Apocalypse Now?

As a kid I always loved looking at the pictures that you often could find in the back of bibles.  There would be the maps, but there would also often be representations of things like the Ancient Temple.  Encoded into space (architecture) would be a certain meaning. The entire place was to be holy, a place for prayer, so when the Jews made the court of the gentiles into a marketplace, Jesus gets properly mad.  Because right in that architecture was the idea that the gentiles were not to be excluded, even if they were not priests. All Israel was a nation of priests.  That nation itself would have divisions.  There would be the court of the women which also contained the place the Levites – the priestly tribe – sang as the gateway into the court of the Israelites which included the Altar.  The sacrifices were a public thing.  Then you had the temple proper with a court of priests – Levites and Aaronic.  The Holy Place – only Aaronic priesthood – with the table for the showbread, the lampstands and the altar of incense. And finally the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest would go containing the Ark of the Covenant. The encoded meaning wasn’t that each group was holier than the rest.  The encoded meaning was that we all need a mediator with the Holy God.  The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.  And upon the cross, when the veil of the temple was torn, we found our mediator in Jesus Christ. “Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? (Ps. 24:3 ESV)” The incarnate son.

Most churches still keep some of that old architecture.  Even modernist sanctuaries like ours have their nods.  The pulpit, lectern, and table are all a step up. The nave or ark of the church is separated from the narthex or the courtyards by doors.  The reason I’m thinking about these things is two-fold. The first is they help me make some distinctions. There are things I would write in this corner that I would probably not bring into a Bible Study.  And there are things that I’d bring into a bible study to ponder that I would not bring into the pulpit. There are appropriate places for business and rank speculation. The second is a bit of speculation from personal mediation that feels impossibly old.

We often say that our enemies are the devil, the world and our sinful nature.  And we have plenty of problem with these.  But if you read the Old Testament or study the BC world it feels like something else is different. I’d posit that the “something else” is what Jesus says in Mark 3:27 where the strong-man is bound, or in Luke 10:18 where Satan falls like lightning.  Apocalyptic Revelation talks about Satan bound with his only power being deception (Rev 12:13ff). Paul would say our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the powers and principalities (Eph 6:12), but those dark forces have been hampered for a long time.  The history of Israel and the ancient world shows us what happens when those forces are unbound. Paul reminds us in Romans 1 that the wrath of God revealed is when “God gave them up.”  When we exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship the creature instead of the creator.

The three “gods” – the unholy trinity if you will – were Baal, Molech and Asherah.  The ancient world was syncretistic, so those names would morph, but the symbols and offerings would often remain. Baal being the worship of pure power. Molech being the worship of destruction and death.  And Asherah being better know as Venus or Aphrodite, the worship of eros. When you see things like the statue recently installed over the Appellate Court building in NYC (I’m not putting that image here) something has changed.  When alongside Moses, Maimonides and other law givers is installed a golden image with horns and tentacles, something new-old is being worshipped.  Architecture and public art tell you how those in charge of a society would organize it.  For a long time we were organized on Christian principles.  What comes in when we turn our backs on those is not John Lennon’s Imagine.  What comes back are the spirits once cast out (Matthew 12:45).

But such things are the very purpose of books like Revelation or Jesus’ sermon in Matthew 24.  “See, I have told you beforehand.”  Christ is already victorious.  Your life is already hidden away with Christ.  Whatever comes we have no reason to fear.  Those old powers can do nothing but flail impotently against that. They are judged, the deed is done. We only await the final word that sends them away forever.

Self Examination pt1

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Text: Small Catechism Q&A 1-6

In preparation for the Sacrament Paul tells us to examine ourselves. The Small Catechism provides a section of Christian Questions and their Answers that is given as a fitting examination. The Lenten Mid-Week services this year are going to be looking as these as our fitting preparation for Easter.

