, Arthur, will be just Arthur! real loud. And my Father will smile and say, ‘Hey, Arthur! You’re just the way I pictured you!’ And the universe will giggle and say, ‘That’s some Arthur you’ve got there!’ But me, I’ll just wink at you and say, ‘Arthur, c’mon up here and plunk yourself down by my great white throne and let’s you and me have a good long practice laugh before this party gets so loud we can’t even hear how much fun we’re having.

His Cup of Tea

Trust Him. And when you have done that, you are living the life of grace. No matter what happens to you in the course of that trusting - no matter how many waverings you may have, no matter how many suspicions that you have bought a poke with no pig in it, no matter how much heaviness and sadness your lapses, vices, indispositions, and bratty whining may cause you - you simply believe that Somebody Else, by His death and resurrection, has made it all right, and you just say thank you and shut up.The whole slop closet full of mildewed performances (which is all you have to offer) is simply your death; it is Jesus who is your life. If He refused to condemn you because your works were rotten, He certainly isn't going to flunk you because your faith isn't so hot. You can fail utterly, therefore, and still live the life of grace. You can fold up spiritually, morally, or intellectually and still be safe. Because at the very worst, all you can be is dead - and for Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, that just makes you His cup of tea.

- Robert Capon

Walking again in the Garden

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.
      - G. K. Chesterton

Plotting the Resurrection

From Steve West at Out Walking Blog:

 As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion --- the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.

(E.B. White, from the Introduction to Onward and Upward In the Garden, by Katharine S. White)

E.B. White, author of Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and countless columns for The New Yorker, wrote this essay about his wife's annual late October planting of bulbs in her garden in what was, at this point, perhaps her last such planting.  I love that phrase, "plotting the resurrection," as it suggests the posture believers are encouraged to have in life: faithful, continued perseverance in our usual work, unto God, with hope for its ultimate meaning.

I work each day in a rather nondescript 1960s era building, fashionable perhaps in that time but uninteresting now.  I walk up two flights to my office.  I turn on the light. I hang up my coat. I sit down and sign into my computer. I listen to messages.  I read emails. I make phone calls.  I answer emails.  I write.  I read.  I move paper and files from one box to another.  I discuss.  Sometimes, I disagree.  I wait.  I make more phone calls.  At 5:30, I log out of the computer, rise, put on my coat, turn off the light, close the door, walk down the two flights of steps, and wave at the guard as I walk out the door.

Tomorrow, I'll do it all again.

This is the quotidian, that which occurs everyday.  The ordinary.  Viewed apart from the resurrection, the drudgery of it, the ceaseless repetition, would weigh heavy on me, a sense of uselessness and meaninglessness rising up in me, creating cynicism, a lackadaisical attitude, and even despair.  And yet for the Christian, the most mundane of work is offered up to God and will be taken up by God and transformed in some as yet unknown way.  A continuity exists between the work we do here and the work we do in Heaven.  What we do now really means something, tainted though it may be by sin, weighed down by the travail of Creation.

In 1 Corinthians 3:13 Paul looks ahead to Heaven and sees that on that Day "each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it. . . ."  The Colossians are told "[w]hatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. . . ."  Work, no matter how mundane, is what we do, what we are made to do, and God uniquely equipped us for certain work or works that we do.  And, ultimately, he will sanctify that work, carrying forward all that is good in it to a recreated heavens and earth, to a New Creation.

That's why an old lady plants bulbs in the cold soil of October, just like she always has, year after year, believing that there will be a Spring of new life.  That's why I've engaged in a 26-year routine of faithfulness to a work that will go on in all that is good.  I'm not just plotting the resurrection --- I'm betting on it.