Category: Pastors Corner

Singing from the Same Hymnbook

Sometimes you write about topical things driven by events – like last week on Israel.  Sometimes you write about one of the texts of the week because there are good things in it, but it isn’t the sermon text.  Sometimes you write about a point of theology because from reading and meditation you have a handle on it.  And sometimes you write about purely local happenings.  There is an old phrase that “if you are explaining you are losing.”  It comes from politics and it is probably true. It is probably true because most people aren’t persuadable.  Explaining is attempting to persuade and if nobody is open to it, if you are doing it, you lose. Better off pandering even if badly. But while I might be that cynical about our body politic, I’m not ready to be that cynical about the church. I like to believe that the Holy Spirit still works.

So, I’m going to talk about “singing from the same hymnbook.” That is a phrase for a reason.  Institutions, like the church, used to form people.  You didn’t join something because you already agreed 100%.  You joined something, or honestly you were born into it, and how it behaved formed you over time.  Everyone grew together – like the body of Christ – into singing from the same hymnbook.  Now there are legitimate complaints about that, but we’ve heard all those complaints turned up to 11 for two generations.  To the point that I’m not sure how many hymnbooks are left. And what is the result of this? Weak institutions that can’t form anything and that nobody trusts. Is that really the world we want to inhabit?

How did we get into this place where we don’t even know our own hymnbook? From my observation there were two paths.  The first path is the one of decay.  The hymnbook – absolutely true – used to be called “the layman’s bible”. The most used religious book in any Lutheran household used to be the hymnbook.  The Anglicans called theirs The Book of Common Prayer.  And that is what the hymnbook used to be, a daily companion to personal and family prayer life. Part of the decay was the decay of personal and family prayer life.  As the hymnbook was less used in personal life, many pastors responded by shrinking the hymns used in worship.  Every congregation has a repertoire.  A healthy congregation should have at least 200 hymns in that repertoire. Many that I know of have about 50. The problem with this is that the overall service becomes non-sensical. For example, when the gospel reading is the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, it makes complete sense to sing a bog-standard Lutheran hymn LSB 514 “The Bridegroom Soon Will Call Us.” In a congregation that has decayed to 50 hymns, you sing Amazing Grace – a great hymn – once a month.  Even if Amazing Grace has nothing to do with the Wedding Feast which warns about our attitude toward that gift of grace. The second path was defection. There is something more popular over here.  Heck with the rest of the institution, I’m going to benefit personally at their expense by hopping on the bandwagon.  The result is churches theoretically with the same teaching pulling in separate ways.

Our hymnbook – Lutheran Service Book – along with those prayer and study supports and liturgies at in the start, has 635 hymns deemed appropriate to support a congregation’s spiritual life. They cover both church seasons – Advent to End Times – and topics – sacraments, sanctification, trust, praise and others. In 15 years at my prior congregation did we ever sing every one of those 635 hymns? No way. How many did we sing? Roughly 400. Ok, but how many yearly, or on a regular basis?  We sang roughly 200 hymns in a given year.  Say 4 per week for 52 weeks ignoring advent, lent and other occasional services. Now within those 200 there were probably 50 that were sang a couple times or more a year, think A Mighty Fortress or Jesus Sinners Doth Receive.  There were about 100 that would be sang at least yearly, think On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry or Stricken’ Smitten’ and Afflicted.  And there would be another 100 that would probably be 2 years out of the 3 year cycle of readings.  Out of that you form a congregational repertoire of about 200.   

Part of the job of the pastor is forming the faith.  I am not doing my job if I allow the faith to swim around in in a shallow pool.  Partly because that shallow pool might appeal to one section, but another truly hates it. And partly because life is ocean deep. And if all you have is Amazing Grace, and you don’t have I Walk in Danger All the Way, your faith might get eaten by leviathan.  So, my suggestion, if we sing a hymn you don’t know is take it home.  That is why we publish it with the melody line.  It will be coming back.  Use it for your personal piety during the week.  Let it form you for a week in your thoughts and words. Let us work toward being Christians who can swim in the deep.

