Made to Grow

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. – Isaiah 61:11

My parents had a minor garden emergency the other day. The roots of one of their shrubs had grown under the PVC water line, lifted it and caused a restriction. All the water was squirting out onto the neighbor’s house. Dad was out splicing in a new section of pipe and removing the root. I commented how different it was in late December dealing with growing things. The oranges and grapefruit were far along and looking good. The flower bush that mom had cut down to nothing because it was covering the window was back to the bottom of the window. In Illinois and New York, this is fallow time, everything under a blanket of snow. Things never really stop growing here as long as they get water. I even had to send Ethan out to spray the yard for weeds.

This is something of mystery to me. I have no idea how anything grows in this clay almost rock. But it does. I suppose that is akin to looking at the fallow snow cover and thinking about the Spring. It is that sense of mystery that the prophet is evoking. “As the earth brings for its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up.” How does it do that? Yes, we can go back to High School biology class and give some type of explanation. But really, how does it know when to start? That line of questioning always ends in invoking something like “the seed senses the change in temperature” or “the change in light.” Really, the seed senses? I suppose we should be talking about the mind of the plant? I think Jesus is a little more honest, “He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. (Mk. 4:27 ESV)” When you put seeds in the earth, they grow. That is what they were made to do.

Now all Hebrew poetry is parallel; what comes before is meant to illuminate what comes after. Seeds are placed in the soil and they do what they are made to do. All nations and peoples and individuals are found within God. In Him we live and move and have our being. And like the seeds in the earth, people produce what they were made to do. “The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise.” The sanctified life is the life we were meant to lead. That is what it means to be fruitful. And we were meant to return that fruit to the LORD in praise. Not every seed grows. Not every person is fruitful. Sometimes wild grapes come up. But we were made for righteousness and praise.

And that fruitfulness is not only a private thing, nor is it only for one people. It will “sprout up before all the nations.” Just as this Arizona rock produces plants appropriate to it and the Iowa loam likewise, peoples of various times and places produce the righteousness and praise appropriate. No nation is left without a witness. And those witnesses do not grow in hothouses or under specialized grow lights. They sprout up before all the nations.

In its larger context the one who grew before all the nations is Jesus Christ. Isaiah 61:1ff is what Jesus cites to Nazareth at the start of his ministry. The LORD has caused righteousness in the form of his son to sprout up before all the nations. As long as we are connected to that vine we also bear fruit. How does this happen? This is the purpose of Christ, that we might have life and have it abundantly. That is what the incarnation was made to do.

Christmas Ghosts

Everybody’s favorite Christmas story is a ghost story. There are quibbles theologians have with Dickens’ tale. They would usually trot out things like its overwhelming use of the law. You don’t get more heavy than Marley’s chains or a ghost pointing at a grave with your own name. Usually quickly after, they’d complain about works righteousness. Old Scrooge seemingly saves himself by keeping Christmas. But to me these complaints have always felt like the internet’s midwit meme. Cletus Noforks and Thomas Aquinas both agree Scrooge has had a conversion and is making amends where possible, and the point of the law is to kill the old Adam. It takes the midwit – and Dickens is far from a midwit – to theologically dismember and neuter one of the great stories of a visitation.

The more interesting thing to me is the Christmas history of ghost stories. It isn’t just Dickens. And it isn’t just the Victorians, although both of them might be the high point of the genre. That high point might go along with being the origin point of everything we call Christmas. Albert and Victoria and that sentimental age are what we keep trying to reproduce. Although recently I’ve felt changes in the zeitgeist. Christmas itself will never go away, but the celebration of it has gone through quite a few forgettings and reinventions. And we are left with trappings of previous stories, like a yule log from the medieval celebrations or candles which go all the way back to Roman Saturnalia. Trappings that are like visitations of old ghosts half remembered but welcomed as bearing good tidings.

