Better late than never: Here’s a little something about Thanksgiving.
We’re awfully close to the tipping point where the Thanksgiving holiday falls completely into the clutches of the advertising world, where Thanksgiving is treated as just another excuse to get you to buy more stuff, accumulate more goods. Our holy-days have been co-opted by the marketers and the cultural diluters: All Hallows Eve, the feast day of St. Valentine, the Nativity of our Lord, and the festival of Christ’s resurrection. They’re pretty good excuses to sell, sell, sell. But Thanksgiving remains as a small, flickering light, where the elements of a great holiday are still linked to the good and precious small things that make for a deep, rich life: family, friends, a little turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and, depending on your predilections, a nice Merlot or a glass of Mogen David. As the old hymn says, we gather together as God’s people. And in our gathering we give thanks.
So how about it? Go on now and give thanks. If you read the story of Jesus and the ten lepers in the gospel, that’s what it seems to be about: giving proper thanks to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus meets up with these ten lepers and gets ‘em all nice and clean, with no more rotting fingers and noses, and sends them on their merry way to be declared by the priests as fit for human company again. Nine of the ten former lepers head out presumably to the local gentlemen priests’ club to get their clean bills of health. But that one comes back to thank Jesus who, frankly, seems a bit surprised at the paltry return on his investment of messianic healing power. But give thanks is what the tenth leper does and then gets sent on his way again.
I’ve had any number of chances to preach on this story of Jesus and the ten lepers. And I’ve been like most preachers who take it as an opportunity to tell my hearers what a fine example that tenth leper is. "See! Now there’s a truly thankful fella. If you want to be an upstanding Christian you should take him as your model. Give thanks, my friends, give thanks."
But I’ve come to the conclusion that to speak of this remarkable little story in this way is to come at it with very little attention to my call to deliver God’s word to you in a manner that actually gives you saving faith. For what’s a sermon that tells you to give thanks but a thinly disguised example of yet another demand dressed up in religious language? Because I use the example of someone who encountered God in the flesh, then somehow that must be good news for sinners like you and me. But here’s why such a sermon is unfitting for a Christian preacher, and a Lutheran one at that: It pays attention neither to how your life actually works or to what Jesus death and resurrection have done for you and all creation.
If I were to stand here in the pulpit and tell you to take the tenth leper as your model and be thankful, it would ignore how such thanks actually comes about. It’s the nature of relationship stuff that things like faith, hope and love (the big three that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13, the standard wedding reading) don’t appear as a result of our will. Who in the world has ever become hopeful because they decided to have hope? Hope comes when the thing hoped for is so sweet and rich that a person can’t help but wait for it with eagerness. In Ephesians Paul points beyond the act of hoping to the thing we await: “the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”
The same is true of love, for has any one you gotten up one day and thought, “I’ve decided to fall in love today”? Try it out for size. Turn to the person next to you. Look that person in the eye and decide to fall in love. It doesn't work, does it? You fall in love because your beloved has so much charm and wit, or a winsome smile and long eyelashes, that you just can’t help yourself. As the old Temptations song said, “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch / You know that I love you / I can't help myself / I love you and nobody else.”
That’s exactly how it works with thanksgiving. You might tell someone thanks because your parents brought you up to be polite, to say please and thank you as a matter of course, because that’s what you ought to do. But that’s not the same thing as having a thankful heart. It’s not the same thing as bursting with gratitude because you know how much you owe the person you’re thanking.
Demands like “Be thankful!” have never done us sinners much good, because, while they can get us to drum up some outward action like shaping air and teeth and tongue into the words “thank you,” they simply can’t make you thankful. Martin Luther liked to tell his hearers that these were words from Moses. They’re the law, making demands, doling out commands. They might be able to pull you into line morally, so you don’t hurt someone else. But the law, even something as nice and good as saying, “Be thankful,” can’t change your heart. Moses couldn't make it happen for the Israelites, and neither can a law-preaching pastor standing in front of a congregation on Thanksgiving Eve.
So if the story of the thankful leper and Jesus isn't meant as an example for you to take up, then what’s it do for you? I’ll tell you: This word from God comes to place your whole life under the light of God’s judgment and Christ’s redemption. Its aim is not to tell you to decide to be thankful, but to make you thankful, to give you faith, to get you to fall in love with your Lord, and to save you from the devil, the world and your sinful self.
These lepers may have had a skin disease that you’re fortunate enough not to be afflicted with, but they’re really no different from you. You can’t say, “Whew! It’s a good thing I don’t have to deal with such an ugly, smelly disease. I’m glad that I’m in good shape.” But leprosy was just the particular form of sinful brokenness that they had to live with each and every day. It's simply another variation on the wages of sin that we human beings have been paid since our first mother and father sinned in the Garden.
You may not have leprosy, but the real disease that lies behind it is something you’ve caught. It’s capital-S Sin and your Lord has come to cure you of it. But notice this: In this story, Jesus doesn’t come to cure some leprosy out of ten people who don’t have the disease. He is the great physician who’s come to heal the sick, to make the lame walk, the deaf to hear, and the blind see. Christ our Lord comes to take on the raging virus of sin in all its forms, so that you might be healed.
Notice in this story of Jesus and the lepers that not a single one of them was healed because they decided to be healed and the tenth leper didn’t come back because he decided he needed to be thankful. The healing comes simply because that’s our Lord’s nature. Wherever he encounters the effects of Sin he’s Johnny-on-the-spot serving up a dose of his power. Jesus heals because he wants to, because that’s what he’s come to do. His healing is valid; it actually happens.
In the world’s eyes, not being a leper anymore is a pretty good thing, just like not being a thief or not being a person trailing the baggage of broken relationships is a good thing. Jesus is just fine making that sort of visible healing happen. But he’s not satisfied with just shining up the veneer of your life or the lives of the lepers or the lives of any sinner. Such a repair job is just a surface fix and won’t last beyond your last breath. Those nine lepers who went off in search of the priests to show off their suitability and their newly regained status as clean people may get permission to enter the synagogues, but the fact that they have a clean bill of health doesn’t mean any real change has happened for them.
It’s an awful lot like having the gospel proclaimed to you in the water and word in baptism and then never having it mean a lick. Your baptism can be valid without having any real effect. You can dress a person up in a clean white robe without it actually cleaning up that person’s heart and placing faith where there was only unbelief. No, what Jesus is after is a complete and utter change in the identity and very being of sinners like you and the lepers. He wants to make a new creation out of you, and that only happens when he gets at the truth of the sickness of sin in you.
There’s nothing that any of us truly deserves from God except his wrath and judgment. We come before God not having kept the commandments, not having loved our neighbors as ourselves, not loving the Lord with all our heart, strength and mind. Instead, and if we’re honest about ourselves, we know that it’s we ourselves whom we’ve put first in our lives. We trust ourselves to make a future, to achieve whatever goals we hope to arrive at in life, to make our next breath happen, and our next and our next. And that’s exactly what happened for those nine lepers. They don’t come back to Jesus because they’re off to live their lives, assuming that they can go on and on and on like the Energizer bunny, under their own power and free will to make new lives for themselves.
But the tenth leper, now that’s a different story. He comes back not to confess his new cleanness like the other nine did to the priests. He came back to the source of the new life he’d been given. He came because he recognized his nothingness apart from Jesus. When you know you deserve nothing and Jesus gives you absolutely everything, when you realize the true state of affairs, there’s nothing to do but give thanks. The leper just couldn’t help himself.
What he did was no different from what Luther talked about in the Small Catechism when he explained what baptism means for daily living: “It means that the old creature in us with all its sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily contrition and repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
You see, it’s not in the healing that salvation and thankfulness come for the tenth leper. It’s in having his eyes opened and in the relationship Jesus established with him that his complete healing and salvation happens. Not only is he a leper who was forced to live on the fringes of society, always forced to give people warning of his presence. He’s also a Samaritan, someone who’s seen by the religious folk of the day as an outsider, unable to come into God’s good graces. Not only does Jesus have no fear of the man’s disease, he also doesn’t have a problem with his lack of religious credentials. Christ our Lord is smitten with those who have no shred of evidence to plead their goodness or righteousness.
