Category: Pastors Corner

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…”

Come As You Are?

Mt. Zion, specifically the Choir, received a wonderful gift. Today, on Pentecost Sunday, we are blessing and putting into first use new choir robes sponsored by a generous gift.  On such an occasion it is worth thinking about the bare facts of worship and presentation.

The prevailing ethos of our day might be summed up as “come as you are.” I’ve heard on more than one occasion in my life some form of “God doesn’t care what you look like, he cares that you are present.”  And if I’m ascribing the best construction to such thoughts they come from places like Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well who was very concerned about proper worship.  “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place people ought to worship…(John 4:20)”.  And we normally skip to the later part of Jesus’ response, “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23).”  The hymn Just As I Am, without one plea, captures something true about worship.  God doesn’t need anything from us.  He doesn’t “eat” our sacrifices.  He doesn’t exist off of our devotion. He doesn’t need fancy vestments.  And Jesus on more than one occasion would mock the pharisees for their like of “long robes (Mark 12:38).”  The worship that God’s desires – especially on Pentecost – is that in Sprit and Truth.

But the ethos of our day usually takes this much too far. It usually takes it to one of three assertions.

  1. When something wonderful is done for Jesus – like anointing him with costly myrrh (Matthew 26) – there is a tut tut that “this large sum could have been given to the poor.” 
  2. That God does not really care about the form of worship
  3. And ultimately “come as you are” ends with a statement like “God accepts you just as you are.”

It should give anyone pause using the first of these arguments that the bible tells us this was Judas’ argument (John 12:4).  But Jesus’ response comes in two forms. First, “she has done a beautiful thing to me.” Nothing done for God is truly lost.  And beautiful things have ways of reminding us that this is our Father’s world and He cares for it deeply.  Deeply enough that he so clothes the lilies of field that are here today and gone tomorrow. We cannot equal the lilies, but copying the Father is never a bad thing.  Jesus’ second response is “the poor you will have with you always.” This is not a dismissal of the ethical demands of charity, but a recognition that ethics – how you live – is subservient to belief.  That when the God you believe in is present, that takes priority.  Mary chose the greater part (Luke 10:42).

The second assertion is what Exodus 28, for that matter Exodus 25 through the end of Leviticus, should give us pause. God in painstaking detail in those chapters and books tells Israel exactly how they are to worship.  Right down to the garments of the priests. We cannot say that God does not care.  There is even a parable about showing up to the wedding feast without a wedding garment. The problem that the ethos of our day was reacting against was taking such things as a law.  If you did not or could not worship in this way your worship was invalid.  That would break what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman.  But it also went too far in not hearing what Jesus first said to her, “You worship what you do not know, we Jews worship what we do know.” God went into painstaking detail about worship so that we might know him.  Vestments and beautiful things in worship are not about us.  We come as we are without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me. These things point to the God whose first work post sin was to cover Adam and Eve in better clothes.  And who ultimately gave us the robe of Christ’s righteousness.

Those earlier assertions all lead to that last one, which really is the natural religion of the day. The logic is something like God made all things.  God is a good guy.  Therefore God accepts us as we were made.  He accepts us just as we are.  There are many problems with this, but I will limit myself.  What God made was good, and we broke it with our sin.  The “good guy” doesn’t accept us as we are, he offers us absolution in Christ. He invites us into the divine life.  Not to stay as we are, but to kill the old Adam and arise in before God is newness of life. Life in the Spirit is one of being conformed to the likeness of Christ. “We shall all be changed (1 Corinthians 15:51).”

We are putting something beautiful into the service of God.  The worship of Spirit and Truth acknowledges the gifts God freely gives.

Ascension Day Guilt

I swear every year I’m going to do something, and every year Ascension Day sneaks up on me and zooms by.  It was May 29th, last Thursday. I suppose I could always cheat and just make the nearest Sunday Ascension Day (Observed), but I always hate moving actual days like that.  The Ascension is 40 days after easter.  Pentecost is 50 days after. Compared to All Saints which is always November 1st, but there is nothing else that connects it to that date. So what I end up doing is reflecting it in the Hymns.  The Ascension is Crowning Day – Crown Him with Many Crowns.  It is the Day he was “seated at the right hand of the Father” so Christ the Eternal Lord.

