Job’s Answer – The Character of God

Note: I’ve been cajoled into including a reading of these Pastor’s Corner articles. I guess I’m going to include it in the podcast feed now.

Our Old Testament Lesson this Sunday (Job 38:4-18) is chosen for one specific line – “Have you entered into the spring of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?” – which lines up with the gospel lesson’s Jesus walking on the water. And the impact of the Old Testament lesson as it is read is exactly what Jesus walking on the water signals, what the disciples intone together at the close, “truly you are the Son of God.” God is always something completely beyond us. Even while being true man, he remains true God. And if that doesn’t scare you a little, instill a holy fear, check your heart to be sure you are still living.

But this Job passage in its larger context speaks to a deeper mystery than simply awe. If there can be such a thing. We roughly know the start of Job. He is describes as “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” This is better than the OT’s description of Noah who was “blameless in his generation.” Of course his generation is the one that God chose to wipe out with the flood. Job as described is more like Enoch who “walked with God and God took him (Genesis 5:24).” Enoch being the pre-history version of Moses whom God took and nobody knew where he was and Elijah who was taken up in the fire-y chariot. And if you are Roman Catholic or open to a bit of Marian devotion, like Mary assumed into heaven. Job both had faith in God Almighty and he walked it. Job was innocent, and yet Satan – the accuser – decides he wants to sift him. And God lets Satan do what he wants. Yet Job does not really sin. His wife comes out at one point and tells him to “curse God and die (Job 2:9).” To which Job replies, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”” And the narrator tells us “in all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

Job, lying in a pile of his own pus and blood, has three friends arrive. And the three friends take turns telling Job in some way he had to have done something to deserve this. They rotate through all the arguments we know that we hope will keep tragedy from our doorstep. That will ensure the innocent receive justice and the guilty are punished correctly. And Job answers them all with three assertions. 1) I am innocent, 2) Yet my redeemer lives, and 3) That redeemer – God – owes me an answer. And Job has the best of the argument to such an extent that a fourth person shows up.burning with zeal to defend God’s honor. His argument is better than the first three. He doesn’t deny Job a superficial righteousness but blames Job for his heart “he does not regard any (i.e. you Job) who are wise in their own conceit.” And the conceit is that God owes Job an answer. God’s sovereignty exempts him from any explanation.

And it is here that God himself show up in the whirlwind. And as you read our lesson it might sound a bit like Job’s last visitor. God proclaiming his own majesty and glory and sovereignty. “Where you there when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And some of that is clearly there. But if all we are doing is pointing out God’s majesty it is a slander against the character of God. Borrowing a line from the greatest B movie ever – Constantine – “God is a kid with an ant farm.” If all we say about God is that he can shake it whenever he wants to we have “darkened counsel by words without knowledge.” For God goes on to call out all kinds of things, like the apparent idiocy of the ostrich who just leaves her eggs “that the wild beast may trample them.” Or how a variety of animals: goats and donkeys, and oxen and horses and hawks and eagles all seem to have their place. “Did you give this to them?” The character of God is not that he is a tyrant doing anything he wants without regard. But that the LORD orders all things mightily.

Job gets an answer of sorts. All these things that we see made by God’s majesty have a way of working, and we know not how. It is above our pay grade. It is beyond our ability. Yet we trust them daily. Should we not also trust that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28).” That the God who has revealed himself is the God of steadfast love. And this is what is required. That we believe in who Christ has revealed the Father to be, not that we know.

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Robert Barnes and English Lutheranism

July 30^th on Church calendar is a remembrance of Robert Barnes, Confessor and Martyr. Now I know that most of us don’t pay any attention to the church calendar beyond Christmas, Easter and maybe a nip of green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. But Robert Barnes got me thinking about one of history’s great “what-ifs” and the history of Lutheranism in the English language. In the US it is always interesting looking at common languages at the turn of the 19^thand 20^th century. The US was much closer to a Canadian two-language reality – with the two being German and English – than any of us can imagine. The turn of the century naturalization laws and then two wars against Germany eradicated that fact. The LCMS had been so German right until the 20^th century that it kept The English Synod – which eventually became our English District – as a separate entity. The first English hymnal was by that English Synod in 1912. Which largely became the 1941 The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH) that I imagine many readers might still call “The Hymnal.”

