Category: Pastors Corner

Bread in the Wilderness

The Introit for this Sunday comes from Psalm 105.  Specifically verses 39-43 with verse 1 as the antiphon.  (What is an antiphon I hear someone ask?  Think of it as the chorus.  After every verse detailing the works of God you could sing: “Oh give thanks to the Lord; Call upon His name/make known his deeds among the peoples.”) The fullness of the Psalm is a remembrance of the history of the covenant, the promises of God, and those deeds starting with Abraham and culminating in the Exodus. The specific time the verses of the Introit are recalling is Israel’s days and years in the wilderness.

Why would we be recalling that?  The wilderness, or the desert, is the place to do two things.  In the worldly sense, rebels and renegades gathered in the wilderness.  If you are gathering an army to overthrow the current ruler, you went into the wilderness.  The other thing you went into the wilderness to do is draw near to God.  In the absence of the delights of the World, the hope was connection to God. Why did God lead Israel into the wilderness after the Exodus?  In the hopes that they would draw near to Him.  Of course if we remember that physical Israel, they longed for the meat and fullness of Egypt, and they gathered in rebellion against the God who brought them out of Egypt.  It would be Jesus who would go out into the wilderness and turn down the temptations of the devil and the world.

The Psalmist remembers the Works of God in the wilderness as three things.  First, God draws near to his people – “a cloud for a covering, and fire to give light by night.”  This is the fire-y cloudy pillar that would see Israel all their journey through. After drawing near, God provided abundant sustenance, bread from heaven and water from the Rock. And the last work is that God remembered his promises.  While Israel would still be rebels in the wilderness, even while God drew near, He remembered his promises and provided in abundance.

So why would we remember this let alone sing about it or make these deeds known among the peoples?  The first reason is that God again drew near, but this time not as fire and cloud, but as man, as Israel reduced to one.  And when Jesus went to the desert, this Israel was faithful.  When tempted to make bread from the stones, he pointed at the true bread – the Word of God (Matthew 4:4).  And He came to give us this true bread, himself.  God drew near to us with his abundance.

The second reason is how we might recognize this life.  We are like Israel in the desert. We know where we have been.  We vaguely know where we are going.  And we know who leads us.  We walk though this world to learn that God draws near to us, and to learn how God gives us bread in abundance and water in the desert. We walk through this world to learn that God remembers and keeps his promises.

The question to us is do we follow?  Or do we go back to Egypt; do we prefer rebellion?  Does the bread of heaven satisfy, or do we long for what the world would offer?

One Thing’s Needful

I probably have to issue an apology for the hymn chosen as the office hymn.  It has a tricky rhythm change. And I can’t even really blame it on modernity. It is just my observation that modern hymns – and by modern I mean anything written after roughly 1960 – often fail not because they aren’t good in a doctrinal sense, but because you can’t sing them. They are set too high, they have large gaps in the melody or they use complex rhythms; all of which just mean they are meant for soloists or trained singers, not congregational singing which is supposed to include everyone. But “One Thing’s Needful” (LSB 536) is from a text in the 17th century, translated in the 19th century, paired with a tune from the 17th.  The Companion to the hymnal observes, “the unusual metrical structure of the text is representative of the more soloistic style of hymns found at the end of the 17th century.” So these things go in and out of style.  We are not alone.

So, why am I afflicting you with this hymn?  I’d like you to ponder the juxtaposition of the first verse of the two rhythm parts. The flowing 4/4 time is serene and restful and presents a doctrinal truth.  “One thing’s needful; Lord this treasure teach me highly to regard/All else though it first give pleasure is a yoke that presses hard.” The truth it communicates is something that most Christians would assent to mentally almost immediately.  Christ is our only true need.  We don’t acknowledge this enough.  Instead our hearts chase other gods.  All of them turn out to eat us alive, to place us under heavy yokes. And in our serene space of contemplation this is all very easy to accept.

