A Second Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lesson: First Thessalonians 5:1-11

"Always have a plan. Always be ready to break from your plans." Good advice! Earlier this week, I planned to write at least three considerations of this Sunday's Bible lesson for our worship at Friendship Church. But life intervened. So, here's a second consideration, based on some study I did in The New Interpreter's Bible (NIB), a great commentary of the entire Bible...

1. Context effects content. Just prior to the passage (4:13-18) we'll be delving into on Sunday, Paul has been talking about what it will be like for two groups of people when Jesus returns to the world: "those who are asleep" and those who are still alive when reappears. Now, in 5:1, Paul says that we don't really need to know more than this.

2. Some see "an adversative contrast" between 4:13-18 and 5:1-11. Not so, says the NIB, paraphrasing scholar Tracy Howard's argument that "neither section gives a systematic chronological timetable, and both sections are exhortative in purpose and parallel in content. Both commend a certain type of behavior in the light of eschatological [end time] matters. Both discuss the...parousia [the coming, appearance, or presence of the risen Jesus] (or the day of the Lord), and draw on various apocalyptic images to clarify the importance of that day for believers in the present."

In other words, both sections deal with the impact of the reality of Jesus' future return on how we live our lives today.

3. Believers lives in an already/not yet state of being. We know that as we follow Christ, we already have resurrection victory even in the midst of the challenges of today.

4. So-called "transitional markers," words that mark seams in the passage make it easy to outline this passage:

5:1-2: Hearers of Paul's letter aware of the day of the Lord
5:3: Unbelievers ignorant of the day of the Lord
5:4-5: End-of-day contrasts between believers and unbelievers
5:6-8: The call for believers to be sober
5:9-10: The justification for remaining sober
5:11: Recommendation of "mutual consolation and edification [building up]"

5. Paul peppers the entire passage with several synonomous phrases commonly used in his day, especially about end times. The first is "a time of judgment." (v.1)

6. A "thief at night" is another such phrase from Jewish apocalyptic literature. (v.2) (Luke 12:38-39; Revelation 3:3)

7. "labor pains" is also commonly used in Jewish apocalyptic writing. (Psalm 48:6; Mark 13:8)

8. Interesting: "peace and security" (v.3) was a "propaganda slogan" of the Roman imperial regime. Paul's phrasing may have been an attack on those in the Thessalonian church who were putting the empire in a higher place in their priorities than Jesus Christ. In fact, this problem underlays much of what Paul says in this entire letter. Caesar Augustus was seen by many as the benefactor of a kind of new age, with Augustus' role painted in almost godlike terms. Paul says that the only true new age will come with Jesus' return on that occasion the New Testament always calls, "the day of the Lord.'

9. About vv.4-5, NIB says that night "represents a condition of unawareness or insensitivity." Believers are children of the day and therefore won't be flummoxed by the day of the Lord. But unbelievers, experiencing the exact same thing, will be disconsolate and disoriented.

I imagine that C.S. Lewis does a good job of showing what this will be like in two of the books from The Chronicles of Narnia. In The Magician's Nephew, four persons from our world and the evil Queen Jardis from the dead world of Charn, are present when Aslan, the great Lion, "sings" Narnia into being. For three of the people--Digory, Polly, and the London cabbie, Frank--the sights and sounds of Aslan's creation are breathtakingly beautiful, arousing feelings of awe and wonder. But in Digory's Uncle Andrew and in Jardis, Aslan's activities rouse revulsion, fear, and a desire to run away.

In The Last Battle, a number of people are transported to eternity after entering a stable in which they have died. For the followers of Aslan who have entered, eternity is a place of beauty, restoration, life, and joy. But, in their midst are dwarves who are so resolutely selfish and cynical that even when offered the best of food and drink, can only taste refuse.

An analogous difference of perspective will mark believers and unbelievers, according to Paul, when they experience Jesus' return. For some, it will be a moment of indescribable joy. For others, it will bring dread or perhaps, even indifference.

10. At v.6, there's a shift in Paul's discussion. He moves from contrasting the perceptions of believers and unbelievers to looking at how believers are to live during these "in-between times." Besides the contrast in attitudes then, the differences between believers and unbelievers are also seen in the way they live life.

11. Believers, Paul says, are vigilant...ready for what life throws at them because they're deeply rooted in their relationship with Jesus Christ.

12. The church's weapons for dealing with daily life and the return of Jesus: FAITH, HOPE, LOVE.

13. In vv.9-10, we're told not to be like the sleepers in 4:13-18.

[Here's the first pass at this passage, from earlier in the week.]

Pat Robertson Is No Prophet

The good news is that Pat Robertson's 700 Club television show is viewed by only about one-million Americans each day. By the reckoning of my admittedly faulty math skills, that's less than .4% of the country.

The bad news is that not only is he viewed by one-million Americans and by more people in other countries into whose languages his blather is translated, he also seems to be among the mainstream media's favorite "Christian" spokespeople. Along with Jerry Fallwell and James Dobson, he's a straw man that skeptics, agnostics, atheists, and genuine inquirers into Christian faith can read about in their local paper, easily knock down or dismiss, and decide that Christians are every bit as legalistic, clueless, and venomous as your average Islamofascist.

Robertson likes to play the prophet. I won't bother reciting his past attempts to play this role. I will say that at least Robertson seems to understand what a prophet is from a Biblical point of view. In the Bible, a prophet is not someone who necessarily predicts the long-term future, although some of the Old Testament prophets did that. Prophets rather:

• saw themselves as messengers who
• addressed current situtations and
• pressed people to deal with those situations in order to avoid future difficulties or even punishment

But, there is another characteristic generally displayed by the prophets: reluctance to fulfill their missions. Jonah didn't want to travel to Nineveh for fear that the people of that city would hear his message, repent, and thereby be reconciled to God. Other prophets were hesitant about sharing God's message, believing that their hearers would kill them.

Robertson shows no hesitation about being "prophetic." He opened mouth and inserted foot again this week, telling the people of a Pennsylvania town not to expect God to be there for them because they voted in a slate of school board candidates who said that, while notions of Intelligent Design could be taught in Humanities classes, they didn't want it taught as an alternative to Darwinian evolutionary theory in Science classes.

Now, we may argue about Intelligent Design. As I understand it, there are non-theistic scientists who believe in Intelligent Design, a version without a designer. Be that as it may, to me it defies common sense to observe the intricacies of the universe and conclude it all is the result of happenstance. And frankly, I take a more reverential, even literalistic view of the Scriptures, than others. I believe that there was an Adam and an Eve, for example.

But, Robertson has no Biblical warrant for telling the voters of Dover, Pennsylvania that they have voted God out of their town. "Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord of the Lord shall be saved," is a promise that God hasn't revoked, no matter what Pat Robertson says.

As I interpret that promise from a Christian perspective, it means that all who earnestly seek the God we know through Jesus Christ in their lives, has access and relationship with God.

The people of Dover may be wrong in the decision that they have made. But Robertson has no reason for telling them that they have erected a wall between themselves and God. The Bible simply doesn't support his latest foray into "prophecy."

Paris Riots: My Greatest Hits of the Past Two Weeks

The Paris Riots have "inspired" several posts on this site. Here are a few of those I think deal with issues of lasting importance for the future:

A Christian Perspective of the Paris Riots
Is Paris Burning?
The Republic is At a Moment of Truth
Steyn Says That Riots Begin Eurabian Civil War

I'm glad that the riots have died down in Paris and appear to be diminishing throughout France. But they imply much about the future of Europe and the global war on terrorism, as well as the ongoing need of the Western democracies to assimilate immigrants and win the allegiance of those from other cultures.

One of the great questions is whether the appeal of Islamofascism, which eschews playing any role other than dictating its version of domineering fundamentalism to every nation, can be diminished among young Muslims.

A Confession I Probably Shouldn't Make

I admit it: I love to preach.

And teach.

And write.

I feel as though God made me to be a communicator and when I'm involved in communicating, I have a tremendous feeling of fulfillment.

