Nonviolence

In anticipation of Martin Luther King Day in January (I need something to keep my frustrations rising from all the Christmas hoopla), I have been reading a collection of his essential works. And one thing that absolutely fascinates me about his work comes from a museum display I saw in Lancaster County, PA.

The local School Boards were trying to impose manditory schooling on the children of the Amish. But the Amish refused. The men gathered and were arrested and held in prison for a time, embarassing the local authorities, until they finally struck a compromise, the eighth grade for men and I don't remember how little education for the women.

As a man with a couple of Masters degrees, married to a teacher, I find the level of education among the Amish relative to 'secular' standards to be too low. But I am also envious at times of how they have truly lived the Christian life as few others.

But I was amazed at the connection between a truly nonviolent Christian community embodying the nonviolent protests that were advocated and broke down the walls of segregation that shamefully divided our country.

What is the greater sin?

I spent a very refreshing couple of days back at my alma mater, Westminster Seminary. Its biblical rigor grounds me. Each year, there is a preaching conference. I have had the privilege of attending the last two, and both have bolstered me. But this one was also very tough.

Dr. Bryan Chappell of Covenant Theological Seminary delivered the message home so powerfully that God loves me, no matter what, no matter what I have done. This truth is there for all Christians, that God has chosen them, that there is no abandonment. Sometimes, when it feels like I am out there by myself, I can lose that center.

But then we had the alumni dinner. It was another powerful occasion, sharing the successes of the Seminary, catching up, looking forward. But one of the things the Seminary participated in was a mass mailing to I think it was over 57,000 congregations in California and the other states with the ballot initiative of defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

In a stroke, the tyranny of the majority was going to undo, especially in California, the public committments that two people in love had made to one another to be exclusive to one another until death did part them. And this was celebrated as a triumph in the Seminary that is so central to my grounding in God's Word.

And it makes me sad. The mercy of God is from everlasting to everlasting, but there was no mercy in that moment. I am only one voice, standing on the other side of the line in the sand they have drawn on the issue of interpreting Scripture and homosexuality. I am not sure I am worthy, or even have the words to preach to them, they are so dear to my heart.

This was a similar fight I had when I attended. It was the reason I could not pursue ordination in the Presbyterian denominations they train pastors for. The issue was the ordination of women. There was a very intense biblical interpretive construct of why that could not be. And I do not question their scholarship. But I attended and was nurtured in a mainline Presbyterian Church with a woman pastor embodying the best in ministry.

What God revealed in the practice of God's people and what God's people saw God revealing in God's word were at odds in that moment. I chose what I saw in God's people. I chose to understand and interpret Scripture from a wider perspective, using broad themes of freedom and considering the more restrictive historic circumstances in which Paul and other authors of Scripture wrote from.

I am there again. There are people, committed Christians, for whom their sexuality is not a choice. But they are marginalized as either lying or too messed up in their sexuality to know what is 'right' by good and loving people who, I believe, have taken the interpretation of Scripture in a wrong direction.

God is good, God is love, God does not marginalize or exclude those God loves. And I accept the authority of the inspired canon of Scripture. So there is a problem in the interpretation, somewhere. Are we willing to prayerfully find where we have fallen and correct our mistakes?

Tyranny of the Majority!

There are thousands of marriages at risk in California. The propositional election system is allowing a tyranny of the majority against a new sweep of committed monogamous relationships. Women and men who have committed their lives together have just had their lives put in new jeopardy. That stinks!

The amazing thing is that I am usually a great supporter of direct electoral involvement. I think the representative system has fallen under the control of party politics that has made it so hard for the average citizen to stand for office, much less influence things by direct ballot access.

But that is why we have Constitutional guarentees. That is why we have an uberlaw to protect us from the tyranny of the regular legal systsm. And in California it has fallen.

I am not even looking at a theological framework at this moment. I am simply venting my anger that those for whom homosexual marriage is not their business, namely heterosexual voters, are able to oppress in one day a significant segment of our population who were gaining equality in this nation.

It is wrong.

From "A Year of Living Biblically"

For one year, the author tried to live biblically, exploring the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, trying to live the biblical moral law of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Along the way, he spoke to many sects and leaders of both Judaism and Christianity. One of the most significant contacts he made for the purposes of our discussion was an Evangelical bible study group that met in New York City.

These were men from churches that condemn the ordination of homosexuals, that seek to block the possibility of marriage of homosexuals, who take the biblical passages on homosexuality as condemnation of those who are gay, lesbian, or transgender in our culture. And each man was a self-avowed homosexual, and evangelical, and living examples of being at odds what the evangelical wing of the Church teaches.