And it is that which gets us on our way back to Robert Barnes. In translating the common service and all the prayers of the day and everything else that is part of liturgical worship the English Synod did what anyone not concerned about copyright would do. They stole Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s English. Which isn’t as big a stretch as you might imagine. Compared to today’s variance of service even within a body like the LCMS, most of the magisterial protestant churches had kept a liturgy that resembled the Common Service. The service in the Book of Common Prayer is quite close. Cranmer in his first edition of the BCP took from Luther’s reworking of the Mass (in our hymnal as the stub DS5). And so even today, many of the prayers and wording in our services bare a striking resemblance to that Anglican BCP.

And that leads to the great “what if?” In 1525 Robert Barnes brought the reformation formally to England. Cambridge educated and brother of the same Augustinian friars as Luther, he was a doctor of theology and prior of the Cambridge convent. And he preached the first public proclamation of the Reformation gospel from his pulpit in that year. He was arrested leaving the pulpit and charged with heresy. Somehow he escaped and made his way to Wittenberg and was a personal acquaintance with Luther. He returned to England in 1531 with the mission of converting Henry VIII. He rose in office and stature rather swiftly, until as with a lot of Henry’s advisors, he was tasked with getting someone to agree to Henry’s first divorce. Barnes was sent back to Germany to secure Luther and Lutheran theologians’ approval for the king’s divorce and remarriage. They would not agree. (Which is ironic compared to the response later given to Philip of Hesse over bigamy.) Barnes returned without what was desired and Henry soured on Lutheranism. The thought of a Lutheran England, which was quite possible, remains the what-if. What if the Virginia aristocrats (Washington, Jefferson, Madison) had been Lutheran-Anglicans? What would European history have looked like if England and the Northern Continent shared a church?

As it was, Robert Barnes would not recant his Lutheran confession and was burned at the stake for it, July 30^th, 1540. His final words were a prayer, ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Luther wrote upon hearing that news something that probably sounds strange. “It is a particular joy for me to hear that our good and pious guest has been so graciously called by God to pour out his blood and to become a holy martyr…Hope betrayed him. For he always hoped his king would be good in the end.” As the apostle Peter says, “Rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. (1 Pet. 4:13 ESV).” Hope in earthly kings and their glory is bound to fail, but we have a more sure and certain Hope in the resurrection of Christ the King.

Convention Reflections

The every three years LCMS National Convention finished up its business this week. There really isn’t that much to report. It went as scripted. This is what I mean by that. In the run-up to a convention individual members (pastors and congregations), voting circuits (groups of congregations that elect the representatives to the convention) and even entire districts in their conventions can send memorials to the national convention. And they Do! Hundreds of them. Those memorials are grouped and divided by something called floor committees. A floor committee is a working group of members of the Synod that receive memorials and reconcile them together into floor motions. Hundreds of memorials, many of them duplicative, are reduced to a number of motions that the floor committees deem important enough for the time of the roughly 1000 representatives gathered. This is important because it only meets every three years and the cost is thousands of dollars per minute. Not including the vacation time the delegates themselves use. The floor committees also tend to create a couple of Omnibus motions. Omnibus motions are like the Island of Misfit toys. There is something off about them. Some of them are just “not the current thing.” Others are perfectly fine but don’t have “the rizz.” There is usually an omnibus of motherhood and apple pie motions that nobody could be against. There is another one of this is so embarrassing we are going to table it and forget it exists. And there is usually one of things that all good people agree should be rejected and it is important to say so. When I say the convention went as scripted I mean nobody extracted anything from an omnibus onto the floor. Nobody extracted an original motion to replace the floor committee work. No offered amendments from the floor to a floor committee draft were accepted. The vast majority of the elected positions went to people on “the United List” which is a list of people who wink and nod have the Synod President’s endorsement. And most of these votes ended at about 60%-40% if not 90%-10%. For what was an interesting election for the Synodical President decided by 4 votes, the convention turned into a deep ratification of the president’s desires. Even if most of the votes that were taken tended to do things like “instruct a joint seminary panel to study and report in three years.” It was the rare motion that put money or teeth into something.

