Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Some Background on That Shoe Incident
A little background on those shoes hurled at President Bush at an Iraqi press conference seems in order.
In traditional Mideast culture, the foot is considered the filthiest part of the human body.
This is reflected in a book in which I spend quite a lot of time, the Bible, and it plays an important role in an annual event on the Christian calendar. Maundy Thursday--maundy being an Old English word meaning commandment, used for the Thursday before Easter because it was then that Jesus gave a new commandment to His followers, to love one another with the same self-sacrificing love he extended to the world--remembers an extraordinary event. It was then, on the night of his impending arrest, that Jesus did the low servant's work of washing the feet of his disciples. At first, Peter, no doubt speaking on behalf of the other disciples, was horrified. He wouldn't let Jesus do the task of a slave. But Jesus pointed out that only those willing to be servants of others were worthy of being leaders. When he told Peter that unless Peter allowed him to wash the disciple's feet, Peter could have no connection to Jesus, Peter relented.
Feet were considered so filthy in Biblical times, in fact, that untying the thongs of someone else's sandals was considered task fit only for a slave. That viewpoint is what lay behind comments made by John the Baptizer which have, over the past two weeks, been read in most Christians churches around the world. (See here and here.)
These feelings about feet persist in the modern Middle East.
Several years ago, former CBS anchorman Dan Rather scored a coup when he and his producers arranged to interview then-Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. But the thing was nearly shortcircuited when Rather thoughtlessly crossed his legs, allowing Husein to see the sole of one shoe turned up toward the Iraqi dictator. Saddam stormed out of the room and would have ended the interview had his aides not explained to him that in US culture, exposing the bottoms of one's feet to another wasn't a sign of disrespect.
As mentioned in the BBC piece linked above, among the enduring images of the past six years was the day that Saddam Hussein's statue in Iraq was brought down, signaling the downfall of his regime there. Immediately following that, hundreds of Iraqis could be seen hitting the downed statue with their shoes, a sign of spurning disrespect and contempt.
The intended symbolism of the Iraqi journalist at the Bush-al Maliki press conference is clear to Iraqis and to others in the Middle East. It too, was an act of spurning disrespect and contempt.
In traditional Mideast culture, the foot is considered the filthiest part of the human body.
This is reflected in a book in which I spend quite a lot of time, the Bible, and it plays an important role in an annual event on the Christian calendar. Maundy Thursday--maundy being an Old English word meaning commandment, used for the Thursday before Easter because it was then that Jesus gave a new commandment to His followers, to love one another with the same self-sacrificing love he extended to the world--remembers an extraordinary event. It was then, on the night of his impending arrest, that Jesus did the low servant's work of washing the feet of his disciples. At first, Peter, no doubt speaking on behalf of the other disciples, was horrified. He wouldn't let Jesus do the task of a slave. But Jesus pointed out that only those willing to be servants of others were worthy of being leaders. When he told Peter that unless Peter allowed him to wash the disciple's feet, Peter could have no connection to Jesus, Peter relented.
Feet were considered so filthy in Biblical times, in fact, that untying the thongs of someone else's sandals was considered task fit only for a slave. That viewpoint is what lay behind comments made by John the Baptizer which have, over the past two weeks, been read in most Christians churches around the world. (See here and here.)
These feelings about feet persist in the modern Middle East.
Several years ago, former CBS anchorman Dan Rather scored a coup when he and his producers arranged to interview then-Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. But the thing was nearly shortcircuited when Rather thoughtlessly crossed his legs, allowing Husein to see the sole of one shoe turned up toward the Iraqi dictator. Saddam stormed out of the room and would have ended the interview had his aides not explained to him that in US culture, exposing the bottoms of one's feet to another wasn't a sign of disrespect.
As mentioned in the BBC piece linked above, among the enduring images of the past six years was the day that Saddam Hussein's statue in Iraq was brought down, signaling the downfall of his regime there. Immediately following that, hundreds of Iraqis could be seen hitting the downed statue with their shoes, a sign of spurning disrespect and contempt.
The intended symbolism of the Iraqi journalist at the Bush-al Maliki press conference is clear to Iraqis and to others in the Middle East. It too, was an act of spurning disrespect and contempt.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Mary probably didn't ride on a donkey. She and Joseph probably weren't turned away from an inn.
There weren't three kings, but an untold number of magi who arrived some time after Jesus' birth. And, there's no evidence that Jesus was born on December 25.
But it's still a wonderful thing to contemplate God taking on human flesh on the first Christmas.
Thanks to my son, Philip, for putting me onto this video.
By the way, my seminary professor and mentor, Bruce Schein, was of the opinion that Mary and Joseph walked from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That actually makes sense to me. People in first century Judea were accustomed to walking long distances and a very pregnant woman riding on a donkey or being a passenger in a wagon for some seventy miles seems an unlikely prospect.
But it's still a wonderful thing to contemplate God taking on human flesh on the first Christmas.
Thanks to my son, Philip, for putting me onto this video.
By the way, my seminary professor and mentor, Bruce Schein, was of the opinion that Mary and Joseph walked from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That actually makes sense to me. People in first century Judea were accustomed to walking long distances and a very pregnant woman riding on a donkey or being a passenger in a wagon for some seventy miles seems an unlikely prospect.
Rejoice. Pray. Thank.
[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
First Thessalonians 5:16-24
You don’t need for me to tell you this morning that these are tough economic times.
About a million-and-a-half Americans have lost their jobs since the beginning of the year. Some of them are members of Saint Matthew.
Two of the country’s Big Three automakers are saying they could go out of business soon without a bailout.
State governments, like our own in Ohio, are putting together contingency plans in case projected revenue shortfalls resulting from people making less and paying less in income and sales taxes. If the cuts have to go into effect, it may mean fewer services for some people at the very times they most need them.
Retirees and workers alike are watching the values of their pension funds decrease. (I checked my own pension account while preparing this sermon and found that it's lost one-third of its total value since the beginning of this year. Well, I don’t want to exaggerate; it’s actually only lost 32.9% of its value.)
How do we Christians, people who believe in a loving God Who cares about our every moment, people who believe in a God Who came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, and people who trust in a Savior Who promises to come again--how do we--deal with the grim realities of life? And not just grim economic realities, but all of life’s grim realities?
The people of the first-century church in the Roman colony of Thessalonica had similar questions. And for good reason.
Thessalonica, a city that set on the Aegean Sea in the northeast of the Greek peninsula, in the province of Thessaly, next to Macedonia, owed its existence and its fortunes to the Roman Empire. It was a key stop on a major trade route that connected Europe and Asia. Most of the people who lived in Thessalonica were economically well off, in no apparent need of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ when they first heard of Jesus.
Yet about three years before Paul wrote the words in our second lesson for this morning, in the summer of 50A.D., a few Thessalonians dared to confess that their hope wasn’t in the Empire or the emperor or their money, homes, or possessions, but in Jesus Christ alone.
In the intervening time, the Thessalonian church had been subjected to opposition from the local synagogue and Roman officials. They had suffered economic pressures, persecutions, and beatings. Members who had believed that Jesus' return to the world and the Day of the Lord were imminent, had died, leaving survivors wondering where Jesus was and what had happened to those who had died believing.
To help the Thessalonians cope with their circumstances and to prepare for Christ’s intervention in their lives, Paul gives the Thessalonian church--and us--two sets of three imperatives on how best to await Christ’s coming to us. The first set is short and sweet:
In fact, to be ready for Christ’s return or for the moments when we meet Him at the ends of our lives, adopting Paul’s three imperatives is essential.
Through them, God answers the prayer Paul mentions in our lesson, a prayer he offered not just for the Thessalonians, but for all followers of Jesus, including you and me: that God would sanctify us, make us holy, make us more like Jesus, more like the people we were made and redeemed to be.
We can rejoice. Last weekend, I heard a sermon by Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois. He talked about things he’d learned from God in previous economic downturns. One of the lessons he mentioned happened in 1982, during our last major recession.
Three years before, he had founded the Willow Creek congregation. It was still meeting in a movie theater. He and his wife were struggling with their personal finances and saw it as a great personal turning point: They were able to put away $1000 in their savings account.
They were savoring the knowledge that their adoption of the Christian discipline of thriftiness had led to their achievement when an elderly man who was part of the church approached Hybels. This man was living in a condominium and would soon be turned out. All of his investments were either tied up or had gone south in the recession. He’d also accumulated uncovered medical bills and simply didn’t have the money to pay his mortgage. “Does the church have the money to cover what he owed, a thousand dollars?” he wondered.
Hybels explained that the congregation was in the process of paying down the land on which its first unit was to be built and was barely covering its expenses as it was. The man said, “I understand. I was just wondering.”
On his drive home, Hybels had a thought: What if he and his wife Lynne just gave this man the thousand dollars he needed? He stewed about how he could share this proposal with his wife. But when he explained it to her, she said, “Bill, that’s a no-brainer. Of course, we can give him the thousand dollars. That’s probably why God gave us the money in the first place.”
So, that’s what they did. The thousand dollars allowed the man to stay in his condo, helping to ease him through the recession.
Months later, that same man approached Hybels again, this time offering to begin repaying him in installments. Hybels immediately refused the offer. You can’t put a price tag on the good things God taught him and his wife from the experience. They had learned to rely on God completely, not on money; that every good and perfect gift comes from God; and that God gives to us so that we can give to others. Above all, maybe, they experienced the joy that belongs to people who are living in sync with God’s will for their lives. If we’re walking with the God we know in Jesus Christ we can rejoice no matter what our financial situation.
We can also pray in all circumstances. George Mueller was a pastor and social reformer in nineteenth century England, a time and place where the poor had it particularly rough. If you were indebted and couldn’t pay your bills, you were thrown into prison. Disease and alcoholism and abandoned children were everywhere. Most of Dickens' novels convey something of what that era was like. It was a tough time!
After his conversion to Christian faith at the age of twenty, George Mueller became a pastor and moved to the city of Bristol. The small church he pastored grew over the course of his lifetime and starting with just a few pennies, he founded an orphanage for which, before his death, he had raised the equivalent of about $7.5-million.
Mueller was a hard working person of action, but he was also a man who spent hours praying. Everything he did was built on the foundation of waiting for God's direction through seasons of prayer.
His diaries record that in November, 1844, he began praying that five different young men, children of friends, would come to faith in Christ. He prayed for them every single day, no matter where he was and no matter how he felt. Eighteen months after he began these prayers, one of the young men came to faith. He thanked God and kept praying for the other four. Five years later, the second one came to faith. Mueller thanked God and prayed for the other three. Six years later, the third one came to faith. One year after Mueller died, fifty-three years after he began praying for those five young men daily, the last two surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ.
I’ve had similar experiences with prayer. One that especially stands out, which I’ve shared with many of you before, involved a source of real, deep personal anguish for me. I prayed about this issue every day for thirteen years, sometimes wondering if God was telling me my concern weren’t really important. I had just about given up on praying about this item, when God answered my prayer suddenly and more wonderfully than I could have ever imagined. I want to urge you today: even in the tough times, even when your hope is running out, pray without ceasing.
Finally, give thanks in all circumstances. It was Advent, days before Christmas, when I got the telephone call informing me that Margie, who had suffered a long time from a debilitating disease, had passed away. I had visited with Margie and her husband hours before she died.
During that visit, her husband Carl told me, “Advent has always been Margie’s favorite time of year.” He explained that Margie loved everything about the Christmas season. But she also loved remembering that some day, whether at the end of her own life or the end of the world, Jesus would come to her and take her to be with Him forever. “Maybe, this Advent will be Margie’s Advent,” Carl had said.
I rushed back to the nursing home. “It is her Advent,” Carl told me as I walked into Margie’s room. And then, Carl and I gave thanks, not that Margie had suffered and died, but that Christ had come to her and taken her home. That experience underscored for me that we can give thanks, not for all, but in all circumstances. Carl taught me that even when times are tough, Christ is still with us and we still have blessings that deserve our thankfulness.
If I had to summarize the three imperatives in our second lesson today, it would be simply: When tough times come, hang in there with God.
We can do that because God has demonstrated His love and concern for us in the baby born in a cattle stall, Who died and rose for us.
This Savior is returning. In the meantime, we hang in there by rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks to God for our lives, our salvation, our hope, our purpose, for the joy of Christmas, for the love of Good Friday, for the promise of Easter, for the presence of Christ with us always, and all of our blessings in this world and the next.
When we hang in there with the God we know through Jesus Christ, we’re ready to welcome Jesus whenever He comes to us. We can join in the ancient prayer of the Church, "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus."
First Thessalonians 5:16-24
You don’t need for me to tell you this morning that these are tough economic times.
About a million-and-a-half Americans have lost their jobs since the beginning of the year. Some of them are members of Saint Matthew.
Two of the country’s Big Three automakers are saying they could go out of business soon without a bailout.
State governments, like our own in Ohio, are putting together contingency plans in case projected revenue shortfalls resulting from people making less and paying less in income and sales taxes. If the cuts have to go into effect, it may mean fewer services for some people at the very times they most need them.
Retirees and workers alike are watching the values of their pension funds decrease. (I checked my own pension account while preparing this sermon and found that it's lost one-third of its total value since the beginning of this year. Well, I don’t want to exaggerate; it’s actually only lost 32.9% of its value.)
How do we Christians, people who believe in a loving God Who cares about our every moment, people who believe in a God Who came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, and people who trust in a Savior Who promises to come again--how do we--deal with the grim realities of life? And not just grim economic realities, but all of life’s grim realities?
The people of the first-century church in the Roman colony of Thessalonica had similar questions. And for good reason.
Thessalonica, a city that set on the Aegean Sea in the northeast of the Greek peninsula, in the province of Thessaly, next to Macedonia, owed its existence and its fortunes to the Roman Empire. It was a key stop on a major trade route that connected Europe and Asia. Most of the people who lived in Thessalonica were economically well off, in no apparent need of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ when they first heard of Jesus.
Yet about three years before Paul wrote the words in our second lesson for this morning, in the summer of 50A.D., a few Thessalonians dared to confess that their hope wasn’t in the Empire or the emperor or their money, homes, or possessions, but in Jesus Christ alone.
