Sound Words

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. – 2 Tim. 1:13-14

The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod might be the only church that still follows the Trinity Sunday practice of reciting the Athanasian Creed. I’ve never run across it anywhere else and a good number of ministers outside of the LCMS I’ve mentioned it to have never heard of the creed itself. Part of my fascination was simply the language. As a geeky kid, once a year saying something like “the Father infinite, the Son infinite and the Holy Spirit infinite” was an impossible invitation to mystery. I imagine every kid who ever liked math and ran across the Athanasian creed was invited to ponder the infinite. And how I can give you a perfectly valid proof that is completely understandable in simple language that one infinity is bigger than another infinity. (Observe that the numbers 1, 2, 3… and so on are infinite. Observe that 1.1, 1.2, 1.3…and so on are also infinite. The 2^nd infinity is bigger than the first. And you can intuitively grasp that. But what the hell does it mean that one infinity is bigger than another infinity?) “And yet there are not three infinities, but one infinite.” There are three infinite persons, but there is only one infinite God.

It is not meant to be understood. If we could understand it, it wouldn’t be God. He is meant to be adored.

And yet in our hearts we have a desire for understanding. The apostle Paul certainly understood that. “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and may share in his sufferings…(Philippians 3:10).” It is this tension that makes Paul’s letters still sing today. Whatever he was facing he was constantly searching for a way to describe what God is and what he is doing for His people. The way of Love: “I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in tongues of men and of angles, buy have not love…(1 Cor 13).” The mystery of God’s election and Israel: “For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. Oh the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God…(Romans 11:32-33).” The way of a man and a woman: “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church…(Ephesians 5:32).” As Paul more or less rightly bragged, “if anyone has reason to boast, I have more (2 Cor 11, Phil 3).” Yet Paul reaching to know God, always returned to adoration. All theology ends in doxology. He is meant to be adored.

So what we have in the creeds, and I would say especially in the Athanasian Creed, is a sound pattern of words. And in a religion where one infinite person of the Trinity is sometimes called “The Word of God,” words are important. There is a reason Satan is always changing the definitions of words, attempting to confuse things that God made plain. The creeds are a sound pattern of words. When Satan, the World or our own flesh want to pull some tricky business with us, the creeds are a light in a dark place. When our brains are tired of thinking, the creeds guard the good deposit given to us. They are not The Faith. They are not the love in Christ Jesus. They are not even the Holy Spirit that dwells within. These things – faith, love, Spirit – are more important. But faith, love and even the Spirit express themselves in words. And these are a pattern of sound words.

When our own words fail us, the Scriptures promise that the Spirit intercedes. Think of the creeds as part of that intercession. A pattern of sound words leading us back to adoration. A theology in short, so that we can sing the doxology. Praise God from whom all blessing flow. Including words…like “this is the catholic faith.”

Sin, Righteousness and Judgement

And when He comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement. – John 16:8

Sometimes there are phrases that just jump off the page and grab the imagination. I think the one above is one of those phrases. Today is the Feast of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church. And that phrase is what Jesus says the Holy Spirit will accomplish. In a world where standards seem to be up for grabs the idea of the Holy Spirit convicting the world about anything seems doubtful. Convicting this world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement is quite the boast. It is worth pondering those three words and two others in that phrase – convict and world. What do they mean?

We think of convict purely in a negative legal sense – convicted. The word used here does have that meaning, but it might be better to remember an older sense of a trial. The purpose of a trial is to bring to light, to force what was hidden or in the darkness out into the open. The Holy Spirit will bring to light. And what will the Holy Spirit force into the open? The world. The entire cosmos. John likes that word cosmos. God so loves the cosmos. The Holy Spirit will expose how the world works.

How specifically will the Holy Spirit do this? The first thing will be concerning sin. And what is the sin of the world brought into the light? “That they do not believe in me (John 16:9).” The Holy Spirit will expose the fact that the World does not fear, love or trust in God above all things. That the World fears the mighty. It loves money and pleasure. It trusts in its own strength. All of which are temporal. The day the mighty dies, his plans die with him (Psalm 146:4). The fool thinks I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones (Luke 12:28), yet tonight my soul is required of me. The Holy Spirit will bring to light our foolish belief, our disbelief in God.

