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 3^rd 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.

Paul in Athens

I should have something good about mothers. But instead I’ll just pass along what they’d want me to say. God says give your mother a call. Honest, it is in the Bible somewhere. Ok, it’s not, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Talk to your mother today. Tell her you love her.

Our first reading for this Sunday from Acts 17 has had its share of acclaim recently. There was a boomlet of taking Paul in Athens as the model for evangelism in the modern world. In some ways it was rehashing part of Richard Neibuhr’s Christ and Culture. That mid-20^th-century work, when the culture at large would still listen to a theologian, examined various ways the church could interact with society. Christ against Culture (the culture war crusaders), Christ of Culture (Christendom) and three versions of Christ above culture (those who opt out like the Amish, two kingdoms overlapping, or a transformation.) As Lutherans, we tend to find a sweet spot in that two kingdoms approach. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is Gods. The call of the Kingdom of God is above the culture without denying that culture has its place. And its role can be good or bad. The Paul in Athens boomlet was very much transformational. Find the best in the culture, claim it for Christ, and demonstrate how it points to the fulfillment of Jesus.

The Athens of Paul’s time was long past its glory days, although they would regale you with plenty of boring stories. That was the main vocation of the Aeropagas. Imagining themselves as the heirs of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus and debating the ideas of the day. Rich people would send their kids to Athens for a year or two like we would send our bright young things to Boston. Various Philosophers would compete for the tuition dollars and think deep thoughts. Those heirs stumble across Paul reasoning in the Synagogue and preaching in the marketplace and bring him to the Aeropagus to understand what he is teaching. Now that description I’ve given is a little rough, but I think it captures Luke’s feeling when he summarizes, “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”

Paul’s approach is classic Christ Transforms Culture. He ID’s something he finds good. “Men of Athens I see that in every way you are very religious, you even worship an unknown god.” He claims this good for Christ. “What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” Along the way he claims a couple of their poets. “In him we live and move and have our being” and “For we are indeed his offspring.” If you really want to find the fulfillment of what those poets spoke of you need to understand Christ.

This is the method of every evangelical youth pastor. But saying that you can see how easy it is to mock. Instead of claiming the good, the true and the beautiful, we claim the latest Pixar film. “See Nemo/Elsa/Anna/Riley really is a Christ figure.” (And yes, I can point you to every one of those essays. And they aren’t all completely dumb.) Take something your audience already knows and ask them to see something more. It becomes a rhetorical trick. Not something of real transformational value.

Not transformational like the preaching of the resurrection. Paul’s entire rhetorical strategy is a wind up to “an of this he has given assurance to all by raising Jesus from the dead.” Of course our lectionary cuts it out there, because Paul the great Apostle walks off triumphant converting the entire Aeropagus, right? Not right. Continuing past the lectionary end, “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, some said we will hear of this again, but some men joined and believed, Dionysisus and woman named Damaris.” A far cry from the 3000 that were converted at Peter’s simple proclamation on Pentecost.

After Athens, Paul goes to Corinth. And it is at Corinth that Paul tells us “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified…my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power (1 Cor. 2:2,4 ESV).” A complete change of even rhetorical strategy.

The church for decades I think has been trying to be winsome for evangelism. And I’m not saying it is time to be a jerk for Christ. But when we talk about evangelism, I’d turn less to Paul in Athens, and more to Paul in Corinth. We preach Christ crucified. To some this will be a stumbling block. To some foolishness. But the lambs who hear, the power of God. The world is the world. Evangelism is calling the lambs of the sheepfold out of the world to follow the good shepherd who has given his life for the sheep. They will hear his voice.

A Good Life Script

Sociologists or Psychologists might use the term life scripts. They are simply narratives of how one might see his life playing out if everything went perfectly. Nothing ever goes perfectly in life, but a general life script is rather robust. Before the great disruption these were things fathers gave to sons and mothers to daughters almost by default. Those life scripts did a couple of things. First, they passed on the collective wisdom of the ages. But then they also gave society’s general approval to accomplishments that benefited both the individual and society. Graduating from school, getting a job, getting married and having kids is a successful life script. If you followed it and stuck with it you will find your share of satisfaction out of life.