All Israel Will Be Saved

Anytime Israel enters the news cycle, things get apocalyptic. And that is usually because of something that is only described with very big words. The short words would be Left Behind or The Late Great Planet Earth. If you have read either one of those works you have dipped your toe in dispensational eschatology of the premillennial variety. Now if I told you that this particular understanding of “what the bible teaches” comes from John Nelson Darby around 1830. It was incorporated into the Scofield Reference Bible in 1907 where it moved from being the peculiar teaching of the small Plymouth Brethren to being the in the air default of American Evangelicals.  If I told you that – all true – you wouldn’t believe me.  That is how potent an end times story it became. And for me it became so potent because of one particular quirk, it offered Christians what appeared to be a free pass to be “nice” regarding Jews after the holocaust.  They are part of an older dispensation is what it offered.

I obviously can’t summarize everything in 700 words. The best I can do is state the Church’s historic teachings and point at where they are based upon. 

1. Salvation is through Christ Alone.  Nobody has their own dispensation.

Jesus would say “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).” He would also say things like “I am the vine and you are the branches (John 15:5).”  Paul would pick that idea up and talk about Gentiles as ingrafted branches and the ability to graft the Jew back in (Romans 11:17-23). Christ has always – even in the Old Testament all the way back to the first promise after the fall in the garden (Genesis 3:15) – been the only way.  Romans 9 through 11 is Paul’s pondering of this in regards to his kinsman. And his abiding prayer is “that they might be saved (Romans 10:1).”  And the meaning behind saved is come to faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed. Darby’s dispensationalism says you don’t have to preach Christ to Paul’s brothers of the flesh, which is contrary to the gospel Paul preached.

2. The modern nation state of Israel is not The Israel of God.

The idea of Israel is being a “chosen people” (Deuteronomy 7:6). This chosen-ness is to be in Christ by faith.  It is not based on anything in us, but in God’s faithfulness to his promises.  Paul says in Romans 9 that “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel…the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” Israel is not Israel by genetic descent, but Israel is Israel by faith. This is how Peter can say the same words in 1 Peter 2:9 that “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” to the church – Jew and Gentile.  The Israel of God is always by faith by God’s sovereign choice in Christ.

3. This does not mean that “The Jews” are without purpose.

The opposite of dispensationalism’s desire to be nice has often been a Christian hatred of “the Jews”. Luther himself was not beyond such, but it should also be said that Luther was basically expressing common ideas. This misses Paul’s warning in Romans 11.  “Do not be arrogant toward the (cut off) branches…”. If God can graft in wild branches, how much easier to restore the cultivated ones?  It also misses Paul’s prophecy, “a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.  And in this way all Israel will be saved.” Paul doesn’t elaborate on that, and given the shifting meanings of Israel the saying is complex, but what most have thought is: a) even unbelieving Israel is a witness to the faithfulness of God in that they are not lost to history in that God preserves a remnant and b) all Israel – Jews and Gentiles who believe – will be saved which very well might include a ingathering at a late date after the fulness of the Gentiles.

What does this mean for our current intrigues?  The purpose of the Apocalyptic (Revelation, Daniel and a few other places) is not to establish a timeline or a checklist of events.  “You know neither the day nor the hour (Matthew 25:13).”  Don’t be searching for Gog and Magog to meet at Megiddo.  This is just an image of the nations of the world at war.  “There will be wars and rumors of war (Matthew 24:6).” “Why do the nations so furiously wage together? (Psalm 2:1)” Because the nations of this old world have always usurped the power of Christ. Gog is always meeting Magog at some Megiddo.  But the end is not yet. Likewise, don’t worry about 3rd Temples.  The 3rd Temple is already built. It is built of living stones on the cornerstone of Christ. The end has already come in this way.  The purpose of the Apocalyptic is to remind you that however big and wild things appear in this old earth, God is steering them for his people.  And you have eternity. “But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the Kingdom forever, forever and ever (Daniel 7:18).”

I’ve blown past my allotted limit. None of this says anything about what our national foreign policy should be.  Which is in the realm of sanctified practical wisdom anyway. What it hopefully has done is remind us of the basics. This world is passing away. Its ruler, Satan, knows his time is short. But all Israel will be saved. Have faith.