In the intervening time, the Thessalonian church had been subjected to opposition from the local synagogue and Roman officials. They had suffered economic pressures, persecutions, and beatings. Members who had believed that Jesus' return to the world and the Day of the Lord were imminent, had died, leaving survivors wondering where Jesus was and what had happened to those who had died believing.
To help the Thessalonians cope with their circumstances and to prepare for Christ’s intervention in their lives, Paul gives the Thessalonian church--and us--two sets of three imperatives on how best to await Christ’s coming to us. The first set is short and sweet:
- Rejoice always;
- pray without ceasing; and
- give thanks in all circumstances.
In fact, to be ready for Christ’s return or for the moments when we meet Him at the ends of our lives, adopting Paul’s three imperatives is essential.
Through them, God answers the prayer Paul mentions in our lesson, a prayer he offered not just for the Thessalonians, but for all followers of Jesus, including you and me: that God would sanctify us, make us holy, make us more like Jesus, more like the people we were made and redeemed to be.
We can rejoice. Last weekend, I heard a sermon by Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois. He talked about things he’d learned from God in previous economic downturns. One of the lessons he mentioned happened in 1982, during our last major recession.
Three years before, he had founded the Willow Creek congregation. It was still meeting in a movie theater. He and his wife were struggling with their personal finances and saw it as a great personal turning point: They were able to put away $1000 in their savings account.
They were savoring the knowledge that their adoption of the Christian discipline of thriftiness had led to their achievement when an elderly man who was part of the church approached Hybels. This man was living in a condominium and would soon be turned out. All of his investments were either tied up or had gone south in the recession. He’d also accumulated uncovered medical bills and simply didn’t have the money to pay his mortgage. “Does the church have the money to cover what he owed, a thousand dollars?” he wondered.
Hybels explained that the congregation was in the process of paying down the land on which its first unit was to be built and was barely covering its expenses as it was. The man said, “I understand. I was just wondering.”
On his drive home, Hybels had a thought: What if he and his wife Lynne just gave this man the thousand dollars he needed? He stewed about how he could share this proposal with his wife. But when he explained it to her, she said, “Bill, that’s a no-brainer. Of course, we can give him the thousand dollars. That’s probably why God gave us the money in the first place.”
So, that’s what they did. The thousand dollars allowed the man to stay in his condo, helping to ease him through the recession.
Months later, that same man approached Hybels again, this time offering to begin repaying him in installments. Hybels immediately refused the offer. You can’t put a price tag on the good things God taught him and his wife from the experience. They had learned to rely on God completely, not on money; that every good and perfect gift comes from God; and that God gives to us so that we can give to others. Above all, maybe, they experienced the joy that belongs to people who are living in sync with God’s will for their lives. If we’re walking with the God we know in Jesus Christ we can rejoice no matter what our financial situation.
We can also pray in all circumstances. George Mueller was a pastor and social reformer in nineteenth century England, a time and place where the poor had it particularly rough. If you were indebted and couldn’t pay your bills, you were thrown into prison. Disease and alcoholism and abandoned children were everywhere. Most of Dickens' novels convey something of what that era was like. It was a tough time!
After his conversion to Christian faith at the age of twenty, George Mueller became a pastor and moved to the city of Bristol. The small church he pastored grew over the course of his lifetime and starting with just a few pennies, he founded an orphanage for which, before his death, he had raised the equivalent of about $7.5-million.
Mueller was a hard working person of action, but he was also a man who spent hours praying. Everything he did was built on the foundation of waiting for God's direction through seasons of prayer.
His diaries record that in November, 1844, he began praying that five different young men, children of friends, would come to faith in Christ. He prayed for them every single day, no matter where he was and no matter how he felt. Eighteen months after he began these prayers, one of the young men came to faith. He thanked God and kept praying for the other four. Five years later, the second one came to faith. Mueller thanked God and prayed for the other three. Six years later, the third one came to faith. One year after Mueller died, fifty-three years after he began praying for those five young men daily, the last two surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ.
I’ve had similar experiences with prayer. One that especially stands out, which I’ve shared with many of you before, involved a source of real, deep personal anguish for me. I prayed about this issue every day for thirteen years, sometimes wondering if God was telling me my concern weren’t really important. I had just about given up on praying about this item, when God answered my prayer suddenly and more wonderfully than I could have ever imagined. I want to urge you today: even in the tough times, even when your hope is running out, pray without ceasing.
Finally, give thanks in all circumstances. It was Advent, days before Christmas, when I got the telephone call informing me that Margie, who had suffered a long time from a debilitating disease, had passed away. I had visited with Margie and her husband hours before she died.
During that visit, her husband Carl told me, “Advent has always been Margie’s favorite time of year.” He explained that Margie loved everything about the Christmas season. But she also loved remembering that some day, whether at the end of her own life or the end of the world, Jesus would come to her and take her to be with Him forever. “Maybe, this Advent will be Margie’s Advent,” Carl had said.
I rushed back to the nursing home. “It is her Advent,” Carl told me as I walked into Margie’s room. And then, Carl and I gave thanks, not that Margie had suffered and died, but that Christ had come to her and taken her home. That experience underscored for me that we can give thanks, not for all, but in all circumstances. Carl taught me that even when times are tough, Christ is still with us and we still have blessings that deserve our thankfulness.
If I had to summarize the three imperatives in our second lesson today, it would be simply: When tough times come, hang in there with God.
We can do that because God has demonstrated His love and concern for us in the baby born in a cattle stall, Who died and rose for us.
This Savior is returning. In the meantime, we hang in there by rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks to God for our lives, our salvation, our hope, our purpose, for the joy of Christmas, for the love of Good Friday, for the promise of Easter, for the presence of Christ with us always, and all of our blessings in this world and the next.
When we hang in there with the God we know through Jesus Christ, we’re ready to welcome Jesus whenever He comes to us. We can join in the ancient prayer of the Church, "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus."
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Are they really two different people?
Mugabe Government Claims UK Caused Cholera Epidemic
Talk about whoppers! This one would make Rod Blagojevich blush.
A day after Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe claimed that the cholera outbreak in his country had been thwarted, in spite of confirmation from numerous sources it was claiming more victims, a member of the Mugabe regime claimed that cholera had been planted by Britain:
I am praying that God will set the wheels in motion to have Robert Mugabe and his military henchmen step down from power peacefully.
A day after Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe claimed that the cholera outbreak in his country had been thwarted, in spite of confirmation from numerous sources it was claiming more victims, a member of the Mugabe regime claimed that cholera had been planted by Britain:
Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described the outbreak as a "genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British."In the meantime, the same BBC report linked above reports that, "a senior South African Anglican bishop said that Mr Mugabe should be seen as a '21st Century Hitler.'" He asked for Anglicans in South Africa to pray for Mugabe's removal from the Zimbabwean presidency. (Also see here.)
I am praying that God will set the wheels in motion to have Robert Mugabe and his military henchmen step down from power peacefully.
Friday, December 12, 2008
"What Would Jesus Say?"
Below--verbatim--is today's emailed inspiration from my friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot. Read the details included to find out how you can receive OnLine with Faith.
OnLine with Faith
December 12, 2008 Issue 477e
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
WELCOME to the daily issue of ONLINE WITH FAITH.
ONLINE WITH FAITH is a ministry of Faith Lutheran Church,
2313 Whittier Avenue, Springfield, IL, 62704, Glen VanderKloot,
Pastor.
We encourage you to worship and be involved in a local congregation.
If you have any questions, comments, or prayer
requests please be in touch with us at
pastor@faithlutheran.com
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A Thought for the Day
Letter From Jesus Christ, concerning His birthday
celebration.
It has come to my attention that many of you are upset
that folks are taking My name out of the season. Maybe
you've forgotten that I wasn't actually born during
this time of the year and that it was some of your
predecessors who decided to celebrate My birthday on
what was actually a time of pagan festival. Although
I do appreciate being remembered anytime.
How I personally feel about this celebration can
probably be most easily understood by those of you who
have been blessed with children of your own. I don't
care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate My
birth just, GET ALONG TOGETHER AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Now,
having said that let Me continue:
If it bothers you that the town in which you live
doesn't allow a scene depicting My birth, then just
get rid of a couple of Santa's and snowmen and put in
a small Nativity scene on your own front lawn. If all My
followers did that there wouldn't be any need for such
a scene on the town square because there would be
many of them all around town.
Stop worrying about the fact that people are calling
the tree a holiday tree, instead of a Christmas tree.
It was I who made all trees. You can & may remember Me
anytime you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine
if you wish:
I actually spoke of that one in a teaching explaining
who I am in relation to you & what each of our tasks
is. If you have forgotten that one, look up John 15: 1-8.
If you want to give Me a present in remembrance of
My birth here is my wish list. Choose something from it.
1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting to
the way My birthday is being celebrated, write letters of
love and hope to soldiers away from home. They are terribly
afraid and lonely this time of year. I know, they tell
Me all the time.
2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't have to
know them personally. They just need to know that someone
cares about them.
3. Instead of writing the President complaining, why
don't you write and tell him that you'll be praying for
him and his family this. Then follow up. It
will be nice hearing from you again.
4. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts you
can't afford and they don't need, spend time with them.
Tell the children in your life the story of My birth,
and why I came to live with you down here.
Hold them in your arms and remind them that I love them.
5. Pick someone that has hurt you in the past and
forgive him or her.
6. Did you know that someone in your town will attempt
to take their own life this season because they feel
so alone and hopeless? Since you don't know who that
person is, try giving everyone you meet a warm smile
it could make the difference. Also, you might consider
supporting the local Hot-Line: they talk with people
like that every day.
7. Instead of nit picking about what the retailer
in your town calls the holiday, be patient with the
people who work there. Give them a warm smile and a
kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to wish you a "Merry
Christmas" that doesn't keep you from wishing them one.
8. If you really want to make a difference, help
support a missionary, especially one who takes My love
& Good News to those who have never heard My name.
You may already know someone like that.
9. Here's a good one. There are individuals & whole
families in your town who not only will have no
"Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any
presents to give or receive. If you don't know them
(and I suspect you don't) buy some food & a few gifts
& give them to the Marines, the Salvation Army or
some other charity which believes in Me & they will
make the delivery for you. Checks are nice, too.
10. Finally if you want to make a statement about
your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a
Christian. Don't do things in secret that you wouldn't
do in My presence. Let people know by your actions
that you are one of mine.
Don't forget to support your church and the people
and programs there.
My house is where my people gather to learn of my
grace and mercy.
Just love Me & do what I have told you to do.
I'll take care of all the rest. I'll help you.
And do have a most blessed Christmas with all
those whom you love, and remember .. I LOVE YOU!
Jesus
Prayer:
Father help me to focus on serving you and your
people. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen!
Scripture
2 Corinthians 9:6 NIV
Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also
reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously
will also reap generously.
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Your partner in prayer and mission,
Glen VanderKloot
Faith Lutheran Church - Your Church for New Beginnings
A Purpose Driven Church
OnLine with Faith
December 12, 2008 Issue 477e
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
WELCOME to the daily issue of ONLINE WITH FAITH.
ONLINE WITH FAITH is a ministry of Faith Lutheran Church,
2313 Whittier Avenue, Springfield, IL, 62704, Glen VanderKloot,
Pastor.
We encourage you to worship and be involved in a local congregation.
If you have any questions, comments, or prayer
requests please be in touch with us at
pastor@faithlutheran.com
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A Thought for the Day
What would Jesus say?
Letter From Jesus Christ, concerning His birthday
celebration.
It has come to my attention that many of you are upset
that folks are taking My name out of the season. Maybe
you've forgotten that I wasn't actually born during
this time of the year and that it was some of your
predecessors who decided to celebrate My birthday on
what was actually a time of pagan festival. Although
I do appreciate being remembered anytime.
How I personally feel about this celebration can
probably be most easily understood by those of you who
have been blessed with children of your own. I don't
care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate My
birth just, GET ALONG TOGETHER AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Now,
having said that let Me continue:
If it bothers you that the town in which you live
doesn't allow a scene depicting My birth, then just
get rid of a couple of Santa's and snowmen and put in
a small Nativity scene on your own front lawn. If all My
followers did that there wouldn't be any need for such
a scene on the town square because there would be
many of them all around town.
Stop worrying about the fact that people are calling
the tree a holiday tree, instead of a Christmas tree.
It was I who made all trees. You can & may remember Me
anytime you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine
if you wish:
I actually spoke of that one in a teaching explaining
who I am in relation to you & what each of our tasks
is. If you have forgotten that one, look up John 15: 1-8.
If you want to give Me a present in remembrance of
My birth here is my wish list. Choose something from it.
1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting to
the way My birthday is being celebrated, write letters of
love and hope to soldiers away from home. They are terribly
afraid and lonely this time of year. I know, they tell
Me all the time.
2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't have to
know them personally. They just need to know that someone
cares about them.
3. Instead of writing the President complaining, why
don't you write and tell him that you'll be praying for
him and his family this. Then follow up. It
will be nice hearing from you again.
4. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts you
can't afford and they don't need, spend time with them.
Tell the children in your life the story of My birth,
and why I came to live with you down here.
Hold them in your arms and remind them that I love them.
5. Pick someone that has hurt you in the past and
forgive him or her.
6. Did you know that someone in your town will attempt
to take their own life this season because they feel
so alone and hopeless? Since you don't know who that
person is, try giving everyone you meet a warm smile
it could make the difference. Also, you might consider
supporting the local Hot-Line: they talk with people
like that every day.
7. Instead of nit picking about what the retailer
in your town calls the holiday, be patient with the
people who work there. Give them a warm smile and a
kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to wish you a "Merry
Christmas" that doesn't keep you from wishing them one.
8. If you really want to make a difference, help
support a missionary, especially one who takes My love
& Good News to those who have never heard My name.
You may already know someone like that.
9. Here's a good one. There are individuals & whole
families in your town who not only will have no
"Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any
presents to give or receive. If you don't know them
(and I suspect you don't) buy some food & a few gifts
& give them to the Marines, the Salvation Army or
some other charity which believes in Me & they will
make the delivery for you. Checks are nice, too.
