AM — Psalm 119:1-24
PM — Psalm 12, Psalm 13, Psalm 14

Amos 3:12 – 4:5
2 Peter 3:1-10
Matthew 21:23-32

Today is a day of questions, or maybe it’s riddles.

“How can young people keep their way pure?” (Ps 119:9) — (and how   about usold guys?)

“With our tongues we will prevail; our lips are our own — who is our master?” (Ps. 12:4)

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?  How long will you  hide your face from me?” (Ps 13:1)

“Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the LORD?” (Ps 14:4)

“Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Peter 3:4)

“I will also ask you one question — ” (Run!) “– if you tell me the answer,then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.  Did the baptism of John (the Baptist) come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” (Matthew 21:24-25)

The first person who engaged me in the Christian faith was an associate minister of the church in which I grew up.  His last name was “Gunn”  and he
had lived a full life of ribbing because of it, which only intensified, apparently, when he announced he was called to the Lord’s Work.  I was in seventh grade when Rev. Gunn exploded into the sedate ways of our  prosperous and burgeoning polity.  The life of an associate at our church  followed a pretty predictable course.  Large handfuls of “dirty work” were foisted upon them:  stewardship, evangelism, outreach, the on-again-off-again youth
group, superintendant of the Sunday School, any number of necessary,unwanted tasks that are part-and-parcel of the Church Experience.

Most associates sailed through the interview process without asking in advance which of the dirty jobs would grace their tenure.  Once the contract
was signed and the escapes sealed off, they usually took whatever was dumped upon them with grim good humor and varying degrees of attention.

Rev. Gunn came to his interview with a shopping list.  He demanded to be put  in charge of the youth group, all three flavors.  He insisted on overseeing the Sunday School, from the nursery to the Adult continuing ed.  He refused to accept the job if he did not become the first and last word on the organization of outreach.  He reveled in the dirt, and so did his wife, and so did his three children.

Needless to say, he didn’t last long.  In those dazzling twenty-seven months, however, he showed us the joy of doing the Lord’s Work, much of which is dirty.

Rev. Gunn loved the biblical questions — he compared them to landmines. Rev. Gunn loved this passage from Matthew’s gospel, particularly the
parable of the two sons approached by their father to work a day in the vineyard.

The glory of the biblical questions, Rev. Gunn testified, was two-fold:  the answers almost always followed close on; and, the questions were, if
one had the ears to hear and the heart to seek, a sure defense against the trap of the Pharisees, all deeply learned, faithful, holy people who got to hear,
from the Lord of the Universe no less, “Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax-collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”

“Even after you saw it,” was for Rev. Gunn the most terrible comment on the human soul, because it meant marvels great and small could parade before one for seventy plus years and one might never actually see or be touched by them.

So, on the fourth day of Advent, I let the concussion of numerous landmines do their work to shatter the well-built walls, to fragment the opaque glassy scales, to bring down the well-fortified notions, so that I may see  anew the wonder and the glory of the Advent of the Anointed One.

Who is our master?  Too easy.