Category: Pastors Corner

Reformation Slogans

I think it is inevitable.  Any great movement eventually gets reduced to a slogan.  And for a while the slogan works, and then the movement gets institutionalized. And institutions can’t work on slogans.  And people forget what the slogan meant. And people try to add to the slogan.  And it becomes trite.

The slogan of the Reformation is or was “The Solas”. As late as the 20th Century people were still trying to add solas to the list.  The Reformation really boiled down to two: Grace Alone and Faith Alone.  Somewhere along the way Word Alone was added. Three points always rolls easier.  Leave it to the Reformed to try and push 3 to 5.  I think they wanted a Reformation parallel to TULIP, the Calvinist summary. But the two they added in the 20th century just address later arguments that aren’t really the beating heart of the Reformation.  So I stick with three: Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Word Alone.

Grace Alone. Nobody really disagrees with this. The problem that Christianity addresses is sin.  You might ask what is sin? At least I think moderns do.  And there are different answers. You can lean into the legalistic, breaking a commandment. You can be more general, missing the mark. That is the allusion buried in the Hebrew word translated sin. I appreciate the definition the Novelist Francis Spufford used in his work of apologetics and confession: The Human Propensity to *Mess* Things Up.  Although he didn’t use *Mess*.  We can’t seem to avoid it.  We mess things up.  Even when we don’t want to, we do.  As Paul would cry from the heart, “who will save me from this body of death?” Other religions don’t all have sin as their fundamental problem, but they usually will offer some type of solution. And that solution always comes in some type of law like the Buddhist 8 fold path or the Islamic 5 Pillars or the Mormon Doctrine and Covenants. Christ says something completely different.  It is by grace alone. You can’t fix it. God has.  And everything worthy of the name of Christ agrees that it is by grace alone.

The first dividing point is the 2nd Sola: Faith Alone.  As Mumford and Sons once sang, “How does this grace thing work?” One answer is that it works like medicine. God grants grace.  If we respond to the medicine with good works, He supplies more grace. And so there is a cycle of grace and works.  And boy did Luther try the works. It was later reformation Roman polemic that would smear Luther, but all the early accounts of everyone who knew Luther would have described him as Super-Monk. He lived it. It didn’t work.  How does this grace thing work?  Absolute trust in God: Father, Son and Spirit. Faith Alone. The grace of God given to us freely creates faith.  Non-Reformed Christianity will still talk about the process as medicinal, a steady infusion of grace to the extent that works are done. The Reformation proclaims faith alone that God’s grace is enough to cover even me.

Eventually everyone asks the question “How do you know?” One answer would be authority.  The Pope or Prince says so. Another answer would be tradition.  This is how it has always been, or this is how we do it.  The Reformation added its third Sola for this question.  How do you know?  Word Alone.  This often gets taken as Scripture Alone. Which is not terrible, because the Scriptures are the Word of God for Christians of all times and places. The Scriptures are the Norming Norm of our life together. But Word Alone was always bigger.  The simplification to the Scriptures I think is what caused so much of the late 19th and 20th century angst. As critical movements and the enlightenment attacked the Scriptures themselves, for many it felt like everything was lost. But the Reformation slogan is deeper. Word Alone. The Word of the Lord Endures Forever is something of another Reformation slogan – VDMA.  When you’ve heard the Word of God, you know. It is self-revealing. It does not return empty.  It is not without power.  How do you know?  Word Alone.

Reformation Day is a banner waving day, but also a good day to understand what those banners are about beyond hooray for my side. They are about Grace. They are about how Faith holds onto that Grace.  They are about How we know.  The Word of God has come to us today.     

A Note on Stewardship

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ – Ephesians 4:11-15

This week’s corner has a very practical purpose. We are passing out pledge cards for the coming year 2025.  They should be stuffed in your worship folder this week.  They will also be available the next couple of weeks.  Due to a variety of reasons I am having to write this very early, but I also expect that in this package we will have a one page summary of the council approved budget for 2025.  This all has a purpose and part of that purpose is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry to build up the body of Christ.”