A theologian I listen to made me think a little more this year about why I keep missing Ascension Day.  Although I think her first take was a little off.  There are three accounts of the Ascension in the Bible.  The first two are both by Luke, one at the end of his gospel and the other at the start of Acts. If you think of Luke-Acts as volume 1 and volume 2 of a story, it makes sense to retell the ending. And in Luke’s telling Jesus just kinda drifts up.  Hence you get icons and images of the ascension with nothing but Jesus’ feet showing. Which in this theologian’s telling is kinda silly.  And I guess it is, but that type of thing has rarely bothered me. Superman Jesus is amusing, but really, how are you going to visually depict a spiritual event?  As Ender knew, the enemy is always down, and heaven is always up.  The third image of the Ascension is in the book of Revelation.  It never calls it that, but I’m pretty sure that is what it is.  All Heaven is in a sad state because nobody can ascend to the throne and read a scroll.  But then the lamb, like one who was slain, appears and is seated and proceeds to open the scroll. (Revelation 5).  Maybe a little like my theologian’s embarrassment at those feet, being a good American I don’t know what to do with an actual – as opposed to a metaphorical – enthronement.  I’m fine with the imagery of crowns, but an actual crown?  Americans of my generation can still sing along with Schoolhouse Rock “No More Kings”.

The second embarrassment of emphasizing “seated at the right hand of the Father” is that we think of Kings as having all authority. “Blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever” all of heaven sings.  But what happens when the enthroned lamb starts opening the scroll?  All hell breaks loose – 4 horsemen, and saints asking “how long?” and earthquakes and blood and people calling for mountains to fall on them.  When God is on his throne, all is supposed to be well.  But it is not.

But where do I get that “all is supposed to be well” from?  Where does my image of a King with all authority meaning peace come from?  It certainly isn’t from the experience of Kings in this world.  Even the Sun King of France had his problems.  And the biblical picture of the newly enthroned Son King is of the damage Satan thrown out of Heaven is wreaking upon the earth. “All will be well” is the promise at the end of the story. As my favorite Christmas hymn tells it, “All idols then shall perish and Satan’s lying cease, and Christ shall raise his scepter, decreeing endless peace.” But today? Today the din of battle, the next the victor’s song.

What Ascension means is at long last the return of the King.  The correct person is upon the throne. We probably all have experienced following the wrong person.  The despair that can overcome.  The rats seeking to flee the ship.  The second guessing.  And because Christ has chosen to work in this world through the Spirit and through the church we might have plenty of second guessing.  But maybe that is because we are called to faith.  Not necessarily faith that all will be well here and now, or that all leadership even is good.  But faith that God is working all things for the good of his people.  Faith that because Christ is ascended, what we attempt will not be doomed.  That nothing done for Christ is ever lost.

In This Name, You Shall Conquer

The past week had two days that are worth commenting upon.  May 20th in the year 325 AD the council of Nicaea was convened. That is the council that produced the Nicene creed that we say in church on and off with the Apostle’s creed. This year, 2025 is the 1700 anniversary of that event. May 21st happens to be the veneration day of Saint Constantine who played an important role in that council  – if not the role that Dan Brown and 1000 conspiracy theories have him play.

Starting with Constantine himself, his mother St. Helena, was the original Christian. She was the concubine of Constantine’s father who was the Roman nobleman and eventually the inheritor of one fourth of the Roman empire in the Emperor Diocletian’s succession plan. Technically he got the worst part, the far west including Britain. His father dies relatively early and Constantine becomes his replacement. And rather like the Biblical David, his life is one of warfare consolidating the Empire. In 312 AD, before the climatic battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had a vision. Eusebius the church historian records that he saw the “Chi-Rho” which is the first two letters of the name of Christ.  The vision told him “In this name, you shall conquer.” He had it painted on all his standards the next day and he did win becoming Emperor of the entire empire. In 314 AD he would issue the Edict of Milan which made Christianity legal in the empire for the first time. Maybe the biggest benefit of this was that churches could now own public space.  Constantine’s mother would proceed to sponsor the building of the original edifices of most of the famous churches from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem to Old St. Peter’s in Rome.

The seed bed of the conspiracy theories comes from Constantine’s role in starting the Council of Nicea.  He convened the council of Bishops from all over the Empire. Early Christianity had two ongoing doctrinal disagreements.  The first was about the nature of God and the second very close about the nature of Christ. It really came down to the question of how did Jesus participate in the Godhood. One camp headed by a man called Arius held that “there was a time when Christ was not.” The godhood of Christ was derivative of the Father. The orthodox camp held what we find in the Nicene Creed – “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”  The conspiracy theories operate much like any reporting on religion in our press today.  Doctrine or religion isn’t a real thing. Politics is the only real thing. So the Nicene creed and the entire council were just an assertion of political power by the consolidating Emperor Constantine who was looking for a faith to unite the empire behind his elevated rule.