All the tenth leper had was a true knowledge of his nothingness and the new reality of his life caused by this preacher from Nazareth. It’s in the mysterious combination, in the unbreakable bond of both his living death as a leper and an outsider and his new clean state in Christ that he has the full and complete healing that Jesus is after along. When that happens there’s only the explosion of gratitude that can result, the new healed body lying prostrate before Jesus, saying, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
And this is why a sermon saying you ought to be thankful doesn’t do the trick. It misses the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection. If all you needed to get better from the disease of Sin is an example or a demand or a law, Moses would have been plenty for you. You wouldn’t need a savior. You wouldn’t need the great physician. You wouldn’t need anything but a how-to manual for successful living or moral aptitude or a copy of Godliness for Dummies.
To tell you to be thankful would be to forget the very thing that gives you any life at all: your Lord’s death and resurrection. It would be to leave out the most important part of this story and your story: the event that tells the truth about your sinfulness and death and at the same time raises you up to new life. For it is Jesus on the cross who changes everything for you. It was the empty tomb that declared the emptying of Jesus’ lungs of their last breath as the victory over your Sin. It is Jesus crucified and risen who says your divine judgment is condemnation and your hope is in him alone.
As Paul says in Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul’s three words in Corinthians, faith, hope and love, are relational. They happen because you’re compelled to love, to hope and, finally, to trust. At the end of the story, Jesus doesn’t say to the leper that his thankfulness has made him well, but his faith. In the trusting of Jesus, the leper is fully and finally healed both of leprosy and his Sin.
It’s all a matter of faith. And if it’s faith that will make you well, then you might just ask, “Where the heck can I get me some of that bad stuff?” I tell you it comes when true sinners, and not sham sinners, appear before the Lord and hear his freeing word. So gird your loins, sinner, for Jesus is about to come before you: Stand up straight with your broken lives and your trust in yourselves. Throw off your bandages to reveal your rotting flesh like a real sinner and hear our Lord as he speaks to you: You are forgiven in spite of yourself. You are claimed by one who is absolutely unafraid of your darkest secret and deepest shame. He knows you through and through, for he is the one who holds each and every cell, all your amino acids and DNA together. And he is dead and risen that you might have life and have it abundantly. No longer does your future depend on either your past or your resolve to make things better, for Christ comes to raise you from the dead and bring you salvation all on his own power, his own holiness, his own lust for life.
Now you no longer need to decide to be thankful, for our Lord has given you everything and eternity, too. You are given something that elicits your gratitude. And in that new life, suddenly all God’s good gifts come to be seen as our Lord’s horn of plenty. Your sweet potatoes with marshmallows. The warmth of your bed on a crisp November morning. Your beloved family gathered around your table tomorrow and those you’ve lost who are gathered around God’s heavenly table. Your future. Your past. Your every single breath and heartbeat. These come not just as another thing you should be grateful for in life, but an actual part of the salvation that God has set out for you from the beginning of time.
Then the word for you is not, “Be thankful,” but “Get up and go on your way in the new life you’ve been given. Your faith has made you well.”
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Glory and the cross
A Lutheran student at a Baptist seminary wrote me about a statement of faith she had been asked to write. Her professor wanted to her to include something about glorification, an unfamiliar concept to her as a Lutheran. She asked for my input. Here’s my response:
In 1518 Luther presented his teaching in the form of a disputation at a gathering of his fellow Augustinian monks in Heidelberg. In the theses of the Heidelberg Disputation he makes a distinction between a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross:
18. It is certain that a man must completely despair of himself in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.
19. The one who beholds what is invisible of God, through the perception of what is made, is not rightly called a theologian.
20. But rather the one who perceives what is visible of God, God’s “backside,” by beholding the sufferings and the cross.
21. The “theologian of glory” calls the bad good and the good bad. The “theologian of the cross” says what a thing is.
Luther’s take is that our active righteousness (perhaps we could call it visible glorification) is actually dangerous, because it allows us to fall under the illusion that our spiritual success is an indication of our standing with God. Thus, God's work in us is hidden under the sign of its opposite, that is, righteousness, glory, success and victory come to us under the guise of sinfulness, brokenness, defeat and loss. Christ himself, and his suffering and death, are the clearest place God operates that way. Yet it works that way for me individually as well. It is in my own loss, suffering and death that I am finally able to admit my own inability “to obtain the grace of Christ.” In my failure I see that my only hope lies in him crucified.
Thus, a theologian of glory sees these things and regards them as proof positive of my being neither saved nor sanctified. Instead, the theologian of glory would push me to advance my religious life, become more moral and ethical, seek out glorious, mystical, spiritual experiences, and every day in every way become better and better. So a theologian of glory sees something (all these religious, moral activities) and calls it what it is not, that is, salvific and sanctifying.
The theologian of the cross, on the other hand, regards what the theologian of glory lifts up as not much better than manure. These so-called sanctifying activities lead me away from Christ and into my own self-continuity project. The theologian of the cross regards as holy any moment when I’m captivated by my Lord’s cross, over against my captivation to my own self, my victory, my visible righteousness and glory. If Christ alone is the way, the truth and the life, then it is his suffering and death that are my glory. And whenever and wherever I am shaped to his same cross by the circumstances of life that work to kill my self-sustenance and reliance, I am already glorified.
This is the essence of faith, that we look away from ourselves to Christ for our salvation, and past ourselves to our neighbor’s needs for the real work we’re called to be engaged in. Thus, where faith points to Christ justification is in place and, with it, sanctification. Luther hits this in a couple more theses in the Disputation:
25. The one who does much “work” is not the righteous one, but the one who, without “work,” has much faith in Christ.
26. The law says, “Do this!”, and it never is done. Grace says, “Believe in this one!”, and forthwith everything is done.
In the end, true glory on Christ’s part is active not passive: He does the work of dying for a sinner like me. True glory on my part is completely passive and not active: As Luther says in the Catechism, “I confess that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit calls me through the gospel, enlightens me with his gifts and sanctifies and keeps me in the one true faith.” If Christ has attained my salvation by his work, there simply is nothing left for me to do than trust what’s promised. My nothingness is his glory, because it honors him as the Lord who takes on my sin and is truly able to bring me into the comforting bosom of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
If I’m pushed into any activity aimed at achieving some glory (whether it’s a certain level of religious commitment, engagement in spiritual exercises, buying the right deodorant or showing up at the Jordan Creek mall at midnight on Black Friday), I simply have to reject it as the same proposition Satan offered to Christ in the wilderness. My glory is to take what comes at me in this life, even tremendous loss, and serve faithfully in my various vocations as husband, son, dad, friend, neighbor, professor, citizen, pastor. In fact, my glory becomes visible in those places where I am called to give myself up to those whom Luther called “die Nächste,” the neighbors. In short, when I no longer need to seek after my glory, it’s given to me on a plate in these plain, humble, earthy callings.
(For the full set of theses in the Heidelberg Disputation, check out Clint Schnekloth's blog: http://lutheranconfessions.blogspot.com/2006/10/heidelberg-disputation.html.)
In 1518 Luther presented his teaching in the form of a disputation at a gathering of his fellow Augustinian monks in Heidelberg. In the theses of the Heidelberg Disputation he makes a distinction between a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross:
18. It is certain that a man must completely despair of himself in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.
19. The one who beholds what is invisible of God, through the perception of what is made, is not rightly called a theologian.
20. But rather the one who perceives what is visible of God, God’s “backside,” by beholding the sufferings and the cross.
21. The “theologian of glory” calls the bad good and the good bad. The “theologian of the cross” says what a thing is.
Luther’s take is that our active righteousness (perhaps we could call it visible glorification) is actually dangerous, because it allows us to fall under the illusion that our spiritual success is an indication of our standing with God. Thus, God's work in us is hidden under the sign of its opposite, that is, righteousness, glory, success and victory come to us under the guise of sinfulness, brokenness, defeat and loss. Christ himself, and his suffering and death, are the clearest place God operates that way. Yet it works that way for me individually as well. It is in my own loss, suffering and death that I am finally able to admit my own inability “to obtain the grace of Christ.” In my failure I see that my only hope lies in him crucified.
Thus, a theologian of glory sees these things and regards them as proof positive of my being neither saved nor sanctified. Instead, the theologian of glory would push me to advance my religious life, become more moral and ethical, seek out glorious, mystical, spiritual experiences, and every day in every way become better and better. So a theologian of glory sees something (all these religious, moral activities) and calls it what it is not, that is, salvific and sanctifying.
