SORTED!

I used to work with an Irishman called Shaun.  Whenever he was given a job to do he would say rather loud, “Sorted!”  What he meant was “Consider it done!”  You just didn’t have to worry about it, as far as he was concerned it was already finished.

The apostle Paul made an amazing observation, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us.”  He said that in Romans 8:18, just before he started painting a graphic picture about the creation that’s subjected to frustration and groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Paul, he’s groaning inwardly too.  Just like everyone else he had to deal with the world around him on a daily basis.  A world very much in pain, showing decay, bondage, corruption, destruction and frustration.  As it does today…….and boy oh boy can things get frustrating sometimes!  But says Paul, in the midst of all that doom and gloom there is also a twinkle of hope of better things to come.  He’s looking forward to that moment of liberation when everything will be brought into what he calls the glorious freedom of the sons of God.  Paul’s living in hope.  It’s not a hope that could be seen as yet, he said, because hope that can be seen is no hope at all.  But he had already tasted the fruits of it and he knew there was more where that came from.  That was enough for him, convinced as he was that everything was eventually gonna give way to something much much better, there was going to be a brand new world.  And that had everything to do with something amazing that had began to happen in the same world he was living in.  When on an ordinary day, just like any other day, with ordinary people going about their daily business, Jesus came along who said, “I am about my Father’s business!”  And what’s happening with this world was his business too!  He hadn’t come because everything was honky dory, far from it.  It was much the same as it is today.  Then as now people wondered at times what the world was coming to.  But, Jesus came to turn things around.  Sometimes when things don’t do so good they have to be turned around don’t they?  And sometimes you even want to get your hands on it when it seems like an impossible task.  Things can appear so destroyed that all there is left is ruins or wreckage.  But you just want to get on with rebuilding it no matter what, you want it that bad.

It's a bit like with those kind of enthusiasts that get going on a wreck of an old car that’s been rusting away in an old shed and hasn’t seen the light of day for years?  You think they can’t do nothing with it, it’s in that bad a condition.  An impossible situation  But they just start off with that determined look and you don’t see much of them for some time.  But after a while they come out again with the most enormous grin on their faces.  And one of them says “sorted” as they proudly present the most splendid chrome plated shiny specimen of a car that you would never expect rolling again this side of 1950.  Well, Jesus was…..eh, was kind of like a mr. Sortelius too.  The kind of person who doesn’t blink an eye starting on the most difficult job.  What with everything about him being as impossible as it comes, beginning with his birth which was a virgin birth.  Mary had thrown her hands in the air with despair when she heard about it, saying “how can this be!”, (Luke 1:34).  But she was told “with God nothing shall be impossible”, (Luke 1:37).  You could say that Jesus, right from the word go, had the word impossible written all over him.  He had the right credentials to do the job at hand, the one he had come for.  Not to rebuild a car that was scrapped of course, but starting work on a world that most people resigned themselves to as not getting better than it was very quickly soon.  The thing is that to change the world you got to change people first and Jesus was good at that.  He himself was a beautiful unique specimen of humanity from the beginning that you couldn’t find fault with if you tried.  That’s what God thought anyway, because he let everybody know he was pretty pleased with him.  And since we’ve been talking about cars, here was as it were one model, which had just ran of the production line, that he’d been waiting for all his life, that he wanted to be seen in.  Sorted you would think, but then the unthinkable happened.  People wanted to do away with him and scrap him, can you believe that!  Why do away with a model that performs like no other ever performed?  But, this is where it gets interesting.  Because while being scrapped and about to expire and just before he was going to breathe his last breath and presumably never to be seen again, he shouted with a loud voice “It is finished!”

For a while the first Christians were flabbergasted.  They couldn’t fathom how something that’s scrapped could have accomplished anything.  But God he’s smart!  Hadn’t taken half measures.  Didn’t just catch two birds with one hand, he wanted all of them, the lot and not just them, I mean the whole lot, as in the whole world!  Had to, cause of everything that had fallen apart way back (see Genesis 3).  So when the time was right he got in there with his sleeves rolled up.  Singlehandedly, in his own inimitable way, went about putting things together again like the way they were before they started falling apart.  And in a case of ‘if you can’t beat them you have to join them’ really took it down to the wire, must give him that.  Was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.  Because there was no other man who was up to the job for this mission impossible.  For the situation was pretty dire.  A bit in the tradition of:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

No hope then for recovery you could say, it can’t be done!  But your name is not God if you can’t do some pretty incredible things.  He lives for moments like that!

