Theological Ghosts

I’m sorry, don’t know why I’ve had ghost stories on my mind. But, I ran across an essay that talked about the differences between US or Western ghost stories and Japanese. (Here is the link, although it is really geeky. http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/the-ghost-did-what-translation-exposing-providentialist-thinking/)  The summary is to say that US ghost stories tend to reward the virtuous and punish the evil.  That essay calls this providential, although that is a terrible definition of providence, which biblically is “the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.”  The providence of God is not that he’s the galactic scorekeeper, but that he is gracious and merciful, not visiting upon sinners their due rewards.  Japanese ghost stories have a different morality that can be shocking to Westerners.  In the Western sense, complete innocents can die. People who do nothing to help but heed warnings can live.  Victory, if you want to call it that, can simply be diverting the ghost out of your house somewhere else.

I find ghost stories and maybe horror stories in general interesting because they are almost always theological.  They reveal more clearly than almost anything else what we actually believe about “God, the universe and everything.” I also think that is why the horror genre is a niche.  Most people don’t actually want to think about theology. Which makes the pastoral job interesting.  Because part of the job is not just getting people to think about such things, but to maybe make corrections to their thinking.  And maybe even make changes in their lives to bring them into closer alignment with good theology.  And it is part of the job not because any pastors really want to be the morality police.  We don’t.  It is part of the job because it is part of equipping the saints.  We all enter the crucible.  You don’t want to be putting on the armor while you are already being tested.  You want to have it girded prior. So part of the job is Pastor as haunting ghost to get you to think about these things.

The Western ghost story, with its embedded works righteousness, is a fable of the law.  And that law has three purposes: 1) The Curb, 2) The Mirror and 3) The rule.  Watching a US ghost story where the evil and promiscuous die functions as a curb in that the innocent viewer might see where punishment is given and not follow that path. It functions as a mirror in that we might see what is due to us in certain characters.  It functions as a rule in that it holds up – via the hero and heroine – a still more excellent way.  The biggest problem with that fable is that it also lies.  It holds out hope that by following the hero’s path we might live.  By the law, we all die.

This is where I think the Japanese ghost story is a nice correction. It is a world of at best disinterested spirits, and at worst malevolent spirits. The disinterested do their jobs with varying levels of competence.  It is interesting to me pondering a hurricane as the result of the weather power taking a day off.  And I don’t think that is far off the biblical picture of “the powers that be.” (Luke 21:26, Romans 8:38, Eph 6:12, 1 Pet 3:22). And of course “Satan prowls like a roaring lion.” Stealing from Sci Fi/Fantasy, we live in a dark forest. Oh, we think we know everything because of our recent mastery of matter.  But maybe we don’t have the mastery we think we do. We think we have clear cut the forest, but have we?

The secret to many Japanese ghost stories is “the wise old man or woman.” This character is usually a minor one, but they haunt the story. They show up usually after some deaths when the main characters are desperate.  They tell the characters what is happening.  And they tell the characters how to avoid it. And then they leave.  What happens in the Japanese film is not about personal holiness.  Did you follow the law? What happens is did you hear and take heed?  The characters that are open to wisdom’s word are saved.  Those who have ears to hear are not always those we think deserve it.

This is the advent of the gospel.  The star has appeared.  The light shines in the darkness. Are we willing to set aside worldly wisdom and follow the star?  Or do we insist upon our own knowledge unto salvation?  At least in the Japanese ghost story, the one who listens to the Word makes it out of the dark forest and lives.

Out of the Heart…

Biblical Texts: John 7:37-39, Proverbs 2:6-7, Romans 1:16, Psalm 103:17-18

The day was the Feast of Pentecost. That is supposedly the feast that Jesus is speaking out at in the John text. And the first part of this sermon addresses that. The day here at Mt. Zion was also Confirmation. Confirmation is the completion of typically a two year cycle of study of the Luther’s Small Catechism. We throw in a few practical bits as well, like a “how to build a prayer life” and “comparative world religions,” but most of it is knowing the basics of the faith as taught in the Catechism. It ends with a confirmation of the faith of their baptism. One of the traditions of confirmation is usually a specific confirmation verse. It is chosen in a variety of ways by different congregations, but I’m a tyrant. I choose it for all of them. I also try and through it to give them the blessing of a Spiritual Father. The second part of this sermon is those blessings.

