Hidden Impressions

There are some weeks or fortnights that get indelibly marked in your mind. And I’ve usually found that there is some piece of media – music, movie, TV show – that you just happen to have been listening to that becomes the shorthand for that time period. The week my brother died it was this CD by a group called Butterflyfish. I was attempting at the time to build a VBS around the songs. Anyone who has done a GROUP VBS knows the format. There is a song of the day for 5 days. There is an overall theme song. There are one or two reworked hymns which are usually the best songs. This disc included a Doxology in that category. Day 4 – the highest attendance day, kids disappear on Friday – is resurrection day. That Butterflyfish CD had this incredible Day 4 song, “All Sad Songs”. “I know all sad songs have another verse/It’s the one the heavenly choirs rehearse/For that day when the broken will mend/And the sad songs will end.” It is not Evening and Morning or O God, Our Help in Ages Past, but it was what I was listening to at the time. And it stuck. Putting that record in takes me right to that week or right to my brother.

When in the idiocy of the world we all decided to larp the black death, and all of a sudden my kids were home all the time. And the job of keeping a struggling church afloat became even tougher. Having sheriff’s cars drive through your lot most Sunday’s because you complied with the “no more than 10” rule by having 4 services instead of one, was memorable. Especially when you got more visitors than you expected because yours was one of the few doors open. The TV show that marks that time for me is Stargate SG1. COMET was showing three episodes an evening. I could DVR them and in 90 mins at the end of the day escape into the fantasy of stepping through the Stargate to a world that hadn’t lost its mind. It’s not that there weren’t some theological works that also kept one sane, but echoing the Apostle Paul sanity isn’t always about “prophetic powers and understanding mysteries and all knowledge (1 Cor 13:2).” Those things aren’t nothing, but absent love, I’m still empty. And the can-do attitude of Col. O’Neill was honestly more important that any deep understanding. Which five years later we might just be entering into some reflection. I’m told I have to go see the movie Eddington in these matters. We’ll see. Might still be too early. I can feel the anger still.

I suppose I should be getting around to a point. The past fortnight has been one of those. Having a major surgery at 86 years old focuses the mind, or at least it focused my dad’s. He’s been gathering all his “in case this all goes wrong” files and having “last suppers.” This has included many extra evening trips to correct or rescue from disaster various computer files and passwords. It has also included wrangling the entire family together on some type of decent behavior. This fortnight also has graced me with the gout flareup such that walking is difficult. Preparation for a Congregational meeting. Annessa, who keeps me sane in the office, telling me she’s getting a real job. And a few other sidebars. Somehow I stumbled upon Detective Bosch in this fortnight. A salty LA detective that never lets go of a bone. The note he hangs on his desk reads, “get off your a** and go knock on doors.” He’s got a sharp eye and plenty of courage, but Bosch’s greatest attribute? Nothing life throws at him is too much if you just do the work. The truth reveals itself in the end.

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossian 3:3-4)” That’s the apostle Paul in this week’s Epistle lesson sounding very Bosch like. “Put to death what is earthly in you…put on the new self, which is being renewed.” What exactly we will be, we do not know. But we press on. We do the work. Because the way, the truth, and the life are hidden in that work. And one day all will be revealed.

Knowing God

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Biblical Text: Genesis 18:17, 20-33 and Luke 11:1-13

Superficially this is a sermon about prayer. It is an encouragement to prayer. But beyond that superficiality it is a sermon about knowing God. Can you know God? If so, how can you know God? What the sermon meditates on are three ways of knowing God. The first is not unimportant, but it really isn’t enough. It is knowing God as information. This is the way the demons know God. The second is knowing God through His word and promises. This is faith or the faith. And ultimately all ways of knowing God are grounded in his universal revelation of Himself in Scripture. But we are also invited to pray. And Prayer, as the Old Testament lesson of Abraham interceding for Sodom is an example, tell us something personal about God. Prayer is a personal knowledge of God. The sermon expands on this and the great invitation we have to know our God personally.