But for many people those life scripts were thrown out around mid-century. On the one hand, it opened life up to an endless series of choices which could be more rewarding and fulfilling than the defaults parents used to hand on. It opened up self-actualization on a clean sheet of paper. On the other, if you were not able to set your own goals, and society stopped rewarding and often punished as “square” the former choices, many thinking they were chasing self-actualization simply shipwrecked their lives.

It is spring, and as they say that is when “a young man’s heart turns to love.” I also just saw past my 25^th anniversary. And something as a pastor that I do want to encourage is a piece of a life script with biblical backing. The very first act of God toward mankind is officiating a wedding. We Lutherans might not call marriage a sacrament, but that is more because sacraments are a definitional game, and we are very specific. A Lutheran sacrament is for the forgiveness of sins (along with instituted by Christ and having a visible means.) But the first blessing of God to all mankind are the vocations of husband and wife. The right and proper life script of a Christian most likely involves marriage. We will discuss exceptions which are not about self-actualization. Our culture is still pushing that well past its sell-by date and even defines marriage around it. But a marriage that is about individual self-actualization is not a marriage.

So first, what is a marriage? Jesus centers marriage in his teaching in Matthew 19 and Mark 10 and he quotes from that first marriage, almost like he was the officiant. The picture given is that marriage is the creation of “one flesh (Gen 2:24).” The individuals are gone, the marriage is the reality. And from here I am roughly going to follow the marriage liturgy’s description. That reality of our marriages is a reflection, an icon, of the union of Christ and the church. And just as you cannot imagine Christ and the church splitting, a rupture in an icon of it tells us something has gone wrong.

But what is the purpose of marriage? Marriage is first “intended by God for the mutual companionship, help and support that each person ought to receive, both in prosperity and adversity.” If we are seeking self-actualization, when things aren’t working to our personal advantage, we take off. The Christian marriage is made of sterned stuff. Marriage is about the sexual union. “God has not called us to impurity but in holiness.” Sex is an aspect of marriage and apart from that is an act of theft and falsehood. Why exactly? Because “God also established marriage for the procreation of children.” This is the one that bothers the self-actualization folks the most. Marriage has a purpose outside of the self. And that purpose is the creation of the living one flesh union of children. The last purpose the liturgy gives us is that marriage exists so that those children “may be brought up in the fear and instruction of the Lord.” This is a primary Christian calling. God blessed it in Eden before the fall. And paradoxically sacrificing the self for the union and the kids will lead to much greater satisfaction than most self-actualization schemes.

So what can we say about exceptions? The apostles, after hearing Jesus’ teaching on marriage, decide that “it would be better not to marry (Matt 19:10).” It is something of a crude joke ala “heh, if I can’t divorce why would I ever marry. I’ll just fornicate.” And Jesus responds to them that their assumption is wrong. “There are eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom.” The apostle Paul elaborates on this in 1 Corinthians 7. The married person “is anxious about worldly things (7:33).” Things like husband and wife and their welfare. Things like kids and their instruction. But the single person has the ability “to secure undivided devotion to the Lord.” Not to self-actualize to the maximum, to live only for the self. But that calling is to live for God. There is a reason both Jesus and Paul think that is a tougher calling. Jesus adds his phrase, “Let the one who is able to receive this receive it” which I always read as him thinking not too many.

So, you do have the Christian freedom to follow different life scripts. But contrary to the world there are God ordained paths. Marriage is a likely path for most. And something to be held up for honor.