There are positives out of that. You could read this a broad agreement across the church on important things. You can read it as good alignment between the elected officials of the body and the body itself. At the very least you can read it as everyone knowing the pulse of those who care the most about the Synod, those who care enough to put the time into getting elected and spending a week away from home in downtown Phoenix in July. You can also read this as excellent leadership. Both at an election organization level, but more importantly at the handling of issues between conventions. You don’t really want to send coinflip issues to the full powered legislative and deliberative body of the church. You want leadership that has studied and experimented. Because if that body decides something 50.1%-49.9% we all know it really isn’t over. And you have made the 49.9% into scofflaws until they get another crack at it. When the vote is 65%-35%, the 35% tend to get into line, or at least not parade their non-compliance.

There are also some negatives. There is a simmering split between younger representatives and the larger body, and probably not in the way you might think. It was the 70+ retired majority on the floor that was content to place most things in the “study” bucket. Those who were younger – and this might be relative as 50 is young at these things – it was the younger delegates that would have put more money and teeth into certain motions. It is the younger delegates who would have liked to direct the officers of the synod to act with more haste and determination. To make some deeper changes. That simmering split goes back underground, or I should probably say online, for another three years. Maybe three more years will temper that desire for change. Or maybe three more years will give time for the various burrs under saddles to find resolutions. Or in three years it might be interesting times.

Looking at how the sausage is made church-politically is never encouraging. We are human and being human we are sinners. And being sinners requires ways to mediate disagreements. We call that politics. Unless you want to turn toward war – politics by other means. But in line with the Theology of the Cross, God is present, even most present in this world, in the rough places. “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).” Even church-politics and Synodical Conventions are working together for good. And nothing in how the sausage is made separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39). Even if the least it might due is whet our appetite for the Return of the King.

Sower and Soils Redux

I have three purposes behind this “corner.” A) To offer a meaningful engagement with the Word of God for those who might not make Sunday service or one of the Bible Studies. B) To occasionally challenge or simply announce some activity or need of congregational life. C) To provide an example of Christian meditation. The word is a lamp to our feet and a guide to our path. What that means is that hopefully we are walking somewhere purposefully and not just aimlessly stumbling

The parable of the Sower and the Soils was the gospel reading last week. And I know in my sermon delivered that I encouraged more meditation in the Sower and less on the soils. More recognition that the Sower’s supply is inexhaustible, that He doesn’t care about the current soil status, and that sowing is not a once and done thing but moves in seasons. I think these are all the gospel elements Less concentration on discerning the soil, unless that discernment was turned toward the status of one’s own heart. Where have I been rocky soil, hard packed, shallow? What weeding or cultivation of my own heart might I do?

I usually do not have trouble leaving the prior lessons behind. Every Sunday before leaving the building I read the lessons for next Sunday. They can sit in my head and gut on my day off out of the office. Maybe they have germinated by the time I get back. But this week I could not shake the image of the soils. Many if not most of us give little thought to institutions. It is popular to be cynical about them. And many deserve it. Or if we are not cynical, we assume that they will be around forever even without our help. The seed sown is the Word of God. But the Word of God turns into a plant that is supposed to be fruitful. Maybe stretching the parable beyond what it is meant to take, but plants are planted somewhere. We are planted somewhere. We grow somewhere. And that somewhere is often various institutions.

At the most basic level we are all planted in specific families. We are citizens of specific nations. We are members of a specific church. And within those three estates – or broad institutions – we often have roles to play in other groups. And those groups are both shaped by us, but more often form us. I’ve been reading Vice President Vance’s recent memoir of his return to faith. My interest is professional. What type of faith did he have? What type of faith has he returned to? What spurred it? Who or what helped or hindered along the way? And his story is largely one of formation by various institutions. His family gave him a faith, but honestly not one set on a very secure foundation. He watched more televangelists with his memaw than Sundays he was in a church. He had developed something of a relationship with one pastor in one of the phases where his Dad was active in his life, but it could not have been that great, because when he tried to contact that pastor he was surprised the man had taken a call elsewhere. “I had no pastor that I could turn to…and I was too far away to stay in close touch. (p49).” Life in the Marines and especially in Iraq had given him both the best witnesses and a perfect storm of cynicism as waiting for his discharge he got sucked into an attempt to end a Sarge’s career.