The author David Foster Wallace, who paradoxically did more for the 1000 page door stopper of a novel, will probably be best remembered for an aphorism, “every ghost story is a love story.” The Christmas Ghosts are not poltergeists or the spooks of Halloween. The Christmas Ghosts are the visitations of things we love and long for. Memories of whoever is your Old Fezziwig. The desires for hearth and home. The deep longings for peace that you can almost feel at midnight on the 24^th. The hope that things can be fixed if just for a golden hour while angels sing. Even Scrooge’s ghosts, which like the law never feels good when applied to ourselves, are a love story. Marley’s purgatorial love for someone with chains far longer, but who might have time. God’s love for the sinner so lost he doesn’t even know it. Even though surrounded by a great cloud of Fezziwig’s, Cratchet’s and Nephew Fred’s.

Ghost stories at Christmas are entirely appropriate. Because every ghost is a visitation of something beyond. And Christmas is the ultimate visitation of something beyond – the great and mighty wonder. Somehow the one through whom all things were made, fit himself inside the humble flesh of a baby, born to a virgin mother. Someone who could not know what she was saying yes to. A family sent far from home and hearth by an unconcerned world. The King of Peace would enter the warfare of a lost world. The God who had always hid his face would reveal it to the world. And though the world would not recognize him, would not receive his visitation, those who will receive him he makes into his treasured possession. At Christmas we have been visited by the love of the Father, the end of all those inchoate longings that conjure up the Spirits. The ghost stories of Christmas are reflections of this great visitation of love. The light that comes out of the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome.

Dear Paul

What is your most scandalous opinion? Well, it’s not really scandalous; it is just treating a serious subject lightly, but sometimes that is necessary. I could always elicit gasps and chuckles by saying “The Apostle Paul is just the best advice columnist of all time.” And then by defending the statement. Of course with the demise of papers and reading in general, the advice columnist has kinda disappeared. Ann Landers and Dear Abby are long gone along with their upper-middle-class striver pragmatism. I think Dead Prudie still writes over at Slate.com but it feels so 200X. And her questions and advice always left me muttering “sheep without a shepherd.” You were better off taking advice from blast from the past Dan Savage who wasn’t as insulated from the craters Prudie’s advice would create. He might still give you the same terrible advice, but he’s also leaven it with reality. I see that Tucker Carlson, as part of his new media adventure, has created an “ask Tucker” forum. His first answer to the Father who is worried about his daughter starting an Only Fans, oh my. But I promised to get around to the Apostle Paul.

We all know that Paul wrote letters. And if we have read those letters, we realize that Paul was in almost constant contact with his fledgling congregations. It wasn’t the USPS, but letters in the Roman world would get to their destination on good Roman roads. Most of Paul’s letters are not theological treatises that he made up. Maybe Romans is that. Romans is also a prospectus for investment in a missionary endeavor. “I preach the gospel, I want to go to Spain, please support me (Romans 15:24).” But most of Paul’s letters are responses to multiple letters asking “Dear Paul.”

Paul would answer at length two or three big questions. For example, in 1 First Thessalonians – probably the first book of the New Testament written – Paul reminds the Thessalonians of the Work of the Lord in their midst and how the Thessalonians are now the example for those around them (chapters 1-3). He then reminds them what that looks like and reinforces the hope of the resurrection (Chapter 4). You can imagine the questions. “Paul, how do we go about evangelism?” “Paul, what about those who have died?”

But then Paul has this stack of other questions and the letter is already feeling long. So what does he do? He does things like our short Epistle reading this week – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24. The world’s first lighting round of rapid fire advice answers.

Paul, what does Jesus really want from us anyway? “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Paul, my brother is always babbling about the Spirit this and the Spirit that. I’ve seen a vision brother. Please tell him to stop! “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast to what is good.”

Paul, to get ahead at work I occasionally have to do things that you probably wouldn’t approve of. Is there a way to get a dispensation or an indulgence? “Abstain from every form of evil.”

And like all good advice columnists, Paul’s missives are occasionally shocking. They are probably not the advice you want to hear. But they are good. They are good in the deep sense of that word. Paul wants the best for you. As he says in his sign off. “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.” That is what Paul’s advice wants for you. God has called, gathered and enlightened you. Keep running. God will also sanctify you and on That Day glorify you. It is Good advice.