It has long been a slogan of the Lutheran church that Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession on Justification is the article on which the church stands or falls. We cannot be justified before God by our own strength, merits or works.  We are freely justified for Christ’s sake through faith in His work for us. Now I suppose if nobody else was found to proclaim that good news the rocks would cry out. But instead of the actual rocks, God in his wisdom has chosen the living stones, us.  And from these living stones He has built his church. It is through the church, in the preached word and the sacraments, that the Holy Spirit works to call, gather, enlighten, sanctify and keep a people for God.  The saving word always comes from outside of ourselves. Evangelism and the mission of the church is not some heroic one-time thing, but it is the ongoing work of every congregation.  In the Spirit, we keep each other evangelized sharing the word of our salvation in Christ and witnessing to His work in our lives.

That is the fundamental purpose of every congregation. Our council and elders have put together a budget that they believe is necessary and appropriate for that work here at Mt. Zion.  You the congregation will have the chance to vote on this budget on November 17th.  And this is why we are passing out the pledge cards at the same time. The support of this work comes from you.  While justification is God’s free gift, the life of sanctification is always a partnership with God in faith. A partnership in walking the good works that God has laid out in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).  This is equipping you to build up the body of Christ and to mature in that faith instead of being tossed to and fro by every change of inflation.

We are asking you to take these pledge cards home and over the next couple of weeks “decide in your heart how much to give (2 Cor 9:7).”  The card has two lines.  The first line is for a flat number.  This can be a yearly, monthly or weekly number.  It is your pledge for the work of Mt. Zion. The second line asks you to state that number as a percentage of your expected income. Tithing, a tenth, was an old testament practice that has often been imported into the church. Old Testament practices are good examples, although in the gospel the tithe is no longer a legal demand. Instead the intention of this like is likewise the building up of the body of Christ. That tithe is one of the few Old Testament examples where God says “test me” in this (Malachi 3:10).  The purpose of this line is to encourage such intentional planned stewardship.  All that we have is but ours temporarily. It is all from God and we are merely stewards of it. Do we bury it in this earth, or do we put it to work for the kingdom?

Final practicalities.  First, nobody besides you and the treasurer will see your pledge. Second, we will collect pledges in service on November 10th.  For a couple weeks after we will leave a collection box in the Narthex.  We hope that running the budget at the same time as the pledge both demonstrates the need and offers you the solid opportunity to respond in faith.  

Acute and Chronic

No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. – Luke 13:3

In my former congregation there was a nurse manager who also was a teacher/trainer at the local college. One of her observations was the difference in how people and institutions reacted to acute and chronic problems. Acute is happening right now.  Getting shot is an acute condition. Chronic is ongoing.  High blood pressure is chronic. Her observation and complaint was that all the money went to acute.  All the trainees wanted to be in the ER.  Those positions always had higher salary and status. But it was the chronic conditions that needed the most help. Uncontrolled chronic conditions rolled down the hill further and faster, and you tend not to climb back up slippery slopes. Yes, acute could kill you now, but chronic could steal all the life from your life.  Yet the entire system is set up to treat the acute and rely on the individual to manage the chronic.  The individual who has already proven not up to that task. I find the model of care at the place where my wife works to be a fascinating experiment. The practice gets paid on trying to keep people with chronic conditions healthier. On managing them well. I believe it is one of the experiments enabled by the Medicare tweaks in the Affordable Care Act, but google fails me in confirming my memory.  The old MBA in me was always fascinated by business model experiments.

But back to the main thought, I was thinking about acute and chronic because of the Hurricanes.  Hurricanes are at first very acute.  They are happening now.  But as we see in North Carolina, they become Chronic.  Some of those hollows of Appalachia will just never be restored.  Or maybe if you are a radical environmentalist you are saying “no, they are being restored, to nature.” By the time Milton sweeps across Florida, Helene will be a distant memory.  Just another chronic condition.

When Hurricanes or natural disasters come around or the most recent acute trouble gets its 15 minutes, I often turn to Luke 13:1-5.  Acute disasters terrify us.  We think they are God’s judgement.  You must have done something to deserve that.  Karma’s a b.  You saw that in online responses to Helene.  “Stupid Trump voters deserve it.” In Luke Jesus gets asked about “some Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1).”  Part of Jesus’ reply is to bring up a prior 15 mins, “what about those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell?” Acute disasters.  Why did they happen?  Maybe more pruriently, “what did they do to deserve that?” Jesus, who could read hearts, apparently thinks that is what they were thinking.  “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans?…do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem (Luke 13:2,4)?”