The theologian of the cross, on the other hand, regards what the theologian of glory lifts up as not much better than manure. These so-called sanctifying activities lead me away from Christ and into my own self-continuity project. The theologian of the cross regards as holy any moment when I’m captivated by my Lord’s cross, over against my captivation to my own self, my victory, my visible righteousness and glory. If Christ alone is the way, the truth and the life, then it is his suffering and death that are my glory. And whenever and wherever I am shaped to his same cross by the circumstances of life that work to kill my self-sustenance and reliance, I am already glorified.
This is the essence of faith, that we look away from ourselves to Christ for our salvation, and past ourselves to our neighbor’s needs for the real work we’re called to be engaged in. Thus, where faith points to Christ justification is in place and, with it, sanctification. Luther hits this in a couple more theses in the Disputation:
25. The one who does much “work” is not the righteous one, but the one who, without “work,” has much faith in Christ.
26. The law says, “Do this!”, and it never is done. Grace says, “Believe in this one!”, and forthwith everything is done.
In the end, true glory on Christ’s part is active not passive: He does the work of dying for a sinner like me. True glory on my part is completely passive and not active: As Luther says in the Catechism, “I confess that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit calls me through the gospel, enlightens me with his gifts and sanctifies and keeps me in the one true faith.” If Christ has attained my salvation by his work, there simply is nothing left for me to do than trust what’s promised. My nothingness is his glory, because it honors him as the Lord who takes on my sin and is truly able to bring me into the comforting bosom of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
If I’m pushed into any activity aimed at achieving some glory (whether it’s a certain level of religious commitment, engagement in spiritual exercises, buying the right deodorant or showing up at the Jordan Creek mall at midnight on Black Friday), I simply have to reject it as the same proposition Satan offered to Christ in the wilderness. My glory is to take what comes at me in this life, even tremendous loss, and serve faithfully in my various vocations as husband, son, dad, friend, neighbor, professor, citizen, pastor. In fact, my glory becomes visible in those places where I am called to give myself up to those whom Luther called “die Nächste,” the neighbors. In short, when I no longer need to seek after my glory, it’s given to me on a plate in these plain, humble, earthy callings.
(For the full set of theses in the Heidelberg Disputation, check out Clint Schnekloth's blog: http://lutheranconfessions.blogspot.com/2006/10/heidelberg-disputation.html.)
Friday, November 7, 2008
Pixar and preaching, part II
If we are to preach the gospel “in its truth and purity,” as the Catechism says, then we might take a page from the Pixar playbook. We cannot fall prey to our own skepticism about the ability of a law-and-gospel word to actually do its work, nor can we shirk the task of manipulating the will of our hearer and, thus, draw that one into the realm of faith.
If preachers are to be faithful, then they cannot be so craven as to reject the assertion that faith comes by hearing. The work of the preacher is to be Johnny-on-the-spot appearing in the midst of the Law’s kill zone with a word that does indeed raise the hearer to new life. And if the hearer doesn’t recognize how deep sin runs or how one’s attention to the Law leads not to self-continuity but to the grave, then the preacher must trust the word preached to expose such a denial and bring it to light.
In any event, the preacher cannot assume that faith is already present for the pew-sitter. When that happens, what results is a job description for successful “Christian” living or an action plan for achieving justice or a bunch of dithering on moral schemes. We can use Kent Jones’ assessment in his Pixar article as an analog: This kind of preacher revels in the pleasure of storytelling, either in morality tales and other fables of self-preservation or in the mantra of an all-accepting God.
This sort of self-styled preaching sophisticate is “loath to relinquish enough precious sophistication to fully surrender” to the true power of the word which arrives as both law and gospel. On the one hand, there appears a preacher who is an expert at value-laden living. Whether those values lie on the right or the left of the political spectrum is irrelevant – either way they’re just another appearance of the law dressed up as pseudo-gospel. Such is the word from the lips of a theologian of glory. It sees the law and calls it what it is not: the gospel.
On the other hand, the preacher of all-rightness before God fashions the preaching moment into the homiletical equivalent of Stuart Smalley’s affirmations on Saturday Night Live in days of yore: “You're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, God likes you!” If the word is that God accepts you as you are, then it’s an antinomianism that at its core is really more law. The hearer is left in the same old situation, aware of the reality that something isn’t working, and begins to distrust the power of the word to do something, anything.
How about we gospel preachers make some radical assumptions? Try these on for size:
Those you preach to don’t already have all the faith they need (and maybe aren’t baptized). Your job is to speak God’s word in a way that faith is created – just as that same word created the heavens and the earth at the very beginning. And just because your preaching brings faith today, don’t assume it’ll still be there next Sunday!
Your pew-sitters are smart enough to detect when you’re giving them a load of bull. They may not catch on immediately, but eventually their B.S. detectors will calibrate and they’ll vote with their feet (see, for example, the ELCA, which has experienced tremendous losses in its two-decade-long history). At some point they’ll need a word powerful enough to raise the dead. If you don’t have it, you’ll have left them hopeless and dead. Do you not remember what you swore to do at your ordination?
It’s okay to manipulate your audience – as long as it’s not self-aggrandizing manipulation or teaching them to engage in spiritual self-pleasuring. In the parable of the wedding banquet, the king sends his soldiers out to compel the guests to come in. If Luther’s right about us being beasts of burden ridden by God and the devil, God calls you to take the reins and give your hearers a compelling word – one to which they can’t help but say, “Amen.”
Hear the wonder and know the awe of the gospel that has saved you yourself. To that end allow me to preach to you: “You who organize your days and deeds in order to prolong your life and have just one more day to finally get it right: your days are numbered and all your efforts come to naught. Yet there is one won’t accept what you thing you can bring to the table, for he not only expects more from you, he’s also ready, willing and able to give it to you. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for you that you might have his own new, resurrected life. He’s made himself the foundation and linch-pin of all the good gifts God has in store for you. Open your eyes and see that you are risen from the death of your sin. Look up. He’s come for you. Hang on. You’re in for the ride of your life!”
More to come???
If preachers are to be faithful, then they cannot be so craven as to reject the assertion that faith comes by hearing. The work of the preacher is to be Johnny-on-the-spot appearing in the midst of the Law’s kill zone with a word that does indeed raise the hearer to new life. And if the hearer doesn’t recognize how deep sin runs or how one’s attention to the Law leads not to self-continuity but to the grave, then the preacher must trust the word preached to expose such a denial and bring it to light.
In any event, the preacher cannot assume that faith is already present for the pew-sitter. When that happens, what results is a job description for successful “Christian” living or an action plan for achieving justice or a bunch of dithering on moral schemes. We can use Kent Jones’ assessment in his Pixar article as an analog: This kind of preacher revels in the pleasure of storytelling, either in morality tales and other fables of self-preservation or in the mantra of an all-accepting God.
This sort of self-styled preaching sophisticate is “loath to relinquish enough precious sophistication to fully surrender” to the true power of the word which arrives as both law and gospel. On the one hand, there appears a preacher who is an expert at value-laden living. Whether those values lie on the right or the left of the political spectrum is irrelevant – either way they’re just another appearance of the law dressed up as pseudo-gospel. Such is the word from the lips of a theologian of glory. It sees the law and calls it what it is not: the gospel.
On the other hand, the preacher of all-rightness before God fashions the preaching moment into the homiletical equivalent of Stuart Smalley’s affirmations on Saturday Night Live in days of yore: “You're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, God likes you!” If the word is that God accepts you as you are, then it’s an antinomianism that at its core is really more law. The hearer is left in the same old situation, aware of the reality that something isn’t working, and begins to distrust the power of the word to do something, anything.
How about we gospel preachers make some radical assumptions? Try these on for size:
Those you preach to don’t already have all the faith they need (and maybe aren’t baptized). Your job is to speak God’s word in a way that faith is created – just as that same word created the heavens and the earth at the very beginning. And just because your preaching brings faith today, don’t assume it’ll still be there next Sunday!
Your pew-sitters are smart enough to detect when you’re giving them a load of bull. They may not catch on immediately, but eventually their B.S. detectors will calibrate and they’ll vote with their feet (see, for example, the ELCA, which has experienced tremendous losses in its two-decade-long history). At some point they’ll need a word powerful enough to raise the dead. If you don’t have it, you’ll have left them hopeless and dead. Do you not remember what you swore to do at your ordination?