But then the rhythm changes to 3/4 with its driving “bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum.” Gone is the serene time of contemplation.  We are in the very midst of life. “Beneath it the heart is still fretting and striving/No true lasting happiness ever deriving/this one thing is needful all others are vain/I count all but loss that I Christ man obtain.” Whatever our head says in contemplation, the heart often desires other things.  The heart, part of this flesh which Paul has been pondering in our Epistle lessons, has a problem with sin.  It is constantly fretting and striving.  Oh, I might lose this, including my life.  No, I’m going to claim that and get it, I don’t care who I have to kill to do it. And we are driven along “bum-bum-bum” by things we do not know or even stop to ponder.

Our only help in that midst of life is often the “Jesus Take the Wheel” prayer.  Jesus, I know there is no happiness in this way. I know that I need you. Save me.  And then the hymn returns us to that moment of contemplation. Our frantic prayers are turned into communion with God or the consolation of the Spirit.   And in those moments we start to learn the basics of wisdom.  “Wisdom’s highest, noblest treasure, Jesus, is revealed in you/Let me find in you my pleasure, and my wayward will subdue.” I know this, teach me your way so that I might follow it all my days.

All our days we are thrown back and forth.  Luther called the Christian life: “Prayer, Meditation and Trial.” (He of course used Latin – oratio, meditation, tentatio – snob.) And like Luther’s last recorded words, “We are all beggars”, we end in the trial of death. Our hope is completely outside of us. “Through all my life’s pilgrimage, guard and uphold me, in loving forgiveness O Jesus enfold me.” And we only find our rest in faith that “this one thing is needful, all others are vain, I count all but loss that I Christ may obtain.”

I’ve included it because I think it is a masterful work in both word and song of this current life and our one hope in the midst of it.  (If you do not have a hymnal at home, this particular hymn can be seen online here: https://hymnary.org/hymn/LSB2006/536 )

Hype Man

Who is like me? Let him proclaim it! – Isaiah 44:6

I joke with a couple of buddies that I must be losing brain cells, that or just starting to see things I was too uptight to recognize before. I was never a Wrestling fan in my younger years.  I was a “real” athlete and looked down on the show.  One thing in particular always annoyed me.  All my coaches were hard guys.  You don’t find their type anymore.  But they were all the type to quote Bear Bryant, “if you score a touchdown, act like you’ve been there before.”  It was not that they were not emotional or stunted as the cliché would have it.  The teaching was use that emotion to power something that helps, like running over the linebacker, not the cheap release of the touchdown dance or bat flip.  The one particular thing that annoyed me about wrestling was “thy hype man.”  That’s the guy who comes in with the guy holding up the belt.  He’s the guy who is “talking smack” about what the champ is going to do to the poor guy in the ring with him.  He’s the guy (kinda like me) who likes to hear his own voice and if that is in service of some semi-literate brute, that’s fine.  It pays, and the brute can back it up.  If he can’t, you find a new brute.

In the middle of Isaiah you find the passage where God is his own hype man.  “Thus says THE LORD…The King of Israel…and his Redeemer…the LORD of hosts.” You can hear the cadence. The hype man reeling off the titles and the glory.  Oh, you think you are getting into the ring?  Do you know who you are getting into the ring with? 

“I am the first…and the last…besides me…there is no God.” I pity you.  You think that stone thing can compete with me?  You think whatever idol you’ve made can stand in my presence. You better look again.

“Who is like me? Let him proclaim it!”  This is so lopsided you can’t even find a hype man to join you.  There is no one like me and there never will be one like me.  And you know it.  Everybody knows it.

“Since I appointed an ancient people.  Let them declare what is to come and what will happen.”  I was before you and will be after you.  I was so before you I don’t just have a hype man, I have a hype nation. They have a long history with me.  They know what is coming.  Hype nation, let them know.  I’m taking a break, you let them know for a bit.

“Fear not, nor be afraid, have I not told you from of old? You are my witnesses!” Oh I’m not giving up the mike. But can I get a witness.  I need an Amen!  My corner men need to tell you how nobody has ever touched me.  Hype nation, sing my praises.  Let me hear you!

“Is there a God besides me?  There is no Rock; I know not any.”  Not even The Rock is going to be your rock.  There is only me.  There is only one sure bet. And you are hearing The WORD!

