Three Points and a Poem

The old, by today very old, cliché about preaching was: three points and a poem. I haven’t researched it, I’m too lazy to really establish it, but having read a lot of old sermons it strikes me as gaining its form in the late 19^th century – a time when poets were still an important part of life. And not just to egg-heads like me or emo-theater-kids, but the Psalms from the King James, and the Romantics (Byron and Shelley), and the occasional line from Virgil or Homer (or if you were more naughty from Martial’s epigrams) would be part of the common man’s existence. They didn’t have TV to distract or the NFL to take away the day the church used to own. Those 19^th Century divines, mostly Anglican, the Lutherans were still in German which I can’t read, would preach for an hour and wrap it up with a poem. The form became the cliché in the mid-20^th century. By which time the preachers no longer had as much poetry memorized at their predecessors nor did they have a willing hour in the pulpit. That and the demands of the parish itself were changing. Even if they were given an hour, the study necessary for that was no longer available. The reasons are numerous, and we live after the deluge.

Personally I can’t imagine trying to create three points. As a homiletics prof said in an unguarded moment, “all we can handle is one.” And my stock of poetry is even less than my mid-century peers. I was only forced to memorize two poems in all my schooling plus the scattered verse I’ve assinged myself. But I do have this stack of poems that I’ve saved along the way. Saved dreaming of putting together a collection. But making no claim to being from a wide choice. Most poetry, like most creative works, has meaning to you, your mother and maybe your wife. Editors of lit mags have favorites and favors to repay and sinecures to grasp hold of. And my taste and desires are decidedly not the current lit mag editor’s taste. But a Dana Gioia, or a Mary Karr, or especially an A. E. Stallings occasionally passes through the filter simply on the power of their verse.

And what is that power? I’d say the same as the power of Scripture, capital T Truth. Luther in his Heidelberg theses posits, “A Theologian of the Cross says what a thing is.” He contrasts that theologian of the cross with a “theologian of glory” and the defining trait of the theologian of glory is to “call the bad good and the good bad.” Why did poets fade from importance? I’d say the same reason as pastoral theologians. They stopped being vessels of truth. They became masters of a colloquial phrase: polishing a…oops, I almost didn’t receive the call over things like that. They put forward very pretty lies, because their faith in the Cross, and their faith in their audience to hear it, wavered.

A cry of the reformation was “Ad Fontes” – to the sources. To Luther and the boys that meant scripture and the original languages which they felt had been obscured by the pretty words of Philosophers and Scholastics and Prelates more concerned with paying for St. Peter’s than preaching the gospel. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to say pondering what we’d say stands in our modern way. What pretty lies do we tell ourselves? And are we willing to grasp our cross, and call a thing what it is? Or does the recently departed Christine McVie still have the anthem of the age, “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.” Or as an old poet said, “humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

Solar Array (An Object Lesson)

The house that we bought had installed a rather large solar array. Unfortunately, we learned about a month after moving in that something was wrong and it wasn’t working. We learned this when the new electric bill came and there was a zero on produced electricity. The frustration was doubled when the supposed fix was delayed for another month when the scheduled repairman bailed out on the initial date. Other than the occasion to sin as several words got taken in vain over that time, it was also an occasion to learn a few things. I did manage to learn that the installation was still on warranty, who the company was and how to contact them. I learned that they provide both a website and a phone app that monitors and reports on solar production, to which I am now addicted checking the status. I also learned a bit about the actual physical installation which I think is a possible if flawed object lesson in two types of righteousness or the righteousness of the law and that of the gospel.

I’ll say the solar array has three parts: the panels up on the roof, the wires and gauges, and something called an inverter. The panels produce direct current (DC). The electricity that comes from APS is alternating current (AC). The DC produced has to be converted to AC to be used. That is the purpose of the inverter. What was out on my array was the inverter. So, when I got access to the reporting app, I could see Watts being produced by the panels, but it all went nowhere. They were being sent into a non-working inverter.

Luther would talk about moral and civil righteousness. Moral righteousness is that vertical standing with God. Civil righteousness is our standing with each other. The only way we receive moral righteousness is by faith in what Christ has done. The reason we can stand is because Christ has given us his righteousness that covers all our sin. Civil righteousness works much differently, and it has some interesting quirks. Civil righteousness is active. We do it. The real question is if what we are doing is truly righteous or just what we or our society think is righteous.