The Holy Spirit will bring to light righteousness. Jesus’ explanation here might be a little less immediate. “Because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer. (John 16:10)” It is not immediately apparent why the ascended LORD is the Spirit revealing righteousness. I think this is something of an answer to Psalm 24. That Psalm asserts that the earth is the LORD’s and the fullness of it. And then it asks “Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?…He who has clean hands and a pure heart. (Paslm 24:3-4).” Paul ponders this in Romans 10. “The righteousness based on faith says, ‘Do Not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend?’” According to the law we are always worried who could stand before the throne, and the answer is not a single person is righteous. But Christ the Lamb was worthy to ascend and take the seat at the right hand. The Holy Spirit bringing to light righteousness is the testimony that Christ sits at the right hand of God, and that our righteousness is dependent not upon our ability to ascend, but upon faith in the one who has ascended.

The Holy Spirit brings to light judgement? Should this place us back into the fear of not ascending? No, because what the Holy Spirit reveals is that “the ruler of this world is judged (John 16:11).” The important judgement is not ours, but Satan’s. He’s judged, the deed is done, one little word can fell him. The sin that is brought to light and confessed has no power over us. Because the one who sits on the Throne has had mercy, and brings to naught the plans of the evil one, who has been cast out of heaven and can no longer accuse us.

He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement. He will testify to the light that shines in the darkness. A light that the world cannot overcome. In this light is the life of all who receive it.

Ascension Troubles

It was last Thursday (or today if you are reading this electronically). What was Thursday? Ascension Day. It is something of the forgotten feast day of the Life of Christ. Why is that? The easy answer is that it is on a Thursday – 40 days after Easter. And while Epiphany can be forced by a Pastor as a nice late ending to the Christmas season. It doesn’t hurt that everyone loves the story of the Wise Men and the star connected to Epiphany. And Holy Week seems appropriate piety. By the time you get to 40 days after Easter, Summer is starting. It is one thing to be in church when it is cold and dark. It is another thing to sacrifice sun and good weather. Less joking, more serious, Ascension I think hits on all the modern church’s hangups.

What do I mean by that? Well, among respectable educated folk, there is a tendency to spiritualize the more miraculous events of the life of Jesus. Not that the bible allows this, it is just that we are all educated as de facto materialists (i.e. there is nothing but matter). So anything that borders on the woo-woo must be a metaphor. The first step in much of mainline Protestantism’s losing the faith was spiritualizing Easter. The resurrection is a metaphor for new beginnings. If it’s just a metaphor, to hell with it. I want to thrust my hand into the side with Thomas.

Because then I know that my six foot slumber is temporary. If it’s a metaphor, there is no new beginning from that, unless you count being mulch a new beginning. What does Ascension say? That Jesus Christ was bodily taken up into heaven (Luke 24:50-53, Acts 1:6-11, Matthew 28:16-20). And that in heaven he has been seated at the right hand of God the Father (Creed, Revelation 4-5). Ascension says that Jesus Christ is reigning right now. And that is not some metaphor. The King is on his throne. And it is not some King in Parliament scheme. “The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders and every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them fell down and worshipped (Revelation 5:13-14).” This King is the judge of the quick and the dead. Good luck turning that into a metaphor.

The second reason is what the Royal decree of Ascencion Day is – evangelism. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).” Luke’s version is “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the Ends of the Earth (Acts 1:8).” Having been clothed with power from on high, the Holy Spirit, the disciples are to make more disciples. Again, really hard to make a metaphor. That’s a concrete mission. The Gospel of John doesn’t have an explicit Ascension story, but it has an implied one that explains it a bit further. From John 16:7-8, “I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement.” Ascension Day, for it’s woo-woo happening, is very concrete. It is about sin and righteousness and judgement.

Ascension Day is this forgotten day, probably because we don’t always like the message. Jesus reigns. And He has given us a Royal quest. It is not the myth of Camelot or some far away story, but it has come very close to you. That Helper abides in you. Do we say Christ is Lord? And if so, do we mean it…by following his commandments? By being his witnesses? It is an uneasy message in these later days.