I’m not sure how God as hype-man maps onto salvation history.  It isn’t one of the metaphors or types that get emphasized in seminary. But maybe we need to hear hype nation occasionally. This guy has been in the ring since the dawn of history.  The Jews can witness.  And nobody has knocked him off yet.  Satan thought he had his moment on a hill far away. And then – bam! – nothing could hold Him.  The body wasn’t even cold when he reclaimed those belts.

Like the Rain

Our Old Testament Lesson this week comes from Isaiah 55 which happens to be one of the most fascinating chapters in the bible.  Not because it is part of the grand-narrative (what we are studying on Wednesday). But because of what it reveals about God and the metaphors it uses.

The first metaphor is one of commerce, but it is unlike any commerce we are familiar with. I sometimes joke that God operates in the Star Trek economy.  If you are a Trekkie you know what I am talking about.  The replicators, magical devices that turn energy into any matter that you want, have eliminated cash, physical exchange and in general any physical lack.  God declares in Isaiah 55:1, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”  The Kingdom in its fullness runs like the Star Trek economy.

But it then moves from such physical goods as wine and milk to a deeper question. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? (Isa. 55:2)”  Now there is always the reply “ain’t no rest for the wicked…I’ve got bills to pay and I’ve got mouths to feed.” But even the man struggling with the necessities in the fallen world doesn’t do these things simply because they are bread. He does these out of love, duty, pity and number of much deeper things.  What God is offering in the Kingdom is the solid reason.  “Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live (Isa. 55:2-3)” The real bread is the bread of life.  With this bread your soul – your self – lives.  And this bread comes first through the ear.

And what is this bread?  Like the cynical Samaritan woman at the well when Jesus starts to talk of the living water, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t have to return to this stinking well (John 4:15),” we might not have caught the change in the metaphor. This body is fed with water and bread.  The soul has it’s water and bread, but that is something much different.  The soul’s bread are the promises of God. “I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. (Isa. 55:3).”  And Isaiah traces that promise as not just to the people of Israel, but that covenant with David is a covenant with all the peoples (Isaiah 55:4-5).  “A nation that did not know you shall run to you.”

Yet this promise, this day of Grace, is not something that lasts forever.  “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near (Isa. 55:6 ESV).” Today, as you read this, is a day of grace.  “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon (Isa. 55:7).”  Why is it this way?  We wouldn’t pardon enemies that had rebelled against us, why does God? And if we were to do it, we’d be indiscriminate, universal.  If God works in the Start Trek economy, why is there a time limit?  “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD (Isa. 55:8).”  Not a completely satisfying answer, but consistent and true.  “What is the pot to speak back to the potter? (Romans 9:20). Who is this who darkens my council without understanding (Job 38:2).  The secret things of God remain his forever (Deuteronomy 29:29).” But this he has revealed to us.  Today is the day of His Grace.

How does this bread come to our souls?  Here the prophet switches metaphors from commerce to weather. “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isa. 55:10-11).”  The word of God is like the rain shower.

Living in New York, it rained quite a bit.  It was a wet climate.  The next shower was never more than a day or two away. We took it for granted. Living in the desert, it’s been a month, maybe two. We don’t know when.  We don’t know how.  We don’t control it.  We only know it when it happens. The entire place longs for that monsoon that drenches everything.  And it is that rain that brings forth the ending promise. “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off (Isa. 55:12-13).”

Peace and joy and fruitfulness depend upon that rain. And you know it when you hear it.  Seek the Lord while he may be found.  Today is the day of grace.

Kingdom Priorities and Hard Realities

The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.”  – 1 Samuel. 16:1

In our Wednesday morning Bible Study (The 52 Necessary Bible Stories) we are up to David, just anointed King, but far from being the reigning King.  A major theme emerging is one I wish to pick up here for a different purpose.  In living the Christian life there are two types of problems encountered.  There are the problems that I categorize as Kingdom Priorities.  In that Bible study this type of problem was displayed in the verse quoted above.  God has decided or ordained certain things and it is the disciple’s role to get with the program.  This type of problem is often addressed by the most pungent sayings of Jesus, like “let the dead bury their dead, but you go proclaim the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:60, also Matthew 8:22).”  Or like the gospel lesson last week, “do not think I have come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34).” The Christian Life always has its challenges over our priorities.  And what Yahweh in the Old Testament or Jesus (same God) in the New Testament always says is get your priorities straight.  The Kingdom of Heaven is of first priority.  “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33).”

