I was on YouTube and I happened to look over at suggested videos that used to be populated with videos that were relevant to what you were searching for or somehow relevant to you. However, now, the suggested video feature is no longer helpful with way off base videos that appear no matter what you are searching for. This time was a little different though. I saw a video titled “Aristotle’s Paradox” picturing a woman holding a wheel with a few concentric circles on it like a bullseye and a single line going from the center to the edge. I checked it out and found it said something to me way down deep that I couldn’t let go of. To me it addressed something more than mathematics. So, here’s what Aristotle’s paradox is. So you have the circles or the wheel that I described. You aim the line down and then roll the circle one revolution. The path creates a line the length of the circumference of the circle. Ok, no problem. So that means that we can unroll a circle into a straight line the length of the circumference. So you take the smaller circle and unroll it and it makes a shorter line right? At this point I’m thinking, “I am so good at math.” That’s probably what they were thinking back 300 years before the birth of Jesus. Then they rolled the two circles together and it made their and my brains hurt. Right before I recorded this portion of the video, I had to stop, go to the kitchen, get a bottle cap and butter lid, mark and roll them. Bottle cap a very few inches, butter lid off the paper. Then I put them together. Same distance. It reaffirmed the paradox, but didn’t help my brain, at all. As it turns out, if you put ink on the edges of both circles and roll them, or create a cool graphic with the help of a friend…. You can see that they draw a line that is the same length. It sparked lots of debate over a very long time. You can also see this done on youtube or you can try it at home. If you do the same thing with two concentric polygons like squares, pentagons or octagons you end up with a line for the smaller polygon that has gaps or spaces in it. The more sides the smaller the spaces. I didn’t have time to create lots of other graphics. Here’s the cool thing about circles, they have infinite sides. A small circle can have just as many points on it as a big circle. You can see that on the two flat lines of the unrolled circles. If you have the long line on the bottom and the short line above and make the long line the base of a triangle you can start drawing lines from the top down to the bottom and an equal amount will pass through the shorter line. You can’t fill up the edge of a circle with points and you can’t fill up a line with points. You can always put a point between two other points. It’s like that argument as kids. I double dare, triple, quadruple, oh yeah? Fifty, hundred and on and on. Someone would always interject, “O yeah, infinity times!” which would elicit “infinity plus one and so on until someone got tired, not because numbers weren’t left. Infinitely small, infinitely large. The kingdom of God and its treasures. The people of the time of the writing of this Gospel were showing signs of frustration that Jesus had not yet returned. They were expecting a quick trip and were now all wondering if it was worth it, thinking of the things that they were missing or the stuff that they could have accumulated. But sharing and generosity are not sacrifices, they are investments in relationships. Circle building and joining together. Jesus shows us that the treasure of his kingdom is one of relationships not of possessions. We use circles a lot in Christian artwork as a symbol, but we can see in this paradox some other great reasons why it works so well. Annnnd it just so happens that Jesus throws in an exciting and interesting paradox himself in his parable. He’s got the master serving and the servants chilling out? So paradoxes belong on this day. So, banking on earthly treasure and self focus, where does that land someone. Well, when we find ourselves worshiping at the altar of the unholy trinity of me, myself and I, so to speak the result is singularity. Maybe a single point with a lot of money, but a solitary point nonetheless. Jesus points out essentially that you cannot take it with you, or you cannot ultimately depend on them. Between the rust and moths the things will all be gone someday and that’s kinda it. Alternately, through the cross of Christ we are no longer alone but bound to Christ and one another in the infinite circle where there is always room. Here’s a cool thing about God’s Kingdom and the paradox. As christians some may want to keep others out. Some may find others objectionable for a whole host of reasons. So the remedy is simple: make a smaller circle right? We might wish. Nope. The seats at the table in God’s kingdom are just as plentiful regardless of our attempts at restraining God’s and the size of the circle. The whole circle thing also helped me to see the understatement of our water pouring ritual and filling of our baptismal font at the beginning of worship. We started out with a bowl of water, then we poured it to overflowing and now this circle thing had me thinking of filling it with a fire hose and then I thought twice and devised my new plan. I would be at the front of the boat with the font. You could say that I was being silly and engaging in hyperbole, but the shocking, amazing, and overwhelmingly fantastic thing is that I am not. God’s grace, love and forgiveness are boundless and infinite and properties of a circle and its mathematical principles can give us the opportunity to visualize just that. There’s more good news, as the boundlessness and infinite nature of God’s grace applies in both space and time. We see God’s promise extending back to Abraham using this same language and understanding of God’s grace using the stars in the heavens and grains of sand on the seashore. The answer is an absolutely astounding number. There are approximately 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. Or, to put it another way, 200 sextillion. That’s 200 followed by 21 zeros. That’s a big number but to help you manage it that’s about 10 times the number of cups of water in all the oceans of Earth. Also, let’s not forget that we have to add the sand. Scientists estimate that Earth contains 7.5 sextillion sand grains. So, as it stands, my Niagara idea still pales in comparison. Yet in the face of God’s promises we can still find ourselves filled with anxiety looking for the things we will be missing if we have given things away, worrying that because of who we are or what we have done that there will not be a place for us or room for us, thinking that the presence of others somehow diminishes the prestige respect God somehow owes us. So often that anxiety grows and begins to bear the fruits of hatred, jealousy, exclusion and far worse. We look to Jesus’ parable of the workers that came at different times of day to see that there are seats in the kingdom from Bible Baby, as one friend put it, to the thief on the cross and everyone in between. Think about the kind of math and the realm of possibilities that we are talking about here. Wrap your head around standing at the ocean with a cup. And then hear the words amidst all of the possibilities, ““Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” and “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing. Wow. Jesus lets us know that we should be preparing and be prepared, so how do we do it? Hear the words, touch the water, smell and taste the bread and wine and receive God’s grace that the anxiety be displaced by thankfulness. The Holy Spirit uses that thankfulness to propel us to a life of sharing, a life of forgiveness and a life of loving as Christ loves us. It propels us to the cross to and follow Jesus, the master who comes and lays down power to serve, and to seek out and find the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the prisoner, the rejected, the unloved, those in marginalized groups that have been told that they don’t belong, the persecuted and the hopeless to lift them, to embrace them and to pull them up a chair into the circle in which there is ample room. So how do you prepare for living in the Kingdom of God? You do so by living in it right now. Amen………The Lord be with you. Let us pray. Almighty God, you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your church. Open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may be ready to receive you wherever you appear, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen………Jesus encourages disciples to invest their hearts and live fully into God’s reign. Instead of facing life with fear, those who know God’s generosity are always ready to receive from God and to give to others. The Holy Gospel comes to us from the 12th chapter of Saint Luke. [Jesus said:] “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
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