In his story it isn’t the institutions of Ohio State and Yale Law that destroy his early ungrounded faith. That work had already largely been done. But the soil of those institutions grew something different. Ohio State drilled in the idea that “I deserved everything that came to me…any sense of community attachment – that we owe something to the people from whom we come – gave way (p67).” Yale put that on steroids and added pure status. “I wanted to go to a good law school because that is what other’s wanted (p72)…the belief system of places like Yale had a way of turning real vice into perceived virtue (p79).”

Vance’s loss of faith is a story of non-participation and weak institutions. His loss of faith is a story of his family absenting themselves from the institutions of that faith, and then stronger institutions stepping in to provide different ways for the plant to grow. Within his story I think is something for us in general. If you want good soil that produces 30, 60 even 100 fold, you’ve got to maintain it. It is those institutions that are often the soil. And we have not done the work to maintain them.

Dr. Luther and Summertime Sadness

Sure, you could pick up the Old Testament reading and mine it for something. This week’s is Isaiah 55:10-13 and it is perfectly paired with the Gospel lesson – the parable of the Sower and the Soils. The Isaiah passage is surely part of the understanding of the soils. We do not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And that word does go out. And that word does accomplish what it was sent to do. Now we might wonder at why some of it falls on hard soil and apparently does nothing, but that is about the human heart. The Word does do something. It reveals the state of our hearts. And maybe like the rain and snow of Isaiah’s passage, that Word can eventually crack even the hardest of hearts. Or maybe they are like Pharoah. Knowing our own heart is tough. Does it bring up thorns? Or shall it become a tree, a cypress, planted over the waters?

You could turn to the Romans passage. But that would be cannibalizing what you are going to say in Bible Study after worship. Sure, that is only 20% of the worship population, but they deserve something prepared and fresh. But supposedly 60% of the total roster opens this email. If on any given summer Sunday you are fortunate to cross 50% of the roster in worship. And you humor yourself into thinking that 80% who open might at least read the first paragraph. You get to the idea that this little article is probably the item of work most engaged with in the week. And besides, as the epistle says (Romans 8:12-17), “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” Oh, you could certainly come up with something that quickens the spirit from that. At least if you are willing to cut it off there and ignore Romans 8:17, “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” Even then maybe you could invoke Tennyson’s Odyssey – “made weak by time and fate, yet strong in will…to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” Unlike Odysseus who angered Poseidon and suffered, we have not angered God and so suffer. Our journey home through suffering is walking with God, with angels, with Jesus all the way.

But as you stare at the blank page, maybe stuck in a bit of summertime sadness, you hear something moving down the hall. What soul is it in need of solace that without knowing it is giving your soul purpose? And then you get the surprise. “Dr. Luther, it’s been a few years, I was beginning to think that we might not meet again in this realm. How is Leo X doing? Are you guys having a good chuckle over another Leo excommunicating another group (SSPX) that insists they are just preaching and teaching what the church has always taught?”

“Heh. Yes, that little episode has certainly come up. Although maybe I’d point out with a little too much pride, half of Christendom sided with me. Bishop Lefebvre’s group is smaller than even your little Synod.”

“You got me there Dr. Luther. Heaven doesn’t issues traveling passes lightly. What brings you to my small corner today? Why does the great man show up in this humble parish study?”

“What is that pungent phrase you just invoked? Summertime sadness?”

“Yes, well, I stole that, from the singer, Lana DelRey. It’s kinda her entire vibe. And it’s a little infectious.”

“Yes. I can understand that. All the best lines are stolen anyway. We are all just recycling the Word that went out from God originally. Although being German we never called it anything as trite as sadness. We called it anfechtung. There are so many different ways of suffering. Stealing someone else’s line, everyone you meet is engaged in a great struggle. Maybe not over half of Christendom. Maybe over a single soul. Maybe theirs. Maybe that single struggle engulfs all of the Kingdom with it.”