Your mileage might vary.  I certainly know people who have agonized over decisions and over the will of God.  But my experience in general is that we know more about the will of God than we often let on.  Like the old hymn, “Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer.” We often continue with forfeit peace and needless pain because we have that answer and we do not like it. The Rich Young Man in Mark 10/Matthew 19 goes away troubled because he did not like Jesus’ answer.  Which answer was simply seek first the Kingdom.  There are things that must be done for the Kingdom.  And the choice is faithfulness, or not.

The second problem that comes up in the Christian life is what I’ll call “hard realities”.  David may have been anointed King, but Saul still lived.  Now we usually take these types of problems as much bigger problems. We see lack of resources or skills or knowledge or any of the list of things that constitute our excuses.  We even have a favorite bible verse from Jesus we might quote, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:28ff).” But Jesus’ point with that story doesn’t end with a summary like, “don’t be stupid, count first, and if you don’t have enough don’t start.” That would be our human wisdom.  And don’t take this as downplaying that wisdom completely.  But Jesus’ summary of that is “any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”  Things that are hard realities to us are laughably easy to God.  And if we have our Kingdom priorities correct, God provides.  Maybe not how we’d envision, but God provides.  I’m sure David would have preferred an Army after being anointed, instead God arranged for him to play the lyre for Saul. When we depend upon ourselves, we always see lack.  When we depend upon God, we have a surprising abundance.  If we have our Kingdom priorities straight.

We have a congregational meeting scheduled for next week.  In one sense, there is no emergency.  Things are good. This should not be an anxiety producing note. (Sure Pastor, but just saying that raises my anxiety. Yeah, I hear you. But I’m being honest.) But the leadership of Mt. Zion is going to be putting forward something that prayerfully starts to align us with Kingdom priorities and seeks some help with those “hard realities.” We are seeking the Kingdom, and depending upon God and his people.

An American Reflection

By your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, –
Revelation 5:9 (Similar line in 7:9)


A social media game I have seen is to ask what your most controversial post ever was. In terms of being the recipient of a two-minute hate, I’ve had three posts that might qualify. One regarding parenting, one regarding a basketball player and the third regarding AI. Honestly, all of those were predictable and easily relatable. But I had a fourth one that doesn’t qualify as a two-minute hate because not enough people dog-piled. I don’t think it was relatable enough. It was based on the above passage of scripture. But those who did react, did so with vehemence.


The division was this. There are those who I imagine have the U2 Song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” playing in their head. One of the verses contains: “I believe in the Kingdom Come/Then all the colors will bleed into one.” Which is 100% true. And that one is the robe of Christ’s righteousness that the Apostle John sees the great multitude that no one could count wearing. But it is also true that the tribe, language, people and nation markers were still recognizable. It is when I made that comment, that some markers of who we are now continue and are recognizable even in the eschaton, that many people went nuts. But both things, unity and difference, are somehow true in the resurrection.


And I don’t think this should exactly surprise us if we know the Biblical Story. Genesis 10 is the Table of the Nations. It contains the 70 nations that derive from Noah after the flood. Which with a little translation you can still roughly trace those nations or peoples into the modern world. That table of the nations – another word for it would be the gentiles – segues into God choosing one specific new people, the Jews. The nations are handed over to the world, while God reserves for himself one nation, the least of them. Now, out of that one nation, we are given Jesus – Israel reduced to one. Jesus sends out 70 disciples in Luke 10. And God reclaims from the gentiles, from every tribe and language and people and nation, a ransomed people. Which John sees gathered in heaven. God never gave up on all His people.


It also shouldn’t surprise us because God consistently claims what Paul says in Acts 17:26, “having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling places, that they should seek God.” The nations of the world have always been of interest to God. Enough that when they live, and when they die and where they sojourn on this earth are determined by Him.