Jesus takes the acute and the natural human fascination with the acute and turns it to the chronic. Blasphemous sacrifices and falling towers demand immediate attention.  But Jesus says, “No, I tell you (they were not worse sinners for suffering in this way), but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish (Luke 13:3).” Sin, the cause of death and decay, is the ultimate chronic condition. And occasionally the fallen powers and principalities throw up a horror that makes us pay attention.  But per Jesus there is nothing special about such horror or tragedy. We should not assume “they deserve it” and the corollary that we get to play little Jack Horner sitting in a corner thinking what good boys we are. The acute should force our gaze to the chronic.  We are all sinners. And we cannot save ourselves from our sinful condition. Leaving the chronic to the individual just winds up with everyone dead.

But there is a balm in Gilead. Our Chronic condition has been treated by the great physician. Repent and believe. The blood of Christ, sacrificed under Pilate, is the cure for the sin sick soul. His resurrection shall be ours bringing to an end the reign of bodily death. And those powers and principalities that occasionally rear up?  Their time is short.  

Lessor and Greater

The New Testament Book of Hebrews has an interesting argument.  Coming off of St. Michael and All Angels it is fitting. In the intertestamental period, the time between the Old Testament and the appearance of Jesus, Jewish religion became infatuated with angels. If you wanted to see an example you could read an apocryphal work by the name of 1st Enoch. (Just google it and you’ll find multiple copies on the internet.  Our age is not so different.  Both ages that felt something in the air that wasn’t quite there yet.) The Jews had named a bunch of angels.  They had created entire celestial hierarchies. They had job descriptions for all of those hierarchies. The closest analogy for the role these angels played in that time frame might be the role of Saints in the medieval church. You sought them out and asked for their assistance. The first argument of the book of Hebrews is the many ways that Jesus, the Son of God, is higher or better than the angels.  These angels you so admire and fixate upon? Turn your eyes and prayers and worship to the greater one – Jesus.  That kind of argument – from the lessor to the greater – will continue throughout the entire book.  The author of Hebrews, who we don’t really know, starts off with angels, but proceeds with Moses, the Priesthood, the offerings and many of the staples of Jewish religious life.  All of these have been fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus.

The church and the world around is always drifting off into these esoteric and gnostic forms.  Now I’d bet that you might not understand those terms – esoteric and gnostic – but if I described them the lightbulb would go on immediately.  Esoteric means slightly hidden.  Agent Mulder in the X-files had his poster “the truth is out there.”  That is an esoteric belief. There is truth.  You must find or uncover the way to have it.  And that search usually leads to all kinds of practices we might call witchcraft or similar: tarot cards, amulets, psychics, horoscopes.  These are all esoteric ways to knowledge.  The gnostic usually pairs with the esoteric.  The gnostic is someone who believes in a spiritual reality, but it requires knowledge to access it.  The most modern Gnostics might be those who are using ayahuasca, ketamine or other psychedelics, like QB Aaron Rodgers or most of Silicon Valley.  They take part in shamanic rituals.  They hire spirit guides.  All in the pursuit of some greater knowledge. Esoteric or hidden practices lead to gnosis or knowledge. And the church and the world are both always drifting off into things like this because who doesn’t want to know.  And God can always seem so frustrating in not giving us knowledge.  He doesn’t answer the why too often. The intertestamental Jew would summon the angels. The modern Christian goes on a vision quest retreat.

The author of Hebrews tells us, “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it (Hebrews 2:1).”  We might desire that esoteric knowledge, but the true stuff has already been given to us.  God in his wisdom has chosen to reveal himself in His son Jesus.  And Jesus has been proclaimed by the apostles, the church and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Proclaimed freely and openly. Why would we “neglect so great a salvation? (Hebrews 2:3)” Why would we turn away from this deep and true knowledge which God “bore witness by signs and wonders and miracles? (Hebrews 2:4)”  Why would we neglect Christ proclaimed to play with trinkets?  Why would we accept a lessor knowledge, when the greater has been given to us?

While right now we might feel lessor.  And that lack makes us chase everything that promises knowledge now.  Jesus himself was “for a little while made lower than the angels (Hebrews 2:9)” but through his suffering and death was crowned with glory. So also us.  Our salvation is made perfect in Christ and the sharing of his sufferings (Philippians 3:10).  “This is why he is not ashamed to call us brothers (Hebrews 2:11).” Now we might feel lessor because we walk by faith, not by knowledge.  But salvation only comes by faith through the one who is not ashamed to call us brother.