The law of God, like those solar panels, makes use of the light given. The law is good and wise and tells us what is truly righteous. But like those panels, the law by itself has no ability to produce usable power. And what it does produce can be wasted. We know what is right, but we don’t feel like doing it, or worse we twist it to support what I want to do. By ourselves we are like those DC solar panels. The light of the law wasted. A direct current to nowhere good.

It is only by the indwelling of the Spirit creating faith in the work of Christ that creates something usable. That inverter is able to make two useful things out of the law. First is it able to make us aware of our sin. When we look at the cross we become aware that however we have been counting righteousness, it doesn’t work. Our righteousness with God is something that only comes through Christ. The second thing it can do is start to move what we receive from God into the right directions with our neighbors. Without faith in Christ we might be producing a lot of DC current, but it does nothing. It is only by that great inverter that the light of the law can be turned into righteousness. We receive passively the moral righteousness of Christ, and we are then empowered, producing the right current, to love our neighbor.

Like all object lessons, it isn’t perfect. I could pick it apart and probably declare myself heretical. But it does strike something core: “One thing is needful”. And without that faith everything is lost.

A Faintly Burning Wick He will Not Quench

There are these series of “songs” in the book of Isaiah often called the servant songs. The most famous is the one most associated with the passion in Isaiah 52 and 53. “Behold, my servant…shall be high and lifted up…he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows…” Our Old Testament Lesson for this week (Isaiah 42) is another one of the servant songs. And it contains one of the most fascinating descriptions in the Bible of the way that God will operate with men.

The first thing it does is make sure that we understand who and what we are dealing with. “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.” There are three unique things here that we should absorb. The first is that the mystery of our election is tied up in the mystery of the Trinity. The son is the only-begotten of the Father. This is the one in whom the soul of the Lord delights – soul here meaning being or essence. The delight of the Lord being with his people has always been tied up with his people being connected to the only-begotten son. And from where does this delight come? The choosing. This one is my chosen. And this chosen has chosen his own. As John says at the start of his gospel, “given the right to become Children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:13 ESV),” And for what have they been chosen? They are servants of the most high. Now it is the paradoxical nature of this God that he raises up his servants. And the one who is the servant of all now sits at the right hand of God. The church is the servant of Christ, his chosen, and the delight of his eye in an analogous way to the son and the Father.

How is this made known? “I will put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations.” The Spirit was placed upon Jesus in his baptism. There is a long-standing fight between the Western and the Eastern churches over the Nicene Creed. The Eastern one confess that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. The Wester adds: and the Son. The Spirit placed upon Jesus in His baptism then proceeds from the Son to us in our baptism. He took our baptism, so that we might receive his. Just as Jesus was anointed by the Spirit for his service, we have been anointed by the Spirit for our service. And what is this service? To make known to the nations what the justice of the Lord is.

And all of that brings us to the toughest verses. How is this done? Can we bring this justice to the nations by brute force? What about by the wisdom of the world? “He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.” All of the straightforward ways of power and authority of the world are to be shunned. The gospel proceeds by “left-handed” ways. It is not that the gospel denies truth and justice. No, “he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged.” This is the same God who “created the heavens and stretched them out.” His law stands. But that rule is to be accepted and longed for. “The coastlands wait for his law.” Because Christ will not have the might of the law crush the weak. Christ has chosen us and his election is sure. That “left-handed” way is by faith. The Servant has chosen us and the will of God will not be confounded. Our faith is not in vain. The One who made all things, will make them all new in due time. “Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.”

God operates with us by telling us exactly what he has done. By giving us His servant “as a covenant for the people.” And all those who have faith in this covenant are the chosen, those in whom the soul of God delights.

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 25^th – Jan 5^th. 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.

Desire of Nations

“Sages leave your contemplations, brighter visions beam afar; seek the great desire of nations, ye have seen his natal star…(LSB 367, Angels from the Realms of Glory St. 3)”

“O Come, Desire of Nations bind in one the hearts of all mankind…(LSB 357 O Come, O Come, Immanuel St 7)”

This is not pulpit worthy, at least not yet. First because it is more an intuition than something well discerned. And second because there are so many ways it can go wrong. But desire is something fundamentally bound to Christmas.