On weekends like July 4 th I sometimes ponder what a perfected or maybe a better word completed citizen of the United States looks like. What does it mean to be part of the American subsection of the heavenly host? To get to that you have to go to the last of those four qualifiers: nation. In that way the United States is a little bit like heaven before it is time. E pluribus unum, out of many, one. Maybe why so many people didn’t like my observation. They want the one and can’t image the mosaic God is making. Some of us share a language with the English, but there are Americans who don’t speak English. There are many peoples that reside in the United States. And there are many tribes. It doesn’t escape me that as long as the nation sought God – as Acts 17:26 talks about – the unity could be found. And the United States has long sought God in many ways. It was founded and populated by people seeking God from the Mayflower on. It has only been as that quest has subsided that our unity has become strained. It is almost as if the unity can only be sustained by divine means. Echoes of Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity.


I’ve used up my allotted space. So I’ll close with this. The primary trait of those saints is their unity in Christ. That is what covers all. But we have been placed where we are for the purpose of God’s formation. And somehow, that fulfilled American, is to the glory of God. May the American section of heaven be loud and large.

Everybody Worships

I suppose graduation season has passed.  In NY my kids would still have two weeks of school left in the year, so I’m still adjusting a bit. But graduation season brings up maybe my one brush with greatness. David Foster Wallace, the essayist and author, was in residence as a teacher at Illinois State University in 1993.  Supposedly that was when he wrote Infinite Jest, his most famous work that vies for a place in the canon. That also happened to overlap with some of the time I spent there on full scholarship, while also in “He went to Paris, searching for answers” mode. I happened to bump into him at a church service at our little student mission. I’m not sure anyone else knew who he was.

You have probably not read Infinite Jest and that is not me being a pompous ass. I’m the weird one here.  I once attempted to get my mother to read some of his essays which are my favorites.  Because he was an Illinois boy who through his parents’ connections and his own precociousness had gained access to a rarified world.  There was a bit of biographical overlap, and from my reading his love and fundamental goodness was clear.  She of course was offended.  Read where I saw love as scorn. (It was the Illinois State Fair essay if anyone has read him.) But, you might have heard his graduation address at Kenyon College. He gave it in 2005.  And to this day it takes me right back to that church service, because I swear he must have been reading Luther. It usually goes by “This is Water,” and it does have the strong advice to know what you are swimming in.  But for me the stronger portion is when he says, “Everybody Worships.” That is actually the meat of his advice to the graduates.  You are going to worship something.  And all the default deities are terrible. “They will eat you alive.”

That is almost directly from Luther’s Large Catechism on the first commandment. “Now, I say that whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in is truly your God.” And Luther runs down roughly the same default Gods: money, power, skill, favor, family, friendship.  Even good things will eat your alive if placed as the ultimate source. 

Luther’s words in that catechism explanation amount to the same thing as what DFW says. “The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”  Make sure you know what you are worshipping. Understand the water you swim in.

DFW got the law right.  The great difference was in the gospel. For DFW it was your work alone to daily keep the truth before you.  It was your work alone to continue to choose who to worship. Toward the end of his address he’d say, “That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think…the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness…your education really IS the job of a lifetime.”  If you live under the law, you better choose the right god and have no other God’s before him.  And if that is all on you, it will crush you.  DFW took his own life in 2008. Luther would put it differently. “We cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to him.” We will never understand the water we swim in without the pure gift of the Holy Spirit.

The law is still good and wise.  We need to recognize the water we worship.  And we are all too dismissive of that.  Too easily swept along by the strong currents of default. But it is the Spirit who ultimately “keeps us in the true faith.” Today his mercy calls us, again.

