High Sounding Non-Sense

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Good Life

Biblical Text: Luke 6:17-26

The text is Luke’s version of the beatitudes. If you know them, you know them from Matthew. How they appear in Luke is quite different. Different is a way that invites a little comparison and contrast. Also different in a way that invites a much different interpretive focus. The focus of this sermon is how Jesus’ blessings and woes form a teaching on “the good life” for the disciple. Jesus’ teaching contrasts with both popular and philosophical examples of the good life in serious ways. Ways that every disciple should spend some time contemplating.

Godhead, Person, Incarnation

Text: Athanasian Creed (https://hymnary.org/hymn/LSB2006/319) Link has the versified text we used and the sermon references.

The creeds are the definition of the faith. They are the Faith which is believed. The Athanasian Creed, of the three great ones of the Western Church, is a masterful presentation of what we know. All of it can be tied to revelation, but the creeds presentation moves from those things which might be available to gently assisted reason to the more concrete revealed reality. The creed uses the names Father, Son and Spirit, but it starts out more philosophical with what might be call the attributes of God, shared by the Godhead in unity. The Christian Faith attributes these to the God of the Bible, but honestly many of these things are the god of classical theism. The second part of the creed moves into deeper revelation. It confesses and instructs how that God has revealed himself in three persons and how those persons are unique. The uniqueness that it wishes to establish is not hierarchy, but an order: Father Is, Son begotten, Spirit proceeding. The last part of this creed confesses the most concrete, but also the most controversial part of Christianity – the incarnation. In 40 verses it is an inexhaustible source of contemplation.

This sermon merely scratches the surface. It is more a Trinity Sunday encouragement to turn away from the confusion of our age and once again take up the solid definitions which are the gifts of ages of the church past.

Forsythia, fifth grade flutes and farewells – existence and revelation

51814wordle

Biblical Text: John 14:1-14
Full Sermon Draft

The text is Jesus’ words “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”. As a church we spend a good deal of time on way and truth but comparatively little on life. What this sermon does is examine the modern problem with experiencing the life (materialism), look at the ways we might get shaken however briefly out of our materialist slumbers, and then it proclaims how god – the life – goes beyond that god knowable to reason and reveals himself as Father and Son (and Spirit). The revelation of Jesus forecloses some conceptions of God and assures us of our place in The Life.