It’s okay to manipulate your audience – as long as it’s not self-aggrandizing manipulation or teaching them to engage in spiritual self-pleasuring. In the parable of the wedding banquet, the king sends his soldiers out to compel the guests to come in. If Luther’s right about us being beasts of burden ridden by God and the devil, God calls you to take the reins and give your hearers a compelling word – one to which they can’t help but say, “Amen.”
Hear the wonder and know the awe of the gospel that has saved you yourself. To that end allow me to preach to you: “You who organize your days and deeds in order to prolong your life and have just one more day to finally get it right: your days are numbered and all your efforts come to naught. Yet there is one won’t accept what you thing you can bring to the table, for he not only expects more from you, he’s also ready, willing and able to give it to you. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for you that you might have his own new, resurrected life. He’s made himself the foundation and linch-pin of all the good gifts God has in store for you. Open your eyes and see that you are risen from the death of your sin. Look up. He’s come for you. Hang on. You’re in for the ride of your life!”
More to come???
Friday, October 31, 2008
Pixar and preaching, part one
In explaining why Pixar’s movies are so much better than their competition, Kent Jones (nice name, huh?) in a recent issue of Film Comment* describes the prevailing temperament of the world of digital animation that Pixar works against: He says, “Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief….Everyone wants the pleasure of storytelling, but they are loath to relinquish enough precious sophistication to fully surrender.”
Jones says, “Moviegoers have apparently become gripped by a fear of being exposed – as naïve, or stupid, or apt to believe in anything but their own skepticism. And few directors believe that they have the right, let alone the ability, to “manipulate” audiences…[D]istrust is an article of faith. How do you give yourself over to anything when you’re convinced that nothing is worthy of your credence?”
Can the same be said of the public purveyors of the gospel? Have we handed ourselves over to a skepticism about the task of preaching? Have we given up the call to incite a suspension of disbelief? Do we longer see ourselves as having the right to manipulate our hearers? Perhaps we just don’t really see the gospel as something radical and true enough to believe in.
The prevailing homiletical temperament refuses to relinquish the sophistication of our inherent perfectibility and assumed goodness. When “God is love” is the pulpit mantra with nary a mention of sin, death and the devil, the sermon becomes a series of recommendations for better living, deeper commitment and higher spiritual practices. The outcome of the sermon, then, rests on the hard-won wisdom or the individual charm and leadership of the preacher.
When your passel of pews is populated with people whose hyper-ironic sense of skepticism applies to everything but their own ability to believe, you’ve been delivered an audience (rather than a congregation) that is bent on playing church but not on the real death and resurrection of life as a disciple of Christ.
“Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief,” Jones says, “Since the Eighties, we’ve seen countless narratives with a dispiriting, built-in self-awareness, tailored for people who know all the twists and turns, all the happy endings and the last-minute saves, who want to be in on the joke but have the story told anyway.”
This here Jones sighs at the tedium that is the sermon that meets my suburban expectations of nice. It’s good to have a shot of cleverness tossed in. And if the preacher has the down-to-earth charm of a dimple, a history of adolescent orthodontia and a cup of Starbucks in hand, so much the better. The ratings ratchet skyward, but my boredom with the old news of warmed-over law is stultifying. Such a sermon plays into the skeptical expectations of the spiritually enlightened, but to what end?
Pixar’s digital animators assume an intelligence, a manipulatability and a sense of wonder and awe on the part of those whose eyes and ears take in their product. What if the preacher were to take a page from the Pixar playbook, and maybe go a step further?
More to come...
*Kent Jones, “Beyond Disbelief,” Film Comment, July-August 2008, p. 24.
Jones says, “Moviegoers have apparently become gripped by a fear of being exposed – as naïve, or stupid, or apt to believe in anything but their own skepticism. And few directors believe that they have the right, let alone the ability, to “manipulate” audiences…[D]istrust is an article of faith. How do you give yourself over to anything when you’re convinced that nothing is worthy of your credence?”
Can the same be said of the public purveyors of the gospel? Have we handed ourselves over to a skepticism about the task of preaching? Have we given up the call to incite a suspension of disbelief? Do we longer see ourselves as having the right to manipulate our hearers? Perhaps we just don’t really see the gospel as something radical and true enough to believe in.
The prevailing homiletical temperament refuses to relinquish the sophistication of our inherent perfectibility and assumed goodness. When “God is love” is the pulpit mantra with nary a mention of sin, death and the devil, the sermon becomes a series of recommendations for better living, deeper commitment and higher spiritual practices. The outcome of the sermon, then, rests on the hard-won wisdom or the individual charm and leadership of the preacher.
When your passel of pews is populated with people whose hyper-ironic sense of skepticism applies to everything but their own ability to believe, you’ve been delivered an audience (rather than a congregation) that is bent on playing church but not on the real death and resurrection of life as a disciple of Christ.
“Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief,” Jones says, “Since the Eighties, we’ve seen countless narratives with a dispiriting, built-in self-awareness, tailored for people who know all the twists and turns, all the happy endings and the last-minute saves, who want to be in on the joke but have the story told anyway.”
This here Jones sighs at the tedium that is the sermon that meets my suburban expectations of nice. It’s good to have a shot of cleverness tossed in. And if the preacher has the down-to-earth charm of a dimple, a history of adolescent orthodontia and a cup of Starbucks in hand, so much the better. The ratings ratchet skyward, but my boredom with the old news of warmed-over law is stultifying. Such a sermon plays into the skeptical expectations of the spiritually enlightened, but to what end?
Pixar’s digital animators assume an intelligence, a manipulatability and a sense of wonder and awe on the part of those whose eyes and ears take in their product. What if the preacher were to take a page from the Pixar playbook, and maybe go a step further?
More to come...
*Kent Jones, “Beyond Disbelief,” Film Comment, July-August 2008, p. 24.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Independence Day
At one point in the movie Sophie’s Choice, Meryl Streep’s character says, “The truth? I don’t even know what is the truth anymore.” In the gospel assigned for Reformation Sunday, Jesus says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” What is the truth? Do we even know what it is anymore?
The truth of Jesus is what, earlier in John, the Pharisees and the eager stone-hurlers and their target, the woman caught screwing a fella she wasn’t married to, experienced first-hand.
The woman, of course, knew the bitter truth. Whatever concupiscence (where I come from in South Dakota we call it horniness) or brokenness got her into that situation, it was clear that her future held only death. There was no getting around it. It was her fault, her own fault, her own most grievous fault.
Jesus needed to bring no light to the woman’s guilt. The truth was clear. But what about the religious professionals and the morally upright preparing for her literal downfall? Jesus trained his judgment on them: “If there’s anyone of you who can step forward when the roll of sinless people is called, then I’ll put the stone in that person’s hand.”
Those folks couldn’t stand the light of this truth, but the adulterous woman remained there with Jesus. She not only knew the truth. She’d lived it and was about to die to it. Our Lord turned to her and gave her the freedom of his mercy: “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and sin no more.”
Freedom without its opposite, bondage, has no meaning. The gospel of Jesus Christ always and only appears where the law and sin have done the enslaving deed. In John 8, Jesus’ followers said, “We ain’t never been slaves! We’re upright and free descendents of Abraham!” But the truth of the matter was standing in front of them.
The truth (and the way and the life) is Jesus himself. He who knew no sin and became sin, is a bright light shining on our shadowed unwillingness to accord him our trust. “Who was it that crucified thee? It was I, Lord. It was I.” For we are in bondage to sin, enslaved to ourselves, captivated by our endless possibilities. Jesus’ very being judges us as wanting.
Yet he offers more. His resurrection and the little resurrections of healings, castings out of demons and granting forgiveness are all of a piece: God’s own will to work your rescue in this one person’s flesh-and-bone life and death. Those unwilling to recognize and confess the truth of bondage will see and yet not see the resurrection, will hear and yet not hear the gospel. And they will not know the freedom promised here.
The truth? I know what is the truth evermore. You and I and the whole blamed bunch of humanity is dead in sin. All that’s left of your vaunted life is your final role as the target of stoning or whatever else lays you in your grave.