Adoration

Having lived most of my life east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line, when you talked about nature you were talking about two things: the color green and the gentle rolling hills. That can be and is beautiful, but it is all on a human scale.  Even in Pittsburgh, at the confluence of two mighty rivers and the foothills of the Appalachians, Mt. Washington is scaled by the mechanical inclines which used to ferry workers daily to the mills before they became merely for tourists. Around 1100 feet is the highest elevation. The contrast with Arizona or the West is part of this meditation. I’m sure you eventually get used to it and it recedes into the background, but beautiful is not the word I’d use.  I’d use adoration. The mountains are not on human scale.  Unless you became a hermit like St. Anthony, you would not live at the top of the mountains. As we drove to Las Vegas earlier this year I had a hard time keeping my jaw up.  Around every turn was a staggering view.  A lonely trail of asphalt with a few ants crawling along it dwarfed by the immensity of nature, untamed and unbothered by the speck speeding through it. Likewise for about 10 mins every morning and 10 mins in the evening something strange happens in the valley. The light has not fully gone away or come up.  The sun hides behind the mountains casting their shadow over the entire valley.  In the east there was always “the gloaming”, but this is different. The browns all move a shade or two darker yet still radiate.

The Trinity is a doctrine that we confess. And as with all doctrines it is important. As the Athanasian creed we will confess this week will say, “Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith…and the catholic faith is this.” But there are doctrines which can be understood.  For example I’d argue that the Providence of God can be understood. “God has given me my clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home…and still takes care of them.”  Even the pagans had some inkling of this calling Odin the All-Father or maybe more modern the Life of Julia with the government always present to supply. (Although I might argue that Odin was probably a healthier expectation of providence.) These doctrines are like those Eastern scenes.  They are on a human scale.  So much that we occasionally think humans can take God’s place entirely.  But the doctrine of the Trinity is not something to be understood.  It is something to be adored.

The second the human starts throwing around words like infinite, eternal, uncreated, almighty the only comparison we have are the mountains.  Who if they even notice us would do so merely in humor. Oh, we can reduce one or two with strip mines, but not the Rockies.  Not even the foothills. Pondering them is thinking about eternity and how it moves.  Scientists will tell us at one time they were flat.  The tectonic plates rammed into each other and threw them up.  Ok, if you say so. But in all of recorded history, they’ve moved nary a centimeter.

Some doctrines can only be adored. We see them and stagger. The fullness of the Trinity is beyond us.  Yet they have chosen to dwell with us, Father, Son and Spirit.  They have chosen to share their eternal life with us, whatever that really means. I simply believe it and adore.

Confirming What?

I love the juxtaposition of the Feast of Pentecost with confirmation. Pentecost is the day of tongues of fire, people who had been hiding for fear busting out in front of everyone, and 3000 souls added that day.  It also lines up with a secular season of graduations which are those celebrations of something being completed, but something new, that we might not quite yet have defined, starting.  A confirmation is probably the first opportunity for people who have been sequestered in a classroom to make a public confession of faith. It is the end of a tutelage. The parents and sponsors at baptism promised to “support them in their ongoing instruction and nurture in the Christian faith and encourage them toward the faithful reception of the Lord’s Supper.” Confirmation is the end of the largest burden of that promise. (Everyone knows a parent can’t teach a teenager anything until dad suddenly gets real smart again around 24. Just kidding, kinda.)  But unlike the joke about how you get rid of the pests that have taken residence in the church (“confirm them”), a proper understanding of confirmation is the start of personal responsibility in the life of faith.

Now we Lutherans inherited confirmation as a sacrament from the Old Western Church. The Eastern church confirms (they call it chrismation which is anointing with oil) at the same time as someone is baptized in a “double sacrament.” But the oldest tradition of confirmation was that the Bishop – the person responsible for teaching the faith – did the confirmation. As the number of Christians and confirmations grew, getting that one guy around became tougher. The Eastern Churches created the bishop’s oil for the chrismation to maintain some place for the bishop, but the pastors took on the job. The Western churches separated baptism and confirmation to get the bishop to all of them and thus put more of an emphasis on continuity of that teaching. Rome today will confirm around 3rd grade for those baptized as infants. And to be fair, the Roman biblical argument stems from Acts 8:14-17, which other than missing the institution of Christ himself, is a stronger basis than this confessional Lutheran might have naively thought. The churches of the Reformation have done their own things with this rite. Most of them insist upon the unity of the pastoral office (i.e. a pastor is a bishop, a bishop is a pastor) so that worry is out the window. Most of them really liked teaching, and they rejected any biblical institution of a sacrament of confirmation that conferred a unique grace, so the age of confirmation was often moved back.