They've taken the biblical passages speaking against homosexuality as references to pagan sexual worship practices. This interpretation has come out of their dual experience. They have not made a 'choice' to be homosexual. It is in their created order. They do not see how Scripture can condemn them for what they have not chosen.

I am not sure how the rest of us can either.

Inerrancy and Homosexuality

I am a strong proponent of the inspiration and the inerrancy of Scripture. I am also a strong believer in the ongoing need to review and reconsider our interpretations of the inerrant Word of God.

Genesis teaches that God created man and woman in God's image. It teaches that there is a combined effect of image borne in a monogamous relationship. Genesis also teaches how sin has entered the world and creation itself is fallen under the effects of sin. I believe that tainting has struck even to the biological levels of our humanity.

I had someone describe this as the 'freakshow defense'. Simply put, there are physical specimens of humanity that defy the created order of Genesis. Biologically, they do not fall under the perfection of Eden that "man and woman God created them". Nonsexual humans, humans with the sexual organs of males and females, humans with none, have been reported in the medical literature.

So what do we do with people like this? Because the bible says 'man and woman', are we to assume these people do not seek to have a monogomous relationship-recognizing the great difficulties that presents. Or are 'man and woman' titles that refer to the pre-Fallen condition of humanity?

Then here comes the possibility that I am riding a sled down the slippery slope. If sin has confused the biological definitions of 'man and woman', what about other possibilities? What about "a woman trapped in a man's body" and vice versa? What about people who would be considered beyond reproach in every other part of their lives assumed to be liars when they say their sexual preference for the biological same sex is not a choice, but hardwired?

The easiest decision we can make is simply to ignore the catastrophic effects of sin beyond the power of personal choice and condemn those of homosexual persuasions among us that they have made a sinful choice. That is what the bible teaches, right? Maybe on a superficial read.

But the love of God, the mercy of God, the redemption of God overcomes the effects of sin, we believe that comes by grace in Jesus Christ. And there are convincing testimonies out there from Christians who do not believe their sexuality is a choice-and those who live homosexual lives are condemned for it.

I think the rest of us have committed a sin by our condemnations, without daring to err on the side of mercy, without daring to admit that we are very likely wrong.

Because the inerrant Bible teaches that we are all created in the image of God, that we are all Children of the Living God, brothers and sisters of Jesus, and that we must live by love, not judgment.

Homosexuality and Christian Community

This book, edited by Choon-Leong Seow, is a gathering of informed theolgical viewpoints of the PTS faculty in 1997 over the issue of homosexuality, and how it has been dividing the church. Ten years later, and it is still dividing us.

Can we move forward? Is there a place for post-conflict Scriptural interpretation that can allow us to honor the past of our interpretation of Scripture while at the same time coming to terms with the present crisis?

I found a lot of material in here that has prompted me to further thinking and reflection, things that as I work them through, will hopefully end up here, in some coherence.

I know there is an answer, one that honors our God and the Scriptures left to us, one that honors our brothers and sisters in Christ, one that will lead us forward to a more diverse and strengthened congregation. I think I have a little bit of the prophet stuck in my throat.

The Best of Two Worlds!

I am a graduate of Princeton, Old and New. I carry the legacy of Old Princeton with my time at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. And I enjoy the legacy of New Princeton on that venerable campus. And I have spent the last ten years in ministry integrating the best elements of both and trying to slough off the excesses.

To try and compare the two is like trying to compare Granny Smith and Macintosh apples. They are both apples, both Presbyterian, but with very distinct flavors. Perhaps the best way I can begin to draw them together is through two unique volumes produced during my time at each place.

In 1988, Westminster published a symposia, drawn from the faculty and edited by a campus favorite, Harvie Conn, concerning Inerrancy and Hermeneutic. The challenge is over the doctrine of Scripture under attack in modern American theological thinking. The subtitle lays it out well, "A Tradition, A Challenge, A Debate". This was the theological debate of the moment as I began my time there.

On the other hand, in 1997, Princeton published a volume with contributions from the faculty, edited by Choon-Leong Seow, entitled Homosexuality and the Christian Community in response to a vigorous debate going on at the Seminary during my attendance there. The challenge, I believe, is over the doctrine of sin and homosexuality, and how to bring the authority of the bible to bear on the relationship between the two.

I fear people from both sides would cringe at the notion that I would put these two side by side on my bookshelf. But each is part of the legacy the Lord has blessed me with, two schools of the Presbyterian tradition, of vigorous academic reputation, interested in spirited debate, and each willing to engage with the wider Christian community on key issues of the day.

I have been blessed.

