The Beatitudes – Vision and Challenge

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One of the things that I am constantly amazed at is how the Church or Christianity is usually placed in the narrow, weak, small-minded, etc category. To me the simple facts are usually just the opposite. It is the church that requires disciples of Jesus to a) look up and see with eschatological or eternal eyes, b) recognize your real pitiful condition and c) look for salvation from outside yourself and d) start living that eternal reality here and now even though the kingdom has not been completely revealed. Each of those elements takes more courage and greater vision than anything those who attack the church have ever tried.

Everything the world tries to do can be condensed to getting you to narrow you focus to something you think you can control. As long as you don’t ask the big questions or get outside of a comfort range, then you can fool yourself in a high self-esteem. Christ says blessed are the poor in spirit which is point a and b. If you look up with eyes that see beyond your immediate plot you should recognize just how poor and pitiful we are. You can recognize that and run back immediately to your little plot. The Christian recognizes it and confesses it – I am a poor miserable sinner. Which takes more vision and courage – retreat into the seemingly safe self, or confession? Which is more limiting – finding yourself in within a much larger plot, or going back to your small one? The world wants you to stay so small that you don’t even think you need anyone else let alone a savior. Christianity says its hopeless absent God’s action in Christ. Which takes more courage: trying to keep everything in your own hands, or turning your very life over to someone else? And then Christ says go be merciful, be pure in heart (read as seek God first), be peacemakers. You know what happens to those kind of people in this world. But Christ says his disciples do these things. These are what my blessed people will look like.

It is one of those truisms that the world will throw at the church that only weak people need religion, or that the church is for those who are small minded. That truism is demonstrably false. It is those attempting to follow Christ, to live out their religion, that are given much larger vision and challenges. It is much easier to run back to the deceptive safety of one small plot. But running back to that small existence casts away the blessings. Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Do you have a church?

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A few remarks by people in bible class afterward were interesting feedback. This seem seemed to strike harder than I would have expected. Not that the notes that struck were not there, just that I would have expected a slightly different reaction.

Protestantism and Lutheranism in particular are very polar – either this or that. When you are talking about discipleship or responding to the call of Christ, that isn’t always helpful. Modern protestants have become very able to reduce the gospel to one dimension – believe the right thing. Faith Alone. The dramatic flattening of the gospel in many churches isn’t all Paul’s fault, because Paul is never that one dimensional, but Matthew and the gospels help. The call comes to different people in different ways. The gospel is that it is from God’s guidance and never more than we can handle. That simple faith in the right things – for me encapsulated in the creeds – is the general call given to all humanity. Repent, the Kingdom is here!

But the life of Faith may contain individual calls that go beyond that. They are part of the individuals call to follow. They are part of separating out the disciple of the Kingdom from the admirer.

That title questions – Do you have a church? – is from a story used in the sermon. It is important to ask. Do you have a community of people responding and guided by the call of Jesus, or a club of Jesus admirers?

[Another deeper point not touched on in the sermon directly, but broached in bible class and always floating in Matthew is: are the disciples the embryo church or are they the apostles? When you hear the call to be fisher’s of people, is that given to the entire church, or to the ministers? Same in Matthew 28:18-20. Is the great commission to the church as a whole, or those who normally baptize and teach? It is not as clean as we’d like it. Although I’m sure that many would not like this, how you answer that question is probably a bigger difference today between Rome and Protestants than justification. And that also has an impact on Do you have a church? Rome traditionally said Protestants didn’t. Now we are just imperfectly in communion. Is there a church structure – an ecclesiology – that acknowledges the ambiguity?]

Fulfilling All Righteousness

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Text: Matt 3:13-17

I like knowing what I’m going to say in the pulpit before I say it. What that means is that I’m usually over-prepared. But events happen which can make all that preparation if not meaningless, just not what needs to be said. As the day Saturday went along, I new I had to say something about the shooting in AZ. If there is anything that sermons are for or pastors should be able to help with, it is offering a biblical way of thinking about events. The task of discipleship is forming within ourselves, or for pastors with their congregations, the mind of Christ – being conformed to his likeness (Rom 8:29).

And it is exactly in awful and terrible events like mass shootings that the Christian witness makes the most sense. The enlightenment’s only answer to such events is mental illness. That is a form of scapegoating. We don’t understand, so we cast the person out – they are mentally ill. The biblical witness is sin. We are all bent. We all have that within us. It is by grace that we are saved. See the difference? The world’s current answer divides us, judges and doesn’t provide a real answer other than walking quickly past. The biblical answer of sin says no to the division and judgment. And it provides a real answer – repent, we have a savior and a spirit.