Feasts and Festivals

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. – Romans. 14:5

Of the Worship of Saints they teach that the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works, according to our calling – Augsburg Confession Article 21

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. – Colossians. 2:16-17

Christians have been arguing about calendars since Apostolic times.  And those arguments never really stopped. Hence the two opening quotes. And when you argue about calendars you are arguing about piety, practice and remembrance.  You are arguing about what people think is important.  Many such arguments can simply be settled “you respect yours, I respect mine.” You can hear that argument in the Apostle Paul. But calendar arguments, because it is hard to keep your own calendar, often become group defining.  “We are going to remember this date.”

The very first of those definitional dates would be over the Sabbath. The Apostles, being Jews, kept the Sabbath, on Saturday.  They then met together on “the Lord’s Day” or Sunday, the day of resurrection. For example Paul is searching for the local Jewish gathering “on the Sabbath day” (Acts 16:13), but at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 there is no mention of telling the gentiles to keep the Sabbath. And by the time of John’s visions in Revelation, they come to him as “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10).”  You can hear those arguments in that third quote at the start.  Paul telling his gentile audiences that Sabbaths are a shadow of the substance of Christ. Meeting on Sunday is good and proper.

I’m talking about Calendars for two reasons. The first is that this Sunday gets a special name – St. Michael and All Angels. The church calendar that we follow has a general structure – the large seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost.  For half the year we follow the life of Christ, and for the other half we emphasize the life in the Spirit.  We gather on the “the Lord’s Day”. We are the people of the resurrection. We remember that substance of Christ weekly.  Within that general calendar there the “feasts and festivals.”  The actual dates never change.  All Saints is always November 1st. But some of them, like All Saints, we move their observance to the nearest Sunday.  We have deemed their witness and memory too important to skip, yet we do not feel compelled to gather on the odd Tuesday Nov 1st. Most of those festivals we observe occasionally, which means when their day falls on a Sunday naturally, so due to leap years every 6-14 years. St. Michael and all Angels is one of those days. It is always September 29th.  When September 29th is a Sunday, we remember the angels.   There are also some feasts that honestly, we just don’t remember.  When I served St. Mark’s in West Henrietta, I tried to observe April 25th, the feast day of St. Mark.  At Mt. Zion there is no such special connection.

And that gets into the second reason I’m talking about calendars. I tend to think that our everyday lives and most of what takes place in them is designed to flatten everything. The World does this in two ways. If anyone saw the original Pixar Incredibles movie,  it has one of the most subversive lines I can remember.  “And when everyone is super, no one is.”  There is something about our age that reacts against “the memory of the saints being set before us.”  Our world wants equality or even equity. The acknowledgement that someone – a saint – lived it better is subversive. So it levels all days, and days it can’t level it elevates everything to obscure the remembrance of the saint. But I just don’t think that is either reality or the needs of true humanity.

We need things to strive for.  Every Olympic athlete ponders how can I break the world record. The memory of the saints is so that we may follow their faith and good works. We need feast days like we need fast days, and ordinary time (another name for the season of Pentecost).  Because life is not flat. We need days to remember St. Michael and the angels, because we need to ponder that creation includes “things visible and invisible”. And that those invisible things do impact our existence.  When the world wants to flatten everything, the Christian needs to hear the distant triumph song.  There are things the world wants us to forget that we need to remember.

Wisdom of James

Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. – James 3:13

We’ve been reading through the book of James – our Epistle readings in September – in Sunday morning Bible Study.  And the book of James is a unique book within the New Testament, although I would argue not within the entire bible.  The word I’m going to be talking about is genre. What is a genre?  In film you would talk about Westerns or Action or Horror.  In novels: mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, literary. A genre is a recognizable grouping that usually has the same characters, plot or conventions. Westerns have dry towns, citizens, guns, horses, outlaws, savages and sheriffs. The story is always the sheriff or the man who stands between the citizens and the outlaws or savages. The man who is on the border of each belonging to neither. And the tools are the tools of violence and transportation. Which is why the Western Genre can capture things like Space Westerns. The books of the bible largely fall into recognizable genres. The gospels are ancient biographies. Paul’s works are philosophical essays attached to letters dealing with specific instances of living the philosophy often called casuistry or case history. Acts is a work of ancient history, a narrative of people, places, acts and speeches. Revelation is an apocalypse, a work of unveiling the deep meaning of reality.  James may look like one of Paul’s letters, but it’s arguments are not long enough to be essays, nor are its cases real events in a real life (like the Corinthians getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper), but they are generic examples (where do fights come from). James is unique in the New Testament, but if you read it alongside the Old Testament book of Proverbs, I think you find its genre. James is a wisdom book.