Anne Rice II

I finished "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" and I am still trying to absorb it. It is like she has reached into the first century and created a world to get lost in. I am joyful at the way that she has portrayed Jesus, fully human and fully divine, seeking to come to terms with what that might mean as a child. She portrays that time with the violence and turbulence and uncertainty that may, at times, bother the reader. But that is where the power lies, a conviction of Jesus as a real person in a real place at a real time.

I am very much looking forward to the next volume of this work.

I was moved by a section in the Note on the Paperback Edition, which I have. As she describes her conversion, or perhaps reversion experience, returning to the fold, I was struck by the parallels to the last chapters of Job. Now Anne Rice has not had the life of Job, but God's words at the end, describing God's relationship to the powers of all and everything, compared to the life of Job, resonated with what I was reading from Anne Rice's own life.

It is a powerful witness of the Holy Spirit to truly try and lose yourself in the grand mystery of God's creation.

My Preferred Conversionary Sound Byte

I so prefer our sound byte, “You must accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior” to the evangelical sound byte, “You must be born again”.

Yes, I have discovered this is one of the windmills I like to tilt at, the notion that salvation can be boiled down to ‘born again’. The citation is John 3:3, “born anew” according to my faithful RSV, with a footnote referencing ‘born from above’.

But consider Lord and Savior. It defines a definite hierarchical and sovereign relationship between Jesus and ourselves.

He is our Lord, our boss, our master. All the American egalitarian definitions of our lives as a republican democracy are thrown out in this top down relationship with the Almighty. Yes, we are not God’s slaves, Jesus is the first born of God’s children, making us co-heirs with him to the glory of heaven. But he did it for us. He was being gracious.

And he is our Savior. Maybe atonement language is too legalistic, maybe the idea that the death of Jesus is a moral example to us is too thin, maybe the idea that Jesus won a cosmic victory is too ‘out there’, but we cannot deny that he shed his blood for us, that his body was broken for us, and that we who call ourselves preachers of the Gospel must proclaim the Good News of our eternal life acquired in the death of an Innocent.

I’m not talking about Ministers of the Word and Sacrament here. Preaching the Gospel message is the charge to EVERY Christian.

The jailer who was going to commit suicide in Acts 16 because he thought all the prisoners had escaped asked the question, “What must I do to be saved?”

The answer was “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.”

The Faith of Anne Rice

I usually wait till I finish a book to contemplate blogging about it. But I am not even half way through Christ the Lord Out of Egypt and I am blown away. I like her novels, she walks through the dark side of our experience and personalizes them in the vampires, but more so for me in the character of Lasher.

Years ago, I heard her on an NPR show discussing one of her books and the discussion turned theological, looking to the question of evil, how it might be explored, and how Ms. Rice did explore it. She seemed more taken with the discussion then the commentator.

It did not surprise me when she declared for the faith. And she has now turned her talents to something that reads and tastes like the Holy Land in the days of our Lord.

The book begins its journey in the 'between time' of the gospel, between the birth narratives and Jesus coming to Jerusalem at the age of 12. The root of the story is from Matthew 2: 19ff, "When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother; and to to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead . . ."

Thank you Ms. Rice.

Where our Hope and Faith Are, So Is Our Worship . . .

There is nobody making the Credit Markets or the Stock Markets go up or down. There is no force in the financial system that drives what happens, not bankers or analysts or government officials or men in black suits behind drawn curtains. It is 'we the people'. And it scares me.

If 'we the people' have confidence in the markets, they will go up. Governments can pump billions and trillions of dollars into the system, but it will mean nothing if 'we the people' are convinced it means nothing.

But apparently, if we can trust the system, if we can hope in the system, if we can put our faith and confidence back into the financial system, it will go up. It was faith and confidence in the market that made it go up and up and up and up and up until the housing bust. But then again, it could have kept going up forever, if we believed that it could.

If 'we the people' believed that housing values could go up forever, despite what the experts said, then they could have.

Because we made this god in our own image. We want to be rich. We want our money to go forever. And we love that money and everything it allows us to go.

But therein is the root of the evil. We love the money, we fall into greed, we take as much as we can, we look to ourselves and not our neighbors, and we have broken the Second Law of Jesus, Love thy Neighbor as Thyself.

And now we reap what we have sown.

Poverty: The result of the love of money . . .

I am taking the time to preach on issues this season that seem relevant to the national agenda, to the political process, and to the election in a little over six weeks. Nothing grandious, just a title "What the Bible has to say about . . . war, racism, the social safety net, and, this week, poverty.

My scriptures are from Amos, condemning those who oppress the poor, and Luke 16 where Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, both who die and go to hell and heaven respectively.

$700 B to bail out bankers who screwed up in the face of children in America who will go to bed hungry tonight is obscene! More obscene is the money that the bottom five percent of Americans bring home is more than the majority of the "Third World", although that term is passe.