Well, missions that are impossible need impossible heroes.  And heroes, they do what heroes do!  It’s a bit like with that ill-fated Apollo 13 mission that got stranded 335000 miles away in space after an explosion in 1970.  You know what, when disaster strikes, you don’t just wave a magic want and make it all happen.  The crew got to work on it like nobody’s business and they had to act fast.  One of the oxygen tanks was damaged and this meant they would soon run out of air.  Breathing filters had to be repaired and fast!  Parts were used from the service module that were not made for the command module.  Things had to be fixed with sticky backed plastic, fixing different types of filters together from different companies that sometimes didn’t fit the same holes.  They used plastic bags, duct tape and cardboard to make square filters fit round holes.  After many more ingenious repairs and no doubt some spine chilling moments, commander James Lovell, without the help of advanced computers, used nothing more than his notebook to do some complex mathematics to set out a new course to bring his crew safely home.  That involved the unorthodox method of navigating by the earth’s terminator, a clearly visible line on the planet that separates day from night.  They had to, because there was too much debris floating around from the explosion to get coordinates from the stars.  Finally the crew utilized the lunar module descend propulsion system to build up enough velocity.  Then they took the unusual step of going around the dark side of the moon and using the gravity of the moon to help them shoot back to earth in their command module.  At this stage the lunar module was dropped, which was not build to withstand the terminal velocity friction caused by entering earth’s atmosphere.  What had saved the situation is that all the ins and outs of the space craft were no mystery to the crew.  Just as well, because in situations like that you have no time to go on a three weeks refresher course.  You have to be familiar with everything before you even start.  You have to know your landing from your take off, your earth departure from your parking orbit, your oxygen tank 1 from your oxygen tank 2, your quantity readings from your stirring fans, your S-II engine from your S-IVB engine, your flight controllers from your support personnel.  It’s the skills, training and teamwork, but also the courage of the astronauts that got them through, together with the brilliant support of ground control down on earth.  These guys were pro’s!  They turned a disaster into a triumph of ingenuity and deservedly the Apollo 13 mission was called Nasa’s ‘most successful failure’.  It became a model for crisis management and teamwork in extra ordinary circumstances.

God is a pro too, all the ins and outs of that giant spaceship called earth were no mystery to him and he knew all the crew members by name too, past and future!  Better than anyone did he know how everything hangs together.  Had all come from his hands in the first place anyway.  Had measured the water in the hollow of his hand and with the breath of his hand marked off the heavens.  Held the dust of the earth in a basket and weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance (Isaiah 40:12).  He’d put the earth in its place, the heavens in their place and people in their place!  Anyways, to save the world you have to know your hammer from your chisel too, but also iniquity from righteousness, creation from creator, justification from sanctification, wrath from mercy, spiritual from carnal and how to make square pegs fit round holes.  So, he was able to understand all the universal mysteries, the lot.  Takes one to know one I guess!  No kidding, all the mysteries of space, of iniquity, of holiness and any other mystery are a doodle to him and he knows men like the back of his hand.  Did all his arithmetic too, doing off hand the most complex set of mathematical equations of a level that’s out of this world, faster than angel speed of course.  Did all his computations and imputations.  Mind you, this was absolutely not your average equation, time limits and criteria applied that were looked at from an eternal perspective.  Values had to be factored in based on where all the people are at, than there’s things like righteousness, justification, judgment, love, purpose, to name a few, and himself as the biggest factor of course, for nothing was gonna happen without him.  So a lot had to be taken into account, but in the final reckoning his figures were spot on.  And all hat expertise was brought to ahead in Christ, the captain of our salvation, who in his descent for mankind set out a new course that involved the unorthodox method of negotiating the dark side of men and then aiming for the Terminator that had plunged the whole earth into darkness.  But just like captain James lovell after him, Jesus knew he was only going to get one shot at!  And he was determined to go the distance to get the longest home run that ever was.  To let everyone touch down safely from whatever base there were on.  So, with just one last chance of winning, this would have to be the final victory for all forevers that there were ever going to be.  Failure was not on the cards, for that would mean end of game for everyone, with nothing to show for it. 

But what a captain he was!  Not only got in there with his sleeves rolled up, not only got his hands dirty.  But then, for all the failures of everyone that ever was, got treated like he did it even though he had done no wrong.  And got hurt doing it and crushed and buried like a criminal and then he showed the biggest heart you can imagine by not even complaining about it.  Seems what it says in Isaiah 53:

"He was crushed for our iniquities

Each of us has turned to his own way

But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him

He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone

But he was buried like a criminal

Yet he did not open his mouth"

That’s got to be about Christ who died for the sins of the world, foretold of course.  Theologians have an interesting word for it, penal substitution.  Seems like an equation even I can understand.  Quite simply put: He took it for all of us, everyone else is of the hook, when accepted, God happy, we happy.