Rogate – What Shall We Ask?

Every 6^th Sunday of Easter I somehow get pushed into the same meditation. When we date things we find a calendar and just write say 5/3/24 – May 3^rd, 2024. And that time encodes where we are in the earth’s annual trip around the sun. It is handy for calculating interest owed or accrued as the days are easily countable. In other words it is a practical notation, but it is also a skinny one. Through at least the 19^th Century, something on May 3^rd might have been dated – On the Feast of Philip and James. This Sunday would have been known as Rogate. The Sundays all took their names from the first words spoken in service from the Introits originally in Latin. Rogate means to ask. The First Sunday in Easter was Quasimodogeniti which means “as newborn babies.” You might recognize Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He was born on that Sunday. Marking time in those ways is thick. It isn’t as practical for calculating interest, but it communicates a lot more than simply where this rock is in its yearly journey. It is centered on what we the people of God are asked to be in contemplation about that week. And if you are a mystical sort, it might communicate what God is about at that time.

So if you come across a document dated Rogation week, what we are asked to contemplate is asking. Originally this Sunday was tied to the Spring Planting. Whether the seeds were already planted or if you were behind and still needed to get some in, Rogate was the Sunday that you asked God for his blessings on the ground and on the crops. Deep rural congregations would often exit the sanctuary and turn the soil while asking for blessing. Give us this day our daily bread. And that daily bread starts with these seeds and this soil.

Rogate for a long time also had a specific meaning in parish life. Sometimes just the Pastor, sometimes it would be an entire procession, if you were Roman Catholic a Eucharistic one, would walk the boundaries of the parish. As the community prayed for its daily bread and the planting, so also would you pray for the entire people entrusted to the care of the parish. The idea of a congregation and the idea of a parish get treated as synonyms today, but they are quite distinct. You could have many congregations within a parish. You could have “rogue” congregations. A congregation is ultimately just a gathering of people. The parish was a defined geographic space full of sinners and saints and everything in between. The parish priest/pastor/vicar was called to hold a spiritual office for the parish – all those within it. Those seen daily, and those never seen. Rogate was the week to be seen. And to ask God for the soil, that it might prove good soil.

I get to thinking in the same veins because I think these changes tell us a lot about ourselves. We no longer really have parishes, even the Roman Catholics. We are all “rogue congregations”. Singular outposts of believers gathering around word and sacrament. And this is still meaningful. And the promises are still present. But it is thinner. It is the church admitting that she no longer influences larger areas. At the same time the boundaries which once were very easy to recognize – you walked the boundary stones yearly. They are now moved all over to who knows where. Which means questions about what exactly one is called to. And if you bump into the neighboring vicar walking the boundaries, what do you owe him? But maybe more importantly who and what are we asking for these days? At the same time as our lives have often become so busy, they have become so thin. The thickness of living with family and known neighbors, has thinned out in many ways. Lifelong work partners now come and go every six months. People who you might spend 10 hours a day with for months leave and rarely cross our minds. The mystic cords of memory are thinner. No longer strands of 3 connected by water, blood and spirit, but cords of one. So thin that we would rather worry about people half a world away than our literal neighbor.

We can see and feel the thinness and know it isn’t good. But the thicker actually binds us. And are we binding ourselves to the right thing? St. Patrick knew what he was binding himself to (LSB 604). So I return yearly, made more difficult by myself having uprooted and moved a long way, and my Son heading back where we left for school, to questions about thick and thin. To what needs Rogation. For what should we ask the Father?

Easy Reading

The Reformation itself is grounded upon a doctrine with a terrible name – the perspicuity of scripture. Perspicuity, a word that I can’t even pronounce, that most people probably don’t recognize, means something real simple. It is the doctrine that normal people can read the scriptures and understand them. “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John. 20:31)” That taps into “the priesthood of all believers” and Luther at Worms stand on conscience. Luther would also stand in his great work “The Freedom of a Christian (1520)” on a semi-mystical point that “God would make us theodidacti, that is those taught by God (John 6:45).” And all of it gets summed up in the Reformation slogan “sola scriptura” – word alone.