$700 B. would go a long way to feed the hungry and lift the poor out of poverty. It might fund the entire UN initiative designed to cut poverty in half. It might even cover the other half. It might prompt Jesus to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

$700 B. went down in flames today in the House of Representatives. I really don't know whether to feel sick over the future of my 403(b)-that is the not for profit equivalent of a 401(k) or to rejoice that there is still some backbone in Congress.

The amazing thing is that the people who got lousy mortgages out of this and are either being foreclosed upon or are hanging on by their fingernails are not even the poorest people in this country. There is a whole other layers of victims of the free market economy who don't even get to show up at the table to complain, much less have any chance of a government bailout.

Sunday last, I preached on racism, and I looked a lot at the life of Martin Luther King Jr. to prepare the way. He was organizing the poverty march on Washington when he was martyred for his faith. Lord, how can we pick up the mantle of the mighty whose fallen?

Seven Hundred Billion?

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's"

Do we really need to render so much cash unto the financial institutions that screwed up so royally? I was going to say stupid people making bad investments, but these are not stupid people. These are well educated, highly motivated, prime shakers and movers of the financial system. And they let their love of money outstrip all other considerations.

And now the government wants to bail them out-maybe. We don't know the final price tag. I heard in one report that all the insurance that has been written on all these financial investments is in the neighborhood of $62 Trillion (CAPITAL T), of which $700 Billion seems a drop in the bucket.

How much is this government in debt and how much more would this initial investment force us to add? It is more than 700 B. because there will be borrowing fees and interest and a cut for everyone along the way. In the end, do we sign over California to China and the Middle East to make good?

The absurdity that tickles me the most is that the presidential campaigns are saying that the people want to make this decision. No, they want to make the decision for the people. We are a representative democracy. If they really want the people to decide, make this a national referendum question on the ballet in November.

Jesus calls on us to pay our taxes, but I don't think it extends to this.

For more, google "Kansas Senate Prayer"

Don't know if it is an 'e-myth', but it stirred my heart when I got the email.

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance.

We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.

We have abused power and called it politics.

We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleans us from every sin and set us free.

Amen!

X-men 2: A Christian Mutant

His name is Nightcrawler. He is a teleporter, German by background, mutant by birth, ugly by appearance, and a bona fide Christian in a comic book movie. During the course of the movie, he adds the Lord’s Prayer in a moment of desperation, he provides the words to the 23rd Psalm when they mourn the loss of one of their own, and he comes across as a creature of peculiar powers that is truly trying to put together his faith with his strange appearance.

The only really odd bits were the scars he gave himself as reminders of his sins. They had to do with angel signs or something.

Nightcrawler’s faith comes across in the comic books as well. There is some recollection far back in my mind of his becoming an ordained minister after some kind of evil befell the X-men and broke up the team.

But it X-men 2, it wasn’t over the top. The character of Nightcrawler is, but the portrayal of the faith wasn’t. There really seemed to be a subtext of this creature who was different by no choice of his own trying to live life, trying to understand by the power of his faith. At one point, the mutant is under the power of the bad guys, and he doesn’t get what he has done. He retreats to a church. When confronted by members of the X-men, he wonders out loud if he is being tested, looking to the crucifix placed in easy access.

I found their treatment of my faith to be respectful, compared to some movies I have seen.

“Inspiration and Incarnation”; my take

I think Professor Enns got caught between the trustees and the faculty at WTS which has caused a ferment about his book. The trustees raised a red flag while the faculty raised a green flag. He got caught in between.

So why a red flag from the trustees? My guess is somebody on the outside read the book and either didn’t get it and/or didn’t like it. So the word got back, maybe pushing some of the ‘orthodoxy’ buttons, and the flag went up. Maybe Prof. Enns did not reflect enough of a “WTS specific” set of presuppositions in his prologue. Maybe his critics thought he was a little too cozy with setting the bible into comparison and not enough contrast with the culture out of which the Old Testament was written. The trustees have the whole Seminary to think about, after all.

So why a green light from the faculty? My guess is that they recognized the book as an offering of Old Testament research, sound in its consideration of the cultural evidence that pre-date and co-date the Hebrew bible. It’s place was not an offering of cultural implications of Ancient Near Eastern literature to systematic and biblical theology. It was a text for Seminary students pursuing questions of the Old Testament and similar literature of that time and place.

So what issues does this raise?

Does all research need a full theological confession before you start?

Who decides, the trustees or the faculty, on what constitutes a ‘problem’ among the writings of the professors?

What is the difference in emphasis between a book meant for teaching in a Seminary and a book meant for popular Christian consumption?