The reason I have felt reticent about admitting this in the past is that one can love pursuits like these for the wrong reasons.

A person can be a limelight addict, so in love with attention that they hold forth ad infinitum.

It may be because of this penchant among preachers that Rick Warren says in The Purpose-Driven Life that he is unimpressed with preachers who talk about how much they love preaching.

I'm not so deluded as to think that I preach, teach, and write from altogether altruistic motives. I'm a sinner like anybody else. But I also hope (and pray) that by this point in my life--I'll soon be 52--my ego is sufficiently in check to allow my preaching, teaching, and writing do good for someone other than me.

Besides, it isn't the delivery of sermons that I enjoy so much. Or the sharing of the lesson. Or the feedback after the written piece has appeared in the local newspaper or here on the blog. (Although I do, frankly, enjoy those things.)

But what I really enjoy is what precedes those moments.

Take preaching, for example. I began preaching when I was in seminary, which means that I've been doing it now for twenty-five years. But, at the risk of getting wifty on you, I still don't know how a sermon comes into being.

Don't get me wrong. Preaching--any kind of communication--is work. People who think otherwise are really deluded. One of my seminary professors, Merlin Hoops, used to tell us a story he'd heard in Germany about a young pastor who had just preached a sermon and was excited about it. But another pastor who'd heard the effort was unimpressed and told the younger preacher so. "But, pastor," the younger one insisted, "I prayed and prayed about it." "That's fine," the older pastor said, "but did you study and work on it, too?"

Most weeks, I spend from five to fifteen hours studying the Biblical passages that form the bases for my Sunday messages. Then, I pray...a lot! Usually, by Thursday, I'm telling my wife things like, "I have no idea what I will say on Sunday. It's a wonderful passage, but my mind is a blank."

I've learned the truth of what one prolific writer remarked when asked how he had remained so productive through the years. "There's something quite motivating," he said, "about a deadline." For me, knowing that there will be people showing up at a time certain for worship on Sunday morning, people who need and deserve the comfort, hope, camaraderie, and guidance of God in their lives, is motivating.

It's then that I get busy...praying: "God, I have no idea what to say, although I've tried to saturate my mind in this text from Your Word. I think I know what needs saying. But I have no idea how to go about it. Please show me what to say."

It happened again last week. Actually, it was Saturday and I was in a quandary. It wasn't that I hadn't studied or prepared. I had. But I was stumped. I prayed and sat with my notebook and pen, ready to jot down some notes before I hit the computer keyboard. Then, the pieces fell into place and within an hour or so, the sermon was written.

And that is what I love about preaching. And teaching. And writing. I love that mysterious interplay of intellect, information, heart, desperation, and receptivity to God's Spirit and God's power that results in some new creation. It's something so mysterious that I can't explain it. It's like a special visit from God, giving me words and thoughts I would never come up with on my own.

My guess is that anybody who creates knows what that's like.

Michelangelo used to say that his job as a sculptor was simply to chisel away at the stone until the sculpture inside was made visible.

Paul McCartney has said that the songs he composes seem to come to him from someplace out there and he simply ushers them into the world.

C.S. Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham, has written that The Chronicles of Narnia began with an image of a fawn holding an umbrella and some packages that had impressed itself on Lewis's imagination when he was sixteen years old; when he began to write about this fawn twenty-four years after it had first come to him, Lewis had no notion of what would turn up on the page.

I certainly won't blame God for any of the deficiencies in my preaching or writing...and there are many! Sometimes, I know, I get in God's way.

But when I do get out of His way, it stuns me. Every time. I know that God makes more of our earnest efforts to be truly receptive to Him. That's why I love to preach!

UPDATE: Pastor Jeff has some interesting additional thoughts on creativity here.

Two Hope-Filled Promises

[I was honored to conduct the funeral of Laura, grandmother of a member of my current congregation in the Cincinnati area who grew up in the northwestern Ohio parish I served from 1984 to 1990. This is the message I presented there. The funeral took place earlier today in northwestern Ohio.]

First Corinthians 15:12-26
Psalm 27

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” That’s what Paul says in one of our Bible readings.

It’s important for us to remember this today because if the message that all who believe in Jesus Christ are given new and everlasting lives isn’t true today, as you face the loss of your mother, grandmother, and friend, then it isn’t true at all.

No one here today needs to be reminded of how tough and painful life can sometimes be. And the pain doesn’t get any worse than when someone who loved us so much and who was so loved in return suddenly dies. Paul was saying that if Jesus is nothing more than a good luck charm to get us through a few scrapes in life, then we’re as lost as those who have turned their backs on Him.

That’s why I so love what Paul goes on to say in First Corinthians. I imagine him almost shouting it as he dictated it to the secretary taking down his words:

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”

As you face the loss of “Grandma R,” you, as followers of Jesus Christ, have two strong promises on which you can lean, two great hopes.

First: You have the hope of knowing that the God of the universe is right beside you. It was this hope that David was talking about in another of our readings, Psalm 27:

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

After his wife died of cancer, C.S. Lewis wrote a book called, A Grief Observed. He begins by saying, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I’m not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness...”

You’ve probably experienced that fear-like grief already in these past few days.

Love will bring that sensation back again, sometimes in almost unbearable ways and sometimes, fleetingly, almost without your fully realizing it’s there.

It will come when you eat Thanksgiving dinner without Laura’s goose.

Or, when at a reception, you stand up to do a polka.

Or, when you’re at an auction, snooping--as she loved to do--through other people’s old stuff.

The memories will come and that fear-like dread of life without her will come back. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that it’s wrong to grieve. Death was never part of the original plan for the human race. It violates what we somehow know, deep inside of us, life was meant to be. Adam and Eve were made to live with God forever and so are we. And so we grieve.

But the God we know through Jesus promises to be with us, even in our grief. “...[H]e will hide me in His shelter in the day of trouble; He will conceal me under the cover of His tent; He will set me on a high rock,” Psalm 27 says. That expresses the hope we have for this life from Jesus.

But we have a second, bigger, and more wonderful promise through Jesus Christ. Paul goes on to write First Corinthians:

“...since death came through a human being, a resurrection of the dead also came through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus told the disciples, whose lives were about to be rocked by grief with His death on a cross. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may also be.”

I believe that all who follow Jesus, all who have persevered in believing His good news through all the bad (and good) news that meets us in this life, will immediately be welcomed into the presence of the One Who has prepared a place for all His people.

Laura is there now, with Jesus and with all who have believed in Him. She’s seeing the fulfillment of her lifelong faith in the God we meet in Christ. It’s the faith that David wrote about in Psalm 27:

“I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

Today, I commend two kinds of hope to all of you: The hope that comes from knowing that the risen Christ is with you now and the hope that one day, as believers in Jesus, we will see Him and all who have followed Him, in eternity.

Amen

What If Jesus Had Debated Bush and Kerry in 2004?

One southern California pastor presented his version of such a tete-a-tete on the Sunday before the last presidential contest. Now the IRS is apparently looking into revoking his congregation's tax-exempt status. Mark Roberts writes about the story and analyzes the sermon, by an Episcopal clergyperson, in question.

Hoping to Help in Disaster-Struck Areas

I've emailed several Evansville, Indiana congregations offering the services of people from our church in the Cincinnati area to help with any relief work we might do.

The lesson I've learned from several pastors and congregations is that these sorts of church-to-church efforts are far more efficient and far likelier to actually happen than trying to work through big relief organizations or denominational agencies.

A colleague is taking a group from his church to Slidell, Mississippi, scene of so much Hurricane Katrina-induced damage, to do some work next week. I'm hoping to hear from the same Mississippi congregation with which they're working in order to make arrangements for a work crew from our church to head down that way.

The tornado that ripped through parts of Indiana and Kentucky early on Sunday morning present churches in those states as well as in Ohio and other neighboring states to share the love of Christ in a very practical way. Jesus teaches us that our neighbor is whoever is in need.

In the meantime, we continue to pray that God will bring relief, solace, and hope to the victims of natural disaster everywhere.

Paris Riots: "The Republic is at a moment of truth..."