10. Finally if you want to make a statement about
your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a
Christian. Don't do things in secret that you wouldn't
do in My presence. Let people know by your actions
that you are one of mine.
Don't forget to support your church and the people
and programs there.
My house is where my people gather to learn of my
grace and mercy.
Just love Me & do what I have told you to do.
I'll take care of all the rest. I'll help you.
And do have a most blessed Christmas with all
those whom you love, and remember .. I LOVE YOU!
Jesus
Prayer:
Father help me to focus on serving you and your
people. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen!
Scripture
2 Corinthians 9:6 NIV
Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also
reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously
will also reap generously.
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Faith Lutheran Church - Your Church for New Beginnings
A Purpose Driven Church
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Zimbabwe: Time for South African Government To Do Something
How does a lying thug like Robert Mugabe stay in power? Clearly, he's supported by other lying thugs.
In fact, press reports from earlier this year indicated that in the wake of the 2008 presidential elections in Zimbabwe, Mugabe was preparing to concede his loss and step down from office. But his military sponsors told him that he would, under no circumstances, concede. So, the lying thug who has oppressed and murdered thousands of Zimbabweans while he and his henchmen robbed his countrymen and failed to provide them with basic government services, is himself marching to others' tunes--probably gladly, a content bird in a gilded cage.
But now the horrors have reached truly awful proportions. A cholera epidemic, exacerbated by the neglect and indifference of Mugabe's regime, by an estimate of the World Health Organization (WHO) released just yesterday, has exacted an enormous toll. Says WHO in a press release issued in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare:
In fact, press reports from earlier this year indicated that in the wake of the 2008 presidential elections in Zimbabwe, Mugabe was preparing to concede his loss and step down from office. But his military sponsors told him that he would, under no circumstances, concede. So, the lying thug who has oppressed and murdered thousands of Zimbabweans while he and his henchmen robbed his countrymen and failed to provide them with basic government services, is himself marching to others' tunes--probably gladly, a content bird in a gilded cage.
But now the horrors have reached truly awful proportions. A cholera epidemic, exacerbated by the neglect and indifference of Mugabe's regime, by an estimate of the World Health Organization (WHO) released just yesterday, has exacted an enormous toll. Says WHO in a press release issued in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare:
A widespread cholera outbreak, under-resourced and under-staffed health system, and inadequate access to safe drinking water and hygiene are threatening the wellbeing of thousands of Zimbabweans. As of 9 December, 16 141 suspected cases of cholera and 775 resultant deaths (case fatality rate of 4.8%) had been recorded since August in two-thirds of the country's 62 districts.Since then, Mugabe has said that WHO, in cooperation with Zimbabwean medical people, had thwarted the cholera outbreak:
I am happy to say our doctors are being assisted by others and the WHO [World Health Organization] have now arrested cholera.Save the Children says that the epidemic has actually been underestimated by WHO. In a statement issued earlier today, STC country director Rachel Pounds says:
According to the latest figures 775 people have died so far. Save the Children knows this is an underestimate — not least because the figures do not include areas in which we work and where we know there have been many unrecorded deaths.Also, the percentage of people who are dying having contracted cholera in the first place is way higher than normal for this disease, in some areas. With even the most basic health care on hand, you would expect to see a death rate of only one or two percent. In some areas of Zimbabwe a third of those who have contracted the infection are dying.
So, why exactly does a despot deny the existence of an epidemic repeatedly confirmed by countless credible sources?
To hold onto power, of course, although given those post-election conversations about stepping down and the military junta's veto of Mugabe's plans to do so, one wonders who is really calling the shots in the Zimbabwean government these days. But in this hypermediated age, it becomes less possible for repressive regimes to hide unpleasant realities, health crises even more than repressive actions.
Mugabe keeps playing the same old tune, claiming that the latest international calls for his resignation, this time in the face of his indifference to the cholera epidemic, mean that Britain, the US, and France are all anxious to invade and conquer Zimbabwe.
But none of those nation's governments are going to do that. It would be inappropriate for them to do so, for one thing. It would also be harmful to their national interests at this stage in international history. Besides, none of the nations he accuses of salivating over Zimbabwe has the will to undertake such an invasion nor the desire to deal directly with the nation-building that would be required after such an invasion. None of the nations' peoples would stand for an invasion.
But despots love creating foreign bogeymen to unite their countries and to secure their own illegitimate claims to power.
The question is, of course, as they watch thousands of their neighbors being felled by cholera, whether Zimbabweans actually buy the malarkey their fake president is selling. I doubt it.
Even if they do view Mugabe's claims skeptically, they're unlikely to be able to stand up to his regime without some outside help and encouragement.
The consensus is that Mugabe will only step down if a coalition of neighboring African nations calls for his resignation and announces a series of escalating steps designed to pressure him and his regime to walk away from power peacefully. Only an African solution will work.
Some African nations have called for Mugabe to resign. But the most important government in the region, which has often enabled Mugabe's reign of terror, that of South Africa, is key. If the South African nation had grown some sense of ethics, it could end the despotism of the Mugabe regime and the immediate suffering of the Zimbabwean people.
There's reason to believe now that what a sense of ethics couldn't drive the South African government to do may now be propelled by a sense of self-preservation. The cholera epidemic is spreading. Medical refugees from Zimbabwe are flooding into South Africa. In the past, South Africa may have rightly bargained that it could set astride an oppressed Zimbabwe. It may now calculate that it's no longer possible to live alongside an oppressed Zimbabwe that exports its diseases and, with them, discontent with neglectful, corrupt governments.
This is actually a golden opportunity for the government in South Africa, which would like to have the respect of the world. Brokering a deal by which Mugabe steps down peacefully would be welcomed by the people of Zimbabwe, others in the region, and the international community, which has no interest in the instability and drama he brings to the world stage.
In the meantime, I'm calling on God to intervene in causing Robert Mugabe to step down peacefully and to, at last, give the people of Zimbabwe a chance at better lives.
Making Our Relationships Work: Grace
[As was true of last Wednesday's Midweek Advent sermon, this one was inspired by a sermon by Pastor Roger Sonnenberg. But he shouldn't be blamed for what follows.]
Philippians 1:2-11
At age seventeen, she learned that she had diabetes and that it was of such severity, she would probably not live many more years. In spite of that prognosis, she had taken good care of herself in the ensuing years, living far longer than anyone had expected. But now, at age 58 she was dying.
She was one of the finest people I ever knew: loving wife and mother, active in the church and community, fun friend who loved to dance and send out birthday cards, a person who prayed constantly for others, someone whose faith was central to her life. But in the hospital ICU, moments before she died, she told me, “Pastor, I’m such a terrible sinner.”
As I probed that statement, I learned of no sin left unconfessed on her part, just a gnawing sense of inadequacy, of failure as a human being now haunting her on her deathbed.
I talked with her about God’s grace, God’s unmerited favor and love, given to us through Jesus. She was too weak even to open her eyes. And yet, as we discussed grace—as I tried to give it to her in her last moments--she seemed to recognize it, to see it, to remember it like a forgotten friend.
Often in the frenzy of daily life I forget grace. I can get so concerned about what others think of me, see in me, or judge about me, that I forget that Jesus Christ already was born for me, already lived for me, died for me, and rose for me. I can become so obsessed with whether I’m contributing, producing, taking care of my family and friends, and being a responsible person that I forget that performance isn’t the measure of a life. I forget that if we let grace soak into our lives, God’s grace will flood in us and from us.
Last week, we said that solid relationships are built, first of all, on our commitments and promises to others, all of which are built on God’s commitments and promises to us. Those commitments and promises are what the Bible means when it talks about covenants.
The next ingredient in the Bible’s recipe for our relationships is grace. Grace, which in the New Testament Greek is charitas, from which we get the English word charity, is the power that makes it possible for us to keep our covenant promises. As we have been charitably graced by God, we are to grace others.
But grace isn’t something we can generate. In our second Bible lesson for tonight, Paul begins his joyful letter to the church in the city of Philippi, written as he was being imprisoned for his faith in Christ, by telling the church there how grateful he is for them because, “you hold me in your heart…you share in God’s grace with me.”
Then he writes, “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”
Paul’s prayer was that the grace of God, already something that the Philippian Christians enjoyed, would grow in them, so that through them, the whole world would experience what it means to be accepted and loved not for what they do, but solely for being children of God.
Paul had reason to believe that his prayer would be answered. A few years before, on what scholars call his “second missionary journey,” he and his companions had started the Philippian church. People who had once been hostile, unknowing, or indifferent toward the gospel of Christ had been transformed by God’s grace. They had been changed so much, in fact, that when they learned that Paul had gotten into trouble with the law and was imprisoned, they sent him a financial gift. Grace begets grace, it seems, setting off a chain reaction of love that can transform people’s lives. Paul knew that.
Grace then, isn’t an abstract philosophical concept. God didn’t stand far off in heaven and tell us, “I love you.” Instead, God got involved with the human race:
God calls and empowers us to do the same with the people with whom we share our lives: our spouses, friends, neighbors, coworkers, classmates, and even the people with whom we are part of Christ’s body, the Church. And grace, when shared, transforms the way we live our lives.
Pastor Roger Sonnenberg retells the story of a “husband and wife who no longer loved each other. The man had grown paranoid over the years and had become extremely demanding of his wife. He even prepared a list of rules and regulations for her to follow. At times, he even insisted she read them out loud to him so that she understood them exactly as he meant them so that she would obey them to the letter…. After many long years, the husband died. Shortly afterwards, the woman fell in love with another man and married him. This man was totally different. He loved her, making no demands at all. He did everything he could to make his new wife happy, always affirming her with accolades and [gestures of appreciation.] One day as she was cleaning house, [the woman] found one of the old lists of demands made by her first husband. With tears in her eyes, she began to read the list, but then suddenly realized she was doing everything her first husband's list demanded. This time, however, she was doing what she was doing to please her husband, not because of demand or obligation.”
How can we create grace-filled, assuring, life-giving relationships with others?
Ginger Johnson Broslat tells about going to what’s called “the world’s largest nativity scene” at Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee. (Where our youth group will be going this summer for the Week of Hope mission trip.) The nativity scene was made up of large crystalline sculptures that are brightly illuminated. As Broslat notes, “In sharp contrast to this impressive display, the humble story of Christ’s birth…” is retold, “reminding all…of the humility of our Savior, born in a…stable.”
“But,” she says, “in the eyes of a two-year-old, a baby in a crystal blanket is just as much baby Jesus as one made of construction paper and cotton balls in Sunday School. Any way you look at it, baby Jesus is reborn every day when the heart is touched by the story of his birth.” She then explains: “At the end of the presentation spectators were invited to take a closer look…Brooke [the two-year-old]…ran over to the manger, her eyes wide, fixed on the baby. As she gazed, her little body dropped to its knees and her mouth opened in awe. She held her hand to her heart, eyes sparkling with joy as she looked up at me and whispered, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know.’”
That is the message of Christmas and the message of grace: God came into our world in the person of Jesus to give us grace, His unmerited favor, and He can help us to live out that same awe-inspiring grace in our everyday lives and in our everyday relationships. We turn to God in repentance and ask for His grace. We ask God to help us share grace. And then, we dare to share grace with others.
May we rely on God to help us to do just that in all our relationships.
Philippians 1:2-11
At age seventeen, she learned that she had diabetes and that it was of such severity, she would probably not live many more years. In spite of that prognosis, she had taken good care of herself in the ensuing years, living far longer than anyone had expected. But now, at age 58 she was dying.
She was one of the finest people I ever knew: loving wife and mother, active in the church and community, fun friend who loved to dance and send out birthday cards, a person who prayed constantly for others, someone whose faith was central to her life. But in the hospital ICU, moments before she died, she told me, “Pastor, I’m such a terrible sinner.”
As I probed that statement, I learned of no sin left unconfessed on her part, just a gnawing sense of inadequacy, of failure as a human being now haunting her on her deathbed.
I talked with her about God’s grace, God’s unmerited favor and love, given to us through Jesus. She was too weak even to open her eyes. And yet, as we discussed grace—as I tried to give it to her in her last moments--she seemed to recognize it, to see it, to remember it like a forgotten friend.
Often in the frenzy of daily life I forget grace. I can get so concerned about what others think of me, see in me, or judge about me, that I forget that Jesus Christ already was born for me, already lived for me, died for me, and rose for me. I can become so obsessed with whether I’m contributing, producing, taking care of my family and friends, and being a responsible person that I forget that performance isn’t the measure of a life. I forget that if we let grace soak into our lives, God’s grace will flood in us and from us.
Last week, we said that solid relationships are built, first of all, on our commitments and promises to others, all of which are built on God’s commitments and promises to us. Those commitments and promises are what the Bible means when it talks about covenants.
The next ingredient in the Bible’s recipe for our relationships is grace. Grace, which in the New Testament Greek is charitas, from which we get the English word charity, is the power that makes it possible for us to keep our covenant promises. As we have been charitably graced by God, we are to grace others.
But grace isn’t something we can generate. In our second Bible lesson for tonight, Paul begins his joyful letter to the church in the city of Philippi, written as he was being imprisoned for his faith in Christ, by telling the church there how grateful he is for them because, “you hold me in your heart…you share in God’s grace with me.”
Then he writes, “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”
Paul’s prayer was that the grace of God, already something that the Philippian Christians enjoyed, would grow in them, so that through them, the whole world would experience what it means to be accepted and loved not for what they do, but solely for being children of God.
Paul had reason to believe that his prayer would be answered. A few years before, on what scholars call his “second missionary journey,” he and his companions had started the Philippian church. People who had once been hostile, unknowing, or indifferent toward the gospel of Christ had been transformed by God’s grace. They had been changed so much, in fact, that when they learned that Paul had gotten into trouble with the law and was imprisoned, they sent him a financial gift. Grace begets grace, it seems, setting off a chain reaction of love that can transform people’s lives. Paul knew that.
Grace then, isn’t an abstract philosophical concept. God didn’t stand far off in heaven and tell us, “I love you.” Instead, God got involved with the human race:
- God wrestled with Jacob.
- God gave Israel a covenant and a promised land.
- God chastised David when David fell into sin and restored David when he repented.