But just like our modern day journalists who don’t “get religion” and so view it only through the lens of politics, anyone who does get it could tell you betting on Christianity to unite a political movement is a losing bet. From stories of St. Nicholas (yes, Santa Claus) punching Arius at Nicaea to the 300 plus year aftermath, as the hymn says the church is almost always “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” Politicians in every age may try to make the faith utilitarian, but Christ himself is on the throne and such plans quickly come to nothing. But the creed – the symbol of the faith – is still in use 1700 years later.

The world we live in is a messy one. Its politics are pluralistic. Much like Constantine managing Pagans, Christians, Jews and every other form in the broad empire.  And Satan still has his sway on this old earth.  The church’s judgement of Constantine has long been contrary to a reductionist power politics view only.  Jesus promised that the Spirit would lead his followers into all truth. And as any Christian would probably tell you the paths of the Spirit are often quite surprising.  The church’s judgement has long been that God used the rule of Constantine to end the on and off Roman persecutions of his people. To gather the bishops together to make the formal statement of the faith that has stood for 1700 years. To build spaces of worship still in use today.  And ultimately to allow the further proclamation of the gospel as the 300 – 600’s AD would not just Christianize the empire, but also well beyond its borders. Constantine may have thought the conquest would be his by means of arms.  And on that one specific day it was.  But the larger conquest was of hearts.  “In this name – the name of Christ – you shall conquer.”    

A Thought on Travel

“Wherever you go, there you are.”  I tend to think about that aphorism anytime I have to travel. For some reason I couldn’t remember where it comes from this time, so I made the mistake of googling it. It appears that there has been a popular book by that name recently. So, all the current links google served up were from some Western Buddhist wannabe. But the original place I remember it from is Thomas A Kempis in his “The Imitation of Christ.” His larger context was The Cross.

“No one is so touched with a heartfelt sense of the Passion of Christ, as the man whose lot it has been to suffer like things. The cross, then, is always at hand, and everywhere awaits you. You cannot escape it, run where you will; for wherever you go, you take yourself with you, and you will always find yourself.”

A more modern translation of that runs:

“So, the cross is always ready and waits for you everywhere. You cannot escape it no matter where you run, for wherever you go you are burdened with yourself. Wherever you go, there you are.”

I usually hate travel.  Unless I’m going to some all inclusive beach resort, the effort and expense of travel just never seem worth it. I’m not unmoved by the Romance of it. I’d love to go to Constantinople. The problem is that Constantinople doesn’t exist.  And even Istanbul doesn’t exist as it is in my conception. I’m convinced that travel is on so many people’s lists of dreams to do because they are running from the cross. They have bought into the simple Jimmy Buffet transaction – Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude – without contemplating He Went to Paris, or even better “Hell, it could be my fault.” We think we can run away from the cross.  Yet wherever we go, there we are. Whatever we thought we were escaping, we bring it with us. But what is it we bring?

When Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Mark 8:34),” we often take this as a call to some form of the ascetic life. We look at the cross as doing something that our authentic selves does not want. But that is the way to works righteousness, or maybe even worse, to the perennial martyr. What it really means is crucifying the Old Adam. It means mortifying the sin that lives within our members. For it is only then that we meet our true self.  For Jesus’ invitation is followed by the saying, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. (Mk. 8:35 ESV)”  We can travel around the world sucking the morrow out of life, and we shall lose it. For wherever we go, we are like poor Marley’s ghost, adding links to the chain of who we think we are.

But wherever we are, at whatever age, or place or spin of fortune’s wheel, there is a cross. Christ chose the cross.  He set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). And it is only through the cross that the true Christ was shown.  “This man is the son of God (Mark 15:39).” It is in picking up our cross that we for the first time know who we are. Who is the person we have stopped running from?  What have we accepted as the call of love in our lives?

Wherever we go, we are burdened by our sinful nature. It used to be standard reading – Pilgrim’s Progress.  The initial picture of Christian on his pilgrimage is carrying this heavy bag.  And he thinks that bag is everything. It is only at the cross that the bag falls off and Christian knows himself. His pilgrimage is just beginning.  His travels are extensive. But from that point on it is himself.  And his walk is heavenward all the way. We imitate Christ when embrace the cross, when we attempt to live the call of love in our lives and stop running from it.