So says French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin about the failure of the French political system to integrate Muslims from north Africa and Arab nations into the country's life and the abominable failure to confront and end the lawlessness, some of it no doubt inspired by Islamofascist ideology, on French streets.

These twin failures have implications beyond the French borders, of course.

The French failure to assimilate has created a hotbed for Islamofascist recruitment in the heart of democratic Europe.

The French failure to thus far, deal effectively with the rioting there, now for nearly two weeks, will embolden all Islamofascists, with their desire to dictate the practices and daily life of every country, leaving behind all notions of pluralism or equal access to the marketplace of ideas.

The Republic is at a moment of truth. But if they fail this time, we might all pay the price.

[Of course, this all leaves America with a question: How well are we, the great melting pot, doing in assimilating folks from other lands? I'm not talking about illegals or those who sneak into the country bent on destroying America. I'm talking about those who, like the ancestors of every person born in this country, believe in the promise of opportunity in America. Assimilation is a very patriotic cause. It's also right and it's also shrewd. Just ask the French.]

Random Stuff from Our Genesis Study, Part 18

In Genesis 35, Jacob and his family take a journey which, like so many of life's journeys brings joys and tears. But through it all, the imperfect Jacob is graced by the presence and the help of the God in Whom he trusts.

1. As the chapter opens, God tells Jacob to go back to Bethel. (The name means house of God.) One can surmise that he was only too happy to comply with these instructions because it would take him away from anyone who might come after his family and him in the wake of his sons' actions at the end of chapter 34.

2. Before leaving, Jacob tells his family and all their party to get rid of the idols and "lucky charms."

We may shake our heads in incredulity at the need for doing this when we consider all of the scrapes through which God has taken the Abrahamic family. What are they doing "hedging their bets" by invoking humanly-created gods and the moral equivalents of rabbit's feet?

The answer to that question is a bit complicated:

First, it's important to understand what historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and other students of the human family show us. Quite simply, human beings are inherently religious creatures. We only have to hit a few snags in life to become aware that we're not the self-sufficient big shots we sometimes pretend to be. So, we're inclined to look for someone or something that has more power than us to help us. We look for gods to worship.

But we also prefer that our idols be within our control. One of the reasons that, many years ago, I was hesitant to throw in with the God of the Bible, the God ultimately revealed to the world through Jesus Christ, is that He was (and remains) beyond my control. He wasn't like the idols of ancient civilizations, or the lucky charms or superstitions preferred by many, or like the finite stuff by which people today measure the value of their lives--things like money, good times, or achievement. Rather, this God was (and is) bigger than me and dared to tell me what was best for me.

The God worshiped by Jacob was, at this point, so far as we know, only worshiped by Jacob and his family. That means that they were surrounded constantly by those who believed in other gods. That would have created what we might call peer pressure on Jacob's family, especially when difficult streaks come along. The God of the Bible calls people to follow Him even when bad things happen. God isn't a good luck charm. He is, as Pastor Rick Warren notes in his book, The Purpose-Driven Life, vastly more interested in our character than our comfort. Our characters, after all, are eternal. The bodies we seek to keep comfortable are mortal.

All of these elements may have pulled and tugged at Jacob's family and servants. But Jacob tells them to give up on these gods and superstitions and to rely on God alone. All the religious paraphernalia is buried under a tree. As the group leaves, renewed in their commitment to trusting only in the one true God of the universe, a fear seizes the residents of the towns and villages through which they pass. God gives them a favor which their small numbers and powerlessness doesn't warrant.

3. Grief comes at Bethel and in the next town to which Jacob and family go, Eprath. First, Rebekah's nurse, Deborah, dies. Later, grief is intermingled with joy as Rachel, Jacob's beloved, dies while giving birth to another son, Benjamin.

But in the midst of these events, God reiterates His promise to Jacob, essentially the same promise given to his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac:

I AM the Strong God.
Have children! Flourish!
A nation--a whole company of nations!--
will come from you.
Kings will come from your loins;
the land I gave Abraham and Isaac
I now give to you,
and pass it on to your descendants.

After this encounter with God, Jacob erected a pillar dedicated to God's honor, poured a drink offering on it, and then anointed it with oil.

As was often true in those times, Bethel had long been considered a place of worship. But the objects of worship there and elsewhere often changed. Now, Jacob dedicated the house of God to the God of all creation.

In Jacob's encounter, God also gave him a new name: Israel. The name, of course, would come to be applied to all of Jacob's descendants. Although the exact meaning of this important word is somewhat obscure, among its most important is God-Wrestler.

This may seem to be a strange designation for the people meant to be a light to the nations of the world and the womb from which the Messiah would be birthed. But as was true of Jacob, who wrestled with God, it's really only people who believe in God who bother wrestling with Him, struggling to understand His will and ways, sometimes rebelling, sometimes fighting fears and doubts, often wanting to make faith into a matter of the performance of holy rites rather than trusting surrender to the God Who made us. It's from these struggles that, as was also true of Jacob, blessings come.

4. The chapter ends with the death of Isaac. Jacob and Esau, apparently reunited for the last time, bury their father.

[Here are links to the previous installments in this series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16
Part 17]

Paris Riots: They May Not Be Assimilated Into France, But Have the Rioters Assimilated France?

Polysigh says:

Most commentators see the recent riots in Paris (and, it now seems, throughout much of the rest of the country) as evidence of France's failure to assimilate immigrants into the body politic. But perhaps it is just the opposite, that the riots, in fact, signify that these immigrants have assimilated French culture and politics. I don't mean to be flip, but to a great extent and perhaps more than any developed nation, the history of France has been written in the streets.

Read the whole thing.

Please Keep Tornado Victims in Your Prayers

Please pray for the victims of Sunday morning's deadly tornado that swept through parts of Indiana and Kentucky. Evansville, scene of a destructive tornado just three years ago, has been the hardest hit.

Please ask God to help people rebuild their homes and lives in the aftermath of the destruction. Ask too, for success to all relief workers in bringing not just material aid, but hope.

Here is a detailed account of the storm and its aftermath.

Paris Riots: What Took the French Government So Long?

This is a question that future historians will ask of the decision, made just on Tuesday, to allow France's regional governmental entities to impose curfews. How do you say, "Duh" in French?

Opinion Divided Among French Muslim Youth Over Paris Riots

Blog sites written by Muslim youth in France are home to lively debate and differing opinions over whether the riots perpetrated by their fellows are warranted. The Muslim community is far from monolithic about the riots. Many, including Muslim youth, condemn what's going on. (I found this story through Ann Althouse's site.)

First Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lesson: First Thessalonians 5:1-11

[For the third week now, I'm inviting the people of the congregation I serve as pastor into a consideration of the Bible passage around which our worship will be built this coming Sunday. If you have any comments, please let me know.]

First Thessalonians is the first of two letters from the first-century preacher and evangelist Paul, written to the congregation he founded in the city of Thesslonica. Thessalonica was the capital city of Macedonia.

Paul had gone there, along with his associates, Silas and Timothy, after being driven out of Philippi.

On three consecutive sabbath days, Paul had preached in the synagogue in Thessalonica. This conformed with a standard practice in the synagogues of those days. When a male visitor was among the worshipers, he was asked if there were anything he would like to say about the Torah. This is what lay behind the invitation sometimes extended to Jesus in Judean synagogues to "say a few words."

Paul's preaching convinced some of his fellow Jews who were there.

Also won over were Gentile listeners present at the sabbath services.

Throughout the Mediterranean Sea-basin, owing to generations of persecution, exile, and enslavement, there was a great dispersion (diaspora) of Jews. Wherever a Jewish population existed, they gathered for worship, some of them in formalized synagogues, some of them under trees outside of town. But wherever they gathered, Gentiles who had come to believe in the God of Israel--God-fearers, gathered with them as well. (Gentiles were referred to in the New Testament either as Greeks, referencing their being steeped in the Greek culture and language, or as ethnon, the ethnics. Greek language and culture was the equivalent of English today, the milieu of trade, communications, government, and business.)