The truth? We confess with Luther as we approach Reformation Day, “I cannot, by my own understanding or effort, believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” Yet the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies you, so that in your death you might see, know and live the dawning of something new.
When you trust that it comes in him, your freedom is caught up in Jesus. It’s a paradox: The more you are captivated and bound to him, the more free you become. The more free you become, the more bound up in and captivated by your neighbor you will be.
Reformation Day should have some meaning for more than a ragged bunch of Lutherans. It’s really Independence Day for sinners everywhere. You included.
(For a great image of Jesus with the adulterous woman go to http://www.heqiarts.com/gallery/gallery3/pages/7-WomanCaughtInAdultery.html.)
The truth of Jesus is what, earlier in John, the Pharisees and the eager stone-hurlers and their target, the woman caught screwing a fella she wasn’t married to, experienced first-hand.
The woman, of course, knew the bitter truth. Whatever concupiscence (where I come from in South Dakota we call it horniness) or brokenness got her into that situation, it was clear that her future held only death. There was no getting around it. It was her fault, her own fault, her own most grievous fault.
Jesus needed to bring no light to the woman’s guilt. The truth was clear. But what about the religious professionals and the morally upright preparing for her literal downfall? Jesus trained his judgment on them: “If there’s anyone of you who can step forward when the roll of sinless people is called, then I’ll put the stone in that person’s hand.”
Those folks couldn’t stand the light of this truth, but the adulterous woman remained there with Jesus. She not only knew the truth. She’d lived it and was about to die to it. Our Lord turned to her and gave her the freedom of his mercy: “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and sin no more.”
Freedom without its opposite, bondage, has no meaning. The gospel of Jesus Christ always and only appears where the law and sin have done the enslaving deed. In John 8, Jesus’ followers said, “We ain’t never been slaves! We’re upright and free descendents of Abraham!” But the truth of the matter was standing in front of them.
The truth (and the way and the life) is Jesus himself. He who knew no sin and became sin, is a bright light shining on our shadowed unwillingness to accord him our trust. “Who was it that crucified thee? It was I, Lord. It was I.” For we are in bondage to sin, enslaved to ourselves, captivated by our endless possibilities. Jesus’ very being judges us as wanting.
Yet he offers more. His resurrection and the little resurrections of healings, castings out of demons and granting forgiveness are all of a piece: God’s own will to work your rescue in this one person’s flesh-and-bone life and death. Those unwilling to recognize and confess the truth of bondage will see and yet not see the resurrection, will hear and yet not hear the gospel. And they will not know the freedom promised here.
The truth? I know what is the truth evermore. You and I and the whole blamed bunch of humanity is dead in sin. All that’s left of your vaunted life is your final role as the target of stoning or whatever else lays you in your grave.
The truth? We confess with Luther as we approach Reformation Day, “I cannot, by my own understanding or effort, believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” Yet the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies you, so that in your death you might see, know and live the dawning of something new.
When you trust that it comes in him, your freedom is caught up in Jesus. It’s a paradox: The more you are captivated and bound to him, the more free you become. The more free you become, the more bound up in and captivated by your neighbor you will be.
Reformation Day should have some meaning for more than a ragged bunch of Lutherans. It’s really Independence Day for sinners everywhere. You included.
(For a great image of Jesus with the adulterous woman go to http://www.heqiarts.com/gallery/gallery3/pages/7-WomanCaughtInAdultery.html.)
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Render unto Caesar
Something came to mind a few Sundays ago as I was listening to a sermon on a passage from Matthew in which the Pharisees try to nail Jesus with the question of paying taxes. He says to them, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Render unto God what is God's.
Slow down if you think that's anything but the most difficult thing to do. When it comes down to it, who wants to render anything? It means letting go of those things I've held in my fist so tightly for, lo, these many years. "Give it up for God and the emperor? Do I have to?" Yes, you do.
The thing about rendering, though, is that it doesn't just mean "to give over to." It also means to clarify. Decades ago, when a farm animal died, the farmer would call the rendering man to come. He'd haul your dead horse off to a rendering plant to be turned into glue and dog food. Once, while tooling down the highway I passed a rendering truck that had horse legs and hooves sticking out of its box — not a pretty sight. The dead animals were headed to the plant where they'd be literally melted down to their essences.
To render unto Caesar and to God is melt it all down and understand exactly what's whose: what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. Jesus' pushes the Pharisees into a clarity that angers them. What it becomes clear to you, you'll likely get angry too at first. But you might also breathe a sigh of relief and even rejoice.
Both you and they are sinners of whom the law demands everything. In this world, you belong to Caesar, top-to-bottom. You are of this world, and in this world Caesar rules. If you don't think it's so, wait a while and you'll finally come to see the world itself open its 6'x4' maw and swallow you whole. Even though we think this passage of God's word is about writing our tax checks, the demand is even greater. It won't be just a tax check you write. You'll be forced to render your entire self to the world and its ruler, whether you want to or not.
It's no easier when it comes to rendering unto God what belongs to him. From our first breath in the Garden, through to the at-last appearance of the New Jerusalem, God claims what is his. Adam and Eve refused to allow God what belongs solely to God and, instead, swallowed up the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Give up to God our control, our judgment, our future, our life and death, our salvation? Fuggedaboudit.
Our good and gracious Lord, however, has taken matters into his own hands. You don't want to give yourself to the world to serve your neighbor's needs and you'll never release your grip on matters that God would rather be in charge of. And if you never will, he'll do the rendering himself. He offers himself up, pours himself out as a libation for sin, jumps into the rendering truck with all the other dead creatures. You can see his nail-scarred feet sticking out.
This rendering is a clarifying business. It melts your illusions to truth. Whomever you're to render to, you can't and won't do it. (Stamp foot here.) To prove our seriousness, you and I and the rest of sinful humankind killed the one calling us. We decided to offer Jesus up both to Caesar and to God.
It's a role our Lord gladly plays. He doesn't stop the yammering demands of the law. He fulfills them for you. He doesn't just submit to your sacrificing him on the altar of righteousness, he makes his very cross the source of your salvation. And he renders you, too. For in your baptism are you not pocketed by God even as you're set apart to be spent on the world?
You are become the new coin of the realm, serving your neighbor. The economy of salvation is established for you to loosen up the credit crunch of grace. You do it, not by lending yourself out to get yourself back with interest, but by being given, being doled out, by being rendered. You are evidence that the divine wallet is open for the world's snatching. You are not saved in order to be deposited in First Christian Bank and draw interest because you're worth it. You're rendered yourself in order to make the economy of the kingdom of heaven run — and run well.
Ain't no credit crunch here.
Slow down if you think that's anything but the most difficult thing to do. When it comes down to it, who wants to render anything? It means letting go of those things I've held in my fist so tightly for, lo, these many years. "Give it up for God and the emperor? Do I have to?" Yes, you do.
The thing about rendering, though, is that it doesn't just mean "to give over to." It also means to clarify. Decades ago, when a farm animal died, the farmer would call the rendering man to come. He'd haul your dead horse off to a rendering plant to be turned into glue and dog food. Once, while tooling down the highway I passed a rendering truck that had horse legs and hooves sticking out of its box — not a pretty sight. The dead animals were headed to the plant where they'd be literally melted down to their essences.
To render unto Caesar and to God is melt it all down and understand exactly what's whose: what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. Jesus' pushes the Pharisees into a clarity that angers them. What it becomes clear to you, you'll likely get angry too at first. But you might also breathe a sigh of relief and even rejoice.
Both you and they are sinners of whom the law demands everything. In this world, you belong to Caesar, top-to-bottom. You are of this world, and in this world Caesar rules. If you don't think it's so, wait a while and you'll finally come to see the world itself open its 6'x4' maw and swallow you whole. Even though we think this passage of God's word is about writing our tax checks, the demand is even greater. It won't be just a tax check you write. You'll be forced to render your entire self to the world and its ruler, whether you want to or not.
It's no easier when it comes to rendering unto God what belongs to him. From our first breath in the Garden, through to the at-last appearance of the New Jerusalem, God claims what is his. Adam and Eve refused to allow God what belongs solely to God and, instead, swallowed up the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Give up to God our control, our judgment, our future, our life and death, our salvation? Fuggedaboudit.