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Testing or Temptation

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Biblical Text: Matt 4:1-11

The primary text is traditionally called the Temptation of Jesus. It takes place right after his baptism and continues the theme of Israel reduced to one. When Israel fails in the wilderness, Christ succeeds. But, this sermon is about something I think is an important distinction that often gets lost in the modern church. It was important to me to figure out because Luther makes a statement in the Small Catechism that always seemed to fly in the face of reality to me, at least reality if you take the scriptures and the universal experience of the faith as witnesses. And you wish to take ordination vows seriously. Luther says “God tempts no one.” And that honestly felt like this polyanna-ish statement completely foreign to the great man who was always “calling a thing what it is.” So, this sermon attempts to talk about the difference between temptation and testing. And how we can affirm that God tempts no one, even if the answer to that 6th petition of the Lord’s prayer isn’t always positive in the short term. But the will of God is not for this moment alone, but to give you the eternal victory in Christ.

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A Penitential Season (A Reflection on Lent)

Seasons and Holidays always have a chicken and the egg effect.  Is the season or holiday where it is because something happened then, or was there already a celebration of some sort that was infused with theological meaning?  The classic atheist taunt that Christmas was originally the Roman Saturnalia is an example. Which I’ve always taken as just strange.  What if it was, who really cares.  Add onto that the question of how strong must the theological meaning of the birth of Christ have been to completely take over a pagan festival?  The cynic might reply, “you think Santa Claus and black Friday aren’t a pagan celebration?” Yes, yes.

This type of question goes back to the OT feasts. There were three primary ones: Passover, Pentecost or Weeks, and Sukkot or Booths. The theological meanings are rather clear.  Passover was God bringing Israel out of bondage in Egypt.  Pentecost or Weeks was when Moses received the law on Mt. Sinai.  Sukkot’s theology is rooted in the wilderness wonderings and God’s providence for all Israel.  All three holidays also have an agricultural basis that the bible acknowledges.  Passover planting, Weeks the early wheat harvest (the Holy Land being a place of multiple harvests) and Sukkot the big harvest.  We live in a sacramental world. Everyday things are infused with the Spirit.

Lent’s chicken and the egg is something that we moderns probably forget. Your grand-parents, maybe your great-grandparents, certainly further back didn’t. By late February what had been stored for the winter was probably getting repetitive. Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras was the day you took out the last of the really good stuff from the larder, if you had any left.  Did you start the Lenten fast because of the theological meaning, or because all you had left in the pantry was wheat for bread and scraps for soup?

Living in a sacramental world I think can go both ways.  The material reality of our existence can point toward spiritual meaning.  Likewise a Spiritual truth can suggest a material practice.  In our world of material abundance I’m not exactly sure we’ve worked out what a penitential season means. Fasting can be meaningful, but it is certainly better when the entire community is doing it.  And not even Rome seems to have the ability to mandate the fast. The Spiritual truth that Lent captures is that we have all fallen short of the Glory of God. What a fitting material practice would be escapes me.  I’m often tempted to say we are all living a long lent. We are surrounded by a material abundance unimaginable to most of human history, yet far from being fat, dumb and happy, we are collectively the most medicated and depressed society ever. Man lives not by abundance, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  And when God withdraws his word, no amount of abundance can replace it.

Lent as a season not to give things up, but to pick things up anew would strike me as better. What practices have our abundance squeezed out? Has Netflix eaten our prayer?  Return to prayer.  Has the BMW payment squeezed out charity? Recommit to alms giving. Has fast food and business ended the family meal? Make room at the table for something from scratch that begins with prayer.  And if your family won’t join you, ask your neighbors, until someone accepts.  Lent as a season to choose the things that truly feed might be a meaningful material practice. If you try, let me know.

