Love and the Law

How does one love God?  How does one love their neighbor?

There are lots of sayings that Jesus is unique on, but in regards to the law, Jesus was shocking in his clarity, but not in his innovation. The shock of Jesus on the law is that he took it seriously and would not accept the lawyerly loopholes.  He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matthew  5:17).  His innovative summary of that law of God is at the end of his re-upping of the 10 commandments in that Sermon on the Mount, “you must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).”  But Jesus also nods assent to the more standard summaries of the law as seen in the introduction to our Gospel Lesson (Luke 10:25-37). “Love the Lord with all your heart…and your neighbor as yourself.” The lawyer is probing Jesus for what loopholes he will support. And by the end he realizes that Jesus’ answer is “none.”

All of that is so much the second use of the law – religious or mirror use of it.  Looking in the zero loophole law of Jesus shined to a perfectly smooth finish with full silvering on the back we can see every single moral flaw on our face. And in doing that there are one of two reactions. Either Jesus is an overly scrupulous nutcase in which case we can just walk away.  Nothing that he says is “reasonable”. Or, Jesus is the one who loves us enough to tell us the truth.  Being a “good person” is not going to save you. For salvation – and the lawyer’s initial question is “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” – for salvation you must look outside of the law.

But that does not mean the law is useless.  The promise of the law – “You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them. (Leviticus 18:5)” – is a false misleading dream. We cannot keep it.  We have not kept it. We are not perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.  But the law does tell us what true love of our neighbor looks like.

I always chuckle at what gets left out of the lectionary readings. Leviticus 18 and 19 are an enlargement of the 10 commandments. The way Luther answers “what does this mean?” in the catechism with “we should fear and love God so that we don’t do X, but we do Y” can be seen in these chapters.  The lectionary picks up the “fear and love God” introduction.  “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them I am the LORD your God…I am the LORD (Lev 18:1-5).” But what is the first law that is expanded upon that the selected reading completely skips?  The sixth commandment. Do not commit adultery. The entirety of chapter 18 is given over to a laundry list of things that God through Moses says, “stop doing that.” And it covers everything from peeping-toms, to incest, to homosexual acts, to child sacrifice.  And it comes with a warning. Doing these things makes the land unclean.  That is why the Canaanites are being driven out.  “The land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants (Lev 18:25).”   True love of the neighbor means not using them sexually.

What else does the chosen reading skip?  The first table of the commandments which is in Lev 19:1-8.  True love of the neighbor includes worshipping God rightly and honoring your parents.

The lectionary reading picks up the 5th commandment (don’t kill).  That is the point of not harvesting to the edge or stripping the vineyard bare. As Luther would say keeping the 5th commandment includes “help and support him in every physical need.” The poor and the sojourner don’t have land, but they need a way to feed themselves.  True love of the neighbor is ensuring they have that way.

The lectionary reading continues with commandments 7 through 10.  And it calls out the various ways we steal from our neighbors or create injustice through the well-placed lie or knowing how the system works.  And notice that the way the system works include bias both to the poor and the great.   “You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great (Lev 19:15).” True love of the neighbor is honest justice.

How does one love their neighbor? By faithfully living the commandments.  Do we do this perfectly? No.  Does that mean they are meaningless? Absolutely not.  This is how we love our neighbor.  So how do we love God? By loving our neighbor. God needs nothing from us. In fact he gives us all that we need to support this body and life. We love God by walking in his statutes, not the statutes of Egypt or Canaan we ourselves sojourn in the midst of.

On the Ministry – Augsburg 5

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Biblical Text: Luke 10:1-20

The text is Jesus sending out the 72. It is a text unique to Luke. Other gospels have the sending of the 12; only Luke has the follow on larger sending. And I tend to think it is the perfect text to talk about what exactly the ordained ministry is. Within Lutheranism that is discussing Article 5 of the Augsburg Confession. And I think compared to all the other churches of the various schisms – discussed in the sermon – we get it right. Many fall in a ditch to the right ascribing something called ontological change to the one ordained. This puts sacramental magic on the ordination and relegates the call to nothing. Others fall in the ditch on the left. They reduce the ministry to the priesthood of all believers. Everything rests on the call, and we all have a call in that priesthood. And they ignore the entire biblical history of those set apart – like Jesus sets apart these 72 – sent to the towns and villages of Israel. The Augsburg Confession I believe presents is rightly. The ministry exists for one reason, to continue to proclaim the gospel – “Peace be to this house.” Because this is how faith is created, but the proclamation that comes from outside of us. Christ came from outside of our world to proclaim the nearer Kingdom of God. And he sent folks to proclaim that. And he continues to send folks into the fields to proclaim that. In one sense the tools are completely inappropriate for the task. The sermon elaborates. But the Word creates exactly what it intends – faith.