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High Sounding Non-Sense

Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. – Colossians. 2:8 NLT

I love the zest of the New Living Translation. We live in an age of empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense. Around every corner there is someone attempting to lure you into a way of life. And all of it being sold as if it would make you into the most noble human ever. Whether that is such things as “manifesting” – putting the good vibes out into the universe such that the universe will repay you seven-fold, or believing “the science” – which was always contrary to actual science. Science isn’t believed because it is proven or disproven and invites challenge as its only way forward. The world is a smorgasbord of ways to live your life. All often reduced for easy consumption down to bumper stickers and focus grouped phrases. Love is Love. And don’t you ask anyone to define their terms. They are empty and high-sounding, and they have no solid ground.

The Apostle Paul tells us these things come from a couple of places. They can “come from human thinking.” It is not that the Apostle Paul is condemning all human thinking, but he is warning us of that specific type that thinks itself “the smartest man in the room.” Floating around recently was a syllabus of the last semester of Columbia University’s Core Curriculum. Marx, Freud, Fanon, Foucault and Saito. Now I don’t expect you to know all those names, nor even necessarily to look them up. But all of them could easily qualify as empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that comes from human thinking. The workers/psychological/colonial/sexual/ecological utopia is right around the corner. If you just implement my ideas and kill 100 million people. It’s for their good. (And yes, there would be a solid academic reason to read them, if the reason was to be aware and warn of such foolishness, but that is not why they are on the Ivy Syllabus.) Such is our sinful nature.

The other place the Apostle Paul tells us these things come from is “the spiritual powers of this world.” It is funny (at least to me) that I saw reported just this week that some start-up was reporting a way to turn mercury into gold in a fusion reactor. (https://gizmodo.com/startup-claims-its-fusion-reactor-can-turn-cheap-mercury-into-gold-2000633862). The alchemical dream has not died. Although it is an open question which is further away, stable fusion or mercury to gold. Joseph Smith’s tribe continues to proclaim their spiritual powers to get you your own universe. Maybe you can make it easier to transmute lead into gold. And of course the largest cult of the day holds that men can become women and vice versa. And they do so with high-sounding nonsense leading untold numbers into stunted lives and ruined bodies. Such is the world and Satan’s schemes.

Against these the Apostle tells us is the Word of Christ. For He “is the head of all rule and authority (Colossians 2:10).” And through your baptism, “you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh (Colossians 2:13),” God has made you alive together with Christ “by cancelling the record of the debt.” In the Incarnation of Christ, in His flesh, He has defeated our sinful nature and given us His nature. Likewise by the power of the cross, “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them.” The World – Pontius Pilate – and Satan thought they had won. They killed The Son and heir, and the world would forever be theirs. But death could not hold Him. And “you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God.” Christ has defeated the World, and Satan’s time is short.

So don’t let anyone capture you. You have the solid philosophy of the risen Christ, not some made up myth. Christ is risen indeed. You have the plain Word of God. Your sins are forgiven. Hold fast and grow into the fullness of Christ.

One Thing’s Needful

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Biblical Text: Luke 10:38-42

Of all the biblical stories that cause complaint, Mary and Martha is right up there. We are all natural Marthas. And even those who think they are Mary’s probably aren’t. But this sermon reflects really mostly on one phrase of Jesus in the story – “but one thing is necessary.” It set me thinking about the current American love affair with gambling. Because what Jesus is asking us to consider is something like “what is the probability of God revealing himself personally to you?” That is the one thing needful. And the truth is that when God shows up we are often behaving like Martha. When the Word is present we are letting the cares of the world dictate our actions, and we miss the time of our visitation. Thinking in the mentality of a gambler can actually be helpful in this. We might learn to recognize the truly worthy, the one thing needful – The Word of God, Jesus himself.