Our good and gracious Lord, however, has taken matters into his own hands. You don't want to give yourself to the world to serve your neighbor's needs and you'll never release your grip on matters that God would rather be in charge of. And if you never will, he'll do the rendering himself. He offers himself up, pours himself out as a libation for sin, jumps into the rendering truck with all the other dead creatures. You can see his nail-scarred feet sticking out.
This rendering is a clarifying business. It melts your illusions to truth. Whomever you're to render to, you can't and won't do it. (Stamp foot here.) To prove our seriousness, you and I and the rest of sinful humankind killed the one calling us. We decided to offer Jesus up both to Caesar and to God.
It's a role our Lord gladly plays. He doesn't stop the yammering demands of the law. He fulfills them for you. He doesn't just submit to your sacrificing him on the altar of righteousness, he makes his very cross the source of your salvation. And he renders you, too. For in your baptism are you not pocketed by God even as you're set apart to be spent on the world?
You are become the new coin of the realm, serving your neighbor. The economy of salvation is established for you to loosen up the credit crunch of grace. You do it, not by lending yourself out to get yourself back with interest, but by being given, being doled out, by being rendered. You are evidence that the divine wallet is open for the world's snatching. You are not saved in order to be deposited in First Christian Bank and draw interest because you're worth it. You're rendered yourself in order to make the economy of the kingdom of heaven run — and run well.
Ain't no credit crunch here.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Dressing down for salvation
The passage from Matthew’s gospel assigned for this coming Sunday (Matt. 22:1-4) has a couple verses in it that can give us fits. It’s the parable of the wedding banquet in which Matthew adds the bit about the guy not wearing a wedding robe being kicked out of the festivities.
It was hardly fair. This guy, after all, had been dragged in from some alley by the king’s wedding guest procurement posse. How was he to know he was supposed to rent a tux for the nuptial shindig? He winds up hog-tied and tossed back in the alley where he has to spend the night forced to listen to the hootin’, hollerin’ and toast-raisin’ to the groom. Poor fella. Condemned because he wasn’t dressed in the right clothes.
In his letters, Paul loves to use the phrase “in Christ.” In Romans 9:1, for instance he says, “I am speaking the truth in Christ.” He sends greetings to fellow believers who are in Christ. To the Philippians he prays that God would keep hearts and minds in Christ. Paul says it most clearly in Galatians 3:27, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Could it be that the ill-attired wedding guest was not in Christ? If so, what would that look like? I think it was that he failed to get gussied up in Jesus’ cross.
As a kid, I spent many glorious days and weeks at my grandparents ranch in western South Dakota. In early Spring, when it was lambing season, my Grandma Luberta would let me help feed the bum lambs, which were her charge. The bum lambs were orphaned or the runt in a set of triplets. We’d take bottles of milk to the shed and the bums would go to town on their rubber nipples. Apart from that, they were pretty much goners.
Every once in a while I’d see the opposite situation. A ewe would give birth to a dead lamb or one that was so sickly that it died quickly. She’d nuzzle her lamb and try to get it to stand. It was a situation ready-made for the bums. A ewe with a dead lamb + a lamb with no mother? Brilliant! Bring a bum over for the ewe to adopt.
But no ewe with a nose at the tip of her shaggy snout would have anything to do with a lamb that wasn’t her own. It didn’t smell right. So my Grandpa Buster would pull out his jackknife and slit the dead lamb’s underside from chin to tail. He’d skin that dead little thing and toss the carcass across the fence line for to become a night-time coyote feast.
Grandpa would tie the dead lamb’s skin on the back of the bum lamb with a length of baling twine and bring it over to the mother of the dead lamb. She’d smell her own lamb righteous odor on that bum and stand still so it could get at her teats and drink up. The bum would live and grow because it was wrapped in the dead lamb’s skin, immersed in its death as the thing that gave it life.
The problem for the guy with the wrong clothes is just that. He was wrapped up in something that gave him no entrée to the festivities. He waltzed in and thought it was going to be a reception right out of Brides magazine: pretty gowns, pretty cakes, pretty much happy all the day long. But this is a zombie party, a can of whoop-de-doo for the living dead, for those who smell like the crucified and risen one who’s wrapped himself around their rotting sinful flesh. The life they have, they no live in Christ.
The excluded wedding guest remained outside of Christ, instead of being baptized into Christ’s death, wrapped up in his cross. God can smell the sin and glory of the self from a mile away and will have none of it. They smell too much like their own life and too little like Jesus’ death.
But you, dear sinners and friends, have been baptized into Christ Jesus. The robe is already yours, tied around your middle with the baling twine of God’s eternal word. The party began on the first day of the week when the women found themselves staring into an empty grave. It’s a real barn-burner and the guest of honor has decided that you simply must sit at the head table.
You see, it’s a surprise party, because you’re about to find out that Christ has made you the bride. As unlikely as it may be, you’ve walked into the arms of the one who promises never to let you go. When you say, “Do you really take a sinner like me as yours,” Jesus answers, “I do. I do. I do. This is my body and blood given and shed for you."
It was hardly fair. This guy, after all, had been dragged in from some alley by the king’s wedding guest procurement posse. How was he to know he was supposed to rent a tux for the nuptial shindig? He winds up hog-tied and tossed back in the alley where he has to spend the night forced to listen to the hootin’, hollerin’ and toast-raisin’ to the groom. Poor fella. Condemned because he wasn’t dressed in the right clothes.
In his letters, Paul loves to use the phrase “in Christ.” In Romans 9:1, for instance he says, “I am speaking the truth in Christ.” He sends greetings to fellow believers who are in Christ. To the Philippians he prays that God would keep hearts and minds in Christ. Paul says it most clearly in Galatians 3:27, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Could it be that the ill-attired wedding guest was not in Christ? If so, what would that look like? I think it was that he failed to get gussied up in Jesus’ cross.
As a kid, I spent many glorious days and weeks at my grandparents ranch in western South Dakota. In early Spring, when it was lambing season, my Grandma Luberta would let me help feed the bum lambs, which were her charge. The bum lambs were orphaned or the runt in a set of triplets. We’d take bottles of milk to the shed and the bums would go to town on their rubber nipples. Apart from that, they were pretty much goners.
Every once in a while I’d see the opposite situation. A ewe would give birth to a dead lamb or one that was so sickly that it died quickly. She’d nuzzle her lamb and try to get it to stand. It was a situation ready-made for the bums. A ewe with a dead lamb + a lamb with no mother? Brilliant! Bring a bum over for the ewe to adopt.
But no ewe with a nose at the tip of her shaggy snout would have anything to do with a lamb that wasn’t her own. It didn’t smell right. So my Grandpa Buster would pull out his jackknife and slit the dead lamb’s underside from chin to tail. He’d skin that dead little thing and toss the carcass across the fence line for to become a night-time coyote feast.
Grandpa would tie the dead lamb’s skin on the back of the bum lamb with a length of baling twine and bring it over to the mother of the dead lamb. She’d smell her own lamb righteous odor on that bum and stand still so it could get at her teats and drink up. The bum would live and grow because it was wrapped in the dead lamb’s skin, immersed in its death as the thing that gave it life.
The problem for the guy with the wrong clothes is just that. He was wrapped up in something that gave him no entrée to the festivities. He waltzed in and thought it was going to be a reception right out of Brides magazine: pretty gowns, pretty cakes, pretty much happy all the day long. But this is a zombie party, a can of whoop-de-doo for the living dead, for those who smell like the crucified and risen one who’s wrapped himself around their rotting sinful flesh. The life they have, they no live in Christ.
The excluded wedding guest remained outside of Christ, instead of being baptized into Christ’s death, wrapped up in his cross. God can smell the sin and glory of the self from a mile away and will have none of it. They smell too much like their own life and too little like Jesus’ death.
But you, dear sinners and friends, have been baptized into Christ Jesus. The robe is already yours, tied around your middle with the baling twine of God’s eternal word. The party began on the first day of the week when the women found themselves staring into an empty grave. It’s a real barn-burner and the guest of honor has decided that you simply must sit at the head table.
You see, it’s a surprise party, because you’re about to find out that Christ has made you the bride. As unlikely as it may be, you’ve walked into the arms of the one who promises never to let you go. When you say, “Do you really take a sinner like me as yours,” Jesus answers, “I do. I do. I do. This is my body and blood given and shed for you."
