Category: Pastors Corner

Rectification of Names

I understand that it can be tedious.  But somewhere between High School and my ordination I became a big fan of Confucius. Why you might ask.  Seems odd for a Lutheran Pastor. The biggest reason was his answer to the question: If you were made Emperor, what would be the first thing you would do?  Confucius’ answer was: the rectification of names.  What did he mean by that? All words being used would be clearly defined before they could be used.  In a united and functioning society nobody thinks about this because they all roughly share the same definition. Even in an early stage Weimar Republic people share enough definitions to communicate.  But then you get to the stage where people start electing Nazis to fix it.  Different groups have their own dictionaries.  Smart people learn to “code switch” knowing which dictionary to use by which group they are in. Which of course penalizes the less verbally adaptable.  And you find yourself in hot water because the dictionary changed overnight and you didn’t get the update.  Ancient China in the time of Confucius was at that point. And instead of electing Nazis to kill everyone not using the correct dictionary, Confucius thought there was a better way – the rectification of names.  Call things what they are with clear definitions first for to the good of everybody.

The second generation of the Lutheran Reformers – names like Chemnitz, Andrea and Chytraeus who you probably haven’t heard about – were good Confucians. Not only did you have a Roman Catholic dictionary and a basic Lutheran dictionary, you started to have Calvinist Dictionaries, and Radical Reformer dictionaries, and more important for them intra-Lutheran splits.  Their answer is something called the Formula of Concord.  The Formula is the last confessional work that all Lutheran pastors subscribe to as part of the Book of Concord.  It is the last binding dogmatic work of the Lutheran Church.  And it is almost completely a work of Rectification of Names.

Every place where Lutherans were fighting Lutherans would have its own article to address the argument.  The first part of every article is “The Status of the Controversy” which was a paragraph that defined words used and captured the basic argument between all sides engaged.  The Concordists would not allow disagreement to fester through the use of squishy terms that meant different things to different people.  Nor would they allow any group to not recognize their position.  After everyone agreed upon terms and what the argument was, they addressed the argument in two ways.  First, they made affirmative statements.  One of the famous Lutheran phrases comes from these, “We believe, teach and confess…”.  They set forward on the basis of scripture and plain reason what the doctrinal teaching of the church should be in regards to the controversy.  This usually took a few steps to really address it, but the point was concord – a true peace between people arguing, an agreement on truth.  After they affirmed what the true teaching should be, they condemned various false teachings in the air (“We reject and condemn…”).

How do we find ourselves in Weimar?  We allow people to change definitions and use private dictionaries. Instead of positively putting forward in the best way possible what we believe, teach and confess, we rely on tribal markers to sort good guys and bad guys.  (Oh, you aren’t using my dictionary, you go on the bad guy list.) Our politicians and church-politicians today, instead of saying “I’m for X” all compete to say nothing, hoping that you read into whatever they do, say what you think, and so vote for them. And maybe more importantly we never clearly state what is out of bounds.  Why do we find ourselves here?  Because saying things like “deeds, not creeds” sounds like a warm fuzzy. And for a while you can coast off of previously shared understandings or at least known boundaries. Because Weimar, at least early Weimar, is profitable to the powerful who can surf the dictionaries and attempt to enforce theirs. Making everything a power game of who has the biggest megaphone helps the powerful.

None of that is the Way of Jesus Christ who said things like: “whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. (Lk. 12:3 ESV)” and “have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. (Matt. 10:26 ESV)”  and “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. (Matt. 5:14 ESV)”  The way of Christ is the way of all hidden things being brought into the light.  The way of Jesus includes clear teaching, not the soft lights of Weimar to hide the things done in the darkness. 

What About My Dead Cat?

Our mid-week bible study was on the flood this week, so the combination of two by two and recently putting down a pet cat had me thinking about the animals.  It is a cliché question, “will I ever see my beloved pet again?”  And that question is usually treated in one of two ways.  The elder being questioned might simply answer “yes” from a caring but ultimately patronizing place.  It is what the questioner wants to hear, so you say it.  The flip side of this elder is the one who has read Aquinas and thinks it the height of spirituality to tell the questioner, “no, animals have a lessor spirit” thereby initiating them into higher spiritual knowledge.  But let me suggest that the biblical picture is more nuanced.  I’m still going to say yes, but this is more about the reasons why.

The first reason is that God created them and declared it good. “And God said, ‘let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds – livestock and creeping things and beast of the earth according to their kinds…and God saw that it was good.” To do away with something that is good would itself be an evil act. That is ultimately what Satan wishes to do, negate every good thing.  The good has its own existence from God.  All evil can do is attempt to negate it. But one day, that last evil, death, shall be put away and the Good shall be crowned.