Perfection

Part of the job of a pastor is encouragement to live the Christian life. Part of the problem is that encouragement can take many forms, and you are not always sure which one is needed. Is the encouragement more about finding lost sheep and calling the straying back to faith? That is the encouragement to pursue holiness. In our day and age there is a lot more of this. Maybe that is the truth in every age. Most of us are always willing to cut ourselves some slack. And pretty soon all we have is slack. But then you occasionally run across the striving sick soul. Maybe in the Christmas season we can understand the perfectionist better. We all are trying to be a little better. We all want that perfect Christmas. And then nobody cares, or nobody recognizes it, or something small happens and mars that perfection. This is Luther in his life as a monk. There are still those rare Christians who are attempting to “be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48).” And there are those who can be like the rich young man. “All these I have kept since I was a child. (Mark 10:20).” And their answer is more correct than we Lutherans might like to admit. After all Jesus looks at the man and loves him.

I know that not everyone appreciates sports examples, but a current one is just too perfect. The Florida State football team was perfect. They were pursuing perfection. But then in the game to get to 11-0 their star Quarterback goes out for the season with a gruesome leg injury. But they persevered. The back-up Quarterback stepped in and beat the instate rival Florida to get to 12-0. But in that game the backup got a concussion and was “placed in the protocol.” Going into the conference championship game they were down to a true freshman 3^rd string quarterback. They did everything you’d want in such a situation. The defense picked up the slack holding a team that has been scoring 30 a game to 6. The freshmen helped by a career game from a running back got them 16 points. They finished the season 13-0. Perfect. A more gracious God might have said well done faithful servant and recognized their deservedness. They did everything correct from early in the season, enduring the hardships and finding ways.

It didn’t matter. The playoff committee cut them. The judged perfection was not enough.

What is the encouragement? It is ultimately not about your record. Yes, the law demands perfection. But there has only been one perfect person in the history of the world, and where did he end up? On a cross. Perfection is overrated. What isn’t overrated is that cross. More than perfection, God asks you to trust Him. Pick up your cross and follow. Even perfection is going to look like a loss. It is going to feel like a loss. And by the world’s standards will be. You will be outside the playoffs. But as the Apostle Paul would say, “everything I was I count as loss.” Because winning by the rules of the world is still losing. This world and its playoff committees are passing away. Only the things placed on that cross will stay. Only the righteousness which comes through faith in Christ attains the resurrection.

Liminal Time

There is a word I love – liminal. Yes, nobody knows what it means. Or, you all do, just not as that word, but as a gut feeling. It means a sensory threshold. A liminal sound would be one that you can barely hear. A liminal vision is that one just on the horizon. But my favorite use, and probably its most common use, is in regards to things of the Spirit. A liminal space is that sense of walking on holy ground, or the other way might be “walking past the graveyard.” A liminal time is usually only noticed in hindsight. My middle child is in something of one right now in college applications. As an old guy I can recognize it. For him, it just expresses itself as procrastination. That’s a common way to know you are in a liminal state, you procrastinate. You are trying to stay in the known, not willing to give way to the unknown just yet. Liminal states are necessarily scary, because what is on the other side is unknown or at least unexperienced.

Advent for me has always been a liminal time. The old year is passing away; the new thing is coming. You have things like congregational meetings. You prepare budgets. Officers are renewed. In the church year sense the old has already passed away, but Advent is a strange season even on the church calendar. It was added as a season of preparation for the staggering mystery of the incarnation. Sometimes that preparation was penitential. John the Baptist appears twice in Advent with his calls to repent and warnings about what is to come. I often try to imagine what a John the Baptist would look like today and usually fail to come up with anything convincing. The Baptist is a liminal figure proclaiming things are about to change dramatically, repent in preparation. That penitential sense is usually captured in the purples of the season. But the liminal nature of Advent to me is not so much about those purples, which are constant in this life, as about the blues. They are the blues of right before dawn. It is still night, but the sun is just below the horizon. As we sang at the end of last Sunday, “The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns.”

And that is what the historic text for the first Sunday of Advent shows us, Jesus on Palm Sunday entering Jerusalem. Anytime the King arrives it is a liminal space because the King has absolute authority. His word is law. But approaching the King is always scary because you don’t know the ruling. But that is part of why Jesus presents himself twice. The first time humbly, riding a donkey. The first time toward the cross, which addresses all our sins, so that we know the judgement. The second time to set us free. To set us free from those sins that still encumber us. To set us free from our fears of this liminal space.