The Jewish leadership were displeased with Paul and his team, though. They had worked to gather their fellow Jews and to proselytize the Gentile population and now here were these interlopers winning them over to the notion that Jesus of Nazareth had come as the Messiah, fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies by dying and rising, and making it possible for all people to experience a direct and personal relationship with God through Jesus, God in the Flesh.

Paul and Silas were forced to flee from Thessalonica. But they kept in touch and Paul guided the congregation into greater maturity of faith by sending them instructions. This letter is part of those instructions in faith.

Specifically taking a superficial look at First Thessalonians 5:1-11:

vv. 1-2: Paul's words are really similar to those given by Jesus to His disciples during His earthly ministry. "There's really no need," Paul seems to be saying, "to go any further in discussions of 'the end times' than to say that it could happen any time."

v.3: Even today, there are apocalyptic tea-leaf-readers, people who think they've got God's plans for the end of the world all figured out. Paul, quite frankly, would tell these people to shut up. (So does Jesus.)

The end of the earth and the return of Jesus will sneak up on the world like a burglar in the night.

v.4: But, Paul says, that day shouldn't really catch us off-guard, simply by virtue of our knowing that it's coming. Pauls' analogy is instructive: A pregnant mother knows that she will give birth even though she has no idea when contractions are going to hit.

v.5: We're to live our faithfulness to Christ openly and in the light. When we strive to keep no secrets from God, we have nothing to fear when the brilliant light of what the New Testament calls simply, the Day, the day of Jesus' return, will cause us no terror.

v.6: I love this verse!

It hearkens back to James, Peter, and John, who Jesus took with Him to pray on the night He was arrested. He asked them to be vigilant in praying that God would protect them all from the temptations and shame that loomed as possibilities in the hours to come. But they kept falling asleep.

It also reminds me of the New Testament admonition to never tire of doing good.

Jesus' message seems to tell us to never be so comfortable with the life of this world that we fail to vigilantly follow Him or be engaged in the life style of love of God and love of neighbor that is the Christian's appropriate response to the love and forgiveness of God given to us through Jesus.

v.7: Here, Paul says that sleep is appropriate at night, keeping in mind that in the first-century world that knew neither electricity or powered light, you couldn't really work anyway. He also points out that one of the activities that people engage in apart from the searing showcasing of light is drunkenness. If we're to live useful, happy lives, Paul says, we need to remain sober. He doesn't just have alcohol in mind. He has in mind sound judgment, judgment tied in with the One Who designed us in the first place.

v.8: Faith, hope, and love. Good stuff. Look at First Corinthians 13.

v.9: Wrath, as I understand it, isn't God lashing out at sinners. Wrath is that set of consequences that come to us when we decide to violate God's design for us and our world.

In the natural world, God created gravity. Gravity means that I can't with abandon jump from a skyscraper and expect to be unhurt. I'll fall and the landing will be the end of me. If that happens, it won't be because God is angry. It will simply be the reasonable consequence of my actions.

When we violate God's moral law, as embodied in the Ten Commandments, there are also consequences. Even if we're never discovered by others or even if the world regards our violations as being "no big deal," there is scar tissue on our souls. Sin can also harm our relationships with others, cause us to lose our self-respect, or make us inhumane. Sin, until we turn back (repent) to God and trust in Jesus Christ, also acts as a wall between God and us. We will condemn ourselves, running into the consequences of our repudiation of God, even though God wants us to be with Him forever.

v.10: Jesus' death and resurrection makes it possible for all who believe in Him to be with Him forever...as a free gift!

v.11: Here, Paul talks about the importance of the Church. In the face of all that happens in our lives, we can encourage one another in the certainty that we belong to Christ forever.

[Hopefully, more tomorrow. By the way, you can find more about the establishment of the church at Thessalonica in Acts 17.]

A Christian Perspective on the Paris Riots

The New Testament book of First Peter encouraged the Christians of Asia Minor (and encourages us today) with these words:

For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing right you should silence the ignorance of the foolish. As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (First Peter 2:13-17)

Christians see themselves as "aliens and strangers" in this world, as Peter writes just before this passage, because as followers of Jesus Christ, our real citizenship is in heaven. But we acquiesce to government authority for the good of all. We acknowledge that in a world suffering from the effects of human sin, not all will willingly respect the rights, prerogatives, or property of their neighbors.

The Christian accepts governments as gifts from God meant to bring the blessings of civil order in a world unwilling to voluntarily live directly under God's rule of love for God and love for others. Without civil order, there can be no justice.

When governments are unjust, Christians may feel compelled to challenge their governments for the injustices. But they're to do so peacefully for as long as is possible. (As was exemplified in Martin Luther King, Jr.)

What's going on in France, where young Muslims are rioting in the streets, may be readily explained. By most accounts, Muslims are treated with everything from indifference to hostility by the police and by French society.

But the violence cannot be justified or countenanced by the government there.

In a way, France now becomes another theater in the Global War on Terrorism. But it is more subtle than the one in Afghanistan, for example. Not all the young people engaged in civil unrest in France are aligned with Osama bin Laden. But they have the strong potential of becoming part of his Islamofascist horde. The French government has been guilty of creating a breeding ground for future terrorist cells. Now, it must reverse that course and commit itself to...

• Integrating the five-million Muslims who are in the country into the life of the country. Many of the young North Africans and Arabs I have heard interviewed today consider themselves French and want to feel part of their adopted homeland.
• Enforcing the law in ghettoized Muslim communities in Paris and elsewhere. From reports I've read today, the police had given up on being effective in maintaining order in these enclaves. They gambled that if they left the Muslim ghettos alone, all would be well. That "malign neglect" isn't good for anyone and no doubt gave rise to the belief on the part of many Muslim young men that they could begin this wave of violence and get away with it.

Without order, there can be no justice. The French government must be about establishing both order and justice now. From a Christian perspective, doing so is their most fundamental obligation.

[A few tangentially related posts from the past you might want to check out:
Fatwa Demonstrates World is at War with Fascists, Not Muslims
Can Democracy Take Root in the Muslim World?
Living In, But Not Of the World (Part of my 'Habits of Heart' series)
Can the Person Who Puts Jesus First Rule Fairly on Constitutional Questions? (Here, I delve into a Christian view of government)]

Fatwa So Far Has No Impact on Paris Riots

France has the largest Muslim population in Europe. But a portion of the younger Muslim population there, incited by a combination of French discrimination, poverty, and the easy answers of Islamofascism, are apparently heedless of a Muslim fatwa condemning their violence:

France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that forbade all those ``who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others.''

The Guardian reports that the rioting has now spread to 300 French communities and that police in one German town near Berlin are investigating the burning of five automobiles that may be linked to spontaneous Islamofascism. There is a large Turkish population in Germany, much of it marginalized and impoverished as Arabs and North Africans are in France.

Islamofascism has gained a certain cache among many young Muslims who, prior to being exposed to its tenets, largely through numerous radical Islamic web sites, were irreligious. At this point, they don't care that the version of Islam they have embraced has little to do with the actual beliefs of Islam. Their religious ideology is merely an excuse to vent rage.

Times Has Detailed Coverage of Paris Riots

See here. As I wrote yesterday, how the French officials handle this assault on civil order is something in which all the Western Democracies have a stake.

Steyn Says Paris Riots Are Outbreak of "Eurabian" Civil War

It may be a gloomy assessment. But one suspects that at least one party to the riots think they're at war and so far, it doesn't seem to be the French officials.

This Doesn't Surprise Me

On my recent trip to the Los Angeles-area, my first-ever, I asked the driver of the shuttle who took us from our hotel to our conference site, how much the homes we were seeing then might cost. They were one-story slab homes that were nice. In my neck of the Cincinnati suburbs, they would have gone for about $80,000.00. His answer, confirmed by another driver later, was that in SoCal, the selling prices would be about $500,000.00. People who move to the Midwest from California and are able to sell their former homes, pocket quite a bit of cash. They buy larger homes with more yard at a fraction of what it would cost them back there. That's why this doesn't surprise me.