“Dr. Luther, you’ve never been indirect before. Is the sadness spreading, even in heaven? Make it clear, why are you here?’

“Read your Isaiah again. You know I called him the fifth evangelist.”

“Yes, who did you steal that line from?”

“That’s mine, or that’s my story. But focus now Herr Pastor. Does the Word fail?”

“No. But I know where you are going. Look at things. Does this look like success?”

“So are you now the judge? Were you there when he laid the foundations? Have you discerned all the purposes of almighty God? I remind you I’ve had 500 years in paradise and Leo and I are just starting to put some of our lives together.”

“Fine. No. I’m not. But what it your point.”

“You live by faith. God’s word goes out and it accomplishes his purposes. Whether you know them or not. You can go out and come back in in joy.”

And with that Dr. Luther must have been needed elsewhere. Although without a good bye, maybe I shall see him again.

Prisoners of Hope

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of Hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. – Zechariah 9:12

Some phrases just dwell in the imagination. Prisoners of Hope. That’s one of them. Two words that you wouldn’t normally put together. Prisoner and Hope. Prisons of various types are famed for the words put over their entry. The entry is Hell in Dante is “Abandon Hope All You Who Enter Here.” The entry to Auschwitz was “Work will set you free.” On Riker’s Island (NYS Prison) you will find the correction facility motto “New York’s Boldest.” On one Soviet Gulag it said, “Shock labor is the path to early release!” It is absurdly funny that Hell might have been the most honest. In most ways we might think of prison as being the opposite of Hope. Yet the prophet Zechariah ties these two things together to describe faithful Israel, prisoners of Hope.

Zechariah is prophesying to Israel in exile. Their kingdom gone, their temple destroyed, the reality of their covenant with God at least in question. Would any God with any reality allow this for his people? Israel’s exile for most of Christian history has been used as a metaphor for the church in this world. Wherever you find the church, that is not its native ground. That is a beachhead in Satan’s territory. The people of God an infiltrating Army in this old world. And often an army surrounded. Maybe an army in chains. Most of the apostles found themselves in various prisons. Yet they were always prisoners of Hope. As Paul once said, “it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain. (Acts 28:20)”

And what is that hope?

That you would behold your King coming to you righteous and having salvation. That the chariot and the war horse would be cut off. That the battle bows would be broken. That your King would speak peace to the nations. That his rule would be from sea to sea, from The River to the ends of the earth.

That sounds great, by why is this my hope? Why would I endure chains now, for that hope? Why would I consider myself a prisoner held by this hope?

“Because of the blood of my covenant with you.”

Christ has shed his blood for you. Christ has given you his body and blood. He has marked you in your baptism as one redeemed. And these things – these sacraments – are the acts of his covenant with you. Now we might break contracts or covenants. We might be faithless, but God is faithful. God fulfills his promises, his covenant. And He has given us a covenant sealed with the blood of his Son. “I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.”

We have been washed in the waters of Holy Baptism. The Good Shepherd will lead us beside still waters. Today, we might find ourselves in chains of various kinds. Worldly chains of fame and status and want. We might find ourselves in personal chains of besetting sins. But God has set us prisoners free in the blood of his Son Jesus.

Today we might be prisoners of Hope. Tomorrow, God declares, “I will restore to you double.” As Jesus said last week. “You will not lose your reward.” We are prisoners of this hope. Even the shiniest and most gilded cage of the world’s prisons can’t promise this. They all lied, other than Hell which has no hope. But with Christ, we have hope.