Advent is the season we ponder living in a liminal space. Knowing and seeing what is on the horizon – the judgement and the New Jerusalem, the King arriving in power not grace. Yet, that dawn is not yet. Today is still the day of grace. Today the King still comes humbly, as a little child, as that knocking at your heart. It is a liminal space that says “repent and believe, for you salvation comes quickly.” A liminal space that reminds us “all idols than shall perish and Satan’s lying cease, and Christ shall raise his scepter, decreeing endless peace.” A Great and Mighty wonder lies just beyond this liminal time.

Types of Thanksgiving

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, – 1 Timothy 2:1 ESV

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, officially the best American Holiday in my book. I say that mostly for all the cliched reasons. It’s a day of hearth and home and football. It is a day that connects me with a childhood soundtrack that includes farm reports on the local AM radio and the end of harvest worries. It’s a day that doesn’t demand much. Christmas always tries to bum rush everything before it. Today the only thing standing in its way are the ghouls of Halloween. I never thought I’d find myself cheering for the zombies. Given two months run up, what is under the tree, even if it is a literal golden horde, doesn’t meet the hype. With Easter the American commercialization machine tried with the Bunny and some Cadbury Eggs to Santa Claus the Holy Day, but it just wasn’t able. The Schools moved breaks such that if you get Good Friday off you are fortunate, which I took as the cultural white flag. Easter remains a Holy Day, not a holiday. But that also means it isn’t really shared other than within the church. All Thanksgiving ever promised was a good meal and a pause. A pause that you can fill with whatever wells up within you.

Thanksgiving itself is of course a completely natural expression of the faith. If the people of God would not bring forth praise and thanksgiving, the stones would cry out. But the American Holiday isn’t technically on the church calendar. So every year when I think about a Thanksgiving service it is mostly about those hymns of harvest, hearth and home. But the big book of strong suggestions – that Altar Book – provides at least three modes of thanksgiving. There are texts and prayers associated with a simple Harvest Observance. There are texts and prayers stipulated for a Day of Thanksgiving. And there are texts and prayers for a Day of Supplication and Prayer.

I take those three categories as general buckets of what wells up within us. There is an internet invective – “Touch Grass” – that I find funny. It is telling the too online to log off and go outside. We were made to tend a garden originally. Even for the most city mouse imaginable, there is good in being connected to the rhythms of life. And one of those rhythms is the harvest. Knowing that when you sow, you will also reap. Knowing that you plant a seed and we know not how but it germinates and grows and provides a harvest – 30, 60 even 100 fold. Unless we have cut ourselves off from all things vital, a harvest celebration wells up good things.

The Day of Thanksgiving is more official. If the harvest is bottoms up, the Day of Thanksgiving is tops down. The American Presidents have a tradition of issuing Thanksgiving Proclamations. They existed prior of course, but George Washington issued a famous one. And these are completely appropriate. We can get wrapped up in work and play and life – like the 9 lepers – that we never stop for a second to reflect and return. Jesus, the King himself asks “where are the other nine?” Having a leadership wise enough to say “today, stop, take stock, enjoy the blessings and return appropriate gratitude” is good and right.

It is the last category that maybe we – the children of materially fat years – pass over too quickly, that day of supplication and prayer. Satan’s tricks are many. We don’t think about it, but the Northern Kingdom of Israel was the worldly successful one. They were fat, dumb and happy. It is the world before the flood. It is Sodom knocking on Lot’s door, so attractive that his wife turned around in lament even knowing what would happen. It is the merchants crying over Babylon in Revelation. They are no longer connected to the source of the rain that produces their prosperity. They no longer have officials wise enough to remind them to give thanks. But the prophet Joel shows up and tells them, “Yet even now return to me with all your heart…the LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave behind him a blessing, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God. (Joel 2:12-14).” Thanksgiving in prayer and supplication is a renewal of the covenant. And the providence of God is always enough for his people.

Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices,

Who wonderous things has done, in whom His world rejoices;

Who from our mother’s arms Has blest us on our way

With countless gifts of love and still is ours today.