Religious Taxonomy

I’m sure it is passe, or as discredited in elite spaces as the resurrection, but Bloom’s taxonomy for education still makes sense to me as an intellectual model. A Taxonomy is simply a description of the way things are. The glaring error, if there is one in Bloom’s description, is that it is intellectual. It makes no room for emotional reality. And if you think we are first emotional elephants with little riders occasionally with great effort altering the course of the stampede, that is a big error. But it’s the best I’ve seen. It holds that the foundations of all learning are: Knowledge, comprehension and application. Knowledge is simple facts, 2+2 = 4. Comprehension means not just memorization of facts, but some understanding of what they mean. That in 2+2 you are doing addition. And then application means some of the facts can change. If you know 2+2 is 4, and the concept of addition, you can then answer 2+3. Learning things like facts is deeply out of fashion, but without a broad base of facts that you understand and can apply, the rest of the taxonomy is meaningless. The rest of the taxonomy is analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The levels do tend to blur together a bit, but analysis would be something like realizing 2+3 = 3+2. The order of addition doesn’t matter. Synthesis takes multiple analyzed things and creates something new. It’s how you would go from addition to multiplication. But then evaluation at the very pinnacle would ask things like what am I multiplying and should I? Running gain of function research on a virus in a Chinese lab to escape US laws is an amazing act of synthesis. It is a terrible act of evaluation. Somewhere you hope that your rulers are skilled at evaluation, which could also be known as wisdom.

Most of Catechism class is knowledge, comprehension and application. Do you know the 10 commandments? What do they mean? Can you apply them to your life directly? There is a reason that we still half-heartedly attempt to memorize the catechism. It gives everyone a foundation of what the Christian religion teaches. Because I do happen to believe that we are emotional elephants with little riders, catechism also tries to teach a bit about prayer. Prayer is arming the rider or giving him some reins. But I attempt to end catechism with a bit of those higher level skills. Hopefully having a basic understanding of the religion you were baptized into, that your parents have attempted to hand onto you, can we look at other world religions in analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

If anyone went to college and was forced to take a comparative religions class, this is often the exercise that schools used to tear down a naïve faith. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes just because that faith never matured beyond knowledge, comprehension and application. Generations of students who had little depth in knowledge, comprehension and application would be lead through a project of analysis of all religion and fed an evaluation that they were all the same and all false. I run through it in catechism more as an inoculation. You can do this and come to a much different evaluation. Also as an invitation to a mature faith, opening a door that says you have only scratched the surface, and the making of a good theologian is life with reflection.

As my framework I use something original with Dr. Stephen Prothero. His primary categories for religions are: problem, solution, means of solution, exemplars, texts, and organization. So as an act of analysis answering this for Christianity should be easy for a confirmand. Problem: Sin. Solution: Salvation. Means: Grace, Faith and works/love. (As Lutherans we dramatically downgrade works, but we have a tight distinction between justification and sanctification.) Exemplars: The saints. Texts: Bible, The Confessions (which for the students is the catechism.) Organization would be the various denominations or theological traditions. As a comparison Islam. Problem: Pride, Solution: submission, Means: 5 pillars of Islam, exemplars: Muhammed, texts: Quran, Hadith, Organization: Sunni, Shia. When you introduce a second set you can do some evaluation, like asking the question what is the difference between saying the problem is sin and saying it is pride?

Over the years, as I’ve run this final exercise I’ve started to think of another religion. We have all been catechized to some extent in a new dominant religion in the west. What does it say the problem is? Not pride, certainly not sin. I think it would assert the problem is intolerance. The solution is acceptance. I’ve got my own synthesis of what the default religion of the US is. It has means, texts and is creating organization. But it’s an interesting exercise for understanding the world you live in and the mission of the church in it. And then the deeper question is one of evaluation. How does this new dominant religion compare to Christianity (or other world religions)? For me I think its problem and solution are as oblivious of actual humans as Bloom’s Taxonomy not even thinking about emotions, but such things are the mediation of a mature faith.

Lord and Christ

Peter’s Pentecost sermon – which a portion of it is our first reading today, the full sermon is in Acts 2:14-41 – is worth pondering deeper.