Pastoral Anxiety

When I go to a Pastor’s Conference I usually try and share a few things. Not a travelogue; Nobody wants to see your vacation pictures. An attempt to extract some wisdom.

All pastor’s conferences have two expressions.  There are the “right hand kingdom” issues.  These are the anxieties and efforts to rule, govern and guide the church in the world, to make decisions and address problems.  There are also the “left hand kingdom” issues.  These are the worship, prayer, study and consolation of the brethren. Depending upon the group you are in, networking can be in the right or the left. Using right and left is theological language for those things which are of power and the law and those things which are of grace.  The right, the power-hand (sorry lefties), is the straight ahead law, commands, hierarchies and governance. “Do this, and you will live.”  The left, the sinister sneaky hand (sorry lefties), is the one that you don’t see coming. We never expect grace.  “Believe this, and you are already good.”

In that right hand kingdom stuff I had three observations.  And I don’t mean any of these observations to be positive or negative.  Most things in the right hand kingdom simply are.  Being humans we are all struggling toward the best outcomes we can imagine.  Sometimes there is a lack of imagination, sometimes too much.  But we tend to fall in predictable paths. First observation, The Eastern District is probably the poorest one in the LCMS which colors my visions, but man there was a lot of money floating around the PSD.  Having money allows for less anxiety and more imagination of what we might do.  Lacking money, a certain fatalism sets in. The hopefulness of the PSD was refreshing.  Second observation, the political reality of the district is that CA drives everything.  The money and the weight of congregations is Southern Cal.  The third observation is that the pastors of the PSD clearly see themselves apart from the larger Synod. Not that they would separate, but the anxieties are different. And they believe the anxieties of the rest of Synod are misdirected.  There are deeper conversations that could be had around each of those, but that is enough for this space.

Because as much head space that we give to the anxieties and expressions of the right hand kingdom, the church is ultimately about the left.  How do we proclaim the grace of Jesus Christ and him crucified for our salvation? One of the biggest anxieties of the conference is the current state of the pastorate.  The two expressions of this anxiety being a perceived shortage of pastors and specific to CA congregations a shortage of pastors willing to move to CA.  And this is not a small issue for a Lutheran Church body that confesses “so that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted. (Augsburg Confession Article 5).”  The primary study of the conference lead by Dr. Leopoldo Sanchez I felt was spot on.  Dr. Sanchez, who I had for a couple of classes back in Seminary, is “Mr. Holy Spirit.”  And you could summarize his study as “It is OK to Pray to the Holy Spirit.”

An older book was titled “The Half Remembered God” and the Holy Spirit is often that, half-remembered. But it is the Spirit that works in the life of the church.  The Spirit is half-remembered because He is always testifying to Jesus, also because He works through means – Word and Sacrament. We see the effects of the Spirit, like the wind in the trees, but often miss Him.  What Dr. Sanchez shares was a summary of his book “Sculptor Spirit”.  And in that work he outlines five different models of sanctification, five different biblical ways the Spirit works. And the two that address the expressed anxiety I felt were what he labels renewal and dramatic.  Renewal is the fact that “The Holy Spirit works through death and resurrection.” Dramatic is that the life of the church is one in the wilderness.  We learn to trust God and prayer as the Spirit leads us through trail and temptation.  Wherever we find ourselves, we have been lead there by the Spirit. And it is for our good that we might know God more fully.  It is only in God that we find our true rest from all our anxieties. 

God Draws Near

“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” – Isaiah 55:6

When I think of everything that runs under the banner of religion or spirituality – from rules for life to teachings of grace, from ritual to ecstatic outburst, from relationships to doctrinal definitions, from civic duty to kingdom’s not of this world – there are a lot of polarities that people might think religion is about.  And it is not that they are all wrong. Religion in this world does take on a lot of secondary traits.  And it is dealing in stereotypes, but most institutional forms of religion end up being more about those “distinctives.” Ecstatic religion? Head on down to the Pentecostal gathering. Relationship driven sanctification awaits at the Wesleyan Methodist Assembly. And if want ritual, you really can’t beat the Orthodox Church. And those are just within Christian religions.  The Buddhists seem to be a home for the philosophically inclined. The Muslims will give you the five pillars of the good life.  Us Lutherans?  Well, we used to be a bit more united: some solid ritual, the pastors will argue to death over doctrine but the laity keep congregations going through steady relations.