- When God came to the world in the person of Jesus, He wept for the dying, fed the hungry, healed the hurting, forgave the sinful.
- God went to a cross, suffered, and died, then ate fish on the seashore with the disciples after He rose from the dead.
God calls and empowers us to do the same with the people with whom we share our lives: our spouses, friends, neighbors, coworkers, classmates, and even the people with whom we are part of Christ’s body, the Church. And grace, when shared, transforms the way we live our lives.
Pastor Roger Sonnenberg retells the story of a “husband and wife who no longer loved each other. The man had grown paranoid over the years and had become extremely demanding of his wife. He even prepared a list of rules and regulations for her to follow. At times, he even insisted she read them out loud to him so that she understood them exactly as he meant them so that she would obey them to the letter…. After many long years, the husband died. Shortly afterwards, the woman fell in love with another man and married him. This man was totally different. He loved her, making no demands at all. He did everything he could to make his new wife happy, always affirming her with accolades and [gestures of appreciation.] One day as she was cleaning house, [the woman] found one of the old lists of demands made by her first husband. With tears in her eyes, she began to read the list, but then suddenly realized she was doing everything her first husband's list demanded. This time, however, she was doing what she was doing to please her husband, not because of demand or obligation.”
How can we create grace-filled, assuring, life-giving relationships with others?
- We begin with the God we know in Christ, the God Who came right down into our lives on Christmas in order to give grace to us.
- Then, we ask God—actually ask God—to help us display grace, to live grace, toward others.
- And then, we actually dare to give grace to others.
Ginger Johnson Broslat tells about going to what’s called “the world’s largest nativity scene” at Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee. (Where our youth group will be going this summer for the Week of Hope mission trip.) The nativity scene was made up of large crystalline sculptures that are brightly illuminated. As Broslat notes, “In sharp contrast to this impressive display, the humble story of Christ’s birth…” is retold, “reminding all…of the humility of our Savior, born in a…stable.”
“But,” she says, “in the eyes of a two-year-old, a baby in a crystal blanket is just as much baby Jesus as one made of construction paper and cotton balls in Sunday School. Any way you look at it, baby Jesus is reborn every day when the heart is touched by the story of his birth.” She then explains: “At the end of the presentation spectators were invited to take a closer look…Brooke [the two-year-old]…ran over to the manger, her eyes wide, fixed on the baby. As she gazed, her little body dropped to its knees and her mouth opened in awe. She held her hand to her heart, eyes sparkling with joy as she looked up at me and whispered, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know.’”
That is the message of Christmas and the message of grace: God came into our world in the person of Jesus to give us grace, His unmerited favor, and He can help us to live out that same awe-inspiring grace in our everyday lives and in our everyday relationships. We turn to God in repentance and ask for His grace. We ask God to help us share grace. And then, we dare to share grace with others.
May we rely on God to help us to do just that in all our relationships.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Why Should Jesus' Execution Bring Salvation?
In comments earlier today, Spencer Troxell, posed an important question:
Secondly, he's not alone in wondering about the Biblical insistence that Christ's death was necessary to bring about salvation for humanity. I think about it myself sometimes and just this evening, before our Midweek Advent worship, a member of the congregation I serve as pastor remarked, "I'm looking forward to seeing how you answer that question because it's something I wonder about."
The Bible is insistent that Jesus had to suffer and die for fallen humanity in order to bring us salvation. The Gospel of Luke, for example, says that the risen Jesus told two of His disciples, who were skeptical of the word they'd gotten from some others of Jesus' followers that they'd seen Him alive at His tomb, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”" (Luke 24:26)
But why was it necessary? There are, you should know, many theories of atonement among Christian theologians. (Atonement is a word from Old English, literally a compound word meaning at one-ment. The idea is that Christ's death on the cross brings reconciliation between God and humanity, making them one.) Honestly, all these theories are little more than informed conjecture, none of which can really tell us why God chose to use Christ's death on a cross and His resurrection to bring about that reconciliation. But that God has made that choice, the New Testament is emphatic.
Both John's Gospel and the New Testament book of Hebrews refer to the ancient Jewish custom of sacrifice of unblemished lambs in connection to Jesus. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, these lambs were sacrificed on the altar at the temple in Jerusalem. The lambs were stand-ins for people who realized that their sins, their violations of God's call to love God and love neighbor, the themes of the two tables of the Ten Commandments and later, incorporated by Jesus into the Great Commandment. The lambs bore the sins of the repentant and for yet another year, they and God were at one.
In John's Gospel, John the Baptizer sees Jesus and says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).
But, the New Testament, especially Hebrews, makes clear that there is a qualitative difference between Jesus and all the other unblemished lambs who gave their lives for the sins of others. Hebrews says that all the Jewish religious rites that preceded Jesus were either faint copies of heaven or faint precursors of God's definitive action in Christ. The temple replicated heaven. The lambs sacrificed at the temple could only atone for sin for a restricted period of time. The atonement from Jesus is everlasting.
Hebrews says that Jesus was not only the ultimate sacrificial lamb, but also the ultimate high priest. It was the high priest who sacrificed the lambs on Yom Kippur. Priests had to purify themselves in order to enter the holy of holies where the sacrifice happened. Not so with Jesus because He was sinless. And this sinless sacrifice and priest, Hebrews says, "has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26).
From all of this, I think, we get an idea of the seriousness of sin. And in speaking here of sin, I'm not necessarily referring to the individual violations of God's will that are forbidden in God's law, things like false witness, stealing, or misusing God's Name. Those are sins, individual acts that result from the basic human problem of alienation from God and an inward turn to self and selfishness. If we're turned away from God, we're turned away from the source of life. Jesus, Hebrews says repeatedly, has done what all the religious rites of ancient Judaism only hinted at: obliterated sin's power "once for all." (See here).
To God it evidently makes perfect sense that a condition which threatens our eternal lives should be reversed by a perfect sacrifice on the part of an eternally righteous God Who didn't need to experience death. It must make sense to God that our sin should be exchanged for His righteousness, that His undeserved acceptance of death should bring us life.
I don't understand this. Nor can I explain it.
But I do want to suggest a different way of looking at Jesus' death. The angry mobs who cried for Jesus' death and the gutless Roman governor, Pilate, who ordered Jesus' execution were only the proximate causes of His murder. Unlike the lambs offered up by sacrifice by pious Jews on Yom Kippur, Jesus, God-in-the-flesh offered Himself up. His death wasn't really the result of the decisions of jealous priests, angry Pharisees and Saducees, disappointed crowds, or a Roman governor. According to the Old Testament prophecies and the witness of the Gospels in the New Testament, God long ago decided that Jesus would die on a cross. Jesus' death happened at God's initiative, not ours.
Luke 9:51, for example, says that Jesus, when it was time for His crucifixion, "set his face toward Jerusalem."
When Pilate couldn't get answers out of Jesus, he asked if Jesus realized that he had the power to have Jesus executed. "“You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above..." (John 19:11).
And elsewhere, while referring to Himself as "the good shepherd," Jesus asserts, "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again" (John 10:18).
Now, what's significant in all of this to me is that it speaks to a premise of your question. Yes, my sin is the ultimate reason that Jesus went to a cross. A sinful world didn't (and doesn't) want the bother of a sinless Savior come to reclaim a fallen world. We harbor the notion that if we can kill off Jesus (or deny His resurrection or deny His existence), we can have the run of things and do exactly as we want. (See here.) But, in reality, had it not been Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, Annas, Judas, the angry mobs, or the sadistic soldiers, Jesus would have died for us anyway. God mandated it and was in control even when Jesus' murderers thought that they were. His resurrection underscored that.
I don't know why God chose to use the death of a sinless Savior to bring salvation. But when I look back on Old Testament history and when I consider the horrors that human sin unleashes--from the killing chambers of Auschwitz to the terrorist horrors recently unleashed in Mumbai, God's method of atonement doesn't surprise me. Sin is truly grave, killing business. It doesn't shock me that death would play a role in the expunging of its killing power.
In the cross, it seems, God comes into our world and shares the worst of our human experience so that all who surrender to Christ can experience the best of God's experience, resurrection and everlasting life.
I don't get it. But apparently from God's vantage point, it was necessary in order for Him to truly connect with us and take us back from the evil that threatens to take us down for eternity.
This may not be a very satisfying answer, Spencer. But for now, it's the best that I can do. Someone sharper than me can probably see and say more.
[UPDATE: Four years ago, my colleague and fellow blogger Mark Roberts wrote a fantastic series of posts on why Jesus had to die.]
I wish I understood why it was necessary for Jesus to be crucified for the sins of the world. Can you explain this to me without saying "For the wages of sin are death, which is the answer that I'm always given, although it's not a logical answer. WHY IS IT THAT one man's murder by an angry mob somehow offers salvation to that mob?First of all, I'm probably not one of the smartest Christians Spencer knows and I'm apt to prove it in what I write below.
This has always troubled me. You're one of the smartest christians I know, so hopefully you can shed some light on the subject.
Secondly, he's not alone in wondering about the Biblical insistence that Christ's death was necessary to bring about salvation for humanity. I think about it myself sometimes and just this evening, before our Midweek Advent worship, a member of the congregation I serve as pastor remarked, "I'm looking forward to seeing how you answer that question because it's something I wonder about."
The Bible is insistent that Jesus had to suffer and die for fallen humanity in order to bring us salvation. The Gospel of Luke, for example, says that the risen Jesus told two of His disciples, who were skeptical of the word they'd gotten from some others of Jesus' followers that they'd seen Him alive at His tomb, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”" (Luke 24:26)
But why was it necessary? There are, you should know, many theories of atonement among Christian theologians. (Atonement is a word from Old English, literally a compound word meaning at one-ment. The idea is that Christ's death on the cross brings reconciliation between God and humanity, making them one.) Honestly, all these theories are little more than informed conjecture, none of which can really tell us why God chose to use Christ's death on a cross and His resurrection to bring about that reconciliation. But that God has made that choice, the New Testament is emphatic.
Both John's Gospel and the New Testament book of Hebrews refer to the ancient Jewish custom of sacrifice of unblemished lambs in connection to Jesus. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, these lambs were sacrificed on the altar at the temple in Jerusalem. The lambs were stand-ins for people who realized that their sins, their violations of God's call to love God and love neighbor, the themes of the two tables of the Ten Commandments and later, incorporated by Jesus into the Great Commandment. The lambs bore the sins of the repentant and for yet another year, they and God were at one.
In John's Gospel, John the Baptizer sees Jesus and says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).
But, the New Testament, especially Hebrews, makes clear that there is a qualitative difference between Jesus and all the other unblemished lambs who gave their lives for the sins of others. Hebrews says that all the Jewish religious rites that preceded Jesus were either faint copies of heaven or faint precursors of God's definitive action in Christ. The temple replicated heaven. The lambs sacrificed at the temple could only atone for sin for a restricted period of time. The atonement from Jesus is everlasting.
Hebrews says that Jesus was not only the ultimate sacrificial lamb, but also the ultimate high priest. It was the high priest who sacrificed the lambs on Yom Kippur. Priests had to purify themselves in order to enter the holy of holies where the sacrifice happened. Not so with Jesus because He was sinless. And this sinless sacrifice and priest, Hebrews says, "has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26).
From all of this, I think, we get an idea of the seriousness of sin. And in speaking here of sin, I'm not necessarily referring to the individual violations of God's will that are forbidden in God's law, things like false witness, stealing, or misusing God's Name. Those are sins, individual acts that result from the basic human problem of alienation from God and an inward turn to self and selfishness. If we're turned away from God, we're turned away from the source of life. Jesus, Hebrews says repeatedly, has done what all the religious rites of ancient Judaism only hinted at: obliterated sin's power "once for all." (See here).
To God it evidently makes perfect sense that a condition which threatens our eternal lives should be reversed by a perfect sacrifice on the part of an eternally righteous God Who didn't need to experience death. It must make sense to God that our sin should be exchanged for His righteousness, that His undeserved acceptance of death should bring us life.
I don't understand this. Nor can I explain it.
But I do want to suggest a different way of looking at Jesus' death. The angry mobs who cried for Jesus' death and the gutless Roman governor, Pilate, who ordered Jesus' execution were only the proximate causes of His murder. Unlike the lambs offered up by sacrifice by pious Jews on Yom Kippur, Jesus, God-in-the-flesh offered Himself up. His death wasn't really the result of the decisions of jealous priests, angry Pharisees and Saducees, disappointed crowds, or a Roman governor. According to the Old Testament prophecies and the witness of the Gospels in the New Testament, God long ago decided that Jesus would die on a cross. Jesus' death happened at God's initiative, not ours.
Luke 9:51, for example, says that Jesus, when it was time for His crucifixion, "set his face toward Jerusalem."
When Pilate couldn't get answers out of Jesus, he asked if Jesus realized that he had the power to have Jesus executed. "“You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above..." (John 19:11).
And elsewhere, while referring to Himself as "the good shepherd," Jesus asserts, "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again" (John 10:18).
Now, what's significant in all of this to me is that it speaks to a premise of your question. Yes, my sin is the ultimate reason that Jesus went to a cross. A sinful world didn't (and doesn't) want the bother of a sinless Savior come to reclaim a fallen world. We harbor the notion that if we can kill off Jesus (or deny His resurrection or deny His existence), we can have the run of things and do exactly as we want. (See here.) But, in reality, had it not been Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, Annas, Judas, the angry mobs, or the sadistic soldiers, Jesus would have died for us anyway. God mandated it and was in control even when Jesus' murderers thought that they were. His resurrection underscored that.
I don't know why God chose to use the death of a sinless Savior to bring salvation. But when I look back on Old Testament history and when I consider the horrors that human sin unleashes--from the killing chambers of Auschwitz to the terrorist horrors recently unleashed in Mumbai, God's method of atonement doesn't surprise me. Sin is truly grave, killing business. It doesn't shock me that death would play a role in the expunging of its killing power.
In the cross, it seems, God comes into our world and shares the worst of our human experience so that all who surrender to Christ can experience the best of God's experience, resurrection and everlasting life.
I don't get it. But apparently from God's vantage point, it was necessary in order for Him to truly connect with us and take us back from the evil that threatens to take us down for eternity.