What gives Peter the opportunity to preach? Something has happened. We know from reading the story that what was happening is the Holy Spirit has come, but nobody else understands that. In fact everyone else, all good Jews who have gathered in Jerusalem for one of the travel holidays, think that what has happened is something scandalous and embarrassing. Peter and the disciples are drunk at 9 AM. The modern environment of the church can be described as being surrounded by good Jews to the extent that Americans right now seem to be in a moralistic and judgmental mood. There are unwritten rules of society that gets enforced in quite extreme ways. You can find yourself canceled. And what the church has to say on many things is scandalous and embarrassing. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told those disciples this before the passion. “And when [The Holy Spirit] comes, he will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness and judgement. (John 16:8).” It is the work of the Holy Spirit in what from the world’s perspective are scandalous things that is the opportunity to proclaim the good news.

How does Peter’s sermon start? He grounds his proclamation firmly in the prior works and words of God. Peter quotes a long passage from the prophet Joel, an apocalyptic passage. What do I mean by apocalyptic? I mean in the simplest definition of that word, a revelation. God has revealed himself. Any time God reveals himself is in an apocalypse. And there are all kinds of apocalypses. There are personal revelations. When the sinner is convicted of their sin, it is an apocalypse. All the way up to the final apocalypse, when every knee shall bow at the revelation of Jesus Christ in all his glory. When the man comes around. The church’s message is always grounded in the self-revelation of God.

What particular revelation is Peter bringing before his audience? “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.” The greatest of these signs is his crucifixion and resurrection. You killed him, but God raised him up. Whatever prior revelation you are holding onto. In the case of those Jews Peter assumes it is the Davidic promises. We all might have revelations that we are holding onto. Like Peter himself wanting to build booths on the mount of transfiguration. These are all insignificant compared to the bare facts of the passion and resurrection. “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that the Father has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

That proclamation is both law and gospel. It is law to the extent that I and my sin crucified him. To the extent that I want to keep my revelation about him, it is a judgement. But it is also the sweetest gospel. This Jesus whom we know is Lord and Christ. The Lord is not Caesar or any other tyrant, but Jesus. The Messiah, the one we have been looking for, is not some political personage or charismatic movement, but Jesus. This Jesus whom we crucified, but who prayed for our forgiveness. Being convicted of sin is also being convicted of righteousness. My sin killed him, but His Grace has given me his righteousness.

Being convicted the crowd asks, “what shall we do?” Peter’s simple answer is “repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus. Receive the Holy Spirit.” This revelation is not just for some Jews. This revelation is for you and for your Children. This revelation is for all who are far off whom God is calling to himself.

Peter’s sermon has new relevance in our world. The church scandalizes the world. But the church is still a revelation. It reveals to the world its sin, its righteousness and its judgement. It places before the world Jesus Christ. Here is your Hope and Salvation.

Quasimodogeniti

Did anybody read the Hunchback of Notre Dame? See the cartoon? Does anybody remember what his name was? Hint: It wasn’t “Hey, hunchback.” Insert Jeopardy theme….

Ok, we are back. What was your answer? The right answer is Quasimodo. Which is a strange name. Anybody care to hazard a guess where that came from?

Every Sunday of the church year has what are called propers. They include the introit which is the entrance hymn/chant, the prayer of the day, the appointed readings and a few other things. If you were doing a choir led mass, the propers are all the parts that the choir and minister would probably chant. The congregation itself would probably be relatively non-participatory, the high church version of the worship band. The Lutheran Reformation gave to the congregation the role of the choir. With angels, and archangels and all the host of heaven, we laud and magnify the name. But the important proper of the day for this pastor’s corner is the introit.

The same way that people used to sign letters “On the Feast Day of St. X” or something like that to date correspondence, the weeks were actually known by their introits. Specifically the first word of the introit, in Latin because that is what the church used and many propers even after the reformation would remain in Latin for a long time. If you have an old copy of The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH) published in 1941 lying around, you can see that those old names are still on the church calendar for many weeks – the weeks after Transfiguration, the weeks of Lent, the weeks of Easter. Easter 2 was known as Quasimodogeniti. Quasimodo the hunchback was born on this Sunday and given the name from the Introit.