Now I don’t want to say all of that is meaningless.  It is not.  But none of it is the real point of religion.  If your religion in not the place where God draws near, you are missing the point.

That assertion is a live wire.  So I’m going to cover it a bit.  Saying that God draws near is not just confined to ecstatic experience or feeling, although it might include that. Saying that God draws near is not about saying the right words in the right order as if you were conjuring Him, but He has promised to be present in some rituals, like baptism.  Saying that God draws near is more about having faith in the promises of God.  Without faith we would not recognize His presence. Most people might look at the cross and see another poor revolutionary receiving just rewards. It is faith that sees the innocent Son of God drawn near to save.

When the prophet tells us to seek the Lord while he may be found, that time is the time of grace.  And the time of grace is when you hear it proclaimed.  Like right now.  The Lord has drawn near to you with his grace right now, if you should accept it. And if he has drawn near, Call upon him.  Like the boy Samuel hearing his name.  It took Eli a couple of times to realize that God has drawn near.  “Tell him, speak, for your servant is listening.” Call upon him with all your heart.  Call upon him with the biggest request possible. Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Cast me not away from your presence.

The Grace of God is like the sun. There are days that it might feel too strong and overpowering, that we must withdraw.  And maybe we move a bit away.  Find some shade. But when it is gone, all you can think about is how cold and dark things are. Seek the Lord while he may be found.  Because today is the day of grace.  The sun comes up every day and follows its course.  But the day shall come when the sun does not give its light. And you do not know that time. Call upon Him while he is near. Work while we still have the light, for the darkness comes when no work can be done.  Pray, praise and give thanks while the day is here.

Hope or Optimism?

A fellow pastor made a blanket statement recently, “Optimism is mandatory.” It is one of those statements that I could immediately intuit what he was getting at.  He flipped it around and said “you are not authorized to despair” which I found completely without problem. Because when I think about despair it’s opposite is hope.  And as a Christian we have hope.  What I balked at was the equation of Hope and Optimism. Now I hear you already.  There you go pastor, splitting hairs that can’t be split.  But at least some part of the preacher gig is based upon words.  Upon having an understanding about the shade of meaning words have and how they are used.  And to my ears Hope and Optimism had different domains of use.

Optimism to me is based in the gut or in our feelings.  At its most pagan it is simply the feeling that fortune favors me right now.  It could come from a feeling of karma.  “I deserve something good.” It is Norman Vicent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking.” And honestly I don’t want to be too negative on some of these.  A positive outlook on life is an endearing American trait.  Even if you just call it the Dunning-Kruger effect – irrational confidence – it often works. Fake it until you make it is good advice.  Nobody likes hanging around Eeyore. But ultimately Optimism is based only on ourselves. It is the advice of Self-Help.  If I only follow this seven-step plan everything will be perfect.  And the problem with self help stated as boldly as “Optimism is mandatory” is that it makes it a law.  And we can’t keep the law.  We do not have a promise from God that everything in this world is going to be peachy. For lots of people commanding optimism would be like the drowning hand meme. Sometimes self-help works, but many times down you go.

Contrary to Optimism which is not based on anything solid, Hope is based on the promises of God and His self-revelation.  And the Christian Hope is as the creed defines it, “I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” This Hope is solid because Jesus is risen.  We have already seen the first fruits.  We have also been given the Holy Spirit, the deposit of that World to Come. God is not saying to us, “get up” while we are laying dead.  God himself shall raise us.  Likewise God is not demanding that we build the Kingdom under our own effort.  He has already made the Kingdom.  We only wait for its full appearance. The entire creation groans waiting for the revelation. When Jesus compares building on the sand and building on the rock, to me this is the difference between optimism and hope.  Optimism is the sand.  You can build on it for a while, but eventually the water rises higher and the building goes down.  Hope is the rock.  Even when the water comes up, it is Jesus who can command the wind and the waves to be silent.  The prophet can part the sea.  We have been provided an ark.