Thursday, September 25, 2008
My Lying-Sack-of-Sin Pastor Friend's "Basement"
A good friend (who is also a fine example of a sinner) serves as pastor to a congregation in Wisconsin (emphasis on the last syllable). The congregation began in 1988 and the building went up in 1990, without a basement.
On occasion he's preached an imaginative sermon in which he says he'd been stuck for what to do for a sermon and that he'd wandered through the church basement. He would say he'd encountered the ghost of Martin Luther down there, or found Noah's diary, or come upon an early-1960s piece of kid's Sunday school artwork (with a handwritten note from God attached). A nice bunch of clever dream sequences spun from whole cloth for the sake of delivering the gospel.
How careful we must be with the word we've been handed! My friend just got the news that a parishioner has left the congregation because, "He lied. There is no church basement."
If what comes from the preacher's mouth is not factual, does that make it untrue? Students in my New Testament course grapple with that question when dealing with four different gospels, with four different timelines, with four different points of view, and a Jesus who's almost four different people. "How do we know what's true, then?" they ask.
We so easily fall for the proposition that truth can be gleaned from facts. It's part of the air we breathe in this culture, from dissecting a frog in 7th grade science to the latest article in the journal Nature. We look for truth in facts, in the measurable, in the definable, in the tangible, and in what Paul in Corinthians calls the perishable.
But the preacher of the gospel calls that stuff mere stuff and in turn says what is truly true. It is a relational truth: Jesus Christ, true God and true human being has died and is risen...for you. We know it's true because this promise does something to sinners like us. It's true in its power to change absolutely everything.
Basement, shmasement, I say. You want truth? I'll give you truth: You are dead in your sin, bound and captive to yourself, to your own future and your own narrow life. Jesus Christ comes for you now. At this very moment he is wandering around the basement of your heart to create some new life there.
What? Your heart doesn't have an actual basement? Don't let that cardiac ultrasound fool you. It's there and Jesus has set up his resurrection carpentry shop in it. He is even now grabbing hold of whatever detritus he can find, whatever dust-covered antique hurt or bitterness lie in its corners, whatever bits of trash and rottenness he can find. And he's turning his surroundings there into an exact model of his own heart — with a basement swept clean and fit for eternity.
I'm a sinner who preaches. And I lie about all kinds of things, especially to myself. But I cannot lie about this. As Luther said in the Heidelberg Disputation, "A theologian of the cross sees something and calls it what it is." What the preacher sees is success and power that are truly facets of death and the grave. The gospel preacher sees the foolishness of the cross, the lie of imagination, and the disaster of death as a perfectly satisfied Christ shaping his materials into his risen form.
"When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.' 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?'" 1 Corinthians 15:54-55
On occasion he's preached an imaginative sermon in which he says he'd been stuck for what to do for a sermon and that he'd wandered through the church basement. He would say he'd encountered the ghost of Martin Luther down there, or found Noah's diary, or come upon an early-1960s piece of kid's Sunday school artwork (with a handwritten note from God attached). A nice bunch of clever dream sequences spun from whole cloth for the sake of delivering the gospel.
How careful we must be with the word we've been handed! My friend just got the news that a parishioner has left the congregation because, "He lied. There is no church basement."
If what comes from the preacher's mouth is not factual, does that make it untrue? Students in my New Testament course grapple with that question when dealing with four different gospels, with four different timelines, with four different points of view, and a Jesus who's almost four different people. "How do we know what's true, then?" they ask.
We so easily fall for the proposition that truth can be gleaned from facts. It's part of the air we breathe in this culture, from dissecting a frog in 7th grade science to the latest article in the journal Nature. We look for truth in facts, in the measurable, in the definable, in the tangible, and in what Paul in Corinthians calls the perishable.
But the preacher of the gospel calls that stuff mere stuff and in turn says what is truly true. It is a relational truth: Jesus Christ, true God and true human being has died and is risen...for you. We know it's true because this promise does something to sinners like us. It's true in its power to change absolutely everything.
Basement, shmasement, I say. You want truth? I'll give you truth: You are dead in your sin, bound and captive to yourself, to your own future and your own narrow life. Jesus Christ comes for you now. At this very moment he is wandering around the basement of your heart to create some new life there.
What? Your heart doesn't have an actual basement? Don't let that cardiac ultrasound fool you. It's there and Jesus has set up his resurrection carpentry shop in it. He is even now grabbing hold of whatever detritus he can find, whatever dust-covered antique hurt or bitterness lie in its corners, whatever bits of trash and rottenness he can find. And he's turning his surroundings there into an exact model of his own heart — with a basement swept clean and fit for eternity.
I'm a sinner who preaches. And I lie about all kinds of things, especially to myself. But I cannot lie about this. As Luther said in the Heidelberg Disputation, "A theologian of the cross sees something and calls it what it is." What the preacher sees is success and power that are truly facets of death and the grave. The gospel preacher sees the foolishness of the cross, the lie of imagination, and the disaster of death as a perfectly satisfied Christ shaping his materials into his risen form.
"When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.' 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?'" 1 Corinthians 15:54-55
Friday, September 19, 2008
Wonderful Remark
Here's Van Morrison's take on bad preaching in his song "Wonderful Remark":
How can you stand the silence
That pervades when we all cry?
How can you watch the violence
That erupts before your eyes?
You can't even grab a hold on
When we're hanging oh so loose.
You don't even listen to us
When we talk, it ain't no use.
Leave your thoughtlessness behind you,
Then you may begin to understand.
Clear the emptiness around you
With the waving of your hand
Chorus:
That was a wonderful remark.
I had my eyes closed in the dark.
I sighed a million sighs.
I told a million lies to myself.
Now, how can we listen to you
When we know that your talk is cheap?
How can we never question
Why we give more and you keep?
How can your empty laughter
Fill a room like ours with joy,
When you're only playing with us
Like a child does with a toy?
How can we ever feel the freedom
Or the flame lit by the spark?
How can we ever come out even
When reality is stark?
Chorus
Listen, how can you tell us something
Just to keep us hanging on
Something that just don't mean nothin'?
When we see you, you are gone.
Clinging to some other rainbow
While we're standing waiting outside in the cold
Telling us the same sad story
Knowing time is growing old
Touch your world up with some colour.
Dream you're swinging on a star.
Taste it first then add some flavour.
Now you know just who you are.
Chorus
How can you stand the silence
That pervades when we all cry?
How can you watch the violence
That erupts before your eyes?
You can't even grab a hold on
When we're hanging oh so loose.
You don't even listen to us
When we talk, it ain't no use.
Leave your thoughtlessness behind you,
Then you may begin to understand.
Clear the emptiness around you
With the waving of your hand
Chorus:
That was a wonderful remark.
I had my eyes closed in the dark.
I sighed a million sighs.
I told a million lies to myself.
Now, how can we listen to you
When we know that your talk is cheap?
How can we never question
Why we give more and you keep?
How can your empty laughter
Fill a room like ours with joy,
When you're only playing with us
Like a child does with a toy?
How can we ever feel the freedom
Or the flame lit by the spark?
How can we ever come out even
When reality is stark?
Chorus
Listen, how can you tell us something
Just to keep us hanging on
Something that just don't mean nothin'?
When we see you, you are gone.
Clinging to some other rainbow
While we're standing waiting outside in the cold
Telling us the same sad story
Knowing time is growing old
Touch your world up with some colour.
Dream you're swinging on a star.
Taste it first then add some flavour.
Now you know just who you are.
Chorus
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Bless God's Name
“I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.” Psalm 145:1-2
This week Mary and I are celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary. Like any thoughtful, liberal couple in 1990 we faced the dilemma of names: Should Mary change her name? Should we become a hyphenate? Do just leave our names be? If so, then what happens when we have kids? If we hyphenate, what will happen if our children marry other hyphenates? Will they wind up with three hyphens? What about the generation after that?
Our solution was for us to be Joneses and to have Mary’s maiden name, Sundet, as a middle name for both of us. That she took my name as her own meant something to me, and still does. I’m not enough of an Old Testament scholar to say much about what the ancient Israelites meant when they sang of blessing God’s name. But I know Mary blessed my name and all the weight its personal and family histories carried. She set apart my name as a thing of honor and a handle to be cherished. She transformed the name which is me into the locus of her love.