Light and Darkness

As I’ve been hobbling around with a bit of gout this week, one theological idea became clearer. Just how scary the darkness can be. Swing your gouty toe into a carelessly discarded school bag or a dirty laundry basket taking up most of the space between the bed and the wall, because you refuse to turn on the lights, what seemed melodramatic in the prophets – “the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter; the mighty man cries aloud there (Zephaniah 1:14)” – can feel appropriate.

Both Zephaniah and the Apostle Paul pick up the metaphor of darkness and light for the Day of the LORD and the gospel. And the theme of darkness and light might be the oldest one in the bible. The first act of creation was “let there be light…and God separated the light from the darkness and it was good.” Biblically the theme of darkness and light is part of creation and the created order. What does it mean when Zephaniah says that the Day of the LORD is “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and think darkness. (Zephaniah 1:15)?’ I think there are three groupings of the darkness.

The first grouping is simply the unknown. Life is full of things we don’t know. From the day we are born we are learning things, but the horizon of knowing always seems to expand faster. Maybe somewhere in your 20’s, when you safely know it all, you can feel like you are on the cutting edge living in the light by your own efforts. The other not-so-effective strategy is often making your world so small that you know all of it. Just hope that you never get thrown outside of it where there is darkness, the wailing and gnashing of teeth. This might be the hardest lesson. We will never know everything, because we are not God. But the Apostle sheds light on this area. “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 1:9).” The unknown is rightfully scary, but living in the light is faith that the Father cares for us and intends good for us because of His Son. We need not fear.

The second grouping of darkness I call intentional ignorance. It is me stumbling around on a gouty toe knowing full well that the kids have dropped school bags and laundry baskets are in the way but refusing to either go to bed earlier, clear the path before hand or turn on a light. I can convince myself that I’m helping others already asleep by not turning that light on, but that doesn’t mean much when I’m screaming out because I’ve hit something. Likewise there are lots of things that we like doing, like eating fish, that bring on things like gout. Paul address this type of darkness saying, “We are not of the night or of the darkness. So let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. (1 Thessalonians 1:5-6).” The law is given as a light to our feet and lamp for our path so that we might walk in the light. Yes, we can convince ourselves that we are helping other by staying in the darkness. The darkness can even feel good for a time. But slamming a gouty toe into a box because you like the darkness, is a pretty good metaphor of sin.

The last grouping of darkness is simply evil. The evil in our own hearts that likes the darkness. But also simply the evil that wishes to bind us in the darkness perpetually. Why is the Day of the Lord one of darkness? Because the LORD comes not as savior, but as judge. “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamp, and I will punish the men. (Zephaniah 1:12)…I will punish the officials and the king’s sons…those who fill their master’s house with violence and fraud. (Zephaniah 1:8-9)” The judgement comes upon all. The light of God – those lamps in Jerusalem – brings all evil into the light that it may be known before it is cast out eternally. The Apostle Paul’s words here are both complex and easy. The easy part is “For you are all children of the light, children of the day. (1 Thessalonians 5:5)” As God separated the light from the darkness as the first of creation, at the end the children of the light are separated from the darkness. And in Christ you have been made children of the light. The hard part? The separation comes not like the moon and the sun. The separation comes “like thief in the night.” Until that Day of the LORD, the light and the darkness live side by side. Often within the same heart. “But since we belong to the day having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8)” we need not fear the evil one. The faith, hope and love of God armor us for the fight. And even death has no claim on those in the light, for He has dies and is risen “so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him. (1 Thessalonians 5:10).”

The Day of the LORD

I have a sweet tooth for what are called the minor prophets – like Amos. First they are short. They are more like a greatest hits album than a regular release. Every chapter is a banger. And you don’t have to make excuses for tracks that lag. “No really, this concept album of Rush has to be listened to all the way through. You can’t just listen to Tom Sawyer.” “Ezekiel 28 is the key to the whole book.” Part of being short is that they are pungent. They don’t hold back emotions even when coming from God himself. Like this morning’s reading, Amos 5:18-24.