We absolutely need to be told to have Hope.  And if we think God isn’t living up to his promises, take it to Him.  He might come back at us in a whirlwind.  We may be talking words without understanding.  But this is also the God who promises “a bruised reed he will not break.”  And it is exactly that testing of hope that builds it up.  “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. (Rom. 5:3-4)”  It does this because the rock like nature of the promises of God are made real in our lives.  We have not been abandoned, neither is it all on us.  I balked at optimism, because it comes up short. The Christian has hope.

For Joy

I’m not sure if it is simply because I’m an area pastor, or if it is because I have two boys in the school, for one of those reasons I get to lead the Valley Lutheran Chapel occasionally.  Their chapel functions a little differently than our typical worship service.  We start with assigned readings – the lectionary. Those reading are shared each Sunday in a large majority of Churches. It is one of the good outcomes of the 20th century ecumenical movement. Valley’s Chapel starts with a topic.  So instead of being assigned say Hebrews 12:2 as a text, I was assigned the topic: Why did Jesus die?

For most of us who have been Christians for a long time that particular question is not one we spend a lot of time reflecting upon.  And if we do ponder it, we have set dogmatic answers that we accept because they make sense.  The biggest of those answers is at the root of substitutionary atonement.  Jesus died because only Jesus – sinless God-Man – was a worthy sacrifice for sin.  Christ was our substitute.  And if we are biblically literate, we might recall Abraham sacrificing Isaac and being stopped at the last moment and God providing the Ram. And we might recall the long history of Temple sacrifice of the lamb without blemish on the day of Atonement. So when the lamb of God – Jesus – shows up, his death is a necessity.

But for as bloody as that metaphor is, I’m not sure it resonates as a reason to those not deeply embedded in the story.  To a pagan, the idea of my God dying would be crazy.  And we should understand something here, the audience, at least a portion of the audience of even a Lutheran High School, are pagans.  To a pagan, the reason you worship a God is because he is powerful.  He or She might use that power for your advantage.  And if they don’t use it for your advantage, at least if you offer the appropriate sacrifice, they might not use that power against you.  If anyone has seen the movie “Cabin in the Woods” you know what I’m talking about. Baal and Thor and Zeus were popular not because they died.  Gods don’t die.  Or if they do it is because they are associated with the crops.  They are popular because they are strong. And if you don’t think such gods are around today, ask yourself what we mean by “media” or “economy” and what we do.  The high priests of the fed are raising interest rates, which will sacrifice some jobs, in the hope that Economy has a soft landing.  That’s theology and a hidden deity.

So why does Jesus die.  Why doesn’t he look like this guy?  When the scoffers taunted, “If you are the son of God, come down from that cross and save yourself” why didn’t he?

For me the best answer is from that Hebrews 12:2 passage.  It tells us something dear about God.  “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:2 ESV).”  Why did Jesus die?  For the joy that was set before him.  I don’t know about you but I usually don’t associate joy and suffering.  Now I might endure a workout for the endorphin high that follows, for the success of the team I’m on, to prevent myself from being on my 600lb life.  But we are talking about The Cross, the most shameful and torturous death ever invented.  What was this joy that caused Jesus to die?

Part of what was set before him was “sitting at the right hand of the throne of God.” That is the judgement seat.  That is the seat of power.  Even old Odin hung himself on a tree to get the magic runes of power.  Is the Jesus story just a repeat of Odin?  No way.  Because when Jesus comes into that power does he immediately wreck vengeance? No.  The reason that Jesus desired that power was so that he could have grace on his. Jesus doesn’t use the power is a capricious way like the gods of old or say the economy. Jesus says “come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  The God of the universe endured the cross, not to justify lightning bolts, but to lift up the sign of love in the wilderness.

“Despising the shame.” Hating everything that sin has done to his good creation, turning the garden into this wilderness, Jesus endured the cross to use the power to recreate.

The Joy of God was making a way for his people to be fully human again.  The joy of God was through grace giving us the ability to follow him.  To follow Jesus past death and out of the wilderness.

