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

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

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

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

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

Defeated Legion

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Biblical Text: Luke 8:26-39

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

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Endless Summers

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

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

Time Grown Short

The problem with having three readings in church is that two of them usually get neglected. You can always stay for Bible Study on Sunday! We usually pick up at least one of them in its larger context. But not everyone does that. The Old Testament Reading usually supports the Gospel reading, but that support is often not exactly obvious or only a word or two. Like this week, how does Jonah support the Gospel? The implied answer is in the preaching. Jonah proclaimed to Nineveh, “You guys are toast.” And they surprisingly repented to Jonah chagrin. Jesus starts his ministry with “The time is fulfilled…repent and believe the gospel.” But the real problem to me of three readings is the “hard reading.” Like this week’s Epistle reading (1 Corinthians 7: 2-35) where Paul says, “It’s time to forget you have a wife.” Nobody wants to preach on that. The only thing further down the list would be “wives obey your husbands” or last week’s “do not be deceived” passage calling out the sins of the age.

But there it is in Holy Scripture. And as much as I complain about the lectionary makers leaving out the good parts, they are not completely spineless. You are the watchman and Israel preacher. If you don’t tell them, their sin is upon you. So, what they heck does Paul mean by, “let those who have wives live as though they had none?”

First, he absolutely doesn’t mean this is a free pass for a Vegas weekend. Nor is it an invite to an open marriage, a polycule or any such nonsense as our age would throw out. Second, recognize that large sections of Paul’s letters are responses to questions or problems brought up to him by the various congregations. In this case the context of our epistle reading is the larger idea of marriage. Paul pronounces some basic principles for marriage earlier in the chapter. And one of the things that every reader of scripture has to realize eventually is that the Apostle Paul in manners pertaining to marriage and sex is the progressive. What he proclaims is how to live in actual freedom, compared to our popular culture’s disdain for Paul. For example, “likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does (1 Cor 7:4).” Try telling that to any Roman paterfamilias. Paul’s advice boils down to “you are one flesh, act like it.” And it is in the submission of the self to that truth – the one flesh union – that you find your freedom. Freedom is always found in some form of submission.

But how do we find that freedom? Because it certainly doesn’t always feel free. It is in recognizing the parallel truth that we are first slaves to Christ. We submit to Christ. We have a ton of vocations: Husband/wife, father/mother, child, brother/sister, employee, citizen, elder, office holder. And they all overlap. And there are not enough hours in the day to fulfill the claims of everything. And that causes anxiety. “The married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wide, and his interests are divided. (1 Cor 7:33-34).” Paul almost always makes the parallel female point as he does here. The freedom comes from this: “the present form of this world is passing away.” When the anxieties of the age stack up, take a breath and realize that they are all temporal. They are all passing away. The only person who we are eternally bound to is Christ. Serve Him.

And what is the way that Christ wishes to deal with us? It is not by the law that causes all of our anxiety, because we can never keep it. Christ wishes to deal with us by his grace. “Believe the gospel.” And in that grace, “all things work together for the good of those who love God (Romans 8:28).” We are given the freedom in the gospel to live for Christ. And when living for Christ it is amazing how many other vocational decisions become easy. When we live in the light of eternity, our temporal struggles become “light passing things.” Because brothers, “the appointed time has grown short.” And it is always comparatively short to eternity. Be free from anxieties, do what is necessary by the light of the Lord, and he will prosper your steps.