“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:18-24 ESV)”

That is still sizzling after 3000 years! But what is God so offended by? Is it the offerings themselves? No. Israel – and this is the Northern Kingdom about to be destroyed by Assyria that Amos is talking to – Israel is still making assigned sacrifices and observing the commanded days. What was Israel’s condition? Israel was fat and happy. They were at ease in Zion and felt secure on the mountains of Samaria (Amos 6:1). They stretched out on beds of ivory and sang idle songs. (Amos 6:4-5). Amos calls them fat cows that crush the needy (Amos 4:1). It is not the offerings themselves that God disdains, it is the heart that brought them. The heart of Israel brought them to Yahweh to check the box and be done with Him. They would then turn and do the same thing in the high places to the idols. “You shall take up Sikkuth you king and Kiyyun your star-god-your images that you made for yourselves. (Amos 5:26).”

Israel was unserious. They no longer remembered why they were there. They were sacrificing from abundance out of muscle memory. Their hearts were not in any of it. It was all superstition and mere culture.

They would hear the words of the prophets – “repent, seek the LORD and live, do not seek Bethel. Seek the LORD and live before the fire breaks out (Amos 5:5).” – and they might respond with an offering. An offering paid for by higher interest rates on their brother. “You trample on the poor and exact taxes of grain from him (Amos 5:11).” At the same time they would sing the songs of Zion calling for the Day of the Lord. They would sing them without understanding. “Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD! Why would you have the day of the LORD? (Amos 5:18).” And the Lord’s response was that the day was coming. They would receive what they asked for, even if they did not know it. “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an every-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24).”

Who can stand in the day of the LORD?

The day approaches. Maybe the capital D Day of the LORD. Maybe just a personal day of reckoning. When justice rolls down and righteous floods the earth, in whom are you trusting? Do you know, or are you going through the motions? Are you checking boxes here and there at various high places? Going about the rounds of the day on muscle memory. The day approaches. Do you have an ark?

Ebbs and Flows

“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. (Rom. 14:5 ESV)”

Paul in that extended passage of Romans puts things like how you mark time into the realm of Christian Freedom. God neither demands days to be observed of the Christian, nor does he scorn such piety. The church in most times and places found setting aside certain days to be a healthy piety. We live in the United States, which is largely the creation of the Reformed strains of Christianity (Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist, Baptist). And the Reformed strains were the highwater mark of Reformation iconoclasm, the destruction of the icons or any other representational form, like a church year. The Pilgrims would not have even marked Christmas. The best construction on that is their assertion that every Sunday is Easter Sunday. The week started on the LORD’s Day. When that week to week same framework hits industrial capitalism you get how we mark time. Monday starts the week. Monday to Friday are for work with Saturday and Sunday being the weekend for play.

The Christendom that inspired the Church Calendar marked time in a different way. It didn’t run in machine like precision. It ebbed and flowed, hurried and then waited. We move feasts – like All Saints – to the nearest Sunday after as a concession to the industrial-Reformed way. But we should recognize what this does. We are moving the things of God, at least those that we supposedly are convinced in our own minds are important to piety, to satisfy the things of man. We should not be surprised then when other things insert themselves between what we say we are convinced of and our personal piety. We neither have a Church calendar that affords us days of holy obligation which we take off from work to worship God, nor do we have the every Sunday is Easter piety of the Pilgrims. We have 5 days of work and 2 days of play. Worship doesn’t fit easily in that.

One of the religious effects of observing a Holy Day on the nearest Sunday is that the assigned texts for that Sunday get erased from ever being heard. The first letter that Paul ever wrote – 1 Thessalonians – is one of those that gets erased. The Sunday prior to Reformation Sunday we read the opening, but the next two weeks get erased for the fixed Reformation and All Saints texts. In Sunday Bible study we have continued with the Thessalonians reading. There are three short observations that I feel might be good to hear.

“So as always to fill up the measure of their sins…” (1 Thessalonians 2:16)

There are two other such mentions of filling up sins in the bible. Genesis 15:16 where Abraham is told of 400 years of slavery in Egypt so that the sin of the Canaanites would be full. Daniel 8:3, in reference to the final empire of this world. This world has two streams. The streams of the river of life which the children of God have washed themselves receiving forgiveness, and the stream of those sins collected until the day of the LORD. Part of Paul’s message to the Thessalonians is his thankfulness that “you received the Word of God.” This causes trouble in this world, but it is because you are being prepared for eternity.