Why did Jesus die?  For joy.  For the joy of many brothers and sisters. For the joy of the new creation. The old gods, the new gods, every idol ever made? Heck with it, let it all go to hades.  The God of Creation? Would not see the sinner die.  And for Joy of creation created a way past death. For you.

Unpopular Truth

The creed is either true or false. Either God the Father is the creator of all things visible and invisible, or He isn’t. Either Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God crucified under Pontius Pilate yet sitting at the right hand of the Father waiting to come again in glory, or He isn’t.  Either the Holy Spirit does work through means like one Baptism for the remission of sins, are it is just simple water.

The truth or falsehood of something has little direct effect on its popularity or unpopularity. In fact, some things that are true can be repugnant.  Some things that are false can be very sweet. For example, it is true, even if unpopular, that the typical woman would not stand a chance in a fight against a typical man. Now if she had a gun that changes things, but that is not what Hollywood shows.  Hollywood shows us a 100 lbs starlet throwing around a 250 lbs man without messing up her hair.  Sorry, not happening. I don’t care how much Kung-Fu she knows. An example of a falsehood that can be sweet would be the idea that one can be a Christian without a church. There are lots of people who really like that idea.  You might see them at Christmas, but they will tell those who ask they believe in Jesus.  Which is how you get 20% of people in church on any given Sunday, but 70% proclaiming belief.  The problem is that Jesus said he was going to build his church. Me and my personal Jesus are nice, but not sufficient, because we are being built together into one body. The Holy Spirit works through means, the first of which is “The Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints.”

When Jesus asks the disciples “who do people say that I am?”  They answer him, “The Baptist, Isaiah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Jeremiah is the real interesting one on that list.  The Baptist is the most recent prophetic voice.  Isaiah is the sweetest.  Saying one of the other prophets is just saying “he’s speaking truths in a powerful way.” Calling Jesus Jeremiah is calling Jesus “the man of sorrows.” There is a long history of the iconography of this Son of Man.  The two stained glass pictures nearby are a couple of examples.  One has the crown of thorns.  Many of the pictures will pick up either the reed that he was beaten with, or the crown, or some other element of the passion.  Another popular picture is the Garden of Gethsemane. But, it doesn’t require any of those elements.  Sometimes The Man of Sorrows is just portrayed with the melancholy downward look.  Jesus is not fully stoic.  His guts can be churned.

The Man of Sorrows sits in the unpopular truth square. We’d all like to be in the popular truth square.  The devil is pretty effective at herding us into the popular falsehood one.  I’m always surprised at the number of people who will stand in the unpopular falsehood square.  If you doubt me in that why are there so many people who insist that “real communism has never been tried.” But we have an instinctive horror at unpopular truth. Jeremiah prophesied for 40 years that Jerusalem was going to fall. This was the truth, but nobody wanted to hear the message.  We have little interest in being Jeremiah.

What God tells Jeremiah in our Old Testament Lesson (Jeremiah 15:15-21) is instructive.  “If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth.  They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them.  And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze…for I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares the LORD.” The Truth is precious.  Jesus calls himself the Way, The Truth and the Life.  Nothing that is not true comes from the mouth of God.  And I think we know that in the long run, truth outs. Of course we ourselves might not be there to see it.  At Keynes quipped, “in the long run, we are all dead.” But standing in the truth is standing where God is, and where he will save, and from where he will deliver.  The LORD has declared this.

The man of sorrows stood in that unpopular truthful corner. His own did not receive him. But the light still shines. Don’t mistake popularity or unpopularity for the truth.  Tomorrow will rearrange all of our categories, but the truth stands like a fortified wall of bronze.

Office of the Keys

The Symbol to the left is one that you used to find in both Roman Catholic and what were called the Magisterial Protestant churches, which is everybody but the Baptists.  But depending upon your Pastor, you might not have been taught this in catechism. It is the symbol of the office of the keys. It is the fifth part of the Small Catechism. Sometimes called confession.  And the one most often skipped.  Why skipped?  It makes an audacious claim.  It claims that ministers can forgive sins. But probably even more scandalous is the claim that the office has the authority to withhold forgiveness.  Hence the two crossed keys. One of them to loose and one of them to bind.