And what is the genre of wisdom book? I come up with four key things.  1) Wisdom books are typically written by the mature for the naïve. You could say by the old for the young, but that isn’t universal. Timothy at 20, as the son of Eunice and grandson of Lois, was a third generation Christian from the cradle. Paul was constantly reminding the young Timothy that he was the one mature in the faith compared to many of his older flock. 2) Wisdom books are written for those who believe. This is why Luther didn’t much like James.  Wisdom books assume the gospel. They are speaking to the person living a life of sanctification. 3) Wisdom books are descriptive and not prescriptive. Prescriptive would be the 10 Commandments.  You must do this.  You must not do that. Descriptive describes how things usually work.  The mature person has enough store of experience to say “this is how the world usually works.”  Does it always work that way? No. Your particular experience may be outside the realm of this wisdom.  But, it is always good to ask, “am I really the exception?” They are words a man might live by if he is not so foolish as to think himself special. 4) Wisdom books are meant to be pondered.  As no experience is ever really repeated, how does this wisdom apply to me and my situation?

And this is the great weakness of wisdom and also its strength.  It is meek. It invites instead of commands. It desires not your compliance, but for you to make it your own. Mom wants the 3 year old’s compliance about not sticking things in the power outlet, but 3 years olds typically need at least one zap to make that wisdom their own. Lady Wisdom desires that you might learn from her by means of words, but more often those words are things remembered after the fact.  After we get zapped we might turn to Lady Wisdom for the other nuggets she has.

One nugget buried in the middle of our epistle today (James 3:13-4:10) is about quarrels. James rightly points out quarrels come from our uncontrolled and unmet desires. It is almost Buddhist in its recognition.  You suffer because you want. But the wisdom of James is not to kill the want.  The wisdom of James is to ask, and to ask rightly.  “You do not have, because you do not ask.  You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. (James 4:2-3)” Oh Lord, won’t you buy me, a Mercedes-Benz?  Probably not.  But why do you want a Benz?  What passion is unfulfilled? How better would that passion be turned? Those are the mature questions of wisdom.

Talking About Money

Talking about money in church is always an interesting conversation, interesting used in the ancient Chinese curse sense. It is not that Jesus doesn’t have some pointed and meaningful things to say about money.  Things like “and I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. (Lk. 16:9 ESV)”  Neither is it that our use of money isn’t an expression of Spiritual values.  For it explicitly is.  “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt. 6:21 ESV)” The interesting part is that talking about money in church feels like making public what we’d rather be private.  It is shining the light of the gospel into areas that we’d rather keep in darkness (John 2:19, 12:46).  The apostle Paul’s final direction in regards to money is that each one must decide in his heart how much to give.  And not to give reluctantly or in response to pressure, but cheerfully (2 Cor 9:7). But doing so means that our giving has to be intentional. You don’t decide in your heart on a moment’s notice.  And it is that prayerful consideration that shines the light on our own hearts. It is that prayerful consideration that we are attempting to form this year.

Pastor’s Corner in the coming weeks is not going to be given over completely to monetary things, but over the next couple of months there will be at least a couple of stewardship related meditations. From what I’ve been told, the pastoral office at Mt. Zion has never talked about stewardship, nor has there ever been some of the practices (pledges) that we intend to introduce this year.  What the rest of this Pastor’s Corner is going to run through is some information, a calendar on important dates, and a start on the spiritual purpose.