The End of the Epiphany Journey

I truly hope I am not stealing any of Pastor Kalthoff’s thunder here.  So I’m going to zoom out from the textual specifics to the end of the season. Transfiguration is the end of the season of Epiphany.  It starts back on the 12th night of Christmas staring at a strange star that has risen in the east.  That star asked the Magi a question: do you want to see what this means, or are you comfortable here?  Their journey is one of knowing something – a king has been born – but not knowing what that means.  And lots of things they assumed must be changed.  They head to Jerusalem and Herod, to be told to go to Bethlehem.  They are given a map, but they instead follow the renewed star, possible angel, that guides them. They offer gifts for a King, to peasants in a stable. They return home a different way.  The season of Epiphany is a season of seeing exactly who this Jesus is: Babe, Israel reduced to one, stand-in for us in the Jordan, miracle worker, preacher, Son of God.  And it ends with this eschatological vision of the Glory of the One and Only Son, full of grace and truth. In the season of Epiphany we have heard and seen and have come to know.

But so what?  This is one of my favorite phrases of all time.  Don Draper in Mad Men says it to his protégé Peggy who has found herself pregnant and unmarried in the late ‘50s.  Counseling her to get rid of it he says, “You will be surprised at how fast this never happened.”  And Peggy’s character, like her mentor Don, lives that out. The events of life seemingly never leaving a mark on either.  It is that way with many spiritual experiences. It’s the mystery of the seed that falls on rocky soil.  It springs up for a short time, but soon is gone. It has no root.  There is a list of once famous people who detailed their experience and their turn away from it: Paul Verhoeven (director), Barbara Ehrenreich (author), AJ Ayer (atheist philosopher).  In an instant they all knew something, and then left it and went back to their current lives. Knowing doesn’t mean willing to live. Epiphany leads us from the baby in the Manger to the Mountaintop experience.  We know.

And then Jesus hits us with the question.  Are you following me down this mountain?

The hymn I slotted as the sermon hymn is one of my favorite modern ones. Stanza 1 sings the story.  All hymns start in the biblical text.  With our voices we remember, we recall the experience, we make it real before us. Stanza 2 starts to step beyond the story.  Knowing and walking down from the mount, what does Jesus mean for us?  Mountaintop experiences are things we ponder in our hearts.  We don’t live in them like booths.  They live in us.  And if we have truly gained and kept their truth – not surprised at how fast they didn’t happen – they help us walk the valley in faith. And that valley is always the shadow of death. It is always the valley of the cross.  The only way out is through.  And you wouldn’t want to miss it.

The last stanza is the one that gets me every time.  It’s the prayer.  Lord, we have come to know.  We leave this mountaintop for Calvary. And we know this is good if not exactly how.  We also know that we would not move from this spot, not without your help.  Lord, transfigure our perception with the purest light that shines.  Recast our life’s intentions to the shape of your designs.  Let us find no other glory than what lies past Calvary. Guide our steps, our living, and our dying, and our rising, by your will.

We know. Do we follow?

(FYI: The Hymn Referenced is LSB 416 Swiftly Pass the Clouds of Glory. I’d post a link, but you are better off searching it yourself. Or coming to church to hear and sing it! The copyright prevents easy sharing.)

Yawn

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:21-37

I’m going to pat myself on the back here. Takes some guts to title a sermon “Yawn”.

The text is what I usually call Jesus re-upping the 10 commandments, while turning them to 11 on the dial. And if you are reading them the interpretation is rather straight-forward. Having focused on the law last week, and given the basic understanding, I turned this week to how we receive Jesus’ preaching. The focus is on what I label the strangeness of Jesus. We are able to “Yawn” at reading something like “leave the altar immediately” or “cut the body part off” because it is old hat or because it doesn’t get past the surface that this is GOD ALMIGHTY saying this. 2000 years can make any claim venerable. Those hearing Jesus were hearing that claim for the first time. How strange. And it hit them with a crisis. Do you believe it? If you believe it, the preaching demands something deep. Something more than a “yawn.”

I might end this on a questionable story, but it comes from a group that is no longer yawning. Waking from our spiritual slumbers is first hearing anew the claim of messiah.