Where is the border between theologically dominant and culturally dominant inquiry?

How does this weaken the witness of the Whole Christian Nation?

Bible: The Easiest and the Toughest Book

I find myself coming back to the Bible again and again as a concept. It is already an integrated part of my vocation and personal worship. As a pastor, the preaching of the Word is at the centerpiece of the ministry I carry out. As a Christian, personal devotional reading and meditation are the ways to get the Spirit flowing in my life and to simply get through the day sometimes.

But that is my bible, my relationship with the bible. I agree with the broad statements that there is a general lack of knowledge about what is in the bible, simply as a central literary work to our American cultural experience. That is a regrettable flaw in the core knowledge of our educational system. Then that general lack of knowledge extends to our religious use of God’s Word as the central message of our churches. No longer are we simply talking about the common reference points in our American cultural experience, but we are talking about ignorance of God’s saving message to us of Jesus Christ. That has tragic consequences for a nation that considers itself Christian.

If I am not the basic receptacle of biblical teaching, but my pastor is, or my leader is, or that person who sounds so nice on the television or the internet is, then how they define faith is how I will.

If someone tells me that if I believe enough, I will become prosperous and fulfill the American dream, I will grab hold. . . if they say the bible tells me so.

If someone singles out ‘those’ people as the harbingers of evil; fascists in my grandparent’s generation, communists in my parent’s generation, homosexuals in my generation, “PEOPLE X” in the next generation; I will hate ‘those’ people too. . . if they say the bible tells me so.

If someone tells me the poor are not to be pandered to, not to be charity cases to the government, that the homeless just don’t do enough, that such people are just too lazy, I’ll buy that. . . if they say the bible tells me so.

But I can tell you, as a preacher, as a pastor, as a ‘rigorously trained, academically oriented’ theologian, that is not the bible I know.

We Need All of God to Understand the Bible

Incarnation and Inspiration emphasized an ‘incarnational’ understanding of the bible. I understand it to be analogous to the incarnational understanding we have of Jesus as Fully Human. I think that is an excellent idea to prevent a definition of ‘inspiration’ becoming mechanical, that the writers of Scripture were stenographers in their day.

But I do not think that is the whole story. To understand and interpret Scripture as a Christian relies on the very Trinitarian nature of God.

The very idea that God gave us this book, that God inspired the writers, that God guided the selection process that has assembled the Canon of Holy Scripture is mind-boggling to me. We are looking at thousands of years of discernment among sinful, fallible human beings to give us what we have today. Dare I call it miraculous?

Peter Enns really sparked this thinking with his focus on the incarnational aspect of Scripture. It is truly the work of human hands, out of a human context, representative of the human written traditions of the times and places from which the bible emerged. One critique leveled against Professor Enns is that he speaks of the similarities of other cultural writings to the bible as a challenge to the authority of the bible. That may be in some circles, but for me, the similarity is proof to the bible’s inspiration. God did not drop something new from the sky, but interacted with his created order to provide us with the Truth of Jesus Christ.

But the final person of the Trinity is what really drives inspiration in my mind. That is the presence and witness of the Holy Spirit. That is what separates my finding in the bible the promise of salvation and the stranger finding nothing more than moral tales and religious ceremonial instruction in it. The Spirit is the presence that makes one heart stir at the preaching of God’s Word and its absence makes another heart drift into sleep.

I think that is another critique of Peter Enn’s book, the lack of focus on the activity of the Holy Spirit in reading and understanding Scripture.

Controversy in Philadelphia

Professor Peter Enns wrote a book called Inspiration and Incarnation as a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Over the course of the next couple of years, it aroused a controversy, enough that the Board of Trustees thought an investigation should take place. The controversy was deepened when the Faculty of the Seminary voted to uphold and support their colleague.

It made me flash back in my history lessons to the Faculty and Administration divisions at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1920’s that precipitated the creation of WTS in the first place.

I finally found time to read the book, then spent some time online researching the difficulties, and have been pondering how this affects the Christian Nation.

I listened to Peter Enns being interviewed on Radio Times on the Philadelphia Public Radio Station. That is about as mainline media as I think WTS has ever managed. There we have the Lord moving a controversy to allow a minister of the gospel to speak.

Of course, if there had been a heresy trial, we might have had front page headlines. But WTS and Prof. Enns seem to have had a friendly parting of the ways. That opens another question for me, that of which denomination would take the lead in that. WTS trains pastors mainly for the PCA and the OPC. I do not know Prof. Enns’ denominational affiliation.

I like the book and I like the way the title challenges us-although I do not agree with everything in it. Jesus is God incarnate, God made human, and we have to get our minds around that. The bible is God’s Word incarnate, God’s word made human and we have to get our minds around that as well.