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All the Suffering in the World

Some internet wit posted an aphorism the other day. Something like, Protestants find sin in pleasure, Catholics find goodness in suffering. It is something of a perennial observation that comes back in multiple places and styles: Northern Europe vs. Mediterranean, Prussian vs. Bavarian, Yankee vs. Reb. I don’t know about you, but I always hated it everywhere it shows up. It superficially might fit, but the second you scratch the surface it doesn’t. The real point is to elevate some third group that is neither Protestant or Catholic above such trivial concerns as sin and suffering. As if all the sin and suffering in the world would just disappear if we all were as flippant as the enlightened wit.

The Apostle Paul in our Epistle lesson for the day (Colossians 1:21-29) makes one of his deepest statements. “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” The world might have ever shifting ideas of what is sin but there is always something that the world thinks is sinful. The natural law is too powerful, written on our hearts, for the world to get away from sin for that long. With sin what the world tries to do is get the individual to justify themselves and the larger community to act like Pharisees about ceremonial laws instead of moral laws – stop self-reflecting and start cancel culture. We might lose the word sin, but we never lose the concept. Suffering is different. The World, that third enlightened group, doesn’t know what to do about suffering. The Apostle Paul does.

Now, not all suffering is the same. If one suffers because they have trespassed, that is earned. “For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? (1 Pet. 2:20)” The rhetorical answer is none. Suffering in itself can just be the due natural punishment of sin. If we avoid it, it is by the mercy of God. Because we are all sinners. St. Peter in his contemplation would say, “but rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed (1 Peter 4:13).” To Peter there is a suffering that shares in Christ. It is more a reflection of what Jesus had instructed them: “It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. (Matt. 10:25 ESV).” But Paul takes it beyond emulation. ‘I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” Ponder for a second how remarkable that is. The bearing of the cross is not an emulation, but participation.

To Paul the church is the body of Christ. And “whatever you do to one of the least of these, you have done unto me (Matthew 25:40).” Suffering that is endured for the sake of Christ or his church, suffering that is taken on for goodness, is a participation in Christ. If we endure such suffering, we are being conformed to Christ. It is not as the wit thinks that the Christian finds goodness in suffering. Because all suffering is ultimately because of a sinful and broken world. But innocent suffering is a participation in the cross. And the cross has been redeemed. The cross is where all those sins have been collected and paid. The cross is the beginning of the glory. The Christian might rejoice in these sufferings, because the mystery of God is being revealed.

The World has no place for suffering because it is passing away. Every day the glory of the World diminishes a bit more. And suffering reminds the World of its temporality. But Christ is eternal and through sufferings, made full in his body the church, has overcome the world.

You Get What You Need

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Biblical Text: Luke 10:25-37

Note: The recording is a re-recording after the fact. We had a recording error real time.

Wants and needs are two different things. We want to justify ourselves, or maybe better put we want to be able to “do this and you will live.” There are lots of ways of being dishonest with ourselves to justify doing evil, but Paul’s “elementary spirits” (Galatians 4, call it the natural law) usually call us out. It is really hard to lie to yourself all the time. It is easier to justify leaving things left undone. That’s the lawyers tactic. “Who is my neighbor?” Who can I exclude from the circle of love and still satisfy the law. The sermon notes a recent cultural conversation stumbled into by the Vice President. And like all our cultural conversations these days, it was completely warped by our polarization. Because there is a way that the VP was correct in quoting the order of love. We are limited creatures. And call it the other ditch, we can often be sinful in helping out abstract far away neighbor while those in our direct care – on our daily roads – lie beaten and half dead. There is also a way that he could be wrong which is this lawyer’s question. Can I exclude people as too far away to care about? This is the very cutting edge of the law. It always convicts. All humanity is our neighbor.

But the biggest reason all humanity is our neighbor is because Christ has crossed the road and embraced all of humanity. Christ has bound our wounds, and placed us in care and promises to return and repay anything. We want to be able to talk our way in; we’ve been given mercy. You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. And then you go and show mercy to those in your walk.

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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 5^th 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 5^th 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 4^th 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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