Tired of THE DAY

The lectionary gives us too many weeks of The End. I’m tired of the Day of the LORD. But that might be because I tend to feel like we are living through it. As the hymn says “change and decay in all around I see.” And then I’m occasionally given to a thought that if we at least got trumpet blasts and battle cries, and not just the ever present darkness, maybe it would be better. But I didn’t live through the slaughter of millions. That seems like the thought of one as comfortable as I. Maybe each generation gets the Day of the LORD uniquely suited for it.

The Lectionary gives us four weeks, a full month of The End. It usually gets rolling slowly right after All Saints with mere predictions. “Not one stone will be left on top of another.” That frightens the disciples enough, just the idea of their world changing and decaying, that they press on Jesus. It presses on through a couple of Sundays of parables and teachings that tend to end with “watch!” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And then it pulls up right before Advent with The Final Judgement and Christ the King. Now from a church year perspective, a year that begins with Advent and the Christmas Incarnation, walks in the steps of Jesus for six months, and then attempts to grow with the seeds planted, this might be right. This month of the harvest might have the right timing. But man, too much.

Of course this is in contrast to the TV preachers and strip mall prophets who never tire of tales of The Day of the LORD. And they always have an audience. Which might be a distinction worth examining about my tiredness. Why does this Lutheran find himself tired of The Day while much of Christianity seems endlessly fascinated?

And I think it comes down to one primary difference. Lutheranism is a Christian Theology that lives at the extremes. It is law or it is gospel. In Day of the LORD terms it is always A Day of Deep Darkness or it is the Advent of the King. Lutheranism, once it gets into your bones, which it does when you memorize the catechism, is an eschatological theology. One lives their entire life under the weight of judgement (law) and in the hope of the resurrection (gospel). One walks in the good works God has laid out in advance. Because you were sealed before the creation of the world, and you will live in the tents of the LORD unto eternity. To the Lutheran everything in this everyday life transpires in the shadow of eternity. And it is with that recognition of what you were created for, by whose blood you were saved, and the purpose for which you shall live that we live this short allotted time.

In contrast I think for the vast majority of folks, even many Christian folks, that eschatological framework of the world and of life just is not real. The Day of the LORD is some exotic other that inspires endless curiosity and not the everyday reality. As Paul would talk in Thessalonians “those who sleep, sleep at night. Those who get drunk, are drunk at night.” Even though people live in the day, that are not of The Day. They belong to the night, a night unaware of the cosmic battle that rages. And so tales of The Day are like the latest Marvel movie, tales of Doomsday, which never really comes.

But you are of The Day. You are awake and sober having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation. You know the battle wages now. That now is The Day. And soon, soon the effects of The Day will be revealed to all. But until then, watch, for The Day plays out before our eyes.

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A Life Well Lived?

It is Lent, so I get to be a little more somber. And Satan’s big lie to Eve is the bald assertion that “you will not surely die.” And it is a completely unfair lie. Did Eve even have a concept of death? Or maybe a better way of expressing that would be that Eve only had a concept of death. The naked reality of it is not something she was acquainted with. So even if she had a concept, she was working in the realm of theory. And we all know what happens to theory when it meets reality.

I watched a recent interview with former Senator Ben Sasse. He is 54 years old, about the same age as I am. Also has three kids with the youngest being 15. This past December he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and given a plus/minus of 90 days. He has not “given up” as the saying goes. A podcast he is recording with another friend is entitled Not Dead Yet. He has turned himself over to an experimental treatment delivering massive amounts of chemo drugs (i.e. poison) to the cancer. But the reality is still the reality. Unlike my 80-something father whose pancreatic cancer was caught in nascent stages because his appendix just happened to go bad and the surgeon saw something, Mr. Sasse has it all over including in the spinal column which requires massive doses of morphine for the pain. The entire interview is worth your time to watch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8MO-i3CBZQ, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson) and to listen to what he has to say. And I don’t pass it along lightly. He is that exceedingly rare voice who is honest enough with himself, and open enough to share, and verbal enough to express it. And his message is that most rare of things – good.

It got me thinking about comparable works on grief and death and advice to the living and they are rare. The poets have an advantage: John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud and Dana Gioia’s Planting a Sequoia come to mind. Both of those are by people who have a functional theology and are struggling to live it. From a different place of white hot rage Mary Karr’s Face Down. “What are you doing on this side of the dark?…” Now Ms. Karr also has a theology, or she did last I knew, but sometimes it takes a while to travel from head to heart.

The prose writers are at a disadvantage. I know quoting C.S. Lewis is getting to be a cliché, but A Grief Observed is without peer. Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy was maybe the first Christian work on the subject of “A Good Death” or “Advice for Living from those at Death’s Door” written as he awaited the carrying out of his death sentence. Any critique I have of it says more about me than the work, but it’s a bit too much consolation and philosophy, compared to Lewis who truly lets you in the door. There are some others. Richard John Neuhaus attempted it in As I Lay Dying. But he survived, and I always had a feeling he “knew” he would survive. He was already thinking about the book he could write as he lay dying. Tolstoy fans would put forward A Confession. Marcus Aurelius has portions in his Meditations. Simone Weil and Joan Didion both attempted and they have their adherents. But it is a hard thing to pull off. You have to be remote enough from yourself to think and translate, while being close enough to feel.