At the time the Roman church argued that, “no, the scriptures were not comprehensible by ordinary people. You need the pope to tell you what they mean.” And given the situation today, it might be much harder to argue with them. As they satirically argued, “you are replacing 1 pope with millions of popes.” And that might not seem so satirical today. Of course the Roman argument has to wrestle with Paul saying things like, “not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, (Phil. 2:12 ESV)” just as much as with those verses from John. Luther was a sharp reader of scripture. And Luther’s real radical streak was his willingness to trust God for his people. “My sheep hear my voice (John 10).”

There is always the tension in the church to want to over control things. Whether that is to put God in the box. Saying to God that he must act this way. Or if that is to put all the sheep under one shepherd who is not Christ. The Spirit blows when He wills. We all like sheep have gone astray and only one shepherd is the good shepherd. There are a bunch of reasons, but those are some of the reasons I love our First reading from Acts 8:26-40 this week. The reading about the Ethiopian Eunuch. It is a happening about all these confusing things.

It concerns Philip who was one of the 7 appointed deacons. The deacons were supposed to take care of the widows and orphans fund. But as soon as they are “ordained” you find Stephen preaching himself into martyrdom. And you find an Angel of the Lord telling Philip to “rise and go (Acts 8:26).” That spirit tells Philip to go out to a desert place. He blows where he wills. He uses the means he desires. Somehow along this desert road the Ethiopian Eunuch is traveling in a chariot reading Isaiah. The Spirit sends Philip up to him, and the scriptures are not all that perspicuous. “Do you understand what you are reading? How can I, unless someone guides me? (Acts 8:30-31)” Now that might seem to be a slam dunk passage for the Pope, but Luther might say that it seems to be a perfect case of God ensuring teaching, of the Ethiopian Eunuch being a theodidacti. Our slogans never capture the full complexity. Moving from preacher or teacher to Pope is a big step. One that doesn’t seem authorized. A usurpation of what Christ alone fulfills.

Because the Eunuch immediately runs past the teacher. Somehow, out in the desert, “see, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized? (Acts 8:37)” And the answer is nothing. They stop, Philip baptizes, and when they come up “the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away.” That Spirit of the Lord was now abiding in the Ethiopian. (The Ethiopian church to this day maintains a story about his work on his return.) And that Spirit of the Lord had other work for Philip to do. “Philip found himself in Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns (Acts 8:40).”

We have this desire to make everything neat. A Pope to make things clear. A confession to give us surety. An office that would guard the teaching. And God often kindly works though such means. But our surety is never in the means, it is always in the one – in Christ. In the Spirit. “We are all beggars” were Luther’s last written words. And what we are begging for is not some magical talisman or wise teacher or scroll. Every earthly prop gives way. We are begging for God himself to stop and not pass us by. That we too might have that water of life.

Good Shepherd Sunday Contemplations

This Sunday is sometimes called Good Shepherd Sunday. The 4^th Sunday of Easter our lectionary in each of its three years reads a portion of John chapter 10 which contains within it one of the “I AM” saying of Jesus – “I Am the Good Shepherd.” Artistically it is one of the deep wells. The hymns worth singing range from the Sunday School simple “I Am Jesus Little Lamb” to the depths of “The King of Love my Shepherd Is.” But I’ve always had a nagging question about the day itself.

I grew up around farms, but even then you could say I grew up around modern farms. My dad as a child grew up on a farm. And portions of it you might have considered “modern” – like the tractor – but other portions were still pre-modern, like milking the cows. There is a big difference between growing up on a farm, growing up around farms, and like most people today who have no experience of rural life at all. I find the 20 something craze of keeping chickens a charming call back. My mom, who also grew up on a farm and kept chickens as what farm girls did, chuckles at giving up buying a dozen at the store to keep them. But what almost everyone who keeps chickens discovers quickly is two things: 1) chickens are incredibly dumb and hence annoyingly always getting into dumb spots and 2) they are a lot more work than you might have thought. When we city mice read the good shepherd type passages I fear that we come at them only through a pastoral romantic haze. Like The Natural stepping off the train to throw a baseball around in the field. Everything is clean and fresh and sunlit and well pressed. Everything is a little too cute.