This may not be a very satisfying answer, Spencer. But for now, it's the best that I can do. Someone sharper than me can probably see and say more.
[UPDATE: Four years ago, my colleague and fellow blogger Mark Roberts wrote a fantastic series of posts on why Jesus had to die.]
Monday, December 08, 2008
Helen Keller on Making a Difference
(Here's a great thought for the Advent Season, a megatheme of which is how we're to live as we await the return of Jesus Christ at the close of history. It was in this morning's OnLine with Faith, the daily emailed inspirations provided by my colleague and friend, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, who serves at Faith Lutheran Church in Springfield, Illinois.)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A Thought for the Day
“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. “ (Helen Keller)
Scripture: 2 Peter 1:5 (CEV):
“Do your best to improve your faith. You can do this by adding goodness, understanding…”
Prayer:
Lord, help me to remember that I might make a significant difference in someone's life by doing small acts of kindness.
Amen
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You can receive Glen's daily emails, composed of gems like this, by sending an email to olwf1@gliq.net and typing SUBSCRIBE on the Subject line.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A Thought for the Day
“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. “ (Helen Keller)
Scripture: 2 Peter 1:5 (CEV):
“Do your best to improve your faith. You can do this by adding goodness, understanding…”
Prayer:
Lord, help me to remember that I might make a significant difference in someone's life by doing small acts of kindness.
Amen
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You can receive Glen's daily emails, composed of gems like this, by sending an email to olwf1@gliq.net and typing SUBSCRIBE on the Subject line.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
How to Build on a Good Beginning
[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Mark 1:1-8
Andrew Greeley, the priest, novelist, and sociologist, tells a fictional story that, especially in these days of financial crisis and corporate bailouts, has the ring of truth to it.
“Once upon a time,” Greeley writes, “there was a company which was in a bad way. The last three CEOs had been dummies. The company's stock had lost 60% of its value, its market share…decline[d] by thirty percent, [its] bright people were leaving, morale among the employees was at rock bottom.
"The worst part of the trouble was that the product they made was still the best in the market. But the previous leaders had been lazy and mean and had spent most of their time awarding themselves and their friends huge bonuses. They paid [no] attention to advertising or marketing.
"Finally, a new board was appointed at the stockholders’ insistence. They fired the last CEO with a thunderous denunciation. They warned the employees that all their jobs – and their pensions – were in grave jeopardy. The workers were terrified.
"Finally the new CEO arrived. He was expected to fire half the workers, cut back on expenses, and give the company the good shaking that everyone said it needed. Instead, he [walked] around the building, smiled at everyone, assured them that everyone would be all right, and that he didn’t plan to fire anyone. ‘Another fool,’ [some] said.
"Then he met with the union leaders to get their suggestions. They told him the truth that the product was [still] the best in the business. “I thought that too,” he said. Then he hired [a] new marketing and advertising director, brought in [a] new advertising and public relations firm, and launched a very clever television campaign. By that time, everyone in the company admired him and worked hard for him. In six months the company was well on the way to recovery.
"‘You catch more flies with honey,’ a top executive said of him…[But] the new boss, [quoting three different psalms from the Old Testament], merely said, "‘The fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom. 'But,' he added, 'it's only the beginning.’”
Our Gospel lesson for this morning takes us to the very start of the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, in many ways, is the strangest of the four Gospels in the New Testament.
Mark uses what might be called “caveman Greek,” especially in comparison to the poetic writing in John’s Gospel or the lucid, precise prose of Luke.
And if Matthew is the religious scribe, Luke the historian, and John the poet-philosopher, Mark seems like the crazed journalist on a deadline. He conveys the good news about Jesus Christ, God come to earth as a human being, with few words and little explanation.
We see this in the first verse of our Gospel lesson, the first verse of Mark’s Gospel. It says, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
To our English teachers, that probably will sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. There isn’t a verb in sight! It’s a sentence fragment. What was Mark thinking?
Well, I believe that this was a deliberate choice on Mark’s part. For me, the clincher for believing that can be found in Mark 16:8. It’s the passage that says that after being told on the first Easter that Jesus had risen from the dead, the women who had gone to the tomb to anoint Jesus body ran away terrified and because of their fear, at first told nobody what had been revealed to them.
Scholars believe that, years later, for whatever reasons, the first Christians tacked on to Mark’s gospel reports of the risen Jesus meeting His disciples. That doesn’t mean that the tacked-on reports in Mark 16 are untrue. They’re all true, I believe. But by ending his gospel at chapter 16, verse 8, Mark was confirming what he hinted at in the sentence fragment that starts the book. Just as the CEO in Greeley’s story knew that having a good product was only the beginning of making his company successful, our knowing the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection—our knowing the Christmas story that we will celebrate in just seventeen more days, on Christmas Eve--is only the beginning of the gospel.
When I was in high school, I took journalism and got involved with the high school newspaper, The Occident. In my junior year, I wrote editorials. In my senior year, I was the news editor. And, if I may say so, for a high school publication, The Occident was no rinky-dink operation. The paper was published every two weeks, usually eight pages in length, sometimes up to sixteen. The faculty advisors, Mrs. Becker and later, Mrs. Dritz, could be ruthless in their critiques of our work. One of us might submit a story of which we were proud, for example, and then be asked, “So what? You haven’t shown why this story matters. It just sets there. You need to revise it. We can’t take up space in the paper with stories that don’t engage the reader.”
Mark doesn’t tell the story of Jesus just to flap his jaws, see his name in print, or to entertain us. He wants to engage us. He wants us to become part of the story of Jesus.*
If Mark heard that, after considering his gospel, you and I were content with a Christian life in which we sat for an hour each week for worship on Sunday mornings, listening to a preacher yammer and reciting the Lord’s Prayer and a Creed, he would be appalled.
Mark isn’t interested in good religious practice, per se. Neither is Jesus. Neither is God the Father or God the Spirit.
God became flesh in Jesus Christ on the first Christmas in order to make it possible for you and me to have God’s forgiveness for our sins, to have purpose as we live each day on this earth, and to have eternity with God.
That story can not be allowed to simply set there. Believing in Jesus is a good beginning. But the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, demands and deserves a response. By the lives we live after we’ve come to believe in Christ, we move beyond the beginning of the gospel that Mark has told us about.
Last Sunday, the First Sunday in Advent, Mark’s gospel conveyed one of the ways Jesus said that we could respond to Him: to wait expectantly for Jesus' return at the close of history. We said that we can wait well first, by spending time with God each day through reading His Word and praying and second, by reaching out to others with His love.
Today, in Mark’s account of John the Baptizer’s ministry at the Jordan River, we see another way in which we can both respond to Christ’s death and resurrection for us AND anticipate His return. We commit ourselves to the discipline of repenting for our sins—turning back to God, placing ourselves in the hands of the God we know in Jesus Christ.
When we do this, we experience forgiveness of our sins, the reconciliation with God that makes it possible for us to live each day in peace and power, look forward to our futures with anticipation, and even to be reconciled to others.
True story. On a Christmas day back sometime in the 1980s, a young man was walking on the side of the road, south on I-85, just below High Point, North Carolina. He was trying to hitch a ride.
He hadn’t been home in two years. In that time, his family had heard nothing from him. There had been a blowup with his mom and he left, traveling across the country, working odd jobs he could find. He’d worked at filling stations and fruit stands, as a taxi driver and a farm hand. He'd been a nursing home orderly and an assistant to a plumber. Now though, the anger seemed to have subsided. He was ready to go home.
He was just thirty miles away, but no one seemed interested in picking him up. “Mom,” he said to himself, “I’m tired and hungry, but I’m coming home.” A few trucks occasionally passed by, but nobody stopped.
Then, suddenly from across the road, he could heard that someone was shouting at him. “Mike! Hey, Mike, come here!” The hitchhiker, Mike, was surprised to see that the man calling out to him was his stepfather. Mike ran across the road. “Get in, son,” his stepfather said, “We’re going home.”
“How did you happen to be here?” Mike asked his stepdad after he’d settled into the pickup truck. “I came to pick you up,” he explained, “Drove straight here.” “But how did you know I’d be here? I didn’t write. I didn’t call.” “Your mother sent me. Just this morning in her prayers for you, she knew you were coming and that you were on I-85 just below High Point.”
The God Who led a son back to his home wants to lead you and me to our home with Him for all eternity.
Repentance, turning back to God, isn’t a one-and-done thing. Everyone here this morning knows how temptation and sin, in spite of even our best intentions, can work on us, striving to tear us from the hope and peace that God offers to us through Jesus Christ.
By coming to God, as the masses from Jerusalem and the Judean countryside did in response to the preaching of John the Baptizer, we respond to Jesus. We make our lives available to Jesus Christ. We submit to becoming what Martin Luther called, “the Holy Spirit’s workshop,” allowing God to remove the sin and the bad habits that keep us from being the loving, just people we were made to be and who, deep in our souls, we want to be.
Jesus became human, died, and rose for us. But that’s only the beginning of the Gospel. He’s a Savior Whose grace and love demand a response because He will not force Himself on us. He will only transform the lives of those who, day in and day out, pray, as we were taught pray in song when we were kids: “Come into my heart. Come into my heart. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today. Come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.”
If you know that song or even if you don't, sing that with me now, would you? “Come into my heart. Come into my heart. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today. Come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.”
Amen
*In his commentary on this passage, Brian Stoffregen does a fantastic job of showcasing Mark's goal of seeking to engage the reader.
Mark 1:1-8
Andrew Greeley, the priest, novelist, and sociologist, tells a fictional story that, especially in these days of financial crisis and corporate bailouts, has the ring of truth to it.
“Once upon a time,” Greeley writes, “there was a company which was in a bad way. The last three CEOs had been dummies. The company's stock had lost 60% of its value, its market share…decline[d] by thirty percent, [its] bright people were leaving, morale among the employees was at rock bottom.
"The worst part of the trouble was that the product they made was still the best in the market. But the previous leaders had been lazy and mean and had spent most of their time awarding themselves and their friends huge bonuses. They paid [no] attention to advertising or marketing.
"Finally, a new board was appointed at the stockholders’ insistence. They fired the last CEO with a thunderous denunciation. They warned the employees that all their jobs – and their pensions – were in grave jeopardy. The workers were terrified.
"Finally the new CEO arrived. He was expected to fire half the workers, cut back on expenses, and give the company the good shaking that everyone said it needed. Instead, he [walked] around the building, smiled at everyone, assured them that everyone would be all right, and that he didn’t plan to fire anyone. ‘Another fool,’ [some] said.
"Then he met with the union leaders to get their suggestions. They told him the truth that the product was [still] the best in the business. “I thought that too,” he said. Then he hired [a] new marketing and advertising director, brought in [a] new advertising and public relations firm, and launched a very clever television campaign. By that time, everyone in the company admired him and worked hard for him. In six months the company was well on the way to recovery.
"‘You catch more flies with honey,’ a top executive said of him…[But] the new boss, [quoting three different psalms from the Old Testament], merely said, "‘The fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom. 'But,' he added, 'it's only the beginning.’”
Our Gospel lesson for this morning takes us to the very start of the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, in many ways, is the strangest of the four Gospels in the New Testament.
Mark uses what might be called “caveman Greek,” especially in comparison to the poetic writing in John’s Gospel or the lucid, precise prose of Luke.
And if Matthew is the religious scribe, Luke the historian, and John the poet-philosopher, Mark seems like the crazed journalist on a deadline. He conveys the good news about Jesus Christ, God come to earth as a human being, with few words and little explanation.
We see this in the first verse of our Gospel lesson, the first verse of Mark’s Gospel. It says, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
To our English teachers, that probably will sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. There isn’t a verb in sight! It’s a sentence fragment. What was Mark thinking?
Well, I believe that this was a deliberate choice on Mark’s part. For me, the clincher for believing that can be found in Mark 16:8. It’s the passage that says that after being told on the first Easter that Jesus had risen from the dead, the women who had gone to the tomb to anoint Jesus body ran away terrified and because of their fear, at first told nobody what had been revealed to them.
Scholars believe that, years later, for whatever reasons, the first Christians tacked on to Mark’s gospel reports of the risen Jesus meeting His disciples. That doesn’t mean that the tacked-on reports in Mark 16 are untrue. They’re all true, I believe. But by ending his gospel at chapter 16, verse 8, Mark was confirming what he hinted at in the sentence fragment that starts the book. Just as the CEO in Greeley’s story knew that having a good product was only the beginning of making his company successful, our knowing the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection—our knowing the Christmas story that we will celebrate in just seventeen more days, on Christmas Eve--is only the beginning of the gospel.
When I was in high school, I took journalism and got involved with the high school newspaper, The Occident. In my junior year, I wrote editorials. In my senior year, I was the news editor. And, if I may say so, for a high school publication, The Occident was no rinky-dink operation. The paper was published every two weeks, usually eight pages in length, sometimes up to sixteen. The faculty advisors, Mrs. Becker and later, Mrs. Dritz, could be ruthless in their critiques of our work. One of us might submit a story of which we were proud, for example, and then be asked, “So what? You haven’t shown why this story matters. It just sets there. You need to revise it. We can’t take up space in the paper with stories that don’t engage the reader.”
Mark doesn’t tell the story of Jesus just to flap his jaws, see his name in print, or to entertain us. He wants to engage us. He wants us to become part of the story of Jesus.*
If Mark heard that, after considering his gospel, you and I were content with a Christian life in which we sat for an hour each week for worship on Sunday mornings, listening to a preacher yammer and reciting the Lord’s Prayer and a Creed, he would be appalled.
Mark isn’t interested in good religious practice, per se. Neither is Jesus. Neither is God the Father or God the Spirit.
God became flesh in Jesus Christ on the first Christmas in order to make it possible for you and me to have God’s forgiveness for our sins, to have purpose as we live each day on this earth, and to have eternity with God.
That story can not be allowed to simply set there. Believing in Jesus is a good beginning. But the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, demands and deserves a response. By the lives we live after we’ve come to believe in Christ, we move beyond the beginning of the gospel that Mark has told us about.
Last Sunday, the First Sunday in Advent, Mark’s gospel conveyed one of the ways Jesus said that we could respond to Him: to wait expectantly for Jesus' return at the close of history. We said that we can wait well first, by spending time with God each day through reading His Word and praying and second, by reaching out to others with His love.