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Rectification of Names

I understand that it can be tedious.  But somewhere between High School and my ordination I became a big fan of Confucius. Why you might ask.  Seems odd for a Lutheran Pastor. The biggest reason was his answer to the question: If you were made Emperor, what would be the first thing you would do?  Confucius’ answer was: the rectification of names.  What did he mean by that? All words being used would be clearly defined before they could be used.  In a united and functioning society nobody thinks about this because they all roughly share the same definition. Even in an early stage Weimar Republic people share enough definitions to communicate.  But then you get to the stage where people start electing Nazis to fix it.  Different groups have their own dictionaries.  Smart people learn to “code switch” knowing which dictionary to use by which group they are in. Which of course penalizes the less verbally adaptable.  And you find yourself in hot water because the dictionary changed overnight and you didn’t get the update.  Ancient China in the time of Confucius was at that point. And instead of electing Nazis to kill everyone not using the correct dictionary, Confucius thought there was a better way – the rectification of names.  Call things what they are with clear definitions first for to the good of everybody.

The second generation of the Lutheran Reformers – names like Chemnitz, Andrea and Chytraeus who you probably haven’t heard about – were good Confucians. Not only did you have a Roman Catholic dictionary and a basic Lutheran dictionary, you started to have Calvinist Dictionaries, and Radical Reformer dictionaries, and more important for them intra-Lutheran splits.  Their answer is something called the Formula of Concord.  The Formula is the last confessional work that all Lutheran pastors subscribe to as part of the Book of Concord.  It is the last binding dogmatic work of the Lutheran Church.  And it is almost completely a work of Rectification of Names.

Every place where Lutherans were fighting Lutherans would have its own article to address the argument.  The first part of every article is “The Status of the Controversy” which was a paragraph that defined words used and captured the basic argument between all sides engaged.  The Concordists would not allow disagreement to fester through the use of squishy terms that meant different things to different people.  Nor would they allow any group to not recognize their position.  After everyone agreed upon terms and what the argument was, they addressed the argument in two ways.  First, they made affirmative statements.  One of the famous Lutheran phrases comes from these, “We believe, teach and confess…”.  They set forward on the basis of scripture and plain reason what the doctrinal teaching of the church should be in regards to the controversy.  This usually took a few steps to really address it, but the point was concord – a true peace between people arguing, an agreement on truth.  After they affirmed what the true teaching should be, they condemned various false teachings in the air (“We reject and condemn…”).

How do we find ourselves in Weimar?  We allow people to change definitions and use private dictionaries. Instead of positively putting forward in the best way possible what we believe, teach and confess, we rely on tribal markers to sort good guys and bad guys.  (Oh, you aren’t using my dictionary, you go on the bad guy list.) Our politicians and church-politicians today, instead of saying “I’m for X” all compete to say nothing, hoping that you read into whatever they do, say what you think, and so vote for them. And maybe more importantly we never clearly state what is out of bounds.  Why do we find ourselves here?  Because saying things like “deeds, not creeds” sounds like a warm fuzzy. And for a while you can coast off of previously shared understandings or at least known boundaries. Because Weimar, at least early Weimar, is profitable to the powerful who can surf the dictionaries and attempt to enforce theirs. Making everything a power game of who has the biggest megaphone helps the powerful.

None of that is the Way of Jesus Christ who said things like: “whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. (Lk. 12:3 ESV)” and “have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. (Matt. 10:26 ESV)”  and “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. (Matt. 5:14 ESV)”  The way of Christ is the way of all hidden things being brought into the light.  The way of Jesus includes clear teaching, not the soft lights of Weimar to hide the things done in the darkness. 

Legal Recourse

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:13-20, Isaiah 58:3-9

I don’t do these types of sermons that often. Most Sunday’s I try and proclaim the gospel. That proclamation of the cross of Jesus for you is the primary job. But occasionally the text seems to call for a catechetical or teaching sermon. In this case the question both the OT and the NT passages want us to ponder is: What is the purpose of the law? And this is a very important teaching of the church that we have simply lost today. This sermon looks at the two ways the church can lose the true purpose of the law: works righteousness (over-playing the role of the law) and antinomianism (underplaying the role of the law). It then turns to the catechism and confession’s three uses of the law with a specific meditation on almost a precursor to the formal law, a 0th use or a an expanded 1st use. Why expanded? Because none of the teachers of the church could imagine a people rejecting the natural law at such basic points.