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Rivers of Glory

“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream…” – Isaiah 66:12

I grew up on the Mississippi River.  Saw that big river daily.  Never really understood this verse.  Isaiah uses the same metaphor is Isaiah 48:18, “Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”  There it makes more sense to me. The idea is the never-ending nature of the river and likewise the waves of the sea.  It’s a poetic way of saying what I often do about the law – “your life will go better if you live according to the 10 commandments.” There is some variance.  Rivers rise and fall with the rain.  Sometimes they jump their banks.  Like the waves of the sea with the tides.  The returns to observing the law in a fallen world are not guaranteed.  The law does not save. But God’s original creation was good and even in its current brokenness that goodness can be seen.  Seedtime and harvest do not stop. But in what way is peace like a river?  We don’t declare wars anymore, but what was the last year that we didn’t bomb somebody?  The last year July 4th felt like a truly shared holiday of thanks for being Washington’s “distant posterity?”

Isaiah’s reuse of this phrase in chapter 66 is not linked to the covenant of the law as it was in chapter 48.  It is not a lament over the peace that was forfeit.  Here in chapter 66 it is promise.  The Jerusalem that Isaish sees is not the earthly one.  The last chapters of Isaiah are largely written to those who had returned from exile.  They were in the earthly Jerusalem.  And while they might be happy to be back, it wasn’t the promise. And that became evident to them quickly.  The temple was never what it was, the monarchy never came back, the walls took generations to rebuild. They were always ruled by someone else.  The Jerusalem that Isaiah speaks about is the New Jerusalem.  It is the Jerusalem of the divine promise.

In that Jerusalem, “behold, I will extend peace to her like a river.”  The eternal flowing nature of a river – at least rivers like the Mississippi if not the Agua Fria – is the promise. The wars and rumors of wars will be over. The game of thrones that never stops, will have ended, because the rightful monarch is on the throne and all pretenders have been cast down.

As much as we might like peace, the truth is that we can often think of peace as boring. We all know those who can’t go a few days without drama, although maybe as we age we come to appreciate boring better. But the thing that Isaiah puts in the poetic comparison is not righteousness as before but now glory.  “The glory of the nations like an overflowing stream.” Glory isn’t boring. We endure the drama, we run the race, for the glory of a crown that fades. The New Jerusalem described is peace and glory.  And this is a crown that does not fade but overflows.

In the promised Jerusalem peace and glory are not enemies.  Peace denying the one desiring glory the opportunity for it. In the promised Jerusalem they are the bedrock of everything.  The Peace extended and the glory overflowing allow for flourishing.  They allow for mothering (nursing, carrying and comfort) and they allow for growth.  “Your bones shall flourish like the grass.”  Peace is anything but boring in the New Jerusalem. It’s more like that Big River that could take you wherever you want to go. Just waiting for the Resurrection Huck Finn to get on the raft.

What is God doing?

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Biblical Text: 1 Kings 19:9-21

Our lectionary tends to skip texts with a bent to violence or martial images, like Elijah and the Prophets of Baal. It feeds us the sad sack Elijah in the aftermath. Now, there is a defendable reason for this, but you can’t really get to it by skipping. Because we all want the fire from heaven. And when the fire from heaven doesn’t come, or when Jesus rebukes you for asking for it as he did in the associated Gospel lesson for the day, we lament, we ask “why?”

The why’s largely remain God’s. He doesn’t really answer why. He redirects us to what. He will listen to the lament. He asks Elijah twice for his litany of lament. Why does it always work this way? And then God turns him to the What. Elijah, the question is not why God does something, the question is What is God doing. And in ask What we also get our invite to see it and participate. The Kingdom of God certainly comes without our prayers, but we pray that it comes to us also.