Today, in Mark’s account of John the Baptizer’s ministry at the Jordan River, we see another way in which we can both respond to Christ’s death and resurrection for us AND anticipate His return. We commit ourselves to the discipline of repenting for our sins—turning back to God, placing ourselves in the hands of the God we know in Jesus Christ.
When we do this, we experience forgiveness of our sins, the reconciliation with God that makes it possible for us to live each day in peace and power, look forward to our futures with anticipation, and even to be reconciled to others.
True story. On a Christmas day back sometime in the 1980s, a young man was walking on the side of the road, south on I-85, just below High Point, North Carolina. He was trying to hitch a ride.
He hadn’t been home in two years. In that time, his family had heard nothing from him. There had been a blowup with his mom and he left, traveling across the country, working odd jobs he could find. He’d worked at filling stations and fruit stands, as a taxi driver and a farm hand. He'd been a nursing home orderly and an assistant to a plumber. Now though, the anger seemed to have subsided. He was ready to go home.
He was just thirty miles away, but no one seemed interested in picking him up. “Mom,” he said to himself, “I’m tired and hungry, but I’m coming home.” A few trucks occasionally passed by, but nobody stopped.
Then, suddenly from across the road, he could heard that someone was shouting at him. “Mike! Hey, Mike, come here!” The hitchhiker, Mike, was surprised to see that the man calling out to him was his stepfather. Mike ran across the road. “Get in, son,” his stepfather said, “We’re going home.”
“How did you happen to be here?” Mike asked his stepdad after he’d settled into the pickup truck. “I came to pick you up,” he explained, “Drove straight here.” “But how did you know I’d be here? I didn’t write. I didn’t call.” “Your mother sent me. Just this morning in her prayers for you, she knew you were coming and that you were on I-85 just below High Point.”
The God Who led a son back to his home wants to lead you and me to our home with Him for all eternity.
Repentance, turning back to God, isn’t a one-and-done thing. Everyone here this morning knows how temptation and sin, in spite of even our best intentions, can work on us, striving to tear us from the hope and peace that God offers to us through Jesus Christ.
By coming to God, as the masses from Jerusalem and the Judean countryside did in response to the preaching of John the Baptizer, we respond to Jesus. We make our lives available to Jesus Christ. We submit to becoming what Martin Luther called, “the Holy Spirit’s workshop,” allowing God to remove the sin and the bad habits that keep us from being the loving, just people we were made to be and who, deep in our souls, we want to be.
Jesus became human, died, and rose for us. But that’s only the beginning of the Gospel. He’s a Savior Whose grace and love demand a response because He will not force Himself on us. He will only transform the lives of those who, day in and day out, pray, as we were taught pray in song when we were kids: “Come into my heart. Come into my heart. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today. Come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.”
If you know that song or even if you don't, sing that with me now, would you? “Come into my heart. Come into my heart. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today. Come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.”
Amen
*In his commentary on this passage, Brian Stoffregen does a fantastic job of showcasing Mark's goal of seeking to engage the reader.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Yeah!
For the second time this week, the unranked and rebuilding Ohio State men's basketball club faced a ranked team away from Columbus. And for the second time this week, the Buckeyes won, beating Notre Dame 67-62 today. I am psyched!
Go, Buckeyes!
Friday, December 05, 2008
"People Get Ready": A Look at This Sunday's Gospel Lesson (December 7, 2008)
[This week, to help people prepare for worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, the congregation I serve as pastor, and at other churches that use the lectionary associated with the Church Year, I'm not going to discuss all the appointed lessons. You might want to read all of them, linked below. But my focus here will be on the Gospel lesson only. I hope that you find it helpful.]
Bible Lessons for the First Sunday in Advent (Year B):
Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
The Prayer of the Day:
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming strengthen us to serve you with purified lives; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
A Few Comments:
1. For background on the Gospel of Mark, go here. For background on the Season of Advent, go here.
2. The first lesson, from Isaiah, was likely written by the person scholars refer to as "Second Isaiah" (or "Deutero-Isaiah), a prophet schooled in the teachings of the original Isaiah. Second Isaiah, the scholars tell us, began committing his prophecies to paper just before Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon. The Babylonian empire had earlier conquered God's people, taking many of them into slavery. For more, go here, looking under the section dealing with last Sunday's lesson from Isaiah.
3. Advent is not just a season anticipating Christmas, of course. In fact, it originally had nothing to do with Christmas. The season mainly anticipates that the God Who entered our world in Jesus Christ has said that He will come back. The question is, "How do we wait?"
Last Sunday's lessons dealt with one aspect of how we should wait for Christ's return. The lessons for this week further address that question, pointing to repentance.
The earliest Christians, as evidenced by the writings of Paul and Peter in the New Testament letters, had expected Jesus' quick return. In last Sunday's Gospel lesson, Jesus said that all of the world conditions requisite for His return already existed during His earthly ministry. We need look for no further signs for the Second Coming. The perception of a delayed parousia was a source of consternation to the first Christians. It broke the faith of some. Others saw it as license to commit sin. Still others either claimed that Jesus wasn't returning or that His return would be symbolic rather than actual.
In our second lesson, Peter says that the perception of delay was based on impatient human measurement, not the timetable of God. He says, in fact, that God's supposed slowness gives more people time to repent, that is, turn from sin and turn to God. (By the way, it also affords Christians more opportunity to spread the Good News about Jesus.)
This all dovetails nicely with this Sunday's Gospel lesson.
Verse-by-Verse Comments on Mark 1:1-8
v.1: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God": Mark's Gospel begins with a sentence fragment, which I believe, serves as a title for the entire book. The account of Jesus' life, death, and the report of His resurrection--more on that phrasing in a moment--which Mark presents is just "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ." This is so in two ways.
First: Mark, and the other Gospel writers, Matthew, Luke, and John, aren't just telling a story. They're telling the true story of what happened when God came to the earth in Jesus Christ. (By the way, contrary to one of the popular urban legends going around today, Jesus' life is more well attested by more disparate sources than were the lives of many ancient figures whose existences are not questioned. The assertion that Jesus never existed may be around because Jesus is a greater threat to our self-driven life styles, including my own, than someone like Alexander the Great. We can look at someone like Alexander and keep him safely in the vaults of history. But Jesus, the Savior Who wouldn't stay dead, will change us from the inside out if we give Him access to our lives, psyches, and thinking.)
The story of Jesus will, if we let it, change our lives for eternity. His time on earth is only the beginning of Jesus' story. It can continue in us and can continue forever.
Second: Many modern scholars believe that Mark originally ended his Gospel account of Jesus with Mark 16:8. There, we're told simply that on the first Easter, the women to whom Jesus' resurrection was announced fled from the tomb in terror and amazement, saying nothing to anybody because fear overcame them.
That would seem, from Mark's vantage point, to be a good coda for his writing. Mark's first readers, like you and me, were people who hadn't seen a dead man rise to life. Their call, like ours, was to step into this mystery, letting it take hold of them while the Holy Spirit built faith in them.
The sentence fragment in verse 1 immerses us in the mystery of Jesus. Mark doesn't try to win you over with factoids. Instead, in rapid succession, he gives you vignettes from Jesus' earthly ministry and the report of His resurrection to nudge you toward faith, rather than bludgeoning you to it.*
"good news": The word is a Greek compound, euaggelion (pronounced you-ahn-gay-lee-own). The eu- prefix means good. Aggelion means message. (It's related to the Greek word for messenger, angelos, in English rendered as angel.)
In ordinary Greek usage, the singular form of this word, as it shows up in our lesson, never appeared. It was always used in a way that seems awkward in the English language, a plural that, if translated literally, would mean "good newses."
It was a term used of the victories achieved by great kings. The Romans, who it should be pointed out, regarded their emperors as gods or sons of gods, hailed the good newses of their victorious god-kings.
You can see how, first of all, Mark's use of the singular of this word would have been jarring to those who hadn't really heard the word in that way before. More than that, it would have been a gauntlet thrown down at the worship of emperors, military heroes, or little deities. There is really only one thing that we can speak of as good news, of true victory, Mark was saying, and that's the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.
"Son of God": This also would have been a provocative designation. The emperors were called "sons of gods." Mark is saying that Jesus is the Son of the God.
In using these terms for Jesus though, Mark was, in essence, setting his audience up. Jesus wouldn't be a king who conquered through military, economic, or political muscle, but as a suffering servant who dealt with the real problems of the human race, sin and death, by sharing our deaths and rising to give new lives to those who surrender to Him.
vv.2-3: Mark wastes no time in telling his story. He dives in.
He also claims that the whole of what he cites from the Old Testament comes from Isaiah. Actually, only v. 3 does, specifically Isaiah 40:3. V. 2 actually references Exodus 23:20 and the similar Malachi 3:1. The Exodus passage, from the Old Testament account of the Hebrews' journey from Egypt, where they had been slaves, to their promised land, finds God promising "an angel," a messenger, would guard them on their way in order to take them to the place God had prepared for them.
Malachi may have been a title, rather than the name of the writer of the Old Testament book that bears that name. It's the Hebrew word for messenger. Malachi says that a messenger is coming from God and it has been seen by some to refer to both John the Baptizer and Jesus.
Mark's use of the Exodus passage is particularly interesting. John's ministry happened at the Jordan River, which the Exodus people crossed to get to the promised land. Without a relationship with God, without forgiveness of sin, we wander in the wilderness, far from God.
"the wilderness": Interestingly, as pointed out by Pastor Ed Markquart, wilderness was always a place of promise, a place through which God's people travel to be shaped by God and ushered into his presence. John the Baptizer's place of ministry was fraught with promise.
v.4: "John the Baptizer": It's better to refer to John in this way. "Baptist" as in "John the Baptist" creates confusion. John the Baptizer had nothing to do with the Baptist movement within Christianity, which started in the 16th.-century.
"a baptism of repentance": This contrasts with the baptism instituted by Jesus. John's baptism was a rite of commitment to repentance on the part of the person who came forward to be baptized. In the baptism of Jesus, a sacrament, God acts; the baptized is the passive recipient of God's act of grace and salvation in Christ.
The word in the New Testament Greek for repentance is metanoia, meaning change of mind. Repentance, turning away from sin, is an essential response to the grace God offers in Christ. God will not force Himself on us. God will act when we turn to Him, willing to be changed from an enemy to a friend of God.
The Biblical teaching on repentance flies in the face of the pop psychology of our day that claims that people can't change, that they're the hapless victims of genes and experience, nature and nurture. The Bible says that in fact, people can change, and a rich history of thousands of years' worth of changed lives supports the teaching.
In Christ, God calls us to live in what Martin Luther called, "daily repentance and renewal," daily submission to God's power to change us. If we're willing to change for the better, away from self-centered and destructive behaviors toward lives of love for God and neighbor, we can become what Luther also called, "the Holy Spirit's workshop."
This process of gratifying change, which the New Testament calls sanctification, isn't easy and none of us will be fully reformed this side of the grave. But repentant people can be changed by the grace of God.
"sins": The word is the plural form of the Greek word, 'amartia. It has the idea of "missing the mark," of failing to be what God has made us to be and which, when we are honest, we want to be. This is what Paul spoke about in Romans 7:15.
"forgiveness": The word in Greek is a form of the verb, aphiemi, meaning release. When we repent, turning to the God we know in Christ, He lifts the oppressing load of sin off of our shoulders. We're freed to be God's people again, entering "the promised land" of God's eternal reign.
v.5: "confessing their sins": This is how we prepare for Christ coming into our lives, not just at the end of history, but every day we confess our sins to God.
"baptized": There were baptisms practiced as religious rites of purification by some Jews and by people of other faiths. But those rites were self-administered, particularly among the Qumran community who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. John's baptism was unique in that it was administered by someone else and was a public act of repentance and commitment.
v.6: "Now John was clothed...he ate locusts and wild honey": God often uses people the world considers weird and marginal to proclaim His message. Maybe weird and marginal people are the best candidates for this because they're not concerned about what the neighbors think. They only care about what God thinks.
John's attire was similar to that of the Old Testament prophet, Elijah, who it was thought, might come back to be the forerunning announcer of the Messiah.
v.7: "more power than I...I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thongs of his sandals": John emphasizes the surpassing greatness of the one "coming after" him.
v.8: "I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit": John again underscores the contrast between his baptism and the one to be instituted by Christ. John's baptism is water only, a symbol of repentance. Jesus' baptism brings the Holy Spirit's power into the life of the baptized. Just as Jesus came into the world at Bethlehem, in Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. Every time Holy Baptism happens, another advent, a coming of God into our world, happens.
[For more, see here. You might also like N.T. Wright's readable, insightful, and fun commentary.]
*Most scholars today believe that the accounts of Jesus' resurrection appearances that make up the rest of Mark 16, were added later. That doesn't mean that they're inauthentic though.
[Background on the Church Year and the three years of the lectionary cycle can be found here.]
Bible Lessons for the First Sunday in Advent (Year B):
Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
The Prayer of the Day:
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming strengthen us to serve you with purified lives; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
A Few Comments:
1. For background on the Gospel of Mark, go here. For background on the Season of Advent, go here.
2. The first lesson, from Isaiah, was likely written by the person scholars refer to as "Second Isaiah" (or "Deutero-Isaiah), a prophet schooled in the teachings of the original Isaiah. Second Isaiah, the scholars tell us, began committing his prophecies to paper just before Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon. The Babylonian empire had earlier conquered God's people, taking many of them into slavery. For more, go here, looking under the section dealing with last Sunday's lesson from Isaiah.
3. Advent is not just a season anticipating Christmas, of course. In fact, it originally had nothing to do with Christmas. The season mainly anticipates that the God Who entered our world in Jesus Christ has said that He will come back. The question is, "How do we wait?"
Last Sunday's lessons dealt with one aspect of how we should wait for Christ's return. The lessons for this week further address that question, pointing to repentance.