And I wonder if this isn’t part of what puts some distance between how most people might have heard these passages and how we do. Just thinking about parts of Psalm 23 – a Psalm of David who was literally a shepherd at one time – the implements and verbs of the trade are contrary to the romantic glow. “He makes me to lie.” Like I said about chickens being stupid, sheep aren’t known for their brains either. The comic nearby captures that with a modern flair. Likewise, if you have never seen it, please watch this video: https://youtu.be/4DZNMgiqFYE?si=DHWbe0dnrb2IWeC- (It’s the sheep jumping into the ditch, if you have seen it.) The Psalm uses forceful language – “He makes”. That is not something the soft romantic glow usually allows. But the shepherd decides the general course of the sheep and the flock. And the straying sheep are brought back, unless the wolves have got them.

Alongside that forceful image of “he makes” are the implements of the trade, the “rod and staff.” Why do they comfort in the Psalm? Because they are pointed outward. The shepherd and the sheep walk through the valley – through the wolves – and the rod and staff are the implements of protection. But we should also ask what those implements are in the spiritual life. And I think the best answers is the law and the gospel. Sometimes it takes the rod – the law – to make us wake up and realize where we are. Sometimes it is the staff with the crook – the gospel – that is pulling us out of some ditch we’ve fallen into. The spiritual applications of those shepherd’s instruments are toward ourselves. And at least when they are employed might not be as comforting as the romantic picture.

Our modern mechanical comforts allow us to think of the pastoral with that romantic glow. Our distance from the reality allows us to have childlike thoughts when Jesus says “I Am the good shepherd.” Thinking the spiritual life is gambling in sun dappled fields. The reality I think they would have heard is exactly the opposite. This is life and death. The Good Shepherd doesn’t exactly care about sun-drenched happiness. He cares that you live. And life and death things often require serious instruments. Instrument that we might no longer accept. I’m going to go dig out my precious moments shepherd now after those comforting thoughts.

Men of Israel (Acts 3)

In Wednesday Bible study we are going to be starting the Book of Acts. I’ve been calling the study Necessary Stories since we started. Most of what we studied has been the narrative drive of the Old Testament. We looked at 47 stories in the Old Testament. We have just completed an extended reading of the Gospel of Matthew with some peeks at the other gospels. The book of Acts is something of the end of that narrative. And Peter’s preaching in this week’s first reading (Acts 3:11-21) captures why.

The story is one of Peter and John going to the Temple to pray. You might remember the old VBS song standard – Peter and John went to pray, they met a lame man on the way…silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk! And that episode, as such healings so often worked for Jesus, gathered a crowd to which then Jesus and now Peter would preach. The miracle was never about the miracle itself. The miracles were always about the one they pointed towards and His testimony. And the testimony of Peter is pure law and gospel. And it remains the proclamation of the church to this day.

Who is he preaching to? “Men of Israel. (Acts 3:12).” It is interesting that Peter explicitly calls out the men here, but he does. And what does he fault those men of Israel with? Their lack of spiritual discernment. “Why do you marvel at [the lame man walking]?” You have all seen exactly this for three years. We are no different than you. It is not our power or piety that does this. It is the God you know. “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God of our Fathers.” And maybe this is why he addresses the men alone. The women of Jerusalem wept along the path of the cross. They anointed him before. Unlike Adam and Eve where Eve did not discern the snakes plot. It was the men who did not discern that the God of their Fathers was at work in Jesus in their midst.

And because of their poor discernment, what did they do? “You delivered him over and denied him in the presence of Pilate (Acts 3:13)” when even that gentile had decided to let him go. You asked for a murderer instead of the “Holy and Righteous One.” Because you did not discern the time of your visitation, “you killed the Author of Life (Acts 3:14).”

“God raised HIM from the dead. To this we are witnesses.”