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Free Men

There are two contrasting pictures of Christ that the proclamation of the church seems to swing back and forth between.  There is “the man of sorrows” which is usually connected with the passion season and gets expressed in atonement theology as substitutionary atonement. Christ suffers the punishment of sin for us and we receive his grace. Maybe this is just me but this Christ was the dominant theme coming out of 19th century Romanticism and through most of the 20th century. Full of pathos, always giving, his guts churned over sheep without a shepherd.  The 17th century Sacred Heart movement is very similar, and the 13th century had a similar movement. The contrast to the man of sorrows is Christ the victor. This image is usually connected with Easter and the resurrection. In atonement theology it is simply Christ the victor over our great enemies: sin, death and the power of the devil. Hence in the picture I’ve used Christ is stepping on the lion and the snake – the lion which devours and the snake which tempts. But also reflect that this Christ is dressed as a soldier.  The cross which he carries is the soldier’s ruck which would often include the sword. If the man of sorrows feels great things but is somewhat passive being silent as he walks to the cross, the victorious Christ does great things as he claims his kingdom. Historically you have the crusades. You also have the cults of St. George and you could add the YMCA which in its founding was emblematic of something called “muscular Christianity.”  And my point in bringing these up is not to raise up one and deny the other.  These are both valid and necessary parts of the faith. 

Our texts today (1 Kings 19, Galatians 5, and Luke 9:51-62) lean hard into Christ the Victor.  They have little time for great feelings.  Elijah has just defeated the priests of Baal, yet somehow, he is moping in the desert bewailing his fate. And God more or less tells him to get up and move.  “I have 7000 in Israel who have not bowed to Baal.”  Anoint a King of Syria and Israel, find Elisha the next prophet, and “the one who escapes the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death.” And when Elisha receives the call and begs for some time to go say good bye to Father and Mother, Elijah brushes him off. Maybe I have the wrong Elisha.  “Go back, for what have I done to you?” The call of the soldier is timely.  Make your choice.

Paul converts that Christ of Victory into the demand to live as free men.  “For freedom in Christ has set us free, stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”  What is that yoke of slavery?  To “use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.” Whether you have our enemies as sin, death and the power of the devil or the devil, the world and our sinful nature, your call as a soldier of Christ, who has defeated death and the devil, is to make war against the sin that lives in ourselves. Live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit. Mortify the flesh and its desires. Claim the victory over yourself.

And lest we think that we can put the man of sorrows great feeling against the demands of the call, our gospel lesson gives us a Christ more direct than Elijah.  There are those who wish to follow Christ, yet whom Jesus dismisses as not understanding what they are asking. “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Go home, you are not ready to enlist. There are those whom Christ calls, “follow me,” who respond as Elijah, “let me go say good bye.” To which Jesus gives one of his hardest sayings, “Let the dead bury their dead.  You go proclaim the Kingdom.” The call is timely.  Do you recognize the time of your visitation? And once enlisted, as the Spartans would say “come back with your shield or on it.” Jesus says, ‘no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom.”

The call of Christ to be a disciple is heavenward all the way.  The final victory has been won.  That doesn’t mean the war is over. Between now and that day, Satan has marked his prey.  He fighting a scorched earth retreat all the way to hell. And the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  Some martial rigor is needed for the way.

Defeated Legion

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Biblical Text: Luke 8:26-39

In the church year it is the start of the long green season. What I mean by that is the altar colors are green for the non-festival half of the year. And the lessons go back to some semblance of a continuous read through the Gospel (Luke this year.) And where we get dropped in the story is at the end of the Galilean ministry. (The sermon expands on that a bit.) Specifically, Jesus has started to make the moves that Luke often emphasized, which are those of Gentile inclusion. He tells the disciples to set sail across the Sea of Galilee for the other side where they are met by a demon possessed man. A man who represents the Spiritual state of the gentile world. The sermon develops how this man in many ways also represents the Spiritual state of Our World: shameless and death seeking. Which are the hallmarks of demons. Yet Christ has crossed the divide. And Christ has come to save. And the demons have no power over him. In fact he commands them. And He has set us free from our bondage to sin and death to live. The question the text leaves is with is represented in the characters: How shall we live? And that is the last movement of the sermon.