Election Returns

I’ve been struggling what if anything to write about our Synodical Presidential election. I suppose I will start with the simple facts. Matthew Harrison, who has been Synodical President for 16 years/5 terms, has been reelected to a sixth 3 year term. To anyone handicapping the election that result would not have been a surprise. The surprise was in how that came about. It took three ballots. He won on the first ballot his previous times often with vote shares approaching 60%. This time his share was 50.1%. He got 4 votes over the absolute minimum on the 3^rd ballot. Now after 16 years the “time for someone else” vote is going to grow naturally. But this particular vote was not just that. Todd Wilken, the host of Issues, Etc, I think has it right. “The Venn diagram of voters against Harrison often had a single point of overlap – anyone but Harrison.” There were people in the Synod mad over the closure of various Concordia System schools and various lawsuits around those schools. There are people mad because they want expansion of ways onto the ministerial roster. There are people mad because they want a reduction in the ways onto the roster. There are people mad over Harrison talking more explicitly about the order of service and Lutheran distinctives. There are people mad that he doesn’t cast out of the synod those who are not using “our hymnbook.” And behind all of this anxiety is the fact of decline. Peak reported membership was around 2.8M in 1970 – the year before my birth. The last published reports (2026 Lutheran Annual) that number is 1.6M. And of course membership is not attendance. On any given Sunday the last reported attendance numbers were a little over 500K.

Something that I believe to be the truth that impacted this election, and impacts what this summer’s convention is going to debate, falls under Hemmingway’s observation about bankruptcy. How did it happen? Slow, then fast. I think the reality is that many congregations within the Synod have reached that “fast” part of the decline. And there are a variety of reasons. There are congregations on the great plains that are just the victims of their emptying out. What used to take 100 people to farm now takes 1. The town I grew up in at that time had a population of 6000. Today it is 3000. In more populated areas either you have congregations spaced before the advent of the car, or based on assumptions rooted in 1960s attendance and growth, we spaced congregations too close. And when those assumptions didn’t pan out, you’ve had undersized, undercapitalized and in competition with each other congregations for decades. All of that exacerbated by other changes, like the wholesale move of women into the workforce. Congregations that responded by hiring people to do what used to be done by volunteers benefited. Those that did not saw entire generations leave. And none of that incorporates all the one off church fights that blighted otherwise healthy congregations. And none of that even touches doctrinal rails or failures.

All of this reflects our Old Testament lesson this week too much for my comfort. You’d have to back up to the start of the chapter – Jeremiah 28. It takes place before the full exile, but the King of Judah and the temple artifacts – ark, candelabras, etc. – have been deported to Babylon. Jeremiah has been prophesying this – absent repentance, absent change – for more than 28 years. But Hananniah, a temple priest stands up and says he has a word from the LORD. The King and the temple vessels would be returned within two years and peace would be established, that Babylon would be broken. It reminds me of what many a Synod President has said over the years. That everything is fine. Everything will be fine. That nothing large needed to be done. Many congregations have heard that over the decades. Meanwhile Jeremiah hears Hananiah and responds. “Amen! May the LORD do so.” It is not that this wouldn’t be nice. But Jeremiah points everyone back to the authentic prophets that everyone accepts. Is it ever that easy? They all prophesied something like “rend your hearts, not your garments.” They all prophesied absent doing something hard, returning to the LORD your God, returning to you first love, “war, famine, pestilence.”

God works in a peculiar way his wonders to perform. He works by death and resurrection. He does a new thing, and the old thing often has to die for the new to come in. Whether that death is the death of the old Adam in ourselves that often stands in the way of the Kingdom, or that death is not just the loss of the temple artifacts, but the temple itself, it happens. But the Kingdom ours remains. Because the Kingdom is not of stones – even such great stones as the temple. The Kingdom is the living stones built on Christ. And God has placed that stone. It shall not be moved.

The Man of Sorrows & The Sparrow

Jeremiah is a hard book and when I first looked at the lessons for this week I wondered what they were doing pairing this reading (Jeremiah 20:7-13) with the gospel lesson. But the pairing might not be as off as I first thought.

The first thing you should put in your memory is the context of Jeremiah. He is a prophet for forty or so years. And his message the entire time is essentially “you guys are doomed.” Jeremiah is the archetype for the “The End is Near” sandwich board guy ringing a bell. He’s the archetype, but with two primary differences. That guy to us is a character of mirth. The end never comes. The end most definitely was coming for Jerusalem. That comedic guy is not self-aware. He goes ringing that bell with the pure bliss of ignorance. Jeremiah is self-aware.