That is a ‘fundamental’ issue for every Christian.

The Detective was a Minister’s Wife

I was prowling the stacks at my local library and, judging this book by its cover, took home The Body in the Bookcase, “A Faith Fairchild Mystery” by Katherine Hall Page. I picked it because the nosey sleuth is a minister’s wife. I had two questions going into this mystery.

Will it entertain me as a murder mystery?

What bearing will the Christian connection have to the story?

The answer to the first question is yes, it was pretty good. The mystery played out well. It was in the world of antique dealing and I like the way she resolved it. A delightful subtext through it was the sleuth’s business. She is a caterer and Ms. Page interweaves that in the story telling. Then she gives an appendix with some of the very tasty sounding recipes.

The Christian connection was by way of back story. Ms. Page has an excellent feel for the life of a minister’s wife and there are some eerily accurate portrayals of some of the more colorful characters you might find in a congregation. But it stays in the background. For example, her husband is working on his sermon, she sets him up with a snack and sneaks out to go sleuthing. At that point, she becomes another amateur detective.

There is no faith-based reflection of how murder is bad or how a Christian might pursue criminals (whether in a professional or amateur capacity). I don’t even remember a prayer for help when she got herself into a tight spot.

But this is one in a series. There might be more Christianity represented in other books. Regardless, I will read more of them.

A “Post-Racial” Society: Vision for the Christian Nation

I picked up this term listening to NPR. A quick google search produced a lot more results. It is the idea of living in a world where we are beyond racial differences. Most of the discussion seems to be whether we are entering that new place with the potential election of Senator Obama as President this fall.

So, here is an awkward conversation, a white pastor talking about race. I won’t be so naïve as to say that I am not racist. There is racism in my makeup, I haven’t met anybody who, with sufficient honest conversation, does not have this most blatant and particularly American sinfulness.

My personal work on racism is to confess it when it comes out of my mouth and be aware of it in the sin life that still tries to drag me down.

And as a person of the ‘white’ color, a “European-American”, I don’t think any meaningful discussion on race can begin without personal confession.

A post-racial society needs to be theologically considered under the idea of the “already-not yet” mystery of the Christian Nation when we consider it as a synonym for the Kingdom of God. We can already work at it, but it not yet finished, and will not be until sin itself is finished.

So if post-racial is, to use the political terms of the upcoming conventions, a plank in the platform of what it means to be a Christian Nation, the best measure for achieving it comes from Martin Luther King’s famous words that people “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”.

Pop Culture Review: Monster Ark

The Sci. Fi. Channel has taken on the book of Genesis.

According to this, Noah had two arks, and the one for this movie was the “Monster Ark”. First, they find a hidden chamber at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Second, it has the ‘complete’ manuscript of Genesis. Third, it plays off Genesis 6:4, an obscure reference to something called the Nephilim. Fourth, it says Noah had a second ark, one with a monster of the Nephilim era that could bring back darkness to the earth.

The verse goes, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward-when the sons of God and the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.”

They chased too many possibilities. Here is a sample. Indiana Jones is ripped off for a mysterious map room, a ‘brotherhood’ designed to protect the secret of the scroll, of the ark, and of Noah’s burial place, but no Nazis. The sacred/secular debate takes the form of two scientists leading this expedition, one being a ‘believer’ and the other being a ‘secularist’. Modern politics are taken on when the ark is supposed to be lying in the middle of war-torn Iraq. In line with all my favorite Sci. Fi. movies, it becomes a protracted bug hunt with a heroic ending-and the possibility of a sequel.

Unfortunately, the movie itself was really bad. Here is a gathering of some of the clichéd reviews of bad cable movies: The dialogue was stilted, the characters were lame, the CGI monster was particularly bad, there were some obvious errors of continuity, and they even resurrected an actress that I have not seen in some years (Renee O’Connor from ‘Xena, Warrior Princess’). And Tommy Lister, known as Tiny, gets every clichéd line from a major (or is it a sergeant-major) Marine that I have ever seen. It was so bad, I liked it. The theological debates that the premise should have generated were as scattered as the rest of the movie.

A negative hallmark of a Nation defined by its Religion?

Every nation marked by a specific religious identity as a certain level of intolerance built in. The stereotype is the Arab nation governed by religious law. But Christians still exhibit this behavior.

The United Kingdom is still ‘governed’ by the Church of England. A selection of their bishops still sit in the upper chamber of Parliament, the House of Lords, even though their role has been limited over time.

When Russia emerged from the Iron Curtain, there was a protest from the Russian Orthodox Church against the influx of western evangelical church planters coming into their country, transgressing on their ‘spiritual geography’.