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Endless Summers

I suppose it has slipped into a Brown family inside joke. Some celebrity name will come up and I guess I’ve asked – “didn’t they die?” – enough that Ellen makes fun of me because they are not usually dead.  The flip side of this is Ellen coming home and informing me that so and so died, and me asking “who is so and so?” I’ll do the same thing with “so and so from a completely different cause of celebrity” and Ellen will ask back, “Who?” I guess we keep different death pool lists. But the death of Brian Wilson was the rare common celebrity.

Now if you care, you have probably read or heard enough about Brian Wilson in the time since.  And if you don’t care, you’ve heard too much.  I’m hope not going to add to the pile.  Honestly I was too young for the Beach Boys to be a thing while I was growing up.  They were on the “oldies station” already. (I know, stab me again. When did Motley Crue become classic rock?)  Any time it would come on you were instantly transported to 1960’s Southern California.  Even if you had never been there, as this prairie son had never been, those songs made it real. But you also realized that those early songs about girls, cars and surfing were about a California that no longer existed, and which now is even further away.  Summer isn’t eternal. Wilson was the rare artist that while never really changing his style – all his songs are a blissed out melancholy summer – they grew in maturity and depth.  But Brian Wilson was first under his abusive father, and then under an abusive shrink, and at one point he wondered if he needed the abuse to be creative. His story doesn’t really have a second creative act.  When the muse is gone, it is gone.  But he does have a second act of love. His 2nd wife more or less rescued him and together they adopted and raised five kids. If you have never seen the movie Love and Mercy it is well worth a couple of hours.

Brian Wilson’s story came to mind while I was reading the epistle lesson for this week – Galatians 3:23-4:7. Paul reflects on the law throughout the passage as being “our guardian” or “being held captive under the law” or “when we were children, we were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.”  The reflection on the law becoming more severe: guardian to enslaver. And if one is raised in a certain way, the law can inspire great acts.  And I suppose I should expand that, everyone has some type of law.  You can’t escape it. Which is why Paul calls it the “elementary principles of the world.” The only difference is if you have a revealed law, or just the intuitive one. And for each type, there are always kids who will run through brick walls if the Father figure tells them to.  Brian Wilson seemed to have been one of those. But if our salvation is by the law, when we can no longer run through brick walls, when the muse no longer stops by, where are we? Brian’s Dad owned those early songs and sold them for pennies because he thought his son was washed up. What surely started out as appropriate instruction becomes abuse.  “We are enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.” Instead of having a love of the law of God which is a lamp for our feet and a guide to our path, we learn to hate it, and are defeated by it.  Our guardian becomes our tormentor. Especially if we have come of age.

“But we are no longer under a guardian.” The law is not our means of salvation. “The law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”  Because in faith we are not slaves, but we are sons. Like Brian meeting his second wife who created a secure place of love for him, in Christ we have that place of love.  In Christ we can know the Father rightly.  Not as a slave driver, but as “Abba! Father!” who gives us his Spirit freely.  And we no longer have to worry about being turned out or used up.  Because in Christ by faith we are heirs, heirs of the promise.  God only know what we’d be without.

Knowing God

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Biblical Text: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

The Sunday is Trinity Sunday, so we recite the Athanasian Creed and the theme of the Sunday is possibly the hardest one in the church year. If you want to know someone what a wise person would do is say look at what they do. And most Sundays follow that advice. We preach about God by what he has done for us or through his saints. But Trinity Sunday tends to be more philosophical, addressing the desire to know God in himself, or in the interior life. That is the normally the realm of the mystic. The rest of us are given solid words in the creeds. But this sermon – thinks about a few places where God has revealed his own inner life. First, God does wish to be known. Folly beckons you into the dark and secret places, but wisdom cries out from the hills, the crossroads, the gates. Wisdom can be found wherever you are. And wisdom is a reliable narrator. The relationship between Father and Son – between God and Wisdom in Proverbs – is this cycle like breathing of delight and rejoicing. And it is that interior life – of delight and rejoicing – through Christ that we are invited to take part in. Our humanity in Christ has been taken into God. Christ delights in the Children of Men, and we return in rejoicing.