West Wing Debate: Could These Guys Please Run in the Real World?

After last night's live debate on The West Wing, my wife turned to me and said, "If all presidential debates were that enlightening, it would be great!"

The debate, ably conducted by Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits playing the nominees of the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, had about it both aura of reality and unreality.

It looked like a real debate and there was something of the tension that comes through the TV screen with these quadrennial events.

The difference is that the Smits and Alda characters were blunter and more authentic than the real candidates usually are, exposing their fictional nominees' genuine sentiments about issues. Ironically, the showbiz candidates made no attempt to employ one of those standard presidential debate conventions, the withering one-liner, itself something nicked from showbiz.

The upshot? I think I would feel better about voting for either of the West Wing candidates for president than I've felt about their real-life counterparts in decades.

[By the way, here are links to some earlier posts on real presidential debates:
Note for 2008: Dump or Change Presidential Debates
Okay, So Maybe I Was Wrong About Debates]

NOTE: One reason I may have so liked the West Wing debate is that they adopted a format similar to the one I recommended in the first post cited above.

Good Source of Info on Indiana/Kentucky Tornado

Bruce Armstrong at Ordinary Everyday Christian is doing a good job of covering the tornado that hit parts of Indiana and Kentucky yesterday. Bruce includes links to agencies that can use your help and contributions as well as news stories. Please keep the families of those who lost loved ones and all who are dealing with the impact of the tornado in their lives.

Bono Interview in 'Rolling Stone'

He doesn't talk like a preacher at the church fellowship hour, but the lead singer of U2 has a lot of interesting things about his life, his music, and the shape of his faith here. Be warned: There is truly offensive language in the piece.

Is Paris Burning?

So Adolf Hitler asked back in 1944, hoping to administer a death sentence to the City of Lights even as his occupying army was forced to leave it by the oncoming Allied liberators.

Tonight, fires set off by different forces, young immigrants from African and Arab countries, burn in the Paris suburbs and at various places across France. This has been going on now for eleven straight nights.

These recent events are deeply disturbing to anyone who lives in a Western Democracy. They clearly show the dangers inherent in the failure to integrate immigrant populations into the life of a democratic nation.

But there is good reason to wonder if some of the Arab youth involved in the riots truly want to be integrated into the life of their adopted country. If they, like some of the Arab population in the Netherlands, who have come under the influence of Islamofascists, believe that the government's policies must comply with their own version of Islamic law, they may not want to participate equally in the civil life of France, they may want to dominate it.

In any case, the French government must decisively defeat the forces of anarchy now. There will be time for postmortems later.

All Western democracies must deal with the threat posed to their social compacts by the facile, divisive, and destructive programs of fundamental religionists. Whether one agrees with every argument raised by former President Jimmy Carter in his impressive new book, his discussion of this very issue, addressed to America's specific political situation, applies equally well to what is going on in France right now. For democracies to function, no religious group must be able to dominate others. This is why I so appreciate Hugh Hewitt's discussion of Jerry Fallwell in his book, In, But Not Of. Hewitt argues that Fallwell embarrasses and sets back the cause of Christ with his fundamentalist pronouncements.

Democracies require a fair marketplace of ideas. The young people breaking windows and throwing Molotov Cocktails in France tonight don't want that fair marketplace. They want to shut it down and tell everybody else what to believe, think, and do.

UPDATE: In the comments, Free2Rocknroll (aka: our son's best friend since childhood days), points out that Arabs in France are subjected to ill-treatment. (He's also quick to point out that this can't justify the rioting.) He's right. I was trying, perhaps too obliquely and with insufficient detail, to acknowledge that in the original post. The failure to integrate groups of people into a given society can be fatal. The French appear to have been heedless to the immigrant groups among them, ill-treating them when they come in contact with mainstream French society while tolerating a "don't look, don't tell" lawlessness in those areas where they live.

But it does appear to me that some of those who are engaged in rioting in France right now are unwilling to be integrated into a multicultural democracy. That sort of intolerance cannot be tolerated.

Real Faith Relates

Revelation 7:9-17

[This continues a series inspired by the staff at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church of Burnsville, Minnesota.]

How many have you took French when you were in school? I did. It’s a language that can sound so beautiful. But it isn’t easy. The grammar can be different from our English and the elisions, those changeable links between words that can sound like mumbling to English-speakers, are hard to learn. Comedian Steve Martin had a routine he once did in which he imagined someone writhing on the ground like an idiot. “Help!” someone cries, “He tried to speak French!”

The Biblical equivalent of trying to speak French may be trying to understand the last book of the New Testament, Revelation. You can bet that the people who claim to have it all figured out don’t.

But it is possible to say a few things about this book.

First, we can say that it represents a revelation--that is, something that was revealed--to the apostle John by the risen and ascended Jesus Christ decades after Jesus died and rose again. In fact the title in the original Greek of the New Testament is literally, The Apocalypse of John, the Revelation of John.

We can also say that Jesus reveals a number of things to John. Mostly, He indicated the disasters, persecution, and opposition Jesus-Followers would endure as the cosmos convulsed in its inevitable death throes and the wonderful eternal future that awaits those followers beyond the end of history.

We can also say that the number seven is important in the book of Revelation. As one scholar says:

The letter to the seven churches is followed by seven vision-cycles depicting the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven visions of conflict, the seven visions of Mount Zion, the seven bowls of the wrath of God, the seven visions of the fall of Babylon [Babylon probably represented the Roman Empire to John and more universally, represents the world’s sinful, selfish ways of doing things], and the seven visions of recompense.

Now, there’s a reason I bring all this up. One day, when we lived in northwest Ohio, my wife and I found a baby-sitter and drove into the big city of Napoleon to do some shopping. We were heading back to our house in the country and laughing about something. As is my tendency, I was clowning around. My wife said something, which I pretended had offended me.

Just as we pulled up to a four-way stop, I acted like I was backhanding her. Though my hand stopped about a foot from her face, a guy who knew nothing about our cutting up and only saw my gesture, pulled up opposite us at the intersection at the same time. There was a look of rage on his face. At least for a moment, he thought that he was looking at a wife-beater.

If you want to understand content, you must understand the context. If you want to understand the specific things that people say and do and avoid misjudgments, you have to know something about the circumstances from which they arose. That’s also true of the complicated book of Revelation and Bible lesson we’re looking at today.

It recounts a scene in which John observes throngs and throngs of people wearing white, symbolizing that they’ve been made pure by the blood of Jesus that washes away the sin of all who believe in Him, and waving palm leaves, which in the ancient world symbolized victory, hailing Jesus.

The people John visualized were believers in Jesus who, in spite of the difficulties, tragedies, and calamities of the world, continued to follow Him, even with their dying breaths. They reached heaven because on earth, they ignored the blandishments and the persecution of a world that opposes God and persevered in following Jesus.

One of the things that so interests me about this passage is how Jesus chooses to tell John about the rewards of perseverant faith in Him. Think about it. Jesus could have told John, “Here’s Frank (or some other individual person). Frank kept following Me and now Frank is in heaven.”

Instead, Jesus showed John an army of Franks and Lindas, Manuels, and Lucys. Why?

Last Sunday and the Sunday before that, we celebrated Baptisms here at Friendship. Mackenzie Jane was baptized two weeks ago and Benjamin Malcolm was last week. We could have baptized them privately. But it’s always preferable to do so during our public worship because our lives as followers of Jesus are not private matters. Christian faith isn’t just about, “Jesus and me.” When we are baptized into Christ, we’re also baptized into His family, the Church. Real faith involves relationships, not only with the bigger world we want to love into following Christ with us, but also with the people who are part of our church family.

We need the church, in fact, probably more than we need our earthbound families. But those earthbound families can tell us something about why our church family is so important. Back when our son was in the eighth grade was required, as I suppose all the kids in that grade in our district were required, to write a family history. So, at Christmas time, he asked the oldest of my three sisters, who is three years younger than me, “What was it like growing up with Dad?” She smiled and asked me, “Should I tell him the truth?” When I said that would be okay, she told Phil, “He was a pain in the [inappropriate church word].”