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What About My Dead Cat?

Our mid-week bible study was on the flood this week, so the combination of two by two and recently putting down a pet cat had me thinking about the animals.  It is a cliché question, “will I ever see my beloved pet again?”  And that question is usually treated in one of two ways.  The elder being questioned might simply answer “yes” from a caring but ultimately patronizing place.  It is what the questioner wants to hear, so you say it.  The flip side of this elder is the one who has read Aquinas and thinks it the height of spirituality to tell the questioner, “no, animals have a lessor spirit” thereby initiating them into higher spiritual knowledge.  But let me suggest that the biblical picture is more nuanced.  I’m still going to say yes, but this is more about the reasons why.

The first reason is that God created them and declared it good. “And God said, ‘let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds – livestock and creeping things and beast of the earth according to their kinds…and God saw that it was good.” To do away with something that is good would itself be an evil act. That is ultimately what Satan wishes to do, negate every good thing.  The good has its own existence from God.  All evil can do is attempt to negate it. But one day, that last evil, death, shall be put away and the Good shall be crowned.

The second reason follows that act of creation.  As Luther would add to his explanation to the first article of the creed, God not only made me and all creatures, but “he still preserves them.” The bible is full of passages about God’s care for the creatures of the earth.  My two favorites are from Jesus and Jonah.  Jesus takes the sparrow as his example.  I think he takes it because of its complete humbleness.  Nobody goes, “oooh, a sparrow.” Yet Jesus says, “are not 5 sparrows sold for 2 pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.”   A little bit later he will talk of the Ravens who have always had an air of woe about them long before Poe took up his pen.  “Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.”  God remembers even the sparrow and feeds the haunting raven.  But the one that sticks in my mind is from Jonah.  Jonah is sitting outside Nineveh, the work of preaching done, wanting and hoping for its destruction. The last line of the book is “should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many cattle.”  One gets the sense that Nineveh’s deliverance might be more because of those cattle than anything.  The animals are part of God’s continued providence.

But all of that simply points at stuff within this world.  What gives me a sense of the animals’ spiritual worth?  The funny story of Balaam gives me one point.  We talked a bit about that story in last week’s sermon.  Balaam’s donkey eventually prophesies to Balaam.  But before that there is this humorous scene of Balaam riding the donkey and an angel appears holding a sword.  The donkey can see the angel and it stops. Meanwhile Balaam is blind to the spiritual reality. The poor animal tries to save Balaam by turning aside.  Balaam responds by beating the poor beast.  But the donkey persists in trying to warn Balaam in multiple ways.  The animals can at times be more spiritually aware than we are.

When you layer on top of that potential spiritual awareness two other things.  First being that God’s covenant after the flood is not just with Noah, but is “an everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”  The animals are worthy of the covenant. The Apostle Paul talks in similar ways in Romans 8.  “All creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope.”  All creation waits with eager longing for the revealing.  Those animals that are part of the Noahide covenant wait with longing for the final revelation and the freeing of our bondage. All creation has this hope.  If you aren’t going to be there, why hope for it?

I’ll finish this mediation by returning to Jesus’ word’s about the sparrows.  “They are remembered.  Not one of them is forgotten before God.” In this sense all those animals are very much like us.  Our hope is in God remembering his covenant. He has engraved us on his hand and will recall us from the pit.  The same type of statement is given about the sparrows sold for pennies for sacrifice.  God remembers them.

So I think that simple “yes” is correct.  But there are some mighty good reasons behind it.  Reasons that go to the heart of the Gospel.  The entire world is Gods, and he’s going to remake it all good.