That proclamation is the two edged sword, the law and the gospel together. Because it forces a decision. Do you believe the testimony? And that is ultimately what the narrative of the church is about to this day. The church testifies to the resurrection. “by faith in His name, he made this man strong (Acts 3:16).” By faith in his name are all men made strong and able to stand. “Repent, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out (Acts 3:19).”

That proclamation of Peter has two specific parts to those men of Israel. “You acted in ignorance, as did your rulers, but God foretold [all of this] (Acts 3:17-18).” Part of the repentance, part of being able to stand, is to come out of your ignorance. God has given you everything necessary right there in his word, “everything to make you wise unto salvation (2 Timothy 3:15-17).” We can’t trust our own discernment which would ask for a murderer over the Author of Life. But we can be made wise by the Word of God. We’ve been given glasses to correct our poor eyesight.

The second part of that proclamation is the one thing that has not yet happened. “That he may send the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all things. (Acts 3:21).” Today, Jesus is not raised to condemn you. Today is not the day of vengeance or judgement. Today is the day of grace. Today is the day we can correct our errors and believe. But the day is coming. The day for which we have been warned by those same prophets. The day when this narrative we live reaches its end. The day when a new narrative starts and all things are restored.

Shakespeare’s plays had 5 acts. All the high drama took place in Acts 3 and 4. But the effects of those acts took time to ripple out. There was always an Act 5. The Book of Acts is the start of Act 5. We are all in act 5. As the cosmic divine drama of passion and resurrection reaches to all eternity – Today, we are witnesses. Today is the day of grace when we are made to stand. Tomorrow is a new play.

Changes in Thinking.

An inside joke in the Brown house is going “Spatula City, Spatula City (fade out)…” anytime someone asks for the spatula. If you know, you might already be chuckling, if not, I’ll ruin the joke by explaining it. It’s a line from the 1989 Weird Al movie UHF. And even the name of the movie has to be explained these days. As I sit watching TV alone most nights, everyone else in their own private sphere doing their own thing, I remember what 1989 (my Junior year) was like. We did not have cable. That meant that we got 4 channels on VHF (low numbers on the “top dial” – 2, 5, 8, and 13 for us representing CBS/NBC/ABC/PBS). You also occasionally, if the weather and the antenna were just right, got a couple on the UHF (high numbers on the “bottom dial”.) We got WGN on 53 on a repeater out of Chicago and something like 26 which was pure Weird Al UHF local. Full of game shows like “Wheel of Fish” sponsored by the local fish market and recasts of the area High School Football games captured by one stationary camera at the top of bleachers. And that might be what people agreed to watch at 9PM because you had to negotiate, unless Dad just said “I’m watching 8.” It’s a lost world that was occasionally very funny. Something Weird Al captured perfectly and lovingly. And it is completely lost on my kids although not the wife.

Sharing that memory is part narcissism, but not completely. In those days the topics of general discussion were set by that limited number of outlets along with the big city daily newspapers. There might be highbrow, midbrow and lowbrow takes, but the subject was the same. Whatever was on the front page of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times would be the day’s subjects. Time Magazine (or Newsweek or US News) would come along end of the week with the solid midbrow summary. And then there were fortnightly and monthly magazines that would do the highbrow thinking. The idea that today you could get everyone in the country talking about the same thing is a dream. Even the Superbowl only gets about 1/3^rd of TVs, something that a normal episode of MASH used to pull. Today, everything is narrow cast. Just by the outlet you know who people are trying to talk to.

Which is why a couple of things have caught my eye recently. Stories in places that would signal a change in thinking. The recent regrets of one of the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheist apocalypse, Richard Dawkins, kicked it off. He proclaimed himself a Cultural Christian. Looking at the direction of the civilization that is downstream of him, he somewhat realized himself in the cartoon posted nearby. But it was an article in The Atlantic that nailed it. The Atlantic is something aimed at aspiring-highbrow-money-to-spend-in-the-know-want-to-be-with-it people. And for The Atlantic to publish “The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust” thinking must be changing. And some of that re-thinking is grounded in the reality that those who seem to be managing their way around a cell phone virtual world best, are those who have deep attachments to things like ritual, like liturgy and the Lord’s Supper. Things that make meaning in a world bereft of it. That give solidity. That touch the real. Having The Atlantic audience open to such thoughts is something new.