Some information.  The numbers I am using all come from our treasurer and have been accepted by the church council. Over the years 2021, 2022 and 2023 the church income (mostly from offerings) has been between $221K – $246K.  The expenses for those years have been between $246k – $279k.  Mt. Zion has run a consistent $24k deficit.  Mt. Zion was able to do this because of a generous bequest. And my understanding is that this pattern has been typical in prior years as well, with refinancing of the mortgage occasionally being used.  The trouble is the current year. Our deficit for 2024 is already at $34K.  And this deficit is not caused by running over budget. Expense wise we approved a budget of $268k.  Over the prior 12 months (Sept 23 – Sept 24, not the budget timeframe but a full year) we have only spent $248k.  The trouble is that our offerings over those same 12 months have only been $204K.  There are some concrete reasons for that.  There are also some understandable background reasons.  But the light that is shining I believe is two-fold.  We as a congregation can’t operate with that type of deficit indefinitely. The timing on such a deficit would be a couple of years maximum.  And what that brings up is a question. Do we want to be a congregation?  Or maybe more specifically, do we want to be a congregation that looks roughly like what Mt. Zion has historically?

With that question, I’m going to turn to the calendar.  The council has reviewed a proposed budget and on Oct 10th will meet to give its final collective approval to present it to the congregation.  The Congregational budget meeting will be on Nov 17th.  We will publish some form of that budget well prior for your consideration.  But as the council agrees, there are no gold bricks hiding the budget.  Nobody is vacationing in Tahiti. It represents the costs for the utilities, insurance, upkeep, the mortgage, and your Pastor.  Over that same timeframe that we as a congregation are setting aside to think about the proposed budget, we are going to pass out pledge cards on Oct 20th and collect them starting Nov 10th for three weeks.

Finally, a bit about spiritual purpose.  The big question stated above is do we want to be a congregation that looks roughly like we do?  A vote for such a budget should also come with a pledge to support that budget.  But following the apostle’s advice, I do not want your pledge given in response to pressure. If you read the fullness of 2 Corinthians 9, the context of Paul’s advice, he is putting forward the collection for the Jerusalem church. The opportunity to support the work of the gospel done by Mt. Zion is what is being presented. Maybe your heart’s answer is that Mt. Zion should look substantially different. Maybe the answer in your heart is your current support is what you can give.  Maybe you can cheerfully support at a higher level.  We the council hope that enough of you might answer yes.

I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but Mt. Zion monetarily has been something of a minor.  It has been graced with a building and substantial contributions from those largely taught the way elsewhere and from those maybe little known to the current congregation. I don’t think I am trespassing on anything recognizing the generosity of Gene Ockrassa, but there are others. But all minors must eventually become adults. And that is the question of this budget and pledge call.  Are we collectively willing to come into our inheritance as a congregation of Christ? Are we willing to accept both the gifts of his grace and the responsibilities?  And are we able to take them on cheerfully?  The Kingdom of God will certainly come without our help, but in this we are being offered it amongst us in a bountiful way (2 Cor 9:6).

A Word Near; A Far Word

The mystics, maybe more approachable the spiritual writers of every age from St. John of the Cross to Anne Dillard, seem to have two modes of talking. Call them when God draws near and when God is far.  The common expressions of these would be the euphoria of the mountaintop experience when God is so near the planets sing. The dark night of the soul is when God is far.  The music of the spheres is barely a memory.  The cave and the tomb seem the only end.  Who shall give you praise if I am in sheol the Psalmist might ask.

But our gospel reading for today gives us a different experience of near and far.  In these it is not that God himself seems to move.  Jesus is equally present in the region of Tyre and Sidon, a far gentile territory, and in the Decapolis of the Galilee, his hometown region among the Jews. God is the God of all the earth and we all – even the atheist – has an inkling of this. “If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! (Ps. 139:8 ESV)”  Simply ponder our existence on this ball of dirt in the midst of the vast universe.  The entire universe seems to have been tuned to keep us alive here.  Yet God sustains all of it by his majesty.

The question is not God’s presence or absence, because “you are there.” The question is why is God there?  Are you here for my good, or are you here like Zeus for Leda? Are you here as a mere watcher, or as a trickster, or as the lover of mankind?

The first picture in our Gospel text (Mark 7:24-37) is of the unnamed Syrophoenician woman who has a little daughter possessed by the evil of the universe. Matthew is more explicit than Mark.  Syrophoenician is a then current territory marker that would say not Jewish to a Roman hearer. Matthew calls her a Canaanite, the ancient enemy of Israel who God once told Israel to kill all of them.  Is that still God’s stand? Kill all of them? While being near, is this God still far away?  The woman intends to find out.  She risks bridging the distance.  She begs Jesus cast the demon out.  And Jesus’ response seemingly reinforces that distance.  That this God is far away from this person, even though he is right there.  “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But the woman’s response is the only one that makes sense, at least if we have any hope.  If the God who is present everywhere on who our being rests is against us, we have no hope.  But the earth gives all their daily bread.  If this God was against us, surely the rain would not fall on the Canaanite.  Or the rain that does fall must be enough.  “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  And those crumbs of this god – however far away he might be – are enough to cast out the evil.  And this is what Jesus does.  The Word of God is a gracious word for those who are far.  “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.  And she went home and found the child well.”