After elaborating on that, she turned serious and told Phil there was something else she wanted to say about growing up with me. “Your dad and I used to have long talks. One of the things we talked about was that everybody, whether they’re black or white, is equal. He really believed that.” Her eyes then misted over. “Years later,” she told our son, “when my daughter began to date a black man, I had misgivings about it. I was worried about what they or any children they had might go through. But then I remembered what your dad told me and how firmly he believed it. It really helped me to understand how wrong it would be to object to my daughter marrying someone of a different color.”

Folks: Sometimes our family members, even the members of our church family, can be pains in various portions of our metaphorical anatomy. But, if we persevere in our relationships with God and each other, those family members can also help us to deal with the difficulties of life and become our better selves.

A few weeks ago, I was talking with Carol, a member of our congregation who volunteers time and energy for our outreach program at Friendship. She also does a lot of things behind the scenes to help our congregation that few people see or know about. She told me why she did what she does. “This,” she said, referring to all of you, “is my family.”

It isn’t easy to follow Jesus Christ in our world today. You young people in middle and senior high school know that. So, does everybody in this room.

Putting God and not yourself first is a radical idea.

Loving your neighbor rather than living by the ethic of “shaft or get shafted” is not how the world recommends we do business these days.

We know that Jesus will meet all who have kept faithfully following Him in eternity. But along the way, we need the encouragement of our church family to help us to keep following.

Real faith relates.

So, join one of our small groups--the Women’s Book Club, the Men’s Group, our Tuesday Bible study.

Get involved with one of our ministries.

Telephone that person you haven't seen in worship for awhile.

Your faith will be stronger for it and your life will be better for it.

What Are the Implications of Avian Flu Threat for 2008 Presidential Race?

In 1932, the nation was overwhelmed by the Great Depression. It also had a presidential election.

The incumbent president, Herbert Hoover, was blamed for the economic catastrophe from which ordinary Americans were reeling, for insenstivity to their plight, and for ineffectiveness in dealing with it.

His opponent, Franklin Roosevelt, was rather vague about his program. But, like Hoover, he spoke a lot about balancing the federal budget.

In the end, it didn't matter what the political views of the two major candidates were. The nation was predisposed to booting Mr. Hoover out and Mr. Roosevelt had something very big going for him: A jaunty and reassuring confidence that all would be well.

In emergency situations, we tend to put aside philosophical concerns. Political philosphies are seen as the obsessions of a people so comfortable that they can afford to indulge them.

When emergencies impinge on an electorate, whether those emergencies are economic catastrophe, war, the breakdown of domestic institutions, or mass outbreaks of disease, voters turn the reins of executive power over to people who look like they can lead them to better days.

(Fortunately, in America, at the national level, we've always turned to trustworthy leaders. In 1933, for example, Americans brought Franklin Roosevelt to the White House, while in Germany, Adolf Hitler was installed as chancellor.)

What happens if the Avian Flu becomes an ever-greater possibility as we move into the 2008 campaign, or our collective awareness of it grows, or if, God forbid, the H5N1 virus mutates, making human-to-human transfer of the disease possible before or during the 2008 elections?

Once again, Americans will be looking for a decisive, confident leader they believe can lead them to better days.

Michael Barone and Hugh Hewitt have already given anecdotal evidence that rank-and-file conservative Republicans appear to be willing to lay aside their philosophical qualms with former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, believing that he proved his mettle in dealing with national security issues in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. His unruffled demeanor in the face of horrible circumstances could bring him more support from Republicans.

Another possible beneficiary on the GOP side would be John McCain. McCain's credentials for "unrufllability" have been proven in extremis in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. He's also seen as a man of principle who won't cave in to the easy answers. Like Giuliani, he's fought and beaten cancer. His chief deficiency is that he has no executive experience. Americans like to give the presidency to governors.

Of course, governors like Mitt Romney in Massachusetts would also have the opportunity to strut their stuff as they dealt with a pandemic outbreak. Another Massachusetts governor first entered the nation's consciousness by his firm handling of an emergency situation, a police strike in Boston. That was Calvin Coolidge and he later became president.

Among the Democrats, the likeliest beneficiary at this point would appear to be the two governors who seem likely to vie for the party's 2008 nomination.

The first is Bill Richardson. He is an impressive guy and a tested administrator who is credentialed in more than a few of the sweet spots of contemporary US politics. He knows energy policy. He knows about the North Koreans. He is Hispanic and deals with the immigration issue in New Mexico every day. I feel certain that, like Haley Barbour in Missisippi, Richardson is both smart and unflappable.

The other is Mark Warner of Virginia. Warner is the one I think likeliest to emerge as the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee anyway. Moderate southern Democrats have a leg-up in runs for the presidency. If they can successfully run the gauntlet of the primaries, they have a capacity for triangulating Republican nominees in general elections. Warner is smart and if he has to deal with the Avian Flu, his leadership abilities will be brought into focus.

I'm praying that this pandemic won't happen. But if it does, it will without doubt, have an impact on the 2008 presidential race.

Who, Besides Governments, Should Have Plans for a Pandemic?

Every state and community should have a plan to deal with the possible outbreak of an Avian Flu pandemic...and, I'm beginning to think, every church, synagogue, mosque, school, social service agency, and retailer should as well.

If the H5N1 virus mutates, making human-to-human conveyance of the disease possible, as seems likely, the failure to have such plans could prove fatal in the extreme.

The reason I say that?

Avian Flu far quicker and deadlier than the influenza strains with which most of us are familiar. Thus far, half of all humans who have contracted the disease through close contact with infected bird populations, have died. Avian Flu is so deadly because its symptoms seem to show up within twenty-four hours of exposure and within seventy-two hours, its victims can be dead. It's far quicker and more deadly than the influenza strains with which most of us are familiar.

If an outbreak arises, the most sensible responses will be to blunt its spread by limiting possible exposure.

• Faith communities may want to plan on suspending their regular weekly worship and some other church activities.
• Schools and social service agencies may also have to suspend normal operations.
• Retailers may have to close up shop for a time. (If that's necessary for the good of all, it would seem that federal and state governments should make sure that they're not swamped by the debt they likely would pile up during a shut-down.)

Fortunately, in this age of the Internet, faith communities, schools and agencies, and retailers will be able to conduct some form of their ordinary work.

• As we saw exemplified in many of the New Orleans faith communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it is possible for pastors and congregations to share spiritual sustenance via email, pastors' blogs, chat rooms, and church web sites. In fact, it will be easier to do this in the face of an Avian Flu pandemic than it was after Katrina, because populations will be less dispersed.
• In an emergency, social service agencies and retailers might make similar use of cyberspace, not to mention the telephone and conventional mass media.
• Long term, of course, direct human-to-human contact is both optimal and really, what we all need. This need for human fellowship has been built into our DNA by God. The call to love God and love neighbor, which is how Jesus summarizes all of God's Law, is not just a command, it is our privilege.

But if a pandemic hits, it will be essential to deal with it in ways that are compassionate, sensible, and innovative.

UPDATE: One suggestion I intended to include in this post and then forgot, is that faith communities make their buildings available for use as temporary hospitals during any pandemic. There is a long tradition of this in Christianity, of course, and in fact, the first hospitals were Christian institutions. I can't think of a better or more practical way of sharing the love of Jesus Christ. Surveys indicate that should a pandemic arise, there won't be enough hospital beds in the whole country to accommodate the ill. In Massachusetts, they plan to use college dorm facilities, which is also smart.

In Preparation for Sunday: Revelation 7:9-17

I've been remiss about posting about the Biblical text that will be the focus of this coming Sunday's worship. Influenced by something my colleague, Tod Bolsinger, said at the recent GodBlogCon in Los Angeles, last week I decided to invite members of the congregation I serve as pastor, Friendship Church, and whoever else might be interested, to consider the text for the coming week. So, here goes...

The text for this coming Sunday's worship is Revelation 7:9-17.