The earliest Christians, as evidenced by the writings of Paul and Peter in the New Testament letters, had expected Jesus' quick return. In last Sunday's Gospel lesson, Jesus said that all of the world conditions requisite for His return already existed during His earthly ministry. We need look for no further signs for the Second Coming. The perception of a delayed parousia was a source of consternation to the first Christians. It broke the faith of some. Others saw it as license to commit sin. Still others either claimed that Jesus wasn't returning or that His return would be symbolic rather than actual.
In our second lesson, Peter says that the perception of delay was based on impatient human measurement, not the timetable of God. He says, in fact, that God's supposed slowness gives more people time to repent, that is, turn from sin and turn to God. (By the way, it also affords Christians more opportunity to spread the Good News about Jesus.)
This all dovetails nicely with this Sunday's Gospel lesson.
Verse-by-Verse Comments on Mark 1:1-8
v.1: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God": Mark's Gospel begins with a sentence fragment, which I believe, serves as a title for the entire book. The account of Jesus' life, death, and the report of His resurrection--more on that phrasing in a moment--which Mark presents is just "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ." This is so in two ways.
First: Mark, and the other Gospel writers, Matthew, Luke, and John, aren't just telling a story. They're telling the true story of what happened when God came to the earth in Jesus Christ. (By the way, contrary to one of the popular urban legends going around today, Jesus' life is more well attested by more disparate sources than were the lives of many ancient figures whose existences are not questioned. The assertion that Jesus never existed may be around because Jesus is a greater threat to our self-driven life styles, including my own, than someone like Alexander the Great. We can look at someone like Alexander and keep him safely in the vaults of history. But Jesus, the Savior Who wouldn't stay dead, will change us from the inside out if we give Him access to our lives, psyches, and thinking.)
The story of Jesus will, if we let it, change our lives for eternity. His time on earth is only the beginning of Jesus' story. It can continue in us and can continue forever.
Second: Many modern scholars believe that Mark originally ended his Gospel account of Jesus with Mark 16:8. There, we're told simply that on the first Easter, the women to whom Jesus' resurrection was announced fled from the tomb in terror and amazement, saying nothing to anybody because fear overcame them.
That would seem, from Mark's vantage point, to be a good coda for his writing. Mark's first readers, like you and me, were people who hadn't seen a dead man rise to life. Their call, like ours, was to step into this mystery, letting it take hold of them while the Holy Spirit built faith in them.
The sentence fragment in verse 1 immerses us in the mystery of Jesus. Mark doesn't try to win you over with factoids. Instead, in rapid succession, he gives you vignettes from Jesus' earthly ministry and the report of His resurrection to nudge you toward faith, rather than bludgeoning you to it.*
"good news": The word is a Greek compound, euaggelion (pronounced you-ahn-gay-lee-own). The eu- prefix means good. Aggelion means message. (It's related to the Greek word for messenger, angelos, in English rendered as angel.)
In ordinary Greek usage, the singular form of this word, as it shows up in our lesson, never appeared. It was always used in a way that seems awkward in the English language, a plural that, if translated literally, would mean "good newses."
It was a term used of the victories achieved by great kings. The Romans, who it should be pointed out, regarded their emperors as gods or sons of gods, hailed the good newses of their victorious god-kings.
You can see how, first of all, Mark's use of the singular of this word would have been jarring to those who hadn't really heard the word in that way before. More than that, it would have been a gauntlet thrown down at the worship of emperors, military heroes, or little deities. There is really only one thing that we can speak of as good news, of true victory, Mark was saying, and that's the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.
"Son of God": This also would have been a provocative designation. The emperors were called "sons of gods." Mark is saying that Jesus is the Son of the God.
In using these terms for Jesus though, Mark was, in essence, setting his audience up. Jesus wouldn't be a king who conquered through military, economic, or political muscle, but as a suffering servant who dealt with the real problems of the human race, sin and death, by sharing our deaths and rising to give new lives to those who surrender to Him.
vv.2-3: Mark wastes no time in telling his story. He dives in.
He also claims that the whole of what he cites from the Old Testament comes from Isaiah. Actually, only v. 3 does, specifically Isaiah 40:3. V. 2 actually references Exodus 23:20 and the similar Malachi 3:1. The Exodus passage, from the Old Testament account of the Hebrews' journey from Egypt, where they had been slaves, to their promised land, finds God promising "an angel," a messenger, would guard them on their way in order to take them to the place God had prepared for them.
Malachi may have been a title, rather than the name of the writer of the Old Testament book that bears that name. It's the Hebrew word for messenger. Malachi says that a messenger is coming from God and it has been seen by some to refer to both John the Baptizer and Jesus.
Mark's use of the Exodus passage is particularly interesting. John's ministry happened at the Jordan River, which the Exodus people crossed to get to the promised land. Without a relationship with God, without forgiveness of sin, we wander in the wilderness, far from God.
"the wilderness": Interestingly, as pointed out by Pastor Ed Markquart, wilderness was always a place of promise, a place through which God's people travel to be shaped by God and ushered into his presence. John the Baptizer's place of ministry was fraught with promise.
v.4: "John the Baptizer": It's better to refer to John in this way. "Baptist" as in "John the Baptist" creates confusion. John the Baptizer had nothing to do with the Baptist movement within Christianity, which started in the 16th.-century.
"a baptism of repentance": This contrasts with the baptism instituted by Jesus. John's baptism was a rite of commitment to repentance on the part of the person who came forward to be baptized. In the baptism of Jesus, a sacrament, God acts; the baptized is the passive recipient of God's act of grace and salvation in Christ.
The word in the New Testament Greek for repentance is metanoia, meaning change of mind. Repentance, turning away from sin, is an essential response to the grace God offers in Christ. God will not force Himself on us. God will act when we turn to Him, willing to be changed from an enemy to a friend of God.
The Biblical teaching on repentance flies in the face of the pop psychology of our day that claims that people can't change, that they're the hapless victims of genes and experience, nature and nurture. The Bible says that in fact, people can change, and a rich history of thousands of years' worth of changed lives supports the teaching.
In Christ, God calls us to live in what Martin Luther called, "daily repentance and renewal," daily submission to God's power to change us. If we're willing to change for the better, away from self-centered and destructive behaviors toward lives of love for God and neighbor, we can become what Luther also called, "the Holy Spirit's workshop."
This process of gratifying change, which the New Testament calls sanctification, isn't easy and none of us will be fully reformed this side of the grave. But repentant people can be changed by the grace of God.
"sins": The word is the plural form of the Greek word, 'amartia. It has the idea of "missing the mark," of failing to be what God has made us to be and which, when we are honest, we want to be. This is what Paul spoke about in Romans 7:15.
"forgiveness": The word in Greek is a form of the verb, aphiemi, meaning release. When we repent, turning to the God we know in Christ, He lifts the oppressing load of sin off of our shoulders. We're freed to be God's people again, entering "the promised land" of God's eternal reign.
v.5: "confessing their sins": This is how we prepare for Christ coming into our lives, not just at the end of history, but every day we confess our sins to God.
"baptized": There were baptisms practiced as religious rites of purification by some Jews and by people of other faiths. But those rites were self-administered, particularly among the Qumran community who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. John's baptism was unique in that it was administered by someone else and was a public act of repentance and commitment.
v.6: "Now John was clothed...he ate locusts and wild honey": God often uses people the world considers weird and marginal to proclaim His message. Maybe weird and marginal people are the best candidates for this because they're not concerned about what the neighbors think. They only care about what God thinks.
John's attire was similar to that of the Old Testament prophet, Elijah, who it was thought, might come back to be the forerunning announcer of the Messiah.
v.7: "more power than I...I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thongs of his sandals": John emphasizes the surpassing greatness of the one "coming after" him.
v.8: "I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit": John again underscores the contrast between his baptism and the one to be instituted by Christ. John's baptism is water only, a symbol of repentance. Jesus' baptism brings the Holy Spirit's power into the life of the baptized. Just as Jesus came into the world at Bethlehem, in Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. Every time Holy Baptism happens, another advent, a coming of God into our world, happens.
[For more, see here. You might also like N.T. Wright's readable, insightful, and fun commentary.]
*Most scholars today believe that the accounts of Jesus' resurrection appearances that make up the rest of Mark 16, were added later. That doesn't mean that they're inauthentic though.
[Background on the Church Year and the three years of the lectionary cycle can be found here.]
Thursday, December 04, 2008
LP Cover Parodies and Self-Deprecation
I was in a Virgin Records Store earlier this week. (It's a place through which I sometimes peruse, although I can't remember ever buying anything there.) As I looked around, this CD cover caught my eye:
Imitation is, of course, if not the highest, one of the highest forms of flattery and obviously, this LP cover art from Def Leppard, a band I have managed to totally avoid through the years, pays homage to the Beatles. The Sparkle Lounge, I've since learned, was released in April of this year.
In case you don't know which Beatles LP it mimics (How have you managed to avoid the Beatles all these years and why would you want to?), here's the cover for their 1967 release, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band:
One of my favorite knock-offs of this landmark LP's cover was on the 1973 release by Beatle Ringo Starr. It looks like this:
The Beatles always had a healthy sense of humor, concealing pride in their musical legacy beneath a willingness--most of the time--to deprecate and parody themselves. This was true of them from the beginning of their careers, when the Four Moptops appeared on a British variety show mocking their own then-signature, "Wooh!" while singing Moonlight Bay:
In later years, George Harrison appeared in the Eric Idle-created mockumentary, The Rutles.
But when it comes to LP covers, one of my favorite Beatles send-ups came from Beatle Paul McCartney. It mimics the cover that may be even more famous than that of Sergeant Pepper's: Abbey Road. Again, for those who've been living under large geological formations for all or parts of the last forty-five years, the original looks like this:
And here's Macca's send-up, a concert LP released in 1993, called Paul is Live:
The Paul is Live cover manages also to allude to at least two tidbits of Beatles lore. First, it hearkens back to the resilient rumor, which started in 1966 and was still going strong in some circles as late as 1970, that said that McCartney was dead. The Abbey Road cover was introduced as evidence for this assertion. (One probably believed by the same folks who think that UFOs are here from other planets, the Cubans or the Mafia killed Kennedy, and Milli Vanilli were talented.) The four Beatles crossing the street by the EMI studios where they'd recorded from the beginnings of their careers, were said to be forming an Indian funeral procession with Lennon as priest and Starr as undertaker. The bodies of the dead in India, we were told ominously, were always left shoeless in such processions. Note: Paul is barefooted! Harrison, in his jeans, was also said to represent lower-caste mourners for the departed. No, in fact, Macca was saying in 1993, "Paul is [a]live and performing live." (As he told Chris Farley in one of those wonderful faux talk shows Farley used to do on Saturday Night Live, "I wasn't really dead.")
On the 1993 cover, McCartney is being pulled along by an English sheep dog like the one he owned in the 1960s, a dog named Martha. Martha gave its name to the Beatles' 1968 tune, Martha My Dear.
Self-parody is the best way for celebs to inoculate themselves against others' putdowns and from the usually-plausible charge of taking themselves too seriously. (This was something George Harrison tried, to no avail, to teach Madonna and Sean Penn when he produced a movie in which the then-married couple starred for him.) JFK was a master of self-deprecating humor and the Beatles, who conquered America five months after Kennedy's assassination and who were not short on ego, have been as well.
Here and here are sites that display LP covers imitating Sergeant Pepper's and Abbey Road.
I suppose that the real question about these and other parodies or all artistic imitation, for that matter, is why it happens. There are probably several reasons. One is that some works of art, whatever the idiom, are touchstones. They grab us by the lapels--assuming we have lapels--and won't let go. Musically, Sergeant Pepper's and Abbey Road did that, as did their cover art. Both were celebrated and are viewed as iconic.
Secondly, not everybody is as creative as the Beatles or the LP cover artists with whom they closely worked once Beatlemania hit. The Beatles' monstrous success allowed them to roam like kids in the candy shop through the entire musical process--production, arrangements, packaging. Before Beatles LPs like Revolver or Rubber Soul, album covers were fairly boring and predictable. The Beatles changed that.
But, of course, few can match the Beatles for creativity or the freedom accorded them by the suits. For four-and-a-half decades now the Fab Four have been imitated and parodied, but never matched.
[Also see here.]
[UPDATE: Go here to see something totally unnecessary: a live webcam transmission from the Abbey Road studios, now seventy-seven years old and still a site that attracts artists from around the world.]
Imitation is, of course, if not the highest, one of the highest forms of flattery and obviously, this LP cover art from Def Leppard, a band I have managed to totally avoid through the years, pays homage to the Beatles. The Sparkle Lounge, I've since learned, was released in April of this year.
In case you don't know which Beatles LP it mimics (How have you managed to avoid the Beatles all these years and why would you want to?), here's the cover for their 1967 release, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band:
One of my favorite knock-offs of this landmark LP's cover was on the 1973 release by Beatle Ringo Starr. It looks like this:
In later years, George Harrison appeared in the Eric Idle-created mockumentary, The Rutles.
But when it comes to LP covers, one of my favorite Beatles send-ups came from Beatle Paul McCartney. It mimics the cover that may be even more famous than that of Sergeant Pepper's: Abbey Road. Again, for those who've been living under large geological formations for all or parts of the last forty-five years, the original looks like this:
The Paul is Live cover manages also to allude to at least two tidbits of Beatles lore. First, it hearkens back to the resilient rumor, which started in 1966 and was still going strong in some circles as late as 1970, that said that McCartney was dead. The Abbey Road cover was introduced as evidence for this assertion. (One probably believed by the same folks who think that UFOs are here from other planets, the Cubans or the Mafia killed Kennedy, and Milli Vanilli were talented.) The four Beatles crossing the street by the EMI studios where they'd recorded from the beginnings of their careers, were said to be forming an Indian funeral procession with Lennon as priest and Starr as undertaker. The bodies of the dead in India, we were told ominously, were always left shoeless in such processions. Note: Paul is barefooted! Harrison, in his jeans, was also said to represent lower-caste mourners for the departed. No, in fact, Macca was saying in 1993, "Paul is [a]live and performing live." (As he told Chris Farley in one of those wonderful faux talk shows Farley used to do on Saturday Night Live, "I wasn't really dead.")
On the 1993 cover, McCartney is being pulled along by an English sheep dog like the one he owned in the 1960s, a dog named Martha. Martha gave its name to the Beatles' 1968 tune, Martha My Dear.