There exists within the churches the remnants of the Inquisitions that marked the Middle Ages and Reformation periods of the church with so much blood. In the Roman Catholic Church, there still exists the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In my own Presbyterian denomination, there exists the Permanent Judicial Council. These ecclesial courts no longer use temporal authorities to enforce their decisions. We no longer kill people for heresy or wrong belief, but we did.

I do not wish to speak of the Muslim world, because that is not my cultural heritage, except to speak to one set of news reports that just came out. Turkey is the exception that proves the rule. The Supreme Court came close to throwing out the ruling AK Party because their religious views were in conflict with the principle of secular governing that exists there. Turkey is arguably the only nation with a 90% plus Muslim population that does not have Islamic practice at its political center-and that is because of the military.

There are a few political hot coals in this country that could rapidly become the fire of intolerance if we ever truly embraced being a “Christian Nation”. Things like Roe V. Wade, Prayer in School, the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Separation of Church and State, and Faith-Based Initiatives would all get spun very differently if we moved away from our intentionally secular foundations.

Christian Nation Versus the Kingdom of God

One of the first associations I made in my own thinking over this political and theological language was the biblical language of Kingdom of God. If we are going to talk about a Christian Nation, are we going to talk about a historical occurrence or a biblical application?

Kingdom of God is all things in heaven and the in-breaking of God’s work into this world ruled by sin. There is a lovely paradox in theological thinking about the “already-not yet”, the idea that the Kingdom is already here but it is not yet fulfilled. That lends itself to the New Testament descriptions of the imminent return of our Lord Jesus when the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled.

Of course, in an American political debate, we could not use the terminology of Scripture concerning a Kingdom. We are not a monarchy. In fact, we were established specifically not to be a monarchy. In addition, we owe a great debt of gratitude to George Washington, who set the traditions of the Presidency, that this nation did not become a monarchy in its first generations.

And we dare not use language directly ascribing authority to God. We are not a theocracy, we are a democracy. Being a Christian Nation lays off the direct reference to the divine. It also gets us out of the real mess of trying to figure out who would speak for God if were a Nation of God as opposed to a Christian nation. There are a lot of pastors and others out there who, I suspect, would be glad for the job.

No, Christian Nation and Kingdom of God must be separated from each other. The Kingdom of God went from being an Old Testament political experiment in Israel to becoming a trans-natural acknowledgement of the authority of our Lord.

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A Sermon on Abraham and being a "Christian Nation"

Genesis 17: 1-8 Sermon
Have you heard the debate about whether or not we are a “Christian Nation”? Senator Obama started the fight, citing the great diversity of religions in this country make us not exclusively a Christian Nation, but a Christian nation, a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and so on. Senator McCain shot back that we are specifically a Christian nation, citing the way our founding fathers set up this country. The political debate is trying to shape our very relationship with God. But to understand our relationship with God, we have to understand that we are in covenant with God.

Presidential elections are a lot like biblical covenant making. I was listening to election coverage this week and they were talking about each party building their party platforms, the positions and stands and goals that they will bring to the electorate at their conventions. Senators McCain and Obama build on this. Both want our votes.

They promise us things in exchange for our votes. And they spend a lot of time ridiculing the promises of their opponents and promoting their own promises. The model of the covenant, the contract we make at an election, is not just implicit in the form of an election; it is also explicit in the rhetoric.

But election campaigns aside, I think the church should be deciding whether we are a Christian nation or not, not the politicians. But to be a Christian, much less a Christian nation, demands that we are in covenant with Christ, in covenant with God, that we have a relationship with the Almighty. We have to understand that covenant. Presidential politics is a vague copy of this much more fundamental relationship we are called to.

That covenant we have with Jesus is bound up in the words God uses to review God’s covenant promise to Abram. He says, “I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless.” Abram needs a reminder. The first time God came to him was twenty four years earlier, when he was seventy five. Now he is ninety nine. Time catches up with all of us.

Our responsibility in the covenant, because Abram’s covenant still informs us, is to walk before God and be blameless. Jesus allows us to do that, but we will get to that point in a moment. God goes on to outline God’s side of the covenant. First, Abram’s descendants will not just be numerous, but exceedingly numerous. And it won’t just be one nation, but it will be a multitude of nations, and not just a multitude of nations, but a multitude of kings will come from his progeny as well.

This event was so monumental that Abram’s name was changed. He was Abram, which means exalted ancestor, and he becomes Abraham, which you can see in footnote ‘h’ means “ancestor of a multitude”. And the crowning glory is that God will be in covenant with each generation to eternity. All this will take place in the Land of Canaan, the land promised in the covenant.
We cannot fulfill either part of our side of the covenant. We have not walked before God since Adam and Eve committed Original Sin. And because of that sin, we cannot be blameless. By ourselves. But we can fulfill our side of the covenant in Jesus.