Even the Roman catechism portrays their sacrament as “a perfection/completion of baptismal grace. (CCC 1304, 1316).” At the extreme Protestant end you have the Baptists, which I would argue have turned Baptism – which they only confer upon believer who can profess the name – into confirmation. Confirmation is always connected to the grace of baptism. One confirms their baptism. All this history leads me to two arguments. The first argument is that the sacraments which are means of grace have never really changed form. Baptism has always been and remains water and the Word of God, that word being the Name applied to the baptized to mark him or her as one redeemed by Christ. The Lord’s Supper has always been and remains bread and wine and the Word of God which makes them the very body and blood of Christ. They are God’s sacraments and he has preserved them. The fact that confirmation has had so many forms gives me strong reason to doubt any unique means of grace in it. God loves us too much for that.

The second argument is that this does not make a ritual like confirmation less meaningful. Baptism is complete in itself.  What confirmation does is offer the opportunity to confess before others that this grace is mine. What was objectively true in baptism takes on subjective meaning.  And what I might argue is that we have made it more restrictive than it needs to be. This might be what the Baptists get right. There are times in our lives of faith where we come to a more mature or deeper-seated faith in Christ. And uniquely, 14 years old might be a terrible time to think you have found that.  For them it might be more like that day of graduation. I don’t really know what is happening next. Mom & Dad you are not completely off the hook.  But I could imagine a church that held multiple rites of confirmation, that offered a public chance to confess that God has brought me this far by faith and today I recommit to that faith with a better understanding of the grace I have been given.

The questions we ask the 14 year olds are tough.  Kinda like marriage vows, you have no real idea what you are committing to when you say “I do, by the grace of God.” Imagine for a second the witness of someone who knows a little more making the same confession. Both have a virtue of their own. The first a pure faith, the second a witness to the hope that does not disappoint.      

Bother Me

I had intended to write a bit about Ascension Day.  It’s something of a forgotten day.  If you lived in Europe you’d have the day off thanks to the remains of Christendom.  But in the USA it’s the only festival of the life of Christ – right there in the creed! – that gets shuffled off.  I suppose that’s its own fault for not falling on a Sunday.

But I got a call midweek that changed my intended topic, because as important as Ascension Day is, this seemed more so.  Dad called and let me know that a cousin of my had committed suicide.  I share this not in searching for sympathy.  As with many family ties these days, it had been years since we had talked, more specifically played Euchre while eating on Thanksgiving or Christmas. He was significantly older than I was, but at a time in life when I was playing sports, he had just embarked on a coaching career in the Texas High Schools.  And in remembering Mike I started to remember too many others.  The hometown friend.  The high school roommate and friend who I had just reconnected with not long before he took his life.  The HS basketball teammate.  Two college hallmates and study partners.  And it struck me that six people with whom I had been close at least for longer stretches seems like a lot.  Although these days I’m not sure. As another correspondence friend said, “there seems to be a unique despair in the air these days.”

Now I don’t have any great insights.  Maybe I was just a lousy friend for losing contact over the years.  In many of those, opioids were involved. Another correspondent brought up marriage.  I replied that 3 had never been married, but two were still married and 1 was in the midst of divorce.  The social scientists that track these things have all kinds of correlations, but they are quick to say correlation is not causation. My intuition is that everyone is fighting their own private battles. And ranking misery is always a losing game.

The only thing I really have to say is, if you find yourself at that point, please give me a call first.  Don’t call the church line.  That is only watched Tuesdays and Thursdays.  If you don’t have my cell number, it is on the outgoing message there.  It is in the bulletin every week not far from here.  Take this home and program it into your phone today. If you find yourself there, bother me. I’m not going to solve your misery, as much as I might like to.  I’ve read the book of Job too much and been in this office too long to think I have that power.  But the one common thread of all of those is they were alone. If you are there, trouble me. I can make sure you are not alone at that point.