The second picture is of a man who is deaf and whose tongue doesn’t work. This is a man of the Jews.  One of the children.  And as we all know children expect things and they aren’t going to say thanks.  And we all know that sometimes as parents our patience with that runs out.  For a moment instead of being the mother of the runaway bunny who loves him to the moon and back, we might be content for the entitled brat to go. If we are near and have always been near is this how God feels sometimes?

Jesus takes the man aside from the crowd privately.  God does not treat us by groups.  This child of God is his child and the only one that matters at this moment.  And he heals him.  Unlike the far word to those who are far, this is a near word for those who are near.  He puts his fingers into his ears to open them.  Jesus puts his spit into the man’s mouth to loose it. And he says to ears that hear something for the first time, “Be opened.” Even though near we might have been closed to this God.  But the Word draws nearer into our very selves.  The word of God is a gracious Word for those who are near.

Whether you feel yourself far or near from the God who supports your entire being, the Word Jesus speaks to you is his grace. The challenge is more how we receive this word.  And how we tell others.

An Arizona Visit

I was sitting in my office fresh from vacation.  The translation for the week was done. I was trying to scrape the rust off the brain.  Half-heartedly skimming somebody’s commentary on the gospel of the week. When I felt a breeze.  But it wasn’t the AC kicking on and refilling the tubes.  Instead it was an old friend.

“Dr. Luther, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.  I got the feeling the last time we talked it might be the last time. And that was quite a while ago.  About 7 years”

“Seven years? You’ve got to remember, time for me isn’t quite linear anymore. Worms feels like yesterday.  So that little conversation of ours was just this morning.  But I did notice that you seem to have moved.  And not a small one.  You know, other than my trip to Rome, which was only about 850 miles, I don’t think I ever traveled more than 75 miles away from my hometown.  And you are sitting on the other end of a continent!  And it is hot.  Are you sure you didn’t move closer to hell?”

“Yeah.  That might have been an undercurrent in that conversation earlier this morning. Remember how von Staupitz sent you on that Roman trip. Said, ‘you need to see the city.’  Sometimes in our common work of the gospel you need to be somewhere else.  At least that is what we tell ourselves.”

“But it seems to have worked. The black dog was at your door last time, and I hear no barking now.  Although these little chats are never without purpose.  I don’t get released from Leo X and Charles V for chit-chat.”

“You are going to have to tell me about those chats.”

“You’ll get your own one day.  Mark 7.  That’s what you are pondering.”

“Yes. It is just so unnatural.  It is all law, but the law is usually natural. We call it cancel culture – driving out the unclean – but it is really larger than that. Parents spend inordinate amounts of time and money trying to control their kids peer groups.  Our own synod excommunicated a 20 year old recently, basically for hanging out with the the wrong sorts. All of that seems natural, like practical wisdom.  Hygiene.  Yet Christ says, ‘there is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him.’  And the received understanding immediately jumps to Jesus eating with ‘tax collectors and sinners.’ But this passage has been used to justify all kinds of terrible stuff.  Material that is clearly not good for anything, but the second you say so, somebody stands up and calls you a Pharisee or a legalist.”

“I did say the proper separation of law and gospel was the hardest skill in all of Christendom.  And the one most necessary.”

“Yes. And I don’t think we’ve done that right here in a long time.”

“Keep talking.”

“The context that Jesus is talking about is piety practices. Hand and cup washings, pledges to God, for lack of a better word ‘religious acts.’ Things that might have started out as helpful to faith, but have become the entire purpose replacing faith. Practicing magic. Virtue Signaling. In your day, indulgences, pilgrimages and relics.”

“Yes, those were big things in my day. But it isn’t like every age doesn’t have their own.”

“But ours are so strange. In the Epistle Paul talks about putting on the armor.  Know you are in a fight.  Yet the religious act of our day seems to be ‘strip it all off and walk naked, otherwise you don’t have faith.’  Any law is a bad law and contrary to the gospel.”