Jesus’ death and resurrection have made us blameless before God by the gift of God’s grace, if we call on him and surrender ourselves to Jesus as our Lord and Savior. In that surrender, we will be converted, we will be born again, we will become Children of God, heirs with Jesus, the oldest child of God, to God’s glory and eternal wonder.

And it is by grace that we can walk before our God, forgiven when we sin, taught by the words and deeds of Jesus recorded in the Bible as to how we should behave, and indwelt by the Spirit that will continually bring us closer to our God.

And when we do that, God will make us numerous as Abram’s descendants, we have become many nations, we have given rise to many kings and other leaders of great power. The Christian faith is the largest religion on the planet. But more important then any of that, God has been with us through each generation.

And just before ascending into heaven, in Acts 1 verse 6, 7, and 8, Jesus spread the Promised Land to encompass the whole world when he told his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Well brothers and sisters, we are at the ends of the earth and we share the covenant that God laid before Abraham. And we are living in a nation where the Presidential election is shaped with the language of a covenant between ‘we the people’ and the leaders we will elect. And they debate in front of us whether we are in fact a ‘Christian nation’.

So how do we answer that question as the church? Well, we who know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, who are members of the invisible church that stretches to the hearts of all who truly believe, we are children of the covenant, we are part of the multitude of nations promised to Abraham, we are part of the Christian nation.

But in that context, the Christian nation is a nation of all Christians everywhere. What about the question of America? Are we, as the nation of the United States of America, a Christian nation? How do we respond to the political rhetoric? How do we respond to the questions the media continues to ask?

I think the media idea of being a ‘Christian nation’ is a political one, edged to win votes. Our founding fathers were Christians, and Senator McCain is right, their faith informed the creation of the US, but they set up this nation as secular in outlook to end the religious wars that were still being fought in Europe 250 years after the Reformation. Our nation is majority Christian, but we are tolerant of, we welcome other faiths and we will imprison fellow Christians who would impede their ability to worship in their own way. Senator Obama is right recognizing that there is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, all intertwined in what this country is.
Let us recall that we are children of living God, living in covenant with God, walking blameless before God because of the grace given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, indwelt with the Holy Spirit to live as God wants us to, and called to carry that faith to the rest of the world.

Amen

How do we define being a "Christian Nation"?

Would it simply be a matter of population? Do we have the Census Bureau ask people to self-identify their religious commitment? Or would it be religious preference? Or does the question need to come from the realm of Christendom in America? In other words, would there need to be a census conducted of the denominations and churches in America to count the number of church members there are?

The difference is important. Someone self-identifying as Christian gives no criteria against which to measure the claim. Imagine the kind of questions:

1. If asked to claim a personal religious affiliation, which of the following religions would you select:

The answers would be a, b, c based on current religions found in the US. If they answered “Christian”, for the sake of clarity, we might ask their denominational affiliation or non-affiliation:

2. If you answered Christian in question 1, what would be the best description of the variety or denomination of Christianity that you belong to?

You could list the popular denominational categories, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, with an entry for ‘non-denominational’. Of course, there are at least six substantially sized distinct Presbyterian nation-wide churches in the United States with significant theological differences between them. I cannot even begin to count the others.

But how do you screen it? Are you a Christian because your parents were? Because you planned to be buried with a minister presiding? Because you tune in to Joel Osteen once every couple of months? There are certain screening questions.

Perhaps:
3. Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?

That is the question in my church.

Or:
3. Are you born again?

Or:
3. Are you saved?

Perhaps some space needs to be provided for a person’s testimony, if they are inclined to give it.

Commentary on being a Christian Nation

“We are no longer a Christian nation . . .” is a quote that has circulated the web in all its glory. Some quotes include Senator Obama’s slightly extended quote claiming America as a nation defined by many religions.

Why does a politician get to define what kind of nation we are? Why does a presidential candidate? Senator McCain has responded to Senator Obama by saying that we are a Christian nation. Who put them in charge of the nation’s pulpits?

It would be so much simpler if we could appeal to the grand patriarch of the Christian religion in this nation to get a clear ruling. Except that we don’t have one. Let us appeal to the association of the churches in our country and allow them to gather a General Assembly from which they could issue a proclamation on the religiosity of this country.

Except, we don’t have one of them either. Oh, there are Councils of Churches, but large segments of the Christian population are not represented and would never be represented by the voices they speak with.

As I was going through the emails and the google searches and some blog commentary about the question of the religious nature