The second reason follows that act of creation.  As Luther would add to his explanation to the first article of the creed, God not only made me and all creatures, but “he still preserves them.” The bible is full of passages about God’s care for the creatures of the earth.  My two favorites are from Jesus and Jonah.  Jesus takes the sparrow as his example.  I think he takes it because of its complete humbleness.  Nobody goes, “oooh, a sparrow.” Yet Jesus says, “are not 5 sparrows sold for 2 pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.”   A little bit later he will talk of the Ravens who have always had an air of woe about them long before Poe took up his pen.  “Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.”  God remembers even the sparrow and feeds the haunting raven.  But the one that sticks in my mind is from Jonah.  Jonah is sitting outside Nineveh, the work of preaching done, wanting and hoping for its destruction. The last line of the book is “should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many cattle.”  One gets the sense that Nineveh’s deliverance might be more because of those cattle than anything.  The animals are part of God’s continued providence.

But all of that simply points at stuff within this world.  What gives me a sense of the animals’ spiritual worth?  The funny story of Balaam gives me one point.  We talked a bit about that story in last week’s sermon.  Balaam’s donkey eventually prophesies to Balaam.  But before that there is this humorous scene of Balaam riding the donkey and an angel appears holding a sword.  The donkey can see the angel and it stops. Meanwhile Balaam is blind to the spiritual reality. The poor animal tries to save Balaam by turning aside.  Balaam responds by beating the poor beast.  But the donkey persists in trying to warn Balaam in multiple ways.  The animals can at times be more spiritually aware than we are.

When you layer on top of that potential spiritual awareness two other things.  First being that God’s covenant after the flood is not just with Noah, but is “an everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”  The animals are worthy of the covenant. The Apostle Paul talks in similar ways in Romans 8.  “All creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope.”  All creation waits with eager longing for the revealing.  Those animals that are part of the Noahide covenant wait with longing for the final revelation and the freeing of our bondage. All creation has this hope.  If you aren’t going to be there, why hope for it?

I’ll finish this mediation by returning to Jesus’ word’s about the sparrows.  “They are remembered.  Not one of them is forgotten before God.” In this sense all those animals are very much like us.  Our hope is in God remembering his covenant. He has engraved us on his hand and will recall us from the pit.  The same type of statement is given about the sparrows sold for pennies for sacrifice.  God remembers them.

So I think that simple “yes” is correct.  But there are some mighty good reasons behind it.  Reasons that go to the heart of the Gospel.  The entire world is Gods, and he’s going to remake it all good.

How to Have an Argument

The season of Epiphany this year gives us a continuous reading from the book of 1st Corinthians.   Our Sunday morning bible study is using that as a springboard to study at least some of that letter a bit deeper.  The context of at least the first four (4) chapters of 1 Corinthians are divisions or arguments in the church.  And I’m not writing this up because I think or feel coming a great argument within Mt. Zion.  I’m writing this up because the time to think about arguments is when you aren’t having one.  When you are having them, all we sinful humans think about is winning them.

What Paul does in the first two chapters of First Corinthians is make a clear distinction between how arguments in the world take place and how they should take place within the church.  How they take place in the world is that we run to various forms of power.  We make appeals to authority: “I follow Paul…Apollos…Cephas…Christ.” And in making appeals to authority, we seek to trump whoever else has been claimed.  But in our claiming of these various authorities, we assert that they would disagree with each other.  Within the church this is out of bounds.  Paul does not disagree with Christ. We might not yet understand how they actually agree, but the fault is with our understanding, not the scripture or the apostles.  “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?” The answer is no.  The task is to understand why, repent and reform our lives together.

Anselm would call that “faith seeking understanding.” Paul in 1 Corinthians would just call it life under the cross. In the world, if we do not have an authority to invoke, or if all authorities are hopelessly corrupted, we would turn to a couple of other arguments: reason and practicality.  “Jews demand signs and Greeks wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.”  Now signs could be demands for miracles, but they are also just the pragmatic question “does it work?” If it does you should be able to show me something.  Likewise, we should be able to reason together.  The problem with these things in spiritual matters is that we are sinners and our vision is hopelessly clouded.  What is wisdom to us is foolishness to God.  Our natural ways will never bring us to God.  “No human being might boast in the presence of God.” Instead “we boast in the Lord.” Anything we know spiritually comes first as a revelation of Jesus Christ.  And the greatest revelation is that cross.  “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.  God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” Strength usually works. Wisdom is a good thing. But in spiritual matters? They will fail you.  Lean not on your own understanding, but have faith that Christ is the way and the truth.

Why is this the case?  Because “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.”  The indwelling of the Spirit is necessary.  Which you have from your baptism.  Faith is a prerequisite to arguing with each other correctly in spiritual matters.  Why? Because we then share the same Spirit.  We then “have the mind of Christ.”  If we are worldly, what we want to do is win the argument.  And the ultimate way to win is to destroy the other.  If we are spiritual we want together to receive the gifts that Christ has given us.  You have received the Spirit from God such that under the cross we might together remain reconciled to Christ and to each other.  Reconciliation, which is foolishness to those who have the Spirit of the World.

That basically brings you up to where we are in our study.  I’d invite you to join us on Sunday morning after snacks.

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 19th 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 19th 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-20th 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 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.

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.