That is where Mr. Sasse’s interview excels. He has something to say while he is on death’s door. For all of us creatures of dust, who might want to gather our rosebuds while we may, it is worth your time.

Knowing and Being Known

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Biblical Text: John 10:11-18

This was “Good Shepherd Sunday”. The Gospel text is from John 10 which includes one of Jesus’ “I Am” statements – “I Am the Good Shepherd.” He says it twice and after each saying expands a bit on what it means. At least that is my read of what John/Jesus is doing with these I Am statements. For me the core of the passage comes from Jesus saying, “I know my own and my own know me.” The I Am statements reveal to us something about God. In this case that God treats his creation and especially his “sheep” like an owner of something precious. The sheep are life and death things to God. The core of the Good Shepherd is that we have a God who knows, but He wouldn’t be much of a God if he didn’t. Although this one went to the extreme of becoming one of the sheep. But we also have a God who has chosen to be known. He has revealed himself. And his sheep harken to his voice. This is a God for whom this relationship with the sheep – his creation – is not some minor thing, but his engrossing mission, life and death.

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Christmas Eve Midnight – “Light is the Metaphor”

Text: Isa 9:2-7, John 1:1-14 Christmas Eve Midnight
Introduction
Most of you have probably heard me say that John is impossible to preach on. I broke my rule earlier tonight, but the only way it is possible is by picking one verse or one theme and then reflecting it through an epistle or some other scripture to help. Earlier tonight it was receiving. Christmas really is all about receiving. Receiving eyes to see. Receiving the light.
And that is what I want to meditate on a little tonight. Please forgive the cliché, but at midnight how is light a metaphor for Christmas, and how that light works on us.
Life & Death
“Those who dwell in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shined.” – Isa 9:2b
That word for deep darkness has been translated a bunch of ways. The King James divines translated it the land of the shadow of death. It is the same word as in the 23rd psalm. Modern attempts say deep darkness. One even tried death-shade. The word is used 17 times in the old testament. 10 of them in Job. 2 more in Jeremiah. And once in that burning prophet Amos. Just knowing where it is used tells you what “deep darkness” is about – death, destruction, exile. One of the psalms that uses it is about prisoners in chains in deep darkness.
That is where Isaiah puts us. A people who dwell in a land of deep darkness.
But on them a light has shined. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shined in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
That is the start. Somebody told us about the light – a little baby in a manger, the man on the cross, the empty tomb – and nothing is ever the same. The Father and Spirit have moved us from deep darkness to light, from death to life.
And that is a dramatic event. In our age a digital event. For many Christians an unremembered event – being baptized as little babies. But we’ve had our mountaintop experiences, and have heard the dramatic conversion tales. Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I see.
Goodness & Evil
“Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. (Isa 9:7 ESV)”
Another Biblical way we talk about light is good and evil. Nicodemus would come to Jesus at night – the original Nick at Night. Jesus would flabbergast him with talk of needing to be born again. “How can I a grown man re-enter my mother’s womb?” Jesus was talking more about that life & death metaphor. But Nicodemus wasn’t ready. So Jesus says to him,

“Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” – John 3:19-20
We understand the law. We might get it mixed up every now and then. We will try and mitigate its impact, but we get it. Bad men might glorify in their badness, but they know who and what they are. But in the midst of the land of deep darkness, there are Kingdom’s of light.

The promise of Isaiah, fulfilled in Jesus, is a new kingdom. A Kingdom upheld with justice and righteousness. We know these when we see them. Our literature and history are woven through with reflections – Camelot and Plymouth Rock, Cincinatus and Washington, Reagan’s shining city on a hill. They are always more filled with light in reflection and myth than they probably were in reality, but that is because they are reflections of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem whose King was born tonight, whose government increases, like yeast in the bread, like the mustard seed, slowly, quietly until its final fulfillment.

Wisdom & Folly
The last way the Bible uses light is probably the toughest. People will envy you for your stuff or for your intelligence, for your looks or your luck, for almost anything. But rarely will you hear words of envy for someone’s wisdom.
I’m always amazed at the wisdom of the King James translators – which really goes back to William Tyndale who was burned at the stake for his wisdom. They had no tools compared to modern scholars who sniff at the texts they used – but they created a language that lasted really until it met the force of modern marketing that needed to sell bibles.
“And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (Joh 1:5 KJV)
The word they translated as comprehended has a wide area of meaning: more modern translations have tried overcome, understood, extinguish, and perceive. And those are all valid. The greek word is used in a variety of ways and he probably meant to evoke all of them, this being John. But here, he’s talking about a people not receiving. He’s talking about how the one through whom all things were made, was incarnated as a baby. Herod’s killing of the innocents is Matthew. To John, Jesus always knows what he is doing. Jesus puts down his life, and takes it back up again. This one came full of grace and truth. Not everyone sees it. Not everyone comprehends it.
In fact, the world looks at this baby and says foolishness. We have an inner light. We have our ways. God in this helpless child? God on a cross? God adopting us? God living with us? Impossible. The light shines, but the darkness – those living in a land of deep darkness – comprehend it not.
Conclusion
But the true light, which enlightens everyone, came into the world. He shines in the darkness. The boots of the warrior and the uniforms bloodstained by war will all be burned. They will be fuel for the fire. We call him Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts has done this. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts has done this…for us.