(A personal note. I’ve now confirmed my three living children. I went back through my files and gave my older two the verses chosen for them and gave them that personal blessing again. Something like that is the purpose of this. It is something that can be revisited multiple times.)

A Christmas Season

“Love sought is good, but given unsought better.” – Olivia, Act 3, Scene 1, Twelfth Night

That line is from Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, otherwise known as Epiphany. You might have been forced to read it usually as a sophomore.  The play has two themes that play on Epiphany.  The first is wisdom and foolishness, or what is wise and what is foolish.  The second – like most of Shakespeare’s comedies – is about the true nature of love.  Olivia thinks she is being wise playing a “courtly love” game which ends with her foolishness of falling in love with a woman dressed as a man.  And it is all played as a farce. Shakespeare’s comedies have all kinds of troubles today.

I guess I blame Reformed Protestantism.  If you followed Calvin or Zwingli, they more or less ditched the church year.  Every Sunday was the Lord’s Day.  Elevating any day as a Holy Day was Judaizing (using Paul’s term from Galatians.) And while they have a point, every Sunday is a little Easter, life is not quite that flat.  Romans 14: 5-6 should have solved that.  But the United States was largely a Reformed Protestant project, so we get Christmas Day and grudgingly Easter (although that is disappearing into Spring Breaks not always around Holy Week), but we’ve lost the seasons.

The season of Christmas is twelve days, Dec 25th – Jan 5th.  The carol The Twelve Days of Christmas is an echo of that.  It might also be a Roman Catholic crypto-polemic against the Reformed erasing.  And the entire 12 days were often something of boozy hazy time ending with a big party on Twelfth Night when gifts were exchanged.  After all, it was the coming of the Magi that brought the gifts.  Hispanic Cultures still maintain a bit of this as Tres Reyes.  The Protestant Work ethic couldn’t imagine 12 boozy days, so we pack up the tree the day after.

But that’s enough dissembling, or maybe I’m just in a Christmas Season mood and can’t think straight. Olivia’s middle of the play statement captures something about the Christ child and the love of God.  It is good that we love God.  For God has sought our love.  But the better is that he has loved us unsought. When we were lost in darkness, God sent His light.  Whether that light is the fuller light of prophetic revelation, like “out of Egypt I have called my son” which ties the entire story of Israel to this Israel reduced to one, or a light given in a star to a bunch of foolish astrologers, God sought us out wise and foolish, while were all in the dark.  He gave us His love unsought.  When we were still sinners, Christ loved us.

The church built in a season, and then a fuller Epiphany season, to absorb the immensity of that truth.  She can proclaim the reality in an hour.  Your head can hear the message.  But the heart doesn’t always work on the same timetable. And lots of wisdom and foolishness happens as love moves from head to heart.

An Understanding Heart

Biblical Text: 1 Kings 3:1-15 NLT

What a day. Emergency organist replacements, still singlehanded, and a bunch of other things.

But this is one of those sermons you put in the book, the book of ones that you feel good about. What is the seat of wisdom? The text is Solomon’s request and then his life. It is also the answer that I am pretty sure we are missing in most of our troubles. I’d invite you to give a listen.

Tough Texts

The first Sunday after Christmas has what for me is a terrible text, The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Immediately after Christmas we get something that reminds us of the type of Kingdom, the type of King who has come. His Kingdom is not of this world while being firmly in it. This sermon is a reflection on that. (And I hope it is understandable. I had surgery on Friday afternoon, and so the pain killers were still working here. A nod to being in this kingdom while looking for that resurrection. The text is not quite as clean as I just don’t have my main hand, so I dictated and went rough.)

Believe in the Devil?

Biblical Text: Luke 8:26-39

The text is the shocking one of Legion and the Gadarene Swine. As with all such exorcisms, it represents the power of Jesus. He’s one. Satan’s power is over. Even when Legion doesn’t want to go to the Abyss, He goes to the Abyss. But in this message, part of what I want to look at is the reality of evil and Satan himself. We get a little kickstart from an interview Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave a little before his death where he shocks what passes for the American intelligencia by confessing to belief is Satan. And we follow in the jurists tracks a bit. But the man who was possessed by Legion gives us the clearest message. He starts off naked and among the tombs. We look at what that means, because we find Satan in the same situations today. And then we look at where he ends: at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. How can we be made so right?