When we are younger that desire is stoked by the wonders of the season. All the lights. The decorations coming out. A tree in the house! Cookies and just the pace of life. Before you even get to presents and Santa, a two-year old is attuned to the desire of the season. They are sad to see everything packed away. As we get older that desire moves on to: “What am I going to get?” It might be here that we start to understand something about desire. Whatever physical thing you get, the satisfaction doesn’t last that long. As soon as you get the Toy of the Year, it breaks. As soon as you open the X-box, desire moves to having the next game.

Desires of adults around the season might even be more complicated. Christmas might be the first time parents meet the new boyfriend/girlfriend. And the strange mix of desires all of that stirs up in both parents and children. Desires to give the children a “good Christmas” which gets harder each year, until it really is impossible. Desires for a gathering of the clan and a nostalgia for when everything was together. And it is not that any of these desires are necessarily bad. They might be appropriate in their seasons. And there are better and worse satisfactions of them. But if you pay close attention to the desires of season, they all tend to increase the restlessness. We place our hopes on things that can’t bear the weight, even if they are good things. Which if we are honest they often aren’t. Our desires are often that our wills would override the wills of others. That the world would stop and satisfy me.

What Christmas does is start to train our desires, in the words of a great prayer so that we “pass through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal.” It is not the fact of desire that is our problem; it is often the type of satisfaction we expect from what our hearts desire. We often place eternal desires on temporal things which can’t do anything but buckle under the weight.

The hymnwriters get this. Even if one is a sage and supposedly trained their desires for higher things, even those ideologies and deep desires are not the proper object. Brighter visions beam afar. All earthly desires should point us to our great desire. To know our creator and be known by Him. Christmas is that creator coming to us in order to be known. Christmas is that creator not just knowing us, but loving us.

Everything else we place our desires upon ultimately fails. It is only God who is an infinite source of satisfaction. As Augustine said, “we are restless, until we find our rest in thee.” So much of life is about training ourselves to have the right desires. To binding our hearts to those things which do bring peace. When the manger orders our desires, when we come and worship the Christ the newborn King, we allow Him to satisfy our deepest desires setting our hearts at peace so that we might rightly receive all the rest of the gifts of his providence. When we receive first the eternal, the temporal adorns it like so many perfect ornaments. Even the broken ones which speak of a day of mending.

The Right Time

Lesson Basis: James 5:7-11

It amuses me what bits stick in our minds and which ones fly away almost as soon as they are placed in them. For example, Luther’s Small Catechism explanations are highly memorable and spiritually invaluable, yet to get confirmands to memorize them is a chore. Yet, I’d bet that 80% of Lutherans immediately remember that Luther once called the Epistle of James and “epistle of straw” or that Luther once said “sin boldly.” Now, “sin boldly” is actually a very deep reflection on the gospel and the reality of life in this world. Most of our choices are not black and white, and even black and white ones our personal motivations tend toward gray shades. This is the reality of our fallen nature. Luther’s “sin boldly” is more importantly have faith that God knows our frame and has covered all our sins in Jesus, so make the best choices you can in the moment and trust God. “The epistle of straw” was one I bet that Luther wishes he had back. Luther was a polemicist. The vast majority of the things he wrote were engaged in conflict of some type. And the problem, still present with us today, is that when we are being polemic, we tend toward hyperbole or outright “fake news.” It is easier to make your “enemies” and their sources unclean than it is to argue the ideas. Hence the epistle of straw. And while it is true that some scripture ends up being more impactful than others, the letters of Paul have always been the spine of the New Testament, setting Paul against James is not a good idea. They need to be reconciled because they share the same faith.

And what makes Luther’s quip so tough is that the reconciliation is part of what he was complaining about. Luther didn’t like James at the time he wrote because it didn’t pronounce the gospel as strongly as Paul. James leans more on the law, and even beyond the law you could call James New Testament wisdom literature – the New Testament Proverbs. And the Proverb that is placed before us today is on the virtue of patience. “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient.”

Being patient is not an American virtue. We are the people of the fast food drive through. We invented immediate gratification. Of course we could argue that it is these things taken to their fulfillment that are killing us. Our entire food supply chain geared around what turns out to be unhealthy. Amazon Prime delivery promising us everything in two days, only to be depressed when whatever we ordered doesn’t bring us happiness. Patience is a virtue that we might need some lessons on.