The text works. Jesus stood for us in his baptism. Instead of doing what we want to do – divide and judge – Jesus stood with us in the waters of the Jordan. Because of his standing with us, and the Father’s bestowing of the Spirit on him, we also have the Spirit in his baptism. We are not slaves to sin.

The Holy Innocents

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Matt 2:13-23

This is an awful Christmas text. It is heart wrench and not at all in the saccharine mode of modern Christmas. In the words of Doctor Who – ‘its half-way through the dark.’

So far I’m finding Matthew tougher that either Luke or Mark to preach from. I think that is because of a couple of impressions of mine.
1) This could be take the wrong way, but I generally think that most Christians today, even those who claim a high view of Scripture, have a low view. When it comes down to it, we really question or hold suspect if the Bible is the Word of God. If we did think it was the very Word, we would struggle with it. We would argue over it. We would have bibles worn out. Fact is we don’t. The opposite of love isn’t hate but indifference. My impressions of Mark and Luke were that their stories stood on their own a little more. They were more about ‘Jesus is Lord’ which is a theme that can be made within the context of Jesus’ life. Matthew, as this sermon will talk about, has some different themes like ‘Jesus is the Son of David’ and ‘Jesus is the Nazarene/Suffering Servant’. Those are intensely biblical. If you don’t have a high view of scripture, and you don’t have a good knowledge of the basic salvation story, then Matthew’s “proofs” are meaningless.
2) Mark is supposed to be the gritty one, but Matthew in the infancy is the one that looks at the abyss. Matthew is the one that gives us our sin in all its horribleness – a tyrant killing babies. When one of your proofs that Jesus is the messiah is that he is the Nazarene/Suffering Servant, Matthew so far has some darker colors on his palate.

Here is the money portion or emotional payoff of the full sermon…
Suffering Servant
The closest I can come to seeing it, is Matthew’s last “proof”. In order that he would be called a nazarene. That Jesus would be despised among men and rejected. A man acquainted with grief.
Sometimes, in fact in this sin crippled world most of the time, what we can do and accomplish is nothing. Sometimes the tyrants are too strong – including that tyrant sin within us. Sometimes there is no Egypt to run to. Sometimes there are no angels instructing a righteous step-father Joseph. Sometimes all we can do is bear witness. Bear witness that God is not the God of the philosophers distant and far off. God is not the cleaned up and sparkly God of the marketers and Christmas cartoons. We bear witness that God is one of passion.
That the babe in the manger grew up to a cross. That the God revealed to us in his Word does not spare us from life, but came to give us life. Right now, that life includes sorrow, it includes passion. But it also includes a God, a savior, who has felt it and knows it all. A God, a savior who remembers. A God, a savior who will comfort Rachel in the only way possible. Her children that are no more – will be. Because that savior bust the gates of death.
Now we might be Nazarenes, despised and rejected. Now we might be standing a Rama – the place of leaving for exile. But now we have hope – a God, a savior who is Christ the Lord.

So What Does it mean the Jesus was ‘The Son of David”?

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Text: Matt 1:18-25
This text from Matthew has a really clear purpose – to explain how Jesus is the Son of David even though he is the Son of the Virgin Mary. But I have to admit that what this text was written to address is just not relevant to today. Now before anyone goes nuts (‘the Parson has lost it, he’s throwing out the scripture!’), I’m perfectly willing to say its scripture. It is interesting in and of itself. But it was written in an apologetic mindset. It was written to convince people that Jesus was born of a virgin and still the Son of David.

There must be something important about Jesus being the Son of David. Something that maybe just escapes me, but I’d bet escapes most Christians today. I suggest three things, but it is more of an open question.

My thoughts were: 1) The eternal throne of David is in the new Jerusalem. What goes on in the Old Jerusalem carries no special religious significance. (i.e. the evangelicals that encourage a pro-Israel policy because of religious prophecy are badly misguided). 2) The Son of David – the fact that Jesus was the Jewish messiah – says something about how important culture is. God incarnated himself in a very particular culture, and then he forms a new people and calls them his body. Christians are the body of Christ. It is our task to incarnate Christ to our very specific time, place, culture. 3) The Son of David was the first to hold the key (see Isa 22:22). That key was given by the Son of David to Peter and the Apostles (i.e. the church). (see Matt 16:18-19, and Rev 3:7). That key is our salvation from sin. The king has the authority to pardon. Jesus as the eternal King – the eternal son of David – can pardon eternally.

So maybe it is relevant, but not easy to think about. About as easy as how God was born of a virgin.