We Lutherans have an interesting history with this book of the Bible, the last one in the New Testament corpus. Starting with Martin Luther, the monk and priest whose reforming work began the movement of which we're a part, we've been ambivalent about Revelation.

Luther himself didn't like the book, saying that he simply couldn't understand it. This is odd, in a way, because as a Johannine book--that means that, like the Gospel of John and the three letters in the New Testament, First, Second, and Third John, Revelation is attributed to John, the beloved disciple--employs many of the same symbolism one finds in the other books attributed to John.

(By the way, Luther hated the term, Lutheran. It was originally meant as a term of derision, the enemies of reforming the Church and its proclamation to the world claiming that those who agreed with Luther about such issues as justification by faith in a gracious God were more loyal to Luther than they were to Jesus Christ. Luther said that because he was nothing more than a sack of worms and because our hope comes not from a person, but from God, the appellation was completely inappropriate. He preferred calling the movement, evangelical, coming from the New Testament word, euangelion, meaning Good News. Of course, in more recent years, the term evangelical has come to mean something rather different from Luther's usage of it. But it still refers to being people of the Good News summarized so well in John 3:16. For more on Luther, see here.)

Through the years, Revelation has been misused by all manner of apocalypticists claiming to know what all the book's rich imagery means. Just as Craig Williams has said of The Chronicles of Narnia though, it's also true that to read Revelation as a crude allegory is wrong. People have always tried to do this, though.

Take, for example, Revelation's talk about Babylon. In my lifetime, I've heard a succession of preachers who have claimed to have Revelation figured out identify Babylon as the Soviet Union, the United States, China, Communists, or Islamofascists. From their "insights," these misguided souls have then extrapolated the meaning of other images in Revelation and what they tell us about the end of the world and the return of the risen Jesus.

Generations of apocalyptic preachers and writers have worked people up into fearful frenzies and have lined their pockets through such irresponsible talk.

They ignore Jesus' specific injunction not to worry about when the world will end. (See here.) In fact, He even said that all the signs that point to the end of this planet's life had already occurred when He walked the earth in first-century Judea. The call of the Christian isn't to play these endless games spun from Revelation, but to trust in and walk with Jesus Christ today!

But apart from ignoring what Jesus has told us, these folks also ignore the meaning of the Babylon imagery to John, the writer of Revelation.

In Old Testament times, the Babylonian Empire swept into ancient Judea, the remnant of even more ancient Israel, and conquered God's people. They were utterly subjugated and many of their leaders were killed or exiled to Babylon, where they served as slaves of their Babylonian masters. The walls of Jerusalem, walls being the marks and the guarantors of safety for ancient cities, were brought down or allowed to crumble. More seriously, the Temple, where it was thought that the presence of God dwelt in the Holy of Holies, was torn up and allowed to deteriorate.

The "Babylonian Captivity" created a massive crisis of faith for the Hebrew people:

If Yahweh, their God, was the Lord of all and omnipotent, how could this have happened?

If they were God's chosen people, how could this have befallen them?

Had God allowed them to suffer the consequences of their chronic reliance on themselves or on worldly power, leaving them naked and vulnerable before a superior army, a superior power in the world?

If God was only knowable in a Temple made with hands in Jerusalem, as many had thought, what happened to their God and to their faith when the Temple was no more and they were far from home?

Many Old Testament passages give voice to the anguish and the questions of God's people in these circumstances.

When John penned Revelation some seven centuries later and wrote about Babylon, the Babylonian Empire was a long-dead entity. But there did exist an analogous one, the Roman Empire. And by the time John wrote Revelation, at least some elements of that empire were persecuting the Church, the followers of the resurrected Jesus, in many ways. So, he may well have had Rome in mind. But to someone as tuned into God and to the history of God's relationship with the world, Babylon would have been much more than Rome.

Babylon is a symbol of all worldly power at enmity with Christ and His Church. That power may be political, military, psychological, social, religious, or intellectual. Babylon is the world system, if you will, before which the Church stands naked and defenseless if it relies on the power of anyone or anything other than the God we know through Jesus Christ. But, as Luther would say, with Christ fighting by our side, the world system cannot prevail.

The name of John's book, Revelation, translates its Greek title, Apocalypse of John. In spite of the dire associations made with this word, apocalypse simply refers to something that has been revealed, a revelation.

In his book, John talks about a revelation he receives from the risen and ascended Jesus. I like the thematic outline of Revelation found in the Study Bible:

1. The church on earth (chs. 1-3)
2. The Lamb and the seven seals (chs. 4-7)
3. Seven angels with trumpets (chs. 8-11)
4. The church persecuted by Satan and the beast (chs. 12-14)
5. The seven bowls of God's wrath (chs. 15-16)
6. Judgment of Babylon (chs. 17-19:10)
7. Final judgment and final victory (19:11 to end)

Our particular text falls immediately following an enumeration of those in the heavenly places from Israel.

Our passage talks about "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages." These are the non-Jews, Gentiles, who have come to know God through Jesus Christ. (Both Hebrews 1:1-4 and John 1:1-14, among other passages in the New Testament, point us to the fact that Jesus is God's ultimate, definitive self-disclosure.)

I'll cover the passage in greater detail in a post tomorrow, hopefully. But, here's a superficial consideration:

17:9: The "I" is John, of course, committing this revelation to paper.

The multitude of Gentiles stands in contrast to the 144,000 enumerated from among Israel. This can hardly be considered a polemic against the Jews since John, to whom authorship is traditionally ascribed, was himself a Jew. It rather demonstrates the universality of God's love for all people and the accessibility of God's grace, granted through Jesus Christ.

The Lamb is Jesus. This is one of many images and names used for Him. In the Gospel of John, another John, the Baptizer, sees Jesus near the Jordan River and declares Jesus to be "the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world."

In ancient times, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, a pure, unblemished lamb was sacrificed by the High Priest in the area known as the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. (The Temple was rebuilt after the Babylonian Captivity ended. But it no longer exists, being the site today of one of the holiest mosques in Islam. All that's left is some of the wall, where pious people from throughout the world come to pray.)

Atonement is an old English word that can literally be rendered as at one ment. On the Day of Atonement, the sacrificial lamb bore the sins committed by the people in the preceding year. The animal's blood was then sprinkled on the penitent awaiting the emergence of the Priest from behind the curtain that concealed the Holy of Holies. This meant that all the sins of the preceding year no longer impeded the people's relationship with God. In other words, God and the penitent were one again.

The New Testament book of Hebrews, which uses many of the same themes and motifs as the Johannine literature in the New Testament, compares the atonement offered on Yom Kippur, when an unblemished animal is sacrificed and is effective for only a year, to the atonement that comes when the Lamb of God, God Himself, the Savior of the world, offers Himself as a sacrifice on the cross. Through Christ, Hebrews asserts, our sins are forgiven and our relationship with God are secured "once and for all." (That phrase, "once and for all," by the way, translates a Greek word, hapax, which the preacher in Hebrews repeats over and over, a lot like the "Gospel train," a rhetorical device employing repetition and heightened drama in the African-American Christian tradition, to great effect.)

White robes and palm branches symbolize purity and victory, respectively.

7:10: This is a bit like the welcome Jesus received on what's called Palm Sunday, when He entered Jerusalem triumphantly, just five days before He was executed on a cross.

7:11-12: This is an utterly worshipful scene. There is complete deference to God.

7:13-14: What is the great ordeal? I believe it's what all believers in Jesus go through, in one form or another, at lesser or greater degrees of severity. It's what happens when we attempt to live faithfully in following Christ and confront Babylon, the world system that rewards selfishness, greed, domination, and the idolatry of things.

The world, as Jesus points out in the Gospels, is currently under the dominion of darkness and sin, though God's goodness and love break out wherever He is honored. But when we buck that system, difficulties--ordeals, tribulation--ensue. You can bank on it. But Jesus promises that if we hang in there with Him, following Him and repenting when we have failed to do so, we will live with Him and all His children on the better side of history.

7:15-17: This is a great affirmation of God's promises to the faithful.

What strikes you, what questions or insights, strike you as you read this passage?