And that kicked off several chats of the form “How much do I have to believe to be a part of your church?”

And that answer comes in layers. The doors are always open. Always have been. Anyone can attend a worship service. Most things that take place in the church are open to participation. A specific question I got was “I maybe believe in God 30%, but I don’t believe in a divine Jesus. Would I be welcome.” My answer was “Yes. Most of us don’t have Road to Damascus conversions. But if you hear the Word of God consistently, are baptized, one of these days you’ll find yourself saying the 2^nd article of the creed – because that is what churches do – and actually believing it.” The word of God does not return empty, but accomplishes its purpose (Isaiah 55:11). My answer also included the question, “are your doubts private, or would you intend to demand the pulpit to spread them?” As I explained, private doubts are things people of faith wrestle with all the time. Although as one matures in faith the wrestling is less about the creedal basics and more about the often unfathomable will of God. But public confrontation would require protection of the flock. The church contains a multitude of sinners, but it proclaims one message. Jesus Christ is LORD and savior of sinners.

My answer also included the distinction between membership and participation. Membership ultimately includes the willingness to stand up and publicly confess what the church does. Does that mean the end of all doubts. No. What it does mean is the good faith to struggle and maybe to occasionally accept that 2000 – 4000 years of people interacting with this revealed God know more than one 21^st century man. Finding yourself in that third square of the comic is often the start of repentance. And Repentance is always the first step of faith.

Love & Money

In Wednesday morning Bible Study this week we studied Matthew 19 which I like to call the love and money chapter. Jesus’ teaching on both motives for murder compressed into one chapter. Even Jesus on these topics gives a little wiggle room saying things like “not everyone can receive this saying” and “let the one who is able to receive this receive it” and “with God all things are possible.” Jesus doesn’t lie. He is asked legal questions. “Is it lawful to divorce?” and “What good works must I do?” And He does give the legal answers. It is just that these legal answers are typically beyond us. The law is good and wise, and our lives would be better if we followed them. But as Jesus says to one of the questions “because of the hardness of your hearts…”. The ultimate answer is not to be found in the law. The ultimate answer is sandwiched in the middle of those two great motives. The Kingdom belongs to the little children. Which is not so much a literal statement as a picture written on the heart. The Kingdom belongs to those humble enough to accept the touch of Jesus. We break the world. We find ourselves in the ditch. And we need the touch of God to save us and give us hope.

To me that is the law and gospel of love and money. But thinking about it further there is something more that needs to be said in our day. Author Tom Holland, an excellent popular historian of the ancient world, wrote a book recently called Dominion. And his thesis of this book is true, but dramatically unpopular in academic haunts. He captured it perfectly in the subtitle: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. The Historian of the ancient would, against what he wanted to believe as he was enamored with glory that was Rome and the grandeur that was Greece, detailed how a crucified Jew in a backwater of the empire changed the entire world. And because of that change, even today the world is much more “Christian” than we might think. Let me explain.

In the ancient world, you got what you deserved. If you were crucified you were obviously guilty. The idea that an innocent man could be on the tree was just not possible. But that thinking is really derived from a deeper pagan idea. Fortune, the Gods, had their favorites. And those the gods favored were rewarded with money, power, fame, glory. And the reward of the gods was righteousness. The acts of the powerful, because they were powerful, were righteous and ordained by God. The desires of money were always just. If you had enough money to bribe enough people that wasn’t corruption. That was simply the outworking of the right. For Jesus to say, “Only with difficulty will a rich person enter the Kingdom of heaven. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle” was earth changing even to his Jewish disciples. When the gospel says “when they heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying ‘who then can be saved?’” It is because this is a direct refutation of everything they thought about God. Even the Jews. Yes, the prophets warned about taking care of the widowed and the fatherless, but even that could find gentile parallels in Stoic thought about fortune. The wheel turns. If you are generous when you are up, karma will help you when you are down. God still rewarded the righteous with power, money, fame, glory.