How are sins forgiven?  Why do we believe any of them are?  The first biblical story to deal with such forgiveness is the crippled man lowered through the roof by his friends to Jesus (Matthew 9:1ff/Mark 2:1ff).  When Jesus first sees the man, he tells him “your sins are forgiven.” Nice, but probably something of a letdown from expectation of the miracle worker.  But Jesus has his point.  He strikes up the question with the Pharisees watching who were saying he was blaspheming.  “Only God can forgive sins.”  He tells the man to pick up his mat and walk as proof that the Son of Man also has authority to forgive sins.  And this is roughly where the Baptists like to stop the story.  Forgiveness is between me and my personal Jesus.  And they are not completely wrong.  Jesus sinners doth receive. There is nothing that you can’t take to Jesus. But the story doesn’t stop there.

In three places (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18: 18 and John 20:22) Jesus gives this authority to different groups.  If you are Roman Catholic you love our Gospel text for today, the first one, because in that passage the words are said to Peter.  Ta-da, the first pope is the owner of the keys. Hence the papal seal to the right.  If you are most flavors of protestant you love the Matthew 18 version a couple chapters later in which the same words are given in general to “brothers and sisters”.  The Eastern Orthodox and our Catechism like the John passage because the recipients of the saying appear to be the apostles as a group.  The interpretive leap in each is the preferred sources of forgiving sins: The pope and those in communion, members of the church, and those called and ordained.

I can’t remember if I’ve referenced it before but this is where I love Luther in a largely forgotten part of the confessions, the Smalcald Articles Part 3, article 4 on The Gospel.  “God is superabundant in his grace: first , through the spoken word, by which the forgiveness of sins is preached in the whole world…second through Baptism.  Third through the Sacrament of the Altar. Forth through the power of the keys. Also through the mutual consolation of the brethren.” Luther’s answer is “Why not all?”

But that doesn’t address why these keys have a tendency to disappear. Which goes back to the catechism questions. What is confession?  Confession has two parts, first that we confess our sins and second that we receive absolution. It is never the use of the loosing key that causes trouble.  I’ve never run across a Christian who complains about forgiving a repentant sinner.  Yes, I know the parable of the prodigal and the older brother. Yes, I do recognize that people can have trouble with forgiveness.  But at least in my experience that eventually thaws. What all kinds of people do have problems with is the necessity of confession for absolution.  The binding key is not really a power of the office but a duty – to call sinners to repentance. And sinners who don’t think they have can often respond, “just who do you think you are?”

It is much easier to say your sins are forgiven.  But if you are only using one key, you might be like the prophets declaring “peace, peace.” We will see if what they say happens.  But the called office has both keys for reason. So that we might be confident in the grace of God through all of his means of grace. 

The Best Laid Plans

Do you ever start something not really sure where it is going to go?

That usually isn’t me.  I want to have “the plan”.  I want to work “the plan”.  “The plan” might even have multiple paths and checkpoints.  Now I’ve never been crazy about this.  I’ve always known full well in the wise words of Iron Mike Tyson that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”  But when you get punched in the mouth is when you hope your plan is more like a Bach fugue.  The melody is solid, you just have to shift to a different mouth.

Something like that might be the secret to a successful and happy existence on earth.  Can you roll with the punches?  Do you have enough grit such that you don’t have a glass jaw? Are you limber enough to play the rope-a-dope occasionally, or at least get your head out of the way of the haymaker?  If you are good at it, or never come up against Mike Tyson at least, you might even think you can go the full 15 rounds and grab the belt. Define “the belt” however you want to. 

You can file all of that under what Luther called civil righteousness.  The world works a certain way.  Some of those ways are not very Christian, using that word in the sense of nice or meeting a certain decorum.  But that starts to point out the problems with Civil Righteousness. Everyone around you might think you are the best person on earth, a living saint.  But, none of them get a vote that counts.  And even if they absolve you of great crimes because you have donated enough money to get your name on a building, their absolution lasts until you leave the building.  If you plan for civil righteousness you have received your reward.  Enjoy the belt.