Chronicles of Narnia: Not Meant to Be an Allegory of the Gospel

I love C.S. Lewis' seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia. I'm excited that the first book he wrote for the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, will be coming in movie form this coming December.

I love the books because, first of all, they represent great literature, wonderful stories filled with intriguing characters in interesting situations. Another attraction is Lewis, the stylist: as an Ohio State professor of Literature once told me, Lewis "writes like an angel."

There is also much Christian truth in the Chronicles. Aslan is clearly a Christ figure. But, as Craig Williams shows us in the latest post on his wonderful blog, Lewis never intended The Chronicles of Narnia to be an allegory.

The person who sets herself the goal of identifying what every character or circumstance "represents" in Christian truth or the Biblical witness will soon understand the futility of the undertaking and rob themselves of the joy that goes with simply letting their tales come to them as is. (Although there are oodles of Biblical allusions.)

Lewis was a scholar of the first degree, steeped in a knowledge of the myths of many cultures: Greek, Nordic, Roman, and so on. He drew on that rich tradition to weave these magical tales.

Yes, Lewis has created what must be regarded as a great expression of Christian art comparable to anything created by Michelangelo. But part of the Chronicles' greatness and their capacity to both entertain and enlighten resides in their being, first of all, great works of art that avoid pedagogy.

Read Craig's post with quotes from two Lewis letters addressing this issue.

Random Stuff from Our Genesis Study, Part 17

[During our Tuesdays with Markie Bible studies at Friendship Church, we've been working our way through the important Old Testament book of Genesis. Here, in periodic posts, I've been presenting a summary of our conversations on the book which the ancient rabbis said held the key to understanding Israel's faith. For Christians, it's also important because it all foreshadows what we have come to experience intimately through Jesus Christ: that God loves sinners, provides them with the opportunity to be forgiven through repentance and belief in Him, gives hope and encouragement when life is hard, and is our loving Lord whether we live or die.]

Genesis 34 tells what happens when Jacob's only daughter, Dinah, is raped by a young man of the Hivites, Shechem.

1. In Genesis 34:1, Dinah, living in foreign territory, is shown seeking the company of other young women. This meant that she probably went into the town named for the young man who would rape her.

The irony in this is that cities in those times, about 1700 BC, were usually the safe places to be, not the countryside in which Dinah's still-nomadic family lived. Cities were bounded by walls, the narrow gates into which were locked at sundown. It was in the countryside that bandits roamed and of course, wild animals attacked. But somewhere either close to the city or within its environs, Shechem at first spoke tenderly to Dinah and then raped her.

Shechem then asks his father, Hamor, apparently unaware of what has happened, to arrange for a marriage between Dinah and Shechem.

Even in patriarchal ancient Israelite thought, by the way, rape was never justified. (See Genesis 34:1-4)

2. Jacob's reaction to learning of Dinah's rape is strange. He decides to hold his tongue until he has revealed what has happened to his sons. Given the fear and revulsion with which he later greets his son's reactions in the matter, it's hard to know why he told his sons. What does seem clear from that later response on Jacob's part is that he was not intent on exacting revenge, at least not immediately, because he was afraid of the larger numbers of men that Hamor and the Hivites could bring against Jacob and his relatively small band.

3. Hamor visits Jacob and family to seek Dinah's hand in marriage for Shechem. It's interesting that Jacob's sons interpose themselves in marriage negotiations that should have involved only Jacob and Hamor. This in itself should have aroused Jacob's suspicions about his son's plan of action.

It's interesting to note that we've run across a sibling's interposition in such negotiations before. When Abraham's servant went to Iraq, seeking a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac, Laban, the son of Rebekah's father, Bethuel, stuck his nose in to the negotiations. In each case, manipulation was involved.

4. Distinct among many peoples in ancient times, male Israelites were circumcised as a sign of their covenant relationship with God. The Hivites were apparently unaware of the theological significance of circumcision. They seem to think it's only a social custom and with the promise of marriageable women and through the use of their superior numbers, possession of all that Jacob and his family owned, they readily agree to be circumcised.

5. It was said that the third day after circumcision was the most painful in the recovery period. This was when Jacob's sons, who never intended to allow Dinah or any other woman of their party to become wives of the Hivites, attacked the handicapped Hivites. Killed were Hamor, Shechem, and every other male in the city. They also utterly plundered the place, taking all their wealth as well as their wives and children. They then brought Dinah back to their encampment.

6. Jacob was upset by his sons' rash action. Jacob tells his son, Simeon: "You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household" (Genesis 34:30). Simeon is unrepentant.

A few final points on this incident:

• The actions of Jacob's sons don't comport with an important Biblical principle labeled as lex talionis. This is summarized with the Biblical phrase of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," which many interpret as legitimizing vengeful action. In fact, lex talionis is a principle meant to limit punishment. It says that punishment must match, but not exeed, the gravity of the crime. Rape is clearly horrible. But the crime cannot warrant taking the life of a whole city's males, especially since there is no indication that any of them knew of Shechem's violation of Dinah.
• The utter destruction of Shechem wrought by Jacob's sons was standard operating procedure for conquering armies in those days. Conquest was meant to utterly subjugate and even humiliate the conquered and take possession of the enemies' families and property. This is what the word holocaust originally meant.

This is not the last time that Jacob's sons will cause him grief.

[Here are links to the previous installments in this series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16]

Please Pray for the Family of a Seminary Classmate Who Died Last Evening

If you're a regular reader of Better Living, I have a special request to make of you. Please pray that God will comfort and encourage the family and friends of Pastor Dave Drewes, who died last evening. He was 49.

Dave and I were seminary classmates, although I chose to extend my seminary training by one year and we didn't actually graduate together.

Dave Drewes was one of the most talented people I ever met. Not only was he a fantastic communicator of the Gospel, both in his preaching and writing, and a winsome leader, he was also a fine musician, who played guitar, composed, and recorded his own music, and a terrific, insightful cartoonist.

Dave had, for about eleven years now, served as pastor of Saint John Lutheran Church in Lithopolis, Ohio. (That's just outside of Columbus.) He played the lead role in that congregation's decision to financially partner with the congregation I was called to start here in the Cincinnati area some fifteen years ago, Friendship Lutheran Church. That came in the early years of our church's life and was enormously helpful.

Some of the members of Friendship met Dave a few years back, as we exchanged pulpits, he preached at Friendship and I did the same at Lithopolis. In the back of my mind, I stewed a bit that the people here wouldn't want me back after hearing Dave!

Please ask God to sustain a grieving family and congregation as they mourn Dave's passing. Ask too, that God will fill them with the empowering hope of Jesus' resurrection!

An Empire Built on a Bum Philosophy?

To say that there is a Christian agenda on political or legal issues has always been inaccurate. God isn't a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal.

But now comes this story on one of the most unrepentant politicizers of the Gospel and everyone should find it disturbing. Of course, there's no way of knowing yet whether the allegations it contains are true, but it is something that needs to be delved into...before anybody writes another check. (Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for leading me to the story.)

Before the Alito Debate Gets Completely Nuts

Last month, some conservative Republicans hijacked the debate over Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court, claiming that she wasn't a true believer in conservative dogma and attacking her personal competence. Miers was, I think, unfairly savaged.

Now, at least some liberal Democrats are lining up for a similar assault on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. A profusion of Democratic senators have dismissed him as "radical" or "extremist."

Labels are easy to apply. But what exactly are the facts?

In this Los Angeles Times story, liberal Democrats who have worked with Samuel Alito say that he's no extremist and that he's a fair-minded judge who abides by law and precedent.

(Thanks to Zendo Deb for leading me to the Times report.)

UPDATE: Lawprof Ann Althouse, whose opposition to Miers' nomination was I thought, both reasoned and a tad elitist, has now made it her mission to refute every inaccurate statement made about Alito. Because the nominee is being attacked for positions on rulings with which she is very familiar, Althouse appears to know of what she speaks.

TO CLARIFY: I'm not taking a position on the Alito nomination. I just believe in fairness.