But James on patience is keyed directly into the gospel. “You have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.” You know what God is about and who He is. Christ has revealed this to us. He justifies sinners. Does everything happen when we want it to happen? No. It doesn’t in simple material matters. Heck, even a slow line at McDonalds can get us frustrated. Things spiritual don’t happen on our timelines either. Things spiritual happen at the right time. Things spiritual happen “after the early and later rains.” Things spiritual happen on God’s time. Patience for James is waiting on God to be exactly who we know he is. And Job is his example. Yes, waiting can be suffering, but long after this is gone in my flesh I shall see God (Job 19:26). It’s an Advent message. God keeps his promises. Wait for that right time.

Midweek Vespers – An Explainer

If you have not been to a mid-week service for a while, or just not with me leading them, it is worth an explanation of what you might expect. Probably the most practical thing is that I aim for the service to be between 20 and 30 minutes. Their purpose is not a midweek Sunday. It is a daily office. Prayer at the close of day, but for a time during a season of preparation like Advent for communal prayer and praise. The order of service is the canonical office of Vespers.

Now what does that string of words mean? Canonical is a fancy word for regular. The canon of scripture is the list of regularly accepted books. The ministers of a Cathedral church were known as the canons. The canons would lead prayer at regular intervals throughout the day. The Didache, the first catechism coming from the 2nd century, encouraged Christians to pray three times a day. That would have been morning, evening and at mid-day. These canonical hours were expressions of living in community. The canons, or the monks when monasticism grew and often replaced the canons, followed the daily office. And the community around would join as desired. It remains an open question to me if any of us moderns live in community. Yes, we all live in communities, but do we know our neighbors? What do we share with them? These simple regular or canonical services were about shared burdens and joys. They were the daily prayer and praise of living communities. But that is a deeper question of modern life.

The office of Vespers is the office that was originally sung after the day’s work had been accomplished, but usually before the evening meal. Compline, meaning completion, was the prayer before bed. But much of that was dependent upon the sun. Vespers consists typically of a Psalm, a reading, a homily, prayer and a couple of hymns. It is the type of thing that one could do alone (minus the homily) or within a family grouping. This was often the encouragement of the Reformation which saw the extended family as the lived community and the father as the liturgical head of that community.

The one great distinction of the office of Vespers is its use of the Magnificat or Mary’s Song. This is the song Mary sang carrying Jesus when greeted by Elizabeth carrying John the Baptist. You can find the biblical version and that story in Luke 1. That song throughout the ages has inspired many different musical settings and translations. Our hymnbook contains a beautiful chant version that is probably a bridge too far. Maybe at some future time I will see if I can get the choir to prepare it for us to hear it. Instead, what I have planned for these services is a tour of the hymn versions of the Magnificat that our hymnbook contains. Mary’s profound words deserve such a place of honor in our prayer and praise.

So, what can you expect? Hopefully a short encouraging gathering of a community of prayer and praise. A turning or returning to God in faith and hope and then toward one another in love in a season of preparation.

Thanksgiving Rituals

Think for a second about the rituals of Thanksgiving. Most of them are food: Turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie with some region and family variation. The further south you go the more pecan pie and mac-n-cheese show up. In the Midwest the “green stuff” – you know the pistachio pudding and dream whip salad – and French’s Onion green beans are staples. But there are more. Families still gather, many over great distances. The annual report of the misery of being stuck in the airport on the “largest travel day of the year” is a ritual. The President pardoning the Turkeys which unfortunately seems to have erased the much deeper ritual of a written Thanksgiving proclamation which has roots in George Washington and before. And we shouldn’t forget the football games. And if you skipped any of these things, especially if someone thought you skipped them intentionally, it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving. You can try and add stuff. Maybe over time new things replace old, but probably not.

That is the American Thanksgiving liturgy. And this is probably my most controversial claim, the rituals come first. It is through the liturgies that we learn the meanings and become part of something larger than ourselves. How do you know that you are at “the big game?” The really big game gets a Stealth Bomber flyover, although the Blue Angles also count. Having the Goodyear Blimp present is the entry stakes on a big game. But the invocation of “the game” always starts with the presentation of the colors – the flags and the teams – and the playing of the national anthem. That is the liturgy of the game and the creation of the congregation of the game. Mess with the liturgies or rituals and people know that you are messing with the real meanings. They might not be able to express in words what those meanings are, but they know them from repeated invocation.