And that is where our lesson today starts, with one of the most heart rending verses of the entire bible. “O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day, everyone mocks me (Jeremiah 20:7).” Jeremiah has been preaching doom for 40 years, and it has not yet come. He has been shouting “violence and destruction” for decades, and the walls of Jerusalem still stand. Everyone wants him to just shut up to the point they would be willing to kill him. “Denounce him! Let us denounce him…and take our revenge on him! (Jermiah 20:10).” It’s the guy with the sandwich board who knows how everyone looks at him. And know that his message has no effect.

This burden is enough for Jeremiah that he attempts to put it down himself. “I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name.” But the Word of the LORD, the prophetic calling is too powerful. “There is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot (Jeremiah 20:9).” The LORD is stronger and has prevailed. The Word finds its way. Yet the question I think lingers to anyone who reads it. How can God do such a thing? Is this really how God is, a divine tyrant making us the rump of jokes?

Jeremiah works his way to his answer. Those who laugh at him now will not have the last laugh. “The LORD is with me as a dread warrior; my persecutors will stumble, they will not overcome me.” He even manages to get in a bit of bragging. They are laughing at Jeremiah like sandwich board guy, but “They will be greatly shamed…Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten (Jeremiah 20:11).” And indeed it is not forgotten. 2600 years later the book of Jeremiah is still read. 2600 years later his message continues to resonate and spread the warning to those with ears. 2600 years later, those residents of Jerusalem standing on the precipice of destruction who would not hear, who looked to kill the prophet of the LORD are held up for derision, for blind eyes and stubborn hearts. Jeremiah’s ultimate answer is that the LORD “tests the righteous and sees the heart and mind.” That this LORD justifies all who commit their cause to Him (Jeremiah 20:12). And like all hard meditations, it ends with praise. “Sing to the LORD!”

Jesus himself is a fulfillment of Jeremiah – the man of sorrows. We put him to death in the most shameful way possible. But his cause was trusted to his Father who raised him from the dead. And we disciples are not above our teacher. We can expect these things. Cause part of our message is definitely “The End is near.” If not capital T capital E THE END, we all meet our end. “Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. (Matthew 10:28).” The LORD is not the tyrant we might fear, but one who shared the temporal shame. He is one who knows when every sparrow falls. And are you not worth more than a sparrow? Entrust your cause to the LORD.

(Not So) Ordinary Time

The church calendar and its divisions are not biblically mandated stuff. As the apostle says in Romans, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. (Rom. 14:5 ESV).” But I do think there is a reason that it was created rather early, that it perpetuated, and that it keeps coming back. Even Calvinist Presbyterians and Free Will Baptists tend to have Christmas and Holy Week these days. Which is basically how that calendar originally started. And then everything else fell into place around those “High Holy Days.”

And there is a fundamental division in that Calendar that we have gently passed. From Advent to Trinity the focus is on the life of Christ. And so our meditation tends to be about the 2^nd article of the creed. It is the proclamation of who God is and what he has done for us. But when you pass into the long green season, for us the season after Pentecost – others have called it the season after Trinity and still others “Ordinary Time” – it is more about the 3^rd article of the creed, what the Holy Spirit is doing. And that is calling, gathering, enlightening, sanctifying and keeping. That is the Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the preparation for life everlasting. As so last week opened the season with the Call of Matthew the tax collector. The Holy Spirit calls sinners and only sinners. And the readings early will continue in that discipleship vein. How exactly does following Christ work?

And so reading Romans all summer and into fall – and that is what our lectionary does – creates a realistic problem. Summer is when we all check out, right? We’ve made it through the High Seasons, this is me time. When the livin’ is easy. And yet the calendar and assigned reading are serious stuff. We’ve received the call. What the heck does that mean for us…for me? Can’t we just kick back and let it be for a bit? It’s summer.

Most of Paul’s letters have an immediacy to them. He’s responding to some crisis in a baby congregation he founded. He writing to a young kid and the young leaders of congregations how to pastor and be a congregation of God’s people. He’s doing what we all can do, putting off the reflection and ordering of things, to react and respond to the squeaky wheel. And that wheel does need oiled. It will always need oiled. And then one day the question of why the heck am I doing this oiling of this stupid wheel at all sneaks up. Romans is Paul’s answer. Romans is an invitation to: why does this Jesus and church thing work? Why does it work for me?