Acting on Faith

Biblical Text: Luke 6:17-26

I’ve grown to love this series of texts for the Epiphany season from Luke with a late Easter. The early ones are about what and where we can expect to see God (i.e. have an Epiphany). The middle ones are about the proper reaction to that. And now we will have Luke’s version of the sermon on the mount which is about discipleship. What does the good Christian life look like? What does not just reacting but enduring in the Christian life necessitate? When you get into this territory you get into the wisdom tradition, or you have to start talking about virtues. In this case the virtue of faith, but of a very specific kind. To live the Christian life requires faith in the world to come and that you are already part of it. The Christian does not act simply on maximizing the good in this world alone. The Christian works under the assumption of eternity. And that will bring them into some temporal conflict. The blessings are for those who endure and persist. The woes are for those who take their share now, forgetting the age to come.

Hearing the Signs, Fearing their Silence

Biblical Text: Mark 7:31-37 (Isaiah 35:4-7)

Full Sermon Draft

This was our “Rally Day” or recognition of the start of School week. (We delay a week typically due to the labor day weekend.) So, there are parts of the service – like the installation of Sunday School teachers, and blessing of backpacks – that I couldn’t get on the recording. Physically we did them down in front where our various mic’s don’t capture too well. That blessing was probably the key to thinking about this sermon unfortunately.

In my head the sermon is an existential one. It points out a common thought, looking up at the night sky and what do you see? There are naive answers, but nobody really holds those long. That is the purpose of the Lion King reference. The existential question of that sky (a sign) is: is their order or is it all just chaos?

The answer revealed to us by the Word of God is that there is an order. In our sinful condition we are like the deaf and mute man in our text, unable to hear the music of the spheres. But Jesus has come to give us back the ability to hear. That same Word that tells us of God’s loving order, opens ears and loosens tongues. And in the application to educating, learning/education/wisdom which is based on that word is a worth endeavor, because God desires to be known just as we are known by Him. The universe makes sense, the foundation of which is revealed to us in the Word of God, so we can grow in Wisdom just like Jesus. It is not the dark forest nor the great filter that haunt our minds when we tune out the music of the spheres.

Living Toward the Promise

Text: Ephesians 5:21-6:9 NLT
Full Sermon Draft

This sermon completes Paul’s re-upping of the moral law/10 Commandments in the Christian life. It treats the 4th commandment and how we live into the promises of God by honoring the various close authorities in our lives. Those authorities are both temporal and eternal/spiritual, and they are not always perfect. Paul discusses it all under the the banner of being in submission to each other. The world attempts to divide us and councils that we are first individuals. The wisdom of God says we live in a web of proper authority in which we look out for the other. He does this by penning what is often called a household code.

This sermon looks at the elements of that household code and what they ask of the Christian life. That includes the honor between husband and wife, and how that is a sacramental picture of something much greater. But in each case we are called to live toward the promise and not give in to the easy temptations of the way of the world.

Wisdom from Mary’s Heart

Biblical Text: Luke 1:26-38
Full Sermon Text

An unfortunate circumstance of the reformation has been the tendency to look for things that say “not catholic”. One of the big ones is how Protestant’s tend to treat Mary. The first generation (i.e. Luther) didn’t have this problem. They went on as they had before. Mary just wasn’t an issue. She only became an issue in my historical understanding as later Protestants and Catholics made things that were not dogma prior into dogma. And it is a crying shame, because the Biblical Mary has a lot to tell us how to live the life of faith in her son. This sermon is an attempt to hear the annunciation story (advent 4) as original Jews and Gentiles/Pagans might have heard it, and then to to apply that to us moderns. I don’t think we are as far away as we might think. Mary’s faith and Mary’s wisdom are wonderful examples in contrast to our demands for signs and worldly wisdom. I’d invite you to give Mary a fresh look.

Worship Note: I’ve left in a bunch more music that normal. Our choir piece from this morning in is. The gorgeous hymn “The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came” is in. And I left in “Once in Royal David’s City” and the organ postlude.