Apart from faith given as a gift, what could possibly have drawn the Psalmist to honor and cherish the Lord’s name? The Psalmist’s song comes as no choice, nothing his will has conjured up from the depths, no option among many. Drawn to the bosom of God, the song is drawn forth. As the old gospel song says, “How can I keep from singing?”
The trust in such a one’s heart is formed from the outside in. Who knows what Mary ever saw in this doofus who noticed her wedding day zit before he noticed the beauty of her wedding dress? But her very being claimed me. I know I could not help but want her name and the name of her family as my own. That required paying a fee for a revised wedding license, but it was worth it.
This is what the Psalmist sings of. God’s name is the sharing of God’s own self: God’s justice and nearness, God’s watch over the downtrodden and destruction of the wicked, and, in the end, God’s very enfleshment in Jesus Christ forsaken and killed on the cross and raised on the third day. Such a name it is that the sinner can only say, “You, Lord, would let me, even me, bear your name?”
The name came to me first in a white clapboard church in Newell, SD, for than forty years ago as God started drowning and raising the baby and full-fledged sinner that was and is me. Eighteen of those forty-odd years I’ve enjoyed God’s name made manifest in a woman named Mary. If that’s the kind of God we have, then the Psalmist is right: “My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever.
(Happy anniversary, MSJ!)
This week Mary and I are celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary. Like any thoughtful, liberal couple in 1990 we faced the dilemma of names: Should Mary change her name? Should we become a hyphenate? Do just leave our names be? If so, then what happens when we have kids? If we hyphenate, what will happen if our children marry other hyphenates? Will they wind up with three hyphens? What about the generation after that?
Our solution was for us to be Joneses and to have Mary’s maiden name, Sundet, as a middle name for both of us. That she took my name as her own meant something to me, and still does. I’m not enough of an Old Testament scholar to say much about what the ancient Israelites meant when they sang of blessing God’s name. But I know Mary blessed my name and all the weight its personal and family histories carried. She set apart my name as a thing of honor and a handle to be cherished. She transformed the name which is me into the locus of her love.
Apart from faith given as a gift, what could possibly have drawn the Psalmist to honor and cherish the Lord’s name? The Psalmist’s song comes as no choice, nothing his will has conjured up from the depths, no option among many. Drawn to the bosom of God, the song is drawn forth. As the old gospel song says, “How can I keep from singing?”
The trust in such a one’s heart is formed from the outside in. Who knows what Mary ever saw in this doofus who noticed her wedding day zit before he noticed the beauty of her wedding dress? But her very being claimed me. I know I could not help but want her name and the name of her family as my own. That required paying a fee for a revised wedding license, but it was worth it.
This is what the Psalmist sings of. God’s name is the sharing of God’s own self: God’s justice and nearness, God’s watch over the downtrodden and destruction of the wicked, and, in the end, God’s very enfleshment in Jesus Christ forsaken and killed on the cross and raised on the third day. Such a name it is that the sinner can only say, “You, Lord, would let me, even me, bear your name?”
The name came to me first in a white clapboard church in Newell, SD, for than forty years ago as God started drowning and raising the baby and full-fledged sinner that was and is me. Eighteen of those forty-odd years I’ve enjoyed God’s name made manifest in a woman named Mary. If that’s the kind of God we have, then the Psalmist is right: “My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever.
(Happy anniversary, MSJ!)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
By Grace Alone
This last weekend I preached at the 125th anniversary of the first congregation I served. Their theme for the anniversary year was "By Grace Alone." Of course that's one of the "alone" assertions that are attached to the Lutheran Reformation: Christ alone. Faith alone. Grace alone.
In this day that phrase, "by grace alone," has often been viewed through an antinomian lens. We treat grace first and foremost as an attribute of the hidden God. It's understood as the nature of a God who operates only out of love and mercy (as if our human vision could ever get behind the veil and see the fullness of God's nature). We think, “Of course God is gracious. What kind of a loving God would be any other way? Of course, God accepts us as we are.” But God’s grace is nothing close to that.
Perhaps if we were able to remove ourselves from our electronic gadgets and gizmos, our prideful attempts at mastering life, our hubris in to manipulating our surroundings, we might come to understand the hidden God as a dangerous bet. Were we to do as our forebears as they washed and dressed their dead, nailed the planks for coffins, and lowered them into the earth, we might well see the limits of our own efforts and the horror of facing this so-call gracious God. With the psalmist we might point to the grass that lasts for a moment and then withers. Some gracious God!
When we speak of grace alone, the starting point is not how good and nice God is. It certainly isn’t something that calls us to say, “God is love. God is love. God is love,” over and over again to reassure ourselves that God might be well disposed toward us. Instead to speak of grace alone is to acknowledge first and foremost that I am truly and utterly incapable of solving the dilemma of my sin on my own. As Luther said in the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” Or as the confession in the old green hymnal said, “We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”
"By grace alone” is not a declaration about God, but a confession you make about yourself.“By grace alone” means that you’re incapable (no matter how you dress up your own sinful piggishness and slap lipstick on it). If you can't do it, it's left to that hidden God. As Luther advised, we would be well to run from that hidden God to the revealed God who, in Christ Jesus, actually makes a choice about you that you can count on.
The choice is this: God elects to take on whatever your sin can dole out, he chooses to take on flesh and bone and an execution on a cross, so that at last you might know fully and finally what your place is both here on this vale of life and death and in heaven itself. Christ Jesus takes on your sin, your inability and unwillingness to believe and trust God and gives you his own righteousness, purity and life. “By grace alone” means that there is truly no other option, no other way out.
Thus, to speak of grace alone is first to tell the truth, to confess your lack of trust, to pray, “I believe Lord, help thou my unbelief.” It is to ask God to move against you, against your nature and desire, your will to create your own future. “By grace alone” means to pray day-in-day-out that Christ Jesus your Lord would come to rescue you, that he would speak a word of mercy, that he would be forgiveness itself for a sinner like you.
In this day that phrase, "by grace alone," has often been viewed through an antinomian lens. We treat grace first and foremost as an attribute of the hidden God. It's understood as the nature of a God who operates only out of love and mercy (as if our human vision could ever get behind the veil and see the fullness of God's nature). We think, “Of course God is gracious. What kind of a loving God would be any other way? Of course, God accepts us as we are.” But God’s grace is nothing close to that.
Perhaps if we were able to remove ourselves from our electronic gadgets and gizmos, our prideful attempts at mastering life, our hubris in to manipulating our surroundings, we might come to understand the hidden God as a dangerous bet. Were we to do as our forebears as they washed and dressed their dead, nailed the planks for coffins, and lowered them into the earth, we might well see the limits of our own efforts and the horror of facing this so-call gracious God. With the psalmist we might point to the grass that lasts for a moment and then withers. Some gracious God!
When we speak of grace alone, the starting point is not how good and nice God is. It certainly isn’t something that calls us to say, “God is love. God is love. God is love,” over and over again to reassure ourselves that God might be well disposed toward us. Instead to speak of grace alone is to acknowledge first and foremost that I am truly and utterly incapable of solving the dilemma of my sin on my own. As Luther said in the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” Or as the confession in the old green hymnal said, “We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”
"By grace alone” is not a declaration about God, but a confession you make about yourself.“By grace alone” means that you’re incapable (no matter how you dress up your own sinful piggishness and slap lipstick on it). If you can't do it, it's left to that hidden God. As Luther advised, we would be well to run from that hidden God to the revealed God who, in Christ Jesus, actually makes a choice about you that you can count on.
The choice is this: God elects to take on whatever your sin can dole out, he chooses to take on flesh and bone and an execution on a cross, so that at last you might know fully and finally what your place is both here on this vale of life and death and in heaven itself. Christ Jesus takes on your sin, your inability and unwillingness to believe and trust God and gives you his own righteousness, purity and life. “By grace alone” means that there is truly no other option, no other way out.
Thus, to speak of grace alone is first to tell the truth, to confess your lack of trust, to pray, “I believe Lord, help thou my unbelief.” It is to ask God to move against you, against your nature and desire, your will to create your own future. “By grace alone” means to pray day-in-day-out that Christ Jesus your Lord would come to rescue you, that he would speak a word of mercy, that he would be forgiveness itself for a sinner like you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)