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Theology and Doxology

It’s a saying that has been attributed to many people – “all theology ends in doxology.” My guess is that it is a common refrain of people who have read Romans 7 through 11.  Paul struggles for the theology of gentile inclusion, Jewish seeming exclusion and what comes to be called the doctrine of election. And his entire struggle ends with “O, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God…for from him and through him and to him are all things.”

Trinity Sunday always brings that thought back to me because Trinity Sunday is the most dogmatic day in the church year. It is a day given over to the culmination of a theological project.  “Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith…and the catholic faith is this.” The first 300 years post the apostles was the church struggling to define its belief. It had faith.  That is the gift of the Holy Spirit.  But it also desired some understanding, faith seeking understanding. That is the theological project. That is the point of doctrine. This is what we believe, teach and confess. We live or maybe I should say have lived in a time the has devalued theology.  It has done that in two ways. Crudely it has often just dismissed doctrine as unnecessary divisions.  “Deeds not creeds” which ultimately turns the faith in ethics. That is the long path toward Mohammed, or Paul would have said the Judaizers.  Both will tell you the law as a means of salvation.  There has also been a more subtle form of devaluing theology.  Using it not as faith seeking to understand the God from whom we came, in whom we exists and to whom we shall return. But using theology as a means of power or maybe I should say anti-power as in our day it has been used to deconstruct and destroy order. This is the path to nihilism.  The law won’t save you and nothing will save you. You are alone in the universe.

The entire purpose of theology as properly understood has been to understand the narrow way between those two conclusions – salvation by the law or meaninglessness.  Now giving due to the nihilists, all theology is trying to put into words what is ultimately transcendent. It is an impossible task. It is a walking on Holy Ground. And as Moses was told about walking on Holy Ground, take your shoes off.  Keep the dirt and grass of creation next to your skin.  Because all understanding of God in words is by analogy.  And all analogy fails at some point.  The better analogies are those you can feel.  That Athanasian creed uses analogies like majesty, infinite and eternal. If you have three majesties, you don’t really have one.  The Godhead is majesty coeternal. There is only one eternal.  Mathematicians can discern larger and smaller infinities, but looking at the night sky gives you one.

Also giving due to the legalists, if you don’t require something you don’t really know anything. The unknown God is a terrible monster. You don’t know if He is there is kill and devour you, or to save you.  And any God who makes himself known reveals something about his ways.  And if they are the ways of God, they should also be the ways of His creations. The Athanasian creed moves on from the majesty, infinite and eternal – all of which could be an unknown God.  Aristotle comes to some similar conclusions without knowing God.  The Athanasian creed also tells us “it is also necessary for everlasting salvation that one faithfully believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God has revealed himself in man.  And not just man in general, but a man, a particular man – Jesus. The ways of God are revealed to us in Jesus “who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, and rose again the third day from the dead.” The God we worship is one who saves by grace, one who suffers, and one who works by death and resurrection. You don’t get more gritty dirt than a grave, or one who comes out of it.

The theology is necessary because the Spirit does lead us into truth, and the theology is the record of that. The errors never really go away.  They always come back and the church can take out the record and say “you are here.” But the theology also at some point get put down and join the choir. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…”

New Wine

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Biblical Text: : Acts 2:1-21

The day on the church calendar is Pentecost, which is the 3rd most important church festival after Christmas and Easter. Although Pentecost is kinda the Rodney Dangerfield of Church festivals. It gets no respect. Although it does get the great and rare liturgical color of Red.

Wine, even the phrase “new wine” is an important image in the Bible. That phrase “new wine” is used by some in the crowd on the first Pentecost to describe what is happening right in front of their eyes. The scoffers say the disciples are “full of New Wine.” Now that claim in absolutely false in the what that they mean it, that the disciples are drunk. But they are “full of New Wine” in a divine way. The Spirit of Christ has descended upon them. The promised power from on high. This sermon meditates on what that means. It spends some time thinking about ways that claims about new wine might be abused – in line with how the Old Testament prophets could talk. It also seeks to define – in line with Peter’s Pentecost sermon quoting one of those prophets – what the actions of the Spirit, the New Wine in proper use, does.

How do you recognize the “New Wine?” It is for everyone. It allows all to understand the Word of God. And it testifies the apocalyptic reality that God is making you new, and will bring that to completion. When you see these things, you are seeing the New Wine in action.

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