“You might have something there Brown. Continue.”

“The core seems to be ‘whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach.’  It is about the heart.  There are things from the outside that can enter the heart and displace true faith. There are also all kinds of things that exit the heart.  ‘Out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, etc.’  The breaking of the entire 10 commandments.  The heart itself is initially unclean.  But the Christian has had a new heart created in them by baptism and the Spirit.”

“Now you are dividing the law and the gospel. Can you bring it home?”

“The breastplate of righteousness.  The breastplate is what covers the heart.  Eating with ‘sinners and tax collectors’ will not make you unclean.  As long as it isn’t your heart that is desiring to join in ‘all these evil things.’ If your heart is acting out of faith it is protected by that righteousness and would not join in those works. Not all the demons could make you. You can stand in the evil day.”

“Ok, but haven’t you just made another religious work, Brown?”

“I don’t think so, because it is all borrowed armor. It is not our breastplate, but that given to us by Christ. It is not our heart, but the one created anew by the Spirit. We’ve been given these gifts not to bury them, but to use them. Not to discard them, but to wear them for the battle that rages.”

The great man walked out muttering something about it being too hot and Leo called. And then the AC kicked on flapping the pipes and jolting me from my seat.

Sacramental Knowledge

It may not be about the sacrament, but it is sacramental.  That was the sparkly line of a chapel sermon that was brought back to my mind recently.  John chapter 6 is called the bread of life discourse.  We started reading it last week and will complete it next week.  Which causes a problem in hymn selection. After you burn all the decent “bread of life” type hymns in the first week, and go with the secondary and standard praise ones the second week.  What do you do the third?  I guess take vacation.  Half kidding, although the connection between the hymns and the texts certainly becomes looser than I like.

Some of the meat behind that sparkly line – not about the sacrament, but is sacramental – is that Luther himself was strident that John 6 had nothing to do with Holy Communion. It was not about the sacrament. Of course with Luther so much was about polemics. He was always in a fight with somebody.  In this case the fight was over the Word.  John 6 is one of those places where a spiritual or allegorical reading is very natural.  When Jesus says “the bread of life that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh (John 6:51)” and commands you to eat it, immediately jumping to the Lord’s Supper is natural.  Most of us can’t imagine a way to take that without jumping to the Lord’s Supper.  Luther insisted that gave too much away and missed the reality of what John was writing. And any spiritual or allegorical jump could not just be made up, but it had to be grounded in the reality of the Word.

In this case the reality that Jesus is confronting is Jewish unbelief in who Jesus is.  They are happy to be the recipients of Jesus’ miracles.  They would like the bread he multiplied.  They ask about what signs he will perform.  But they do not believe what the signs testify about.  If you look up the definition of sacramental you will have to go to an old dictionary for help.  The current online ones are much like our simple reading of John 6, sacramental means “pertaining to the sacraments” and nothing more.  You’d have to find one that still has multiple definitions or uses where you would find a definition something like “an outward visible sign of an inward grace.” The sacraments themselves – baptism and the Lord’s supper – are specific instances where the grace of God is promised attached to visible elements. We Lutherans define the sacraments themselves with three points: 1) Instituted by Jesus, 2) Visible elements, 3) For forgiveness.  Baptismal water is not simply water only, but the water connected to the word.  But before you talk about the sacraments which are means of Grace, you must talk about faith in Christ alone.  The bread and the signs and the wonders that Jesus performed were the outward visible signs pointing at His grace. The sacraments themselves rest upon faith in the one who instituted them.

And that is what Luther insisted John 6 was about.  Jesus himself is the sacrament of God.  “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.  And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day (John 6:39).”  The Grace of the Father has appeared in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  And this grace of the Father is for you.  “But the Jews grumbled about him, because he said ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven. (John 6:41).’”

And this is the crisis of all sacramental things. When you see them, you know. You no longer have an excuse. Christ has been placed before all mankind. “They will all be taught by God (John 6:45).”  We have all been taught by God. This Christ, this cross, this resurrection, these Words are for you. “Truly, Truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life (John 6:47-48).” We have seen.  We know. We do not have an excuse. Walking away from the bread of life, is walking away from life. All sacramentals are two edged swords. Used properly in faith they cut the knot of our problem with sin. But used improperly, in disbelief or blasphemy, they are deadly to ourselves.