The other type of righteousness Luther calls the righteousness before God.  And the brutal truth about this type is you can’t plan for it.  In fact, the more you plan and scheme and try to earn it, the more it punches you in the mouth. Eventually, bloody and bruised and knocked out, you might conclude that it’s a funny game, the only way to win is not to play. Because you can’t win the righteousness of God.  It only comes as a free gift. It only comes to broken sinners. It only comes to those who are flat on the mat admitting they are not going to beat the 10 count.  That is the stink of desperation in the civil realm, but before God that is when He can start to do something.  That is when we put down our plans and seek out God’s plans.  When we are raised by the Spirit.

Part of the good news is that God has told us where this goes.  This conforms us to his son, Jesus. He has also told us what to expect.  The punches of the world will keep coming.  But the plan of God is your eternal salvation. Your reward will be great in heaven.  

Part of the good news also is that it is good, not nice. Nice is always defined socially.  Nice is always changing. What is good? Conan the Barbarian’s answer isn’t it.  What is good doesn’t really change. “Keep justice, do righteousness (Isa 56:1), and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).”  For soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance will be revealed.  With our plans we never really know where they are going; with God’s plan we know.    

3 AM

Just when you think the bible is giving you shallow travel directions it opens up a deep picture.  The Gospel reading this week (Matthew 14:22-33) starts with those travel directions. The crowds have been fed, but as the disciples had remarked earlier, it is late in the day.  Even later after 5000 have eaten. And Jesus knows what the crowds want to do – make him king.  So, “Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side.”  And, “after he dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself.” How exactly does Jesus dismiss the crowd that wants to make him King?  We don’t know.  Why does he force the disciples into the boat?  Maybe because they would have been just as much caught up in making him king, but we don’t know.  But if we stop to ponder the scene, it is quite a view of the Christian life.

First, Jesus has sent us out at night onto the chaos of the waters. And somehow this is for our good.  Even though we might end up “a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, and the wind was against them, in the fourth watch of the night.” That fourth watch is the metaphorical 3 AM. If you are a horror fan, you know everything bad happens at 3 AM. If you are a worrier or an insomniac, and you are up at 3 AM, it has not been a good day or night and neither will the fast approaching day be good. We know what this feels like.  It is dark and we are exhausted and all the creepies come out.  Why did you send me to this place alone?

But the second part is the recognition that we are never really alone. Jesus on the mountain top – with apparently Moses’ 120 year old eagle eyes – has them on his disciples. Mark’s gospel is explicit, “he saw they were making headway painfully (Mark 6:48).” The eyes of God are always upon those he loves. And his compassion – his guts being churned – are not just for the crowds.  “In the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea.”  The chaos and darkness of the sea have no power over this one.  He walks on them. What are our reactions when God acts? 

The first one, “they were terrified and said ‘it is a ghost!’”  We expect the bad.  We expect the creepies that have come out to finish us off.  This is what the world does; it finishes off the weak and exhausted. Of course lurking in the background there is that saying it is a ghost is easier than saying “our deliverance has come.” Because if what comes to us at 3 AM is God, that comes with demands, with strings attached.  Not the least being that he has witnessed our state.  Jesus answers all this with the affirmative, “Take heart; It is I.” And yes, our translators wimp out. “Take Heart, I AM.”  The Almighty has been watching and has come for you.

The second one, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Ok God, I’m not sure about this, so tell me to get out of this perfectly good boat you placed me in, and walk by myself over the chaos to you.  Yeah, we don’t think too good at 3 AM. But Jesus goes with it, maybe for the same reason he sent them in the first place. Of course we were not meant to be on the waters outside of the boat. And that is not because we can’t.  Peter does manage it for a couple of steps.  But then we always “see the wind” and the fear returns.

So what does Jesus do?  Grabs Peter, puts him back in the boat, and joins the rest, who all then worship him.  We are meant to be in the boat (please see the church). We are meant to be with each other.  And yes the boat is sent out on rough seas, but God sees it.  And Christ comes and is with us and the winds cease. When we see God at 3 AM, we know.  He has not sent us out alone, and He Is.