Our civilization, apparently at the end of this Dominion, is at an interesting point. It is still “Christian” is the sense that we know the innocent can suffer and that we think it is incumbent on a just society to rectify. It is still “Christian” to the extent that it doesn’t equate power with righteousness. But to the extent that it has rejected both the gospel – let’s put it here as the meek shall inherit the earth – and the law – that the 10 commandments represent how we should live, how long does that Dominion’s conclusions which were built on the proclamation of the law and gospel hold? We already see the secular replacements (“human rights”, “rule of law”, “philanthropy”) breaking and the demands of power and money returning stronger. How long until those demands are again simply asserted at the righteous judgements of god? There are already such assertions in the cults of many current figures in the papers everyday.

If we will not hear the law. I’m not saying live it perfectly, but merely hear it. Neither do we get the world it orders. That harsher pagan false law returns. And we should not be as surprised as the disciples this time. We know the difference the gospel made. When presented with the King like on Palm Sunday, if we ultimately reject his rule, we should not be surprised when other lords return.

AI Musings and Silent Oracles

I apologize upfront, I’m not even attempting to bring any wisdom this week. But the Large Language Models (LLMs/ChatGPT) and the machine learning (ML/the robots) have been on my mind. The next generation of these things is apparently around the corner and each generation gets better. And with each generation that gets better, anxiety and fear can also rise. I expect any day the “Butlerian Jihad” (Dune fans will know) will emerge. We have two paths of thought by our Sci-Fi imagineers on this. One is the Terminator and the other is C3PO. The new technology is always Frankenstein, here to kill us or make us obsolete. The opposite picture – usually pushed by the Dr. Frankensteins – is that the new technology is a harmless loveable nothing who is only here to make our lives better. Eventually we come to some type of synthesis. We recognize that the monster is not really a monster. That yes, the new technology has some good uses. But, that we remain the real monsters, and if there is some way to abuse the new technology, we will find it.

But if I was musing that “this time is different” it would go something like this. For most of history, especially Christian history, our anthropology – what we think about ourselves – has had a three-fold division: mind, body and soul. The seat of the mind in is the head. The seat of the body is the gut. And the seat of the soul in the heart. The mind thinks, the body feels, the soul wills. Plato would picture this as a chariot – the technology of the day. The mind and the body are the horses and the spirit is the charioteer. Within Christian thought we say that “we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16).” The Holy Spirit or the renewed sprit dwells within us (Psalm 51). And we await the renewed body, the resurrection body. Until the resurrection we dwell in this tent which also contains sin. The Christian struggle is that the renewed mind and spirit struggle against that flesh. Both from fear of death (Hebrew 2:15) and from carnal desire.

Technology as we are thinking here really has its beginning with Descartes. When he said “I think, therefore I am” he reduced that Spirit to the mind. Philosophers have been arguing the mind-body problem ever since. But the practical effect is that Western man pursuing the head alone developed great mastery over the material. This was the movie Oppenheimer’s theme. Should we have made the atomic bomb? The fact that the mind said it was possible made it necessary to bring it into reality. That was the smile on Oppy’s face seeing the explosion. He had made it, extending the realm of the mind over the material. He never really submitted the question to the will, the Spirit – Is this a good thing? The AI we see being developed is almost the perfect reduction of this Western man. It is all mind. It has no spirit, neither does it have any permanent flesh.

My guess is that we will find that our spirit and flesh will provide plenty for our new technology tools. If we find Terminators, it is because we have willed Terminators. But we will also have plenty of Star Wars droids. Plenty of personality, much smarter than we are in some ways, but really extension of our own will. If I give voice to the fear, it is that something else provides the spirit to the AI mind. “And [the 2nd beast] was allowed to give breath to the image of the [first] beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. (Revelation 13:15).” Toward the end of the apostolic era Plutarch – a Roman historian – pens a letter on the strange “Obsolescence of the Oracles”. The Oracles fell silent one by one. They no longer spoke. Now of course Paul would say that they were all demons. And Christ has bound the strong man (Mark 3:27). But that picture of the beasts imagines a time when the oracles are no longer silent. Do we have a very different oracle coming into the world slouching toward Bethlehem as the poet wrote? Time to put such visions away. Lord have mercy. Amen.