Pick it up and read it / Prepare for the Coming King

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First comment, the Thanksgiving sermon was the better sermon this week. Page down and read that one if you didn’t hear it. That one was winsome and inviting and still crunchy, which by that I mean it had a message behind it that didn’t duck reality. This Sunday sermon was crunchy, but winsome…not so much. Which is a deep error when you are trying to get people to do something. In this case pick up the bible and read it.

It was the first Sunday of Advent which means it is new years day in the church. The lectionary rolls over to a different gospel, this year Matthew. The text was Matt 21:1-11 which is the triumphal entry or Palm Sunday. The main textual point is the welcoming of a king. That day 2000 years ago they welcomed a king who came humbly, but wanted the one who came in righteousness. Somewhere in the future, we welcome a king who comes in righteousness, but what is our impression of Jesus? How do we prepare for the coming of a King?

If the Gallup pole is right, we don’t prepare at all. We probably spend more time preparing for Santa than for Christ. And there are many multiple ways of preparing. Reading the scriptures is not the only way of being in the Word. But it is the seedbed. The scriptures are the authoritative way that God has chosen to speak to us. And here I go ranting again. Being open to the scriptures is just that important. Emotionally, I’m grabbing everyone I can by the lapels and shaking – these words are life. Its that important. Make time for it. Make sure your lamps have oil.

I ended the sermon with three questions. Three questions that a Bible literate loving people could chew on. I think these three questions might get to the core spiritual problem of today. I’ve got some personal answers to them, but they are dangerous and tough. And they require a people grounded on the truth of scripture.

1) What does it mean for how we should be living if the first time he came humble, but with righteousness the next time?
2) Where are we like the Galileans hailing the Galilean messiah today, going home and letting Jerusalem do to our messiah as it wills? [That is a question for laymen and women – because we clergy are probably the Jerusalem.]
3) How does a church forced out to the margins of society – forced to live from the Mount of Olives – respond like David – “weeping for the son who forced him out”?

Why Some not Others…

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It is hard talking about this one. Because there is no real answer other than prayer, which I desperately beg of you to do.

In that vein, this is Anselm of Canterbury which happened to be the prayer of the day in my prayerbook…

Blessed Lord and Savior who has commanded us to love one another, grant us grace that, having received your undeserved bounty, we may love every man in you and for you. We implore your clemency for all; but especially for the friends whom your love has given us. Love them, o fountain of Love, and make them to love you with all their heart, with all their mind and with all their soul, that those things only which are pleasing to you they may will and speak and do. And though our prayer is cold, because our charity is so little fervent, yet you are rich in mercy. Measure not your goodness to them by the dullness of our devotion; but as your kindness surpasses all human affection, so let your hearing transcend our prayer. Do to them what is expedient for them, according to you will, that they being always and everywhere ruled and protected by you, may attain in the end to everlasting life; and to you, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and praise forever and ever. Amen

All Saints – Two Calendars telling a story

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Let me just say two things about this sermon: 1) I really hate it as a sermon. I think it misses the audience, doesn’t point to Christ enough, lacks a real solid textual foundation and doesn’t have the unity of message it should have. 2) I think some of the parts of it by themselves are bleeding raw and cut right to the heart of life. Modern life has lost the saints and the One who makes them and as a result is childish and soulless. We can’t see the problems even though they are right before our eyes. Being a Christian is a call to a life with a larger canvass, not a safe harbor.

Any sermon is a balance or weaving of separate threads. I have a comfort zone being very textual. In my own walk I can’t get over the fact that God speaks in this book, and I want to know as much about it as possible. That comfort zone moves through to application. Basically I have about five outlines: Very simple text-application, a little more complex 4 pages outline with the four pages being trouble in the text, gospel in the text, trouble in the world and gospel in the world (the individual pages can come in any order, when they are text, text, world, world it reduces to text-app), a three point outline (have something to say and say it well, or if you took debate/speech this tends to be a classic argument outline), a question and answer outline, and a refrain structure (multiple images or examples from life that end with the same biblical refrain). All of those outlines are about relating the text we are reading to our lives, or in reality relating our lives to the text. You could say I’m usually about trying to get people to let the biblical text read their lives. This sermon had a different basis in that the liturgical day (All Saints Day) was really the theme. Textual exposition was greatly reduced and the theology of being a Saint was brought forward. The general outline was compare and contrast – living life and interpreting reality from a secular veiwpoint alone (living with a calendar that only has Halloween) and living life with a church calendar (living with All Saints). Instead of being textual this sermon was theological and thematic.

It needed to be better.