Self-parody is the best way for celebs to inoculate themselves against others' putdowns and from the usually-plausible charge of taking themselves too seriously. (This was something George Harrison tried, to no avail, to teach Madonna and Sean Penn when he produced a movie in which the then-married couple starred for him.) JFK was a master of self-deprecating humor and the Beatles, who conquered America five months after Kennedy's assassination and who were not short on ego, have been as well.
Here and here are sites that display LP covers imitating Sergeant Pepper's and Abbey Road.
I suppose that the real question about these and other parodies or all artistic imitation, for that matter, is why it happens. There are probably several reasons. One is that some works of art, whatever the idiom, are touchstones. They grab us by the lapels--assuming we have lapels--and won't let go. Musically, Sergeant Pepper's and Abbey Road did that, as did their cover art. Both were celebrated and are viewed as iconic.
Secondly, not everybody is as creative as the Beatles or the LP cover artists with whom they closely worked once Beatlemania hit. The Beatles' monstrous success allowed them to roam like kids in the candy shop through the entire musical process--production, arrangements, packaging. Before Beatles LPs like Revolver or Rubber Soul, album covers were fairly boring and predictable. The Beatles changed that.
But, of course, few can match the Beatles for creativity or the freedom accorded them by the suits. For four-and-a-half decades now the Fab Four have been imitated and parodied, but never matched.
[Also see here.]
[UPDATE: Go here to see something totally unnecessary: a live webcam transmission from the Abbey Road studios, now seventy-seven years old and still a site that attracts artists from around the world.]
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Making Our Relationships Work: Covenant
[This was shared during the first Midweek Advent Worship of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier tonight. It was inspired by a sermon from Reverend Roger R. Sonnenberg, although it bears no resemblance to his work. So, don't blame him!]
Jeremiah 33:14-16
A woman told me, during a conversation several years ago, about her marriage, then entering its fourth decade. With humor, she recounted some of the trials she and her husband had weathered, including some that might have torpedoed other relationships.
Seeing an unspoken question on my face, she asked me, “Do you want to know how we’ve made it this long?” “Sure,” I told her. “It’s simple,” she said, “Before we even said, ‘I do,’ we made a promise to each other. No matter what, we would stay together.” She laughed and went on. “I also promised my husband that if he ever made me miserable, because of my commitment to him, I’d spend a lifetime making him miserable in return.”
She meant that last part as a joke, you should know. But the takeaway from my conversation with that woman was that the commitments, the promises, she and her husband made at the beginning of their relationship is part of why they remained together.
Now, we all know that not all marriages stay together. Things like infidelity, abuse, or other things can tear marriages apart. But in an age when people end their marriages on the flimsiest of pretexts, that woman’s words to me were telling. This couple decided at the outset that no matter how rocky things got, divorce was not an option.
Whether stated explicitly or simply believed internally, all relationships—marriages, friendships, or those between parents and children—are built on commitments or promises to hang in there together. Those two words—commitment, promise—really help to define the word that is the focal point of tonight’s worship, the first essential ingredient in good relationships: covenant
Covenant isn’t often included in the lexicon of the world outside the Church. (Sometimes, I think that we ought to hand visitors to our churches dictionaries so that they can understand the strange words we Christians use.) But covenant is a fundamental concept for we Christians…and for anyone who wants to have healthy relationships.
It won’t surprise you that as we develop a few thoughts about covenants and the part they can play in keeping our relationships together and strong, we have to start with God.
One reason for that is that God is the inventor of covenants. The God you and I know in Jesus Christ makes and keeps promises. A few examples:
In the resilient toughness of God’s covenant promises to the human race, we see an important key to making all of our relationships work, making promises, making commitments to tough it out no matter what.
But, of course, there’s a problem with promises. I once read the story of a young man living in 19th-century England. As you know, that was what's called the Victorian Era. It was a time when young men were expected to write love poems or flowery letters to their girlfriends. So, this young man tried to write a love letter to his fiancé.
“I would cross the widest ocean for you,” he told her, “I would climb the highest mountain, walk through the greatest desert. I would do anything for you.” After that set of commitments, he added a PS: “I’ll be over tonight, if it doesn’t rain.”
Our promises are only as good as our willingness or our ability to follow through on them. And follow through on our good intentions isn’t generally a strong suit of we human beings. I don’t know about you, but I can so identify with the apostle Paul, when he writes in Romans: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.“
Among the things I’ve done that I hate, more often than I care to remember, is hurt my relationships with friends, colleagues, neighbors, and others by my failure to love others as God has loved me, to forgive others as God has forgiven me.
I should know better. More importantly, I should live better, in part because I’ve been the beneficiary of such great examples of people who live out their covenants, their promises, of love and concern for others.
Back in 1984, I graduated from seminary in May and still didn’t have a call to my first parish by August 11, the date on which Ann (then expecting our daughter, Sarah), Philip, and I had to be out of seminary housing.
My folks still had two teenagers living at home. Ann’s mother had just been through a divorce and was living in a tiny apartment. We couldn’t move in with family, then.
On top of that, my only financial contribution to our family came from what I made working part-time as a janitor. Ann, who I had torn away from a decent-paying position with the Greater Columbus Arts Council, so that I could do my seminary internship in Michigan, was working as a low-level coordinator with the special events office of Lazarus Department Store. We couldn’t even afford an apartment.
That’s when my friend Tom called me. Tom had just been through a divorce himself. It was a time when it would have been easy and understandable for Tom to be turned in on himself, licking his wounds. But Tom knew the jam I was in and asked if Ann, Phil, and I would like to move into his house with him.
Over a decade before, Tom and I had become friends. But then, he lived out the promise of friendship in a way that I could hardly fathom.
If you asked Tom how he was able to do that, you would eventually come to the real reason for his tough covenant love: Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior. When Christ lives in you, you find it possible to walk the talk of loving relationships.
Of course, it isn’t just with friends that we’re called to love as we’ve been loved. For several decades now, Pastor Mike Slaughter has challenged the people of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, located near Tipp City, Ohio, to adopt an impoverished family, usually from inner city Dayton. “Whatever you spend at your house for birthdays and Christmases,” he tells them, “spend the same amount on your adopted family.”
I’ve heard Slaughter talk about how hard that was for him initially, even after he'd convinced people in his church that it was the thing to do. But for decades now, the church’s members have been adopting families. The congregation has swollen to thousands of members precisely because of its commitment to living out covenants of love in Christ's Name.
The other day, Ann pointed me to an article in the most recent issue of Woman’s Day that, in part, profiled a woman who had been among the church's adoptees a few years back. She was a single mom finding it tough to make ends meet. But a giving family from her church helped get her through, and more than materially. Today, she’s an active member of the congregation herself. A few Christmases back, she heard Pastor Slaughter say that the congregation should send a million-dollars to help the refugees from the genocide in the Darfur region of the African nation of Sudan. He suggested that each household add to what they were already giving to attain the goal. “I could never do that,” this woman told herself. But at that moment, her young son leaned over and whispered to her, “We ought to do that.” And that’s exactly what they did!
God's #1 ingredient for relationships is covenant, giving and living the promise to love as we’ve been loved and not only our friends, neighbors, co-workers, spouses, children, parents, and classmates, but also all of the people Jesus was born to save: the whole world.
During this Advent season, let’s pray that the God Who long ago made a covenant to send a Savior, a branch of David Who would give His righteousness to all who turn from sin and follow Him, will give us the courage, tenacity, and openness to make and keep our own covenants of love for others.
Jeremiah 33:14-16
A woman told me, during a conversation several years ago, about her marriage, then entering its fourth decade. With humor, she recounted some of the trials she and her husband had weathered, including some that might have torpedoed other relationships.
Seeing an unspoken question on my face, she asked me, “Do you want to know how we’ve made it this long?” “Sure,” I told her. “It’s simple,” she said, “Before we even said, ‘I do,’ we made a promise to each other. No matter what, we would stay together.” She laughed and went on. “I also promised my husband that if he ever made me miserable, because of my commitment to him, I’d spend a lifetime making him miserable in return.”
She meant that last part as a joke, you should know. But the takeaway from my conversation with that woman was that the commitments, the promises, she and her husband made at the beginning of their relationship is part of why they remained together.
Now, we all know that not all marriages stay together. Things like infidelity, abuse, or other things can tear marriages apart. But in an age when people end their marriages on the flimsiest of pretexts, that woman’s words to me were telling. This couple decided at the outset that no matter how rocky things got, divorce was not an option.
Whether stated explicitly or simply believed internally, all relationships—marriages, friendships, or those between parents and children—are built on commitments or promises to hang in there together. Those two words—commitment, promise—really help to define the word that is the focal point of tonight’s worship, the first essential ingredient in good relationships: covenant
Covenant isn’t often included in the lexicon of the world outside the Church. (Sometimes, I think that we ought to hand visitors to our churches dictionaries so that they can understand the strange words we Christians use.) But covenant is a fundamental concept for we Christians…and for anyone who wants to have healthy relationships.
It won’t surprise you that as we develop a few thoughts about covenants and the part they can play in keeping our relationships together and strong, we have to start with God.
One reason for that is that God is the inventor of covenants. The God you and I know in Jesus Christ makes and keeps promises. A few examples:
- God promised Adam and Eve promised protection from the elements after they fell into sin.
- God promised to protect Cain from murder after Cain killed his own brother, Abel.
- God promised never to destroy the earth by water after He sent the great flood in response to human sin.
- God promised to make a great nation from the descendants of a couple who shouldn’t have even been able to produce children, Abraham and Sarah.
- The Ten Commandments begin, as all you good Catechism students will no doubt remember, not with God’s commands of His people, Israel, but with a promise: “I am the Lord, your God!”
- God promised that one day, He would send a Savior Who would give His life on a cross and rise from the dead in order to offer forgiveness and everlasting life to all with faith in Him.
- After this Savior rose from the dead and before He ascended into heaven, He made another promise: “I am with you always…I will never leave you or forsake you…”
“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’"In Jesus Christ, the baby born at Bethlehem, we see in flesh and blood, evidence that God keeps the promises God makes! “No matter what,” God tells us in His promises—His covenants for both His Old and New Testament peoples, “divorce is not an option. You may choose to walk away from Me. But I will never walk away from you!”
In the resilient toughness of God’s covenant promises to the human race, we see an important key to making all of our relationships work, making promises, making commitments to tough it out no matter what.
But, of course, there’s a problem with promises. I once read the story of a young man living in 19th-century England. As you know, that was what's called the Victorian Era. It was a time when young men were expected to write love poems or flowery letters to their girlfriends. So, this young man tried to write a love letter to his fiancé.
“I would cross the widest ocean for you,” he told her, “I would climb the highest mountain, walk through the greatest desert. I would do anything for you.” After that set of commitments, he added a PS: “I’ll be over tonight, if it doesn’t rain.”
Our promises are only as good as our willingness or our ability to follow through on them. And follow through on our good intentions isn’t generally a strong suit of we human beings. I don’t know about you, but I can so identify with the apostle Paul, when he writes in Romans: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.“
Among the things I’ve done that I hate, more often than I care to remember, is hurt my relationships with friends, colleagues, neighbors, and others by my failure to love others as God has loved me, to forgive others as God has forgiven me.
I should know better. More importantly, I should live better, in part because I’ve been the beneficiary of such great examples of people who live out their covenants, their promises, of love and concern for others.
Back in 1984, I graduated from seminary in May and still didn’t have a call to my first parish by August 11, the date on which Ann (then expecting our daughter, Sarah), Philip, and I had to be out of seminary housing.
My folks still had two teenagers living at home. Ann’s mother had just been through a divorce and was living in a tiny apartment. We couldn’t move in with family, then.
On top of that, my only financial contribution to our family came from what I made working part-time as a janitor. Ann, who I had torn away from a decent-paying position with the Greater Columbus Arts Council, so that I could do my seminary internship in Michigan, was working as a low-level coordinator with the special events office of Lazarus Department Store. We couldn’t even afford an apartment.
That’s when my friend Tom called me. Tom had just been through a divorce himself. It was a time when it would have been easy and understandable for Tom to be turned in on himself, licking his wounds. But Tom knew the jam I was in and asked if Ann, Phil, and I would like to move into his house with him.
Over a decade before, Tom and I had become friends. But then, he lived out the promise of friendship in a way that I could hardly fathom.
If you asked Tom how he was able to do that, you would eventually come to the real reason for his tough covenant love: Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior. When Christ lives in you, you find it possible to walk the talk of loving relationships.
Of course, it isn’t just with friends that we’re called to love as we’ve been loved. For several decades now, Pastor Mike Slaughter has challenged the people of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, located near Tipp City, Ohio, to adopt an impoverished family, usually from inner city Dayton. “Whatever you spend at your house for birthdays and Christmases,” he tells them, “spend the same amount on your adopted family.”
I’ve heard Slaughter talk about how hard that was for him initially, even after he'd convinced people in his church that it was the thing to do. But for decades now, the church’s members have been adopting families. The congregation has swollen to thousands of members precisely because of its commitment to living out covenants of love in Christ's Name.
The other day, Ann pointed me to an article in the most recent issue of Woman’s Day that, in part, profiled a woman who had been among the church's adoptees a few years back. She was a single mom finding it tough to make ends meet. But a giving family from her church helped get her through, and more than materially. Today, she’s an active member of the congregation herself. A few Christmases back, she heard Pastor Slaughter say that the congregation should send a million-dollars to help the refugees from the genocide in the Darfur region of the African nation of Sudan. He suggested that each household add to what they were already giving to attain the goal. “I could never do that,” this woman told herself. But at that moment, her young son leaned over and whispered to her, “We ought to do that.” And that’s exactly what they did!
God's #1 ingredient for relationships is covenant, giving and living the promise to love as we’ve been loved and not only our friends, neighbors, co-workers, spouses, children, parents, and classmates, but also all of the people Jesus was born to save: the whole world.
During this Advent season, let’s pray that the God Who long ago made a covenant to send a Savior, a branch of David Who would give His righteousness to all who turn from sin and follow Him, will give us the courage, tenacity, and openness to make and keep our own covenants of love for others.
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