We are all creatures of habit. The real question is not if we are going to have habits – rituals, liturgies. The question is if we are going to develop good ones, or poor ones. As Ben Franklin/Poor Richard would say, “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Few do it, but doing your homework immediately at the end of the school day is a liturgy of success. Not to mention that you get to spend your evening having fun without worry. This is all in the realm of what the Bible would call wisdom literature. Does it work this way for everyone? Absolutely not. But this is the thing about wisdom literature as Joshua Gibbs wittily put it, “Ways a man can live by, if he is not so foolish as to think himself special.”

This power and necessity of ritual, of liturgy, is something that the church knew for millennia but seems to have forgotten in some mad push for originality. But even originality turns into ritual. The demand for “prayers from the heart” turns into “Lord Jesus, we just wanna ask…”. The third time through a chorus comes with the demand to “raise those hands in worship.” Even supposedly non-liturgical traditions have a liturgy. The question really is what does it teach, what meaning does it encapsulate. This insight is old enough to have a latin phrase, “lex orandi, lex credendi” – the law of worship is the law of belief. How you worship says what you believe better than what you would say. Is the man who does not fall asleep watching football on thanksgiving really giving thanks?

The Christian Liturgy I think tells us two key things. The God who has made himself known is The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit. This God makes His grace present for His people here. He has promised to be here in Word and Sacrament which are the means of that grace. We don’t show up to give God anything. We show up to receive his grace. Wherever two or three are gathered in His name. For which Thanksgiving is a proper liturgical response.

Sea of Stars

(Note, in the past I did not post my weekly “newsletter” articles. I don’t know why. I used to tell myself they seemed more congregation specific. But more specific than the sermons which I do post? So, I’m going to start posting them. In the newsletter they are called “Pastor’s Corner” and so that is the category you will find them under. They often, although not always, are reflections on one of the other lectionary texts of the week.)

Did you catch the first images from the James Webb satellite telescope? The one that basically replaces the Hubble that was deployed over the summer? Here is a link: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages. I know people have alternate responses to such things. The militant atheists took the photo of that stella maris, the now much bigger sea of stars, and quipped “imagine thinking that you are in any way consequential.” And if I am staring at those photos as a pure expression the holiness of God, yeah, I get it. A holy unknown god should cause stark raving terror at the vast gulf between it and us. There is something mischievously funny that every step we seem to make in knowledge of the universe, it reveals that the universe is both infinitely bigger and more strange than we thought. It is almost like God chuckling, “oh, you think you have plumbed my depths and now comprehend the foundations, that you could answer my question to Job “were you there (Job 38:4)” with a yes? Well now, take a look at this.” That vastness of space stares back at us as a metaphor for the unknown god. And if god was simply unknown I think my conclusion would run along the lines of H.P. Lovecraft. But God has not remained unknown. God has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ.

When I think of the last Sunday of the Church Year, sometimes called Christ the King Sunday, my mind takes me to those cosmic images. That is where our Epistle reading for the day (Colossians 1:13-20) goes. The first thing that the Apostle Paul wants us to know is that “The Father has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of his beloved Son.” We have been removed from staring at that vast dark cold sea of stars and been placed in Christ. The impersonal has been replaced with the named. The second thing Paul wants us to know is that this is good news. You could (or at least I could) image a deity where that unknowing and uncaring space was better. You don’t have to think too hard. Any of the idols or the old pagan gods would be such. The pagans didn’t seek the gods so much as give their sacrifices to keep them away, to ensure they continued to slumber. Because being on a first name with a pagan god usually ended poorly. But what Paul wants us to know is that in the Kingdom of Christ we are not insignificant slaves. In Christ, “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

And in Christ we are far from inconsequential. In some of that cosmic language Paul wants us to know exactly who this Christ is. “All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” That entire sea of stars – “the visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities” – is his. Yet in Jesus “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” God was pleased to reveal himself in Jesus. And He revealed himself for this purpose, “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” God revealed himself to make peace. God revealed himself by putting His “skin in the game.” And more than just skin, His blood. God left that vast sea of stars to dwell in fullness with us, to save us.

The God who hides behind that sea of stars has come to us. The God who has the power to make the stella maris, placed all that power in Jesus to save us. Far from inconsequential, you have been invited into that divine life. You have been transferred from the darkness to the Kingdom.