And it simply starts out with a reflection on the law. Think about the law as simply “the way the world works.” And this is the trouble with that law. It works 95% of the time. If you follow it, your life will actually be better. The Taoist knows this, be water, conform yourself to the shape of the world. The living is much easier. But the problem is I don’t want to do that. I want to do what I want to do. Or the problem is the 5%. I have kept all these things since my youth, why is my life a complete mess? Paul the Jew asks, “What is the value of circumcision (the covenant marking of the Jew)?” Has God lied to me? Because exactly when I needed it to work – that 5% – it kills me. I can’t do it, or it doesn’t work. Something has gone wrong with creation because the good are punished and the evil prosper.

Why does this following Christ work? Why do I keep walking the discipleship way? Because the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law (Romans 3:23). The creation was subject to futility that it might be set free from its bondage to corruption (Romans 8:20). We are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us (Romans 8:37). The hope of the disciple is not this world, but the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Which are freely given to us by faith. Because God loves us

Opening Romans

We are going to be reading from the book of Romans for most of the Summer and all the way into the fall. So we will be taking it up closely in the Sunday morning Bible Study after service. Technically we started last week and it will take a couple of weeks to catch up with he lectionary readings. I’d invite you to join us.

Most of Paul’s letters are written either to congregations that he has founded on his journeys, or they are written to his travelling companions like Timothy and Titus. After Paul himself would get chased out of one place, Timothy and Titus would often stay behind to wrap up necessary things, or if not stay behind they would be sent back to take care of anything lacking. That is why the letters to them are often called the pastoral letters, because they are about how that office should be carried out. First by Timothy and Titus and then by those whom they appoint. The letter to the Romans is different. Paul did not found the church at Rome. In fact is it often put forward that the Letter to the Romans is a fundraising letter. Paul intends to go on a missionary journey to Spain (Romans 15:24) and he hopes to stop by Rome on his way. Romans 1:8-15 is Paul’s introductory pitch for missionary support.

I’m being slightly tongue in cheek there. First because everyone in the Christian world would have heard of Paul. His collected letters were already being read in the churches. Nevertheless Paul butters up his potential backers. “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world (Romans 1:8).” It is always flattering to have the guy who is known throughout the world tell you that you are. And he continues that “without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers (Romans 1:10).” And then adds that “I may impart some spiritual gift to strengthen you.” It is not every day that an apostle visits, even the church at Rome. And it is surely true that as Paul says, “I have often intended to come to you.” All roads lead to Rome and everyone surely hoped to see the Imperial City some day. Just like I assume everyone hopes to see New York City.

And it is here that there is a great question. Did Paul make this trip? We know Paul made one trip to Rome at the end of Acts, under guard as part of his appeal to Caesar. Acts ends saying Paul “lived there two whole years…proclaiming the Kingdom…and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ…without hinderance (Acts 28:30).” We know that Paul was martyred in Rome either in 64 AD by Nero after the fire, or in 68 AD. It is one or the other. There is scattered evidence of an actual trip to Spain, but nothing biblical beyond his remarks in this letter. In the Theology of Acts, the gospel made it to Rome, and in making it to Rome, the gospel had made it to the ends of the earth. There was no reason in that book to narrate either further missionary journeys or the death of the apostle. The gospel has made it from Jerusalem to the ends.

If Paul was following his normal routine, the people that sponsored his missionary trip are where he would return. You could imagine Paul being released, making that trip to Spain and returning to Rome. Which is unprovable but helps to hear “in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles (Romans 1:13).” I Paul might not have founded this church, but I think I can help you, and I know that you can help me, by taking a collection for a mission trip to Spain.

And what every missionary ever seeking financial support does is spell out exactly what they will be preaching. This is how your funds shall be put to good use. “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “the righteous shall live by faith (Romans 1:16-17).” Paul, the apostle, proclaims the gospel he always has. The free gift by faith.