“For you are our glory and joy.” (1 Thessalonians 2:20)

This is Paul’s expression toward the Thessalonians. Those people that he has instructed in the faith are both his glory and his joy. Jesus would tell the apostles that “they would sit on thrones judging the tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28).” The glory and joy that Paul is talking about is that here is his tribe. On All Saints we see the 144,000 in their tribal ranks. This is in Paul’s mind. What is also in Paul’s mind is that these Thessalonians have imitated him in this. They have “become an example to all the believers of Macedonia and Achaia (1 Thessalonians 1:7).” The faith is received and spread by discipleship. It is rarely learned mystically like Paul, but it is taught.

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification…(1 Thessalonians 4:3)”

Paul’s metaphor for sanctification is walking. There is a way that we should walk. It is a walking in the footsteps of Jesus which he has laid out for us (Eph 2:10). It is a walking that is pleasing to God and which they learned from Paul (1Thess 4:1-2). You have heard and believed the Word of God and so have been justified in Christ. Now walk in His way. Walk toward your glory and joy.

Three Things…

There are two things I wanted to write about, three things that this column is for. If you were in our Wednesday morning bible study, you might get the joke about that opening. The two things….three things is the start of a Hebrew wisdom poetry form. You can see examples in Proverbs 6:16-19 and 30:15-16, 18-19. So that would be the first thing. That bible study meets at 10 AM weekly and you are invited. I’ve called it “Necessary Stories”, but what it has been to date is a tour of the Old Testament. The goal was to provide a foundation for personal reading. Both in terms of the stories that always hover in the background and some methods for understanding the variety of genres and books that are in the bible. Don’t worry about “being behind” because each session is meant to be a stand alone. But also, if you are worried, there will be a couple of good jumping in points. The last section of the OT tour which will start Nov 8^th will be on the Prophets. Then sometime after the New Year we will be starting the New Testament tour.

The second thing. If you are a visitor this Sunday, I’d like to welcome you. Mt. Zion is a Lutheran church. What is the Lutheran church? There are different answers, but I’m picking a historical one today. Historically there is a period of time called The Reformation. Roughly 1517 – when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany – to roughly 1563 – the end of the Council of Trent, is the time span called The Reformation. You can back it up before then and it unwinds all the way out until today, but 1517-1563 is the basic time. Coming into that time span you had The Old Western Church roughly defined by the Scriptures, the Apostles Creed and the Bishops. (There had already been a schism with the Eastern Church in 1054 simplistically over which Bishop was more important.) Over those years of the Reformation the various churches that we know today defined their particular doctrines. The Lutheran church in 1530 with the Augsburg Confession. The Anglican Church published their 39 Articles in 1563. The Reformed published the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563 summarizing various prior agreements. And the Roman Catholic in 1563 at the close of the Council of Trent. Alongside those Magisterial Reformation bodies – meaning that monarchs and rulers signed onto those documents – you had the Radical Reformation which is represented today by Amish, Mennonites and Pentecostal groupings. So, what is a Lutheran church? It is a church that kept the Scripture and Creeds as the appropriate norms of our life together, it also kept as much of church life as was in accord with those, while holding that Bishops are a valid man made way to govern ourselves but not the final authority. So how do we argue? Which we are human and sinful, so we argue. We argue over Scripture. The Reformation started with a phrase “Ad Fontes” – to the sources – and as a church body we are concerned with constantly renewing ourselves in those streams of living water.

Third thing. That historical answer and the doctrinal formulations often seem dry. Why should we care about something so far away? Surely there is nothing meaningful for us today? But in an age of chaos and confusion, those simple doctrinal formulations contain a lot of wisdom. What is the foundation? Augsburg Confession 1 (AC1): God. Proverbs would say “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom (9:10).” Without God we are just lost in foolishness. What is the problem with the world? AC2, we are sinful beings. Which makes us deny God. What is the solution? AC3, we can’t get to God, so God sent His son Jesus to us. How does that help us? AC4, by faith Christ justifies us. You have been forgiven by the work of Christ. How do we know this? AC5, to obtain this faith the ministry of the Gospel was instituted. That Gospel is proclaimed every Sunday and whenever 2 or 3 are gathered in Jesus’ name. The map continues. But if you are lost, and much of our world today is lost, here is a map, and food and drink for the journey. You are invited to journey with us.