When the propers went to a three year cycle many of those old names were broken. They had already been strained when everything went into the vernacular as long time ago. But the Introits are meant to carry a theme for the service and the week, which they do very well in the Sundays after Easter. Quasimodogeniti is Latin for “as newborn infants.” As newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Easter 2 in the church year is a day of infancy on the faith. Thomas hasn’t seen, so he won’t believe, until he places his fingers in the holes in the hands. We start reading from the Epistle of First Peter which tells us that we have come into our inheritance in the resurrection. “He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” And as such infants, “long for the pure spiritual milk.”

What is that pure Spiritual Milk? The Introit’s answers are: “Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make know his deeds among the peoples, sing praises to him.” Thanksgiving, prayer, proclamation and adoration. What are the things that allow us to grow up into that full inheritance of the resurrection? Hearing the word proclaimed and believing it. Returning in proper thanks for all the Christ has done for us. Trusting in the Lord in prayer. “Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his presence continually.” Never forgetting the proper adoration due to God Almighty. “Glory in His Holy Name!” These are the things of pure spiritual milk that you might grow up to salvation.

And unlike our physical selves who outgrow milk, the Kingdom of God is a land flowing with milk and honey. Every Sunday one can return to that pure spiritual milk: the word, thanksgiving, prayer, and adoration. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Link to the Propers for Easter 2

Resurrection Life (Pastor’s Corner for Easter Sunday)

A Happy Easter to Everyone.

One of the things that Luther found helpful in his spiritual life was a work he thought was written by Tauler, the Theologia Germanica. It’s a work of medieval mysticism. You might consider it something like “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a Kempis. Or even later maybe the “Spiritual Exercises” by Ignatius Loyola. Calvin, being the strictly logical lawyer, rejected it completely. The more radical reformation picked it up and much mischief was done. Those two facts are probably what fed Protestantism’s allergy to even slight mysticism. Of course since it was a Luther favorite, it was eventually banned by the Catholic church in 1612. Although they removed the ban in the 20^th century.

I bring that up for two reasons. First, I know that I wouldn’t bring up mysticism inflected things into the pulpit, so in a week that I need three sermons it is safe to use for this article. Second, I do think that a bit of mysticism is healthy for the soul. One of my sources of this is the sayings of the desert fathers. These sayings and honestly their entire lives are just so radically different than ours trying to ponder what they say puts me way out of my comfort zone.

On Easter, pondering the resurrection, I wanted to share a story that strangely enough is repeated in the collection of sayings. The first one by Macarius the Great. He was a monk around 390 AD. The entire movement was inspired just a bit earlier by Anthony the Great. Many men and women born to great families and wealth would give it all up to live in the Egyptian desert. Macarius’ story is of meeting a distraught widow. Her husband had taken a deposit of money on trust and hidden it. But he had died and not disclosed to her where it was. Their children would have been taken in slavery if she could not produce it. Macarius asks where the man was buried and tells her to go home. He proceeds to the tomb and asks the corpse, “Where is it hidden?” The corpse replied. Macarius then tells the man to return to resting until the final resurrection. He tells the widow where it is, and she frees her children.

The second version is about Abba Spyridon. A young girl had been entrusted with a valuable ornament that she hid. But she too died soon after without telling anyone where it was. The depositor came asking for it and pressed the girl’s father. Abba Spyridon went to the girl’s tomb and asked God, “show me, before the time, the resurrection promised her.” His hope was not disappointed as she appeared alive to her father and named the place.

What do I say about these? Well, that is part of what mysticism is about, I don’t exactly know. And it is probably different for you anyway. But this is what I would say. We live in time and are worried about many things. Like where our treasure is buried. The truth is that our treasure is buried with Christ. And Christ is risen. Nothing that we think is lost is truly gone. It is with Christ. Whatever we entrust to him we have for eternity. And that is an eternity that starts today. Do we all have resurrection appearances to us? No. And in our skeptical age I’m not sure we’d see even if we did. But the desert Fathers were open to such things. We are all one in Christ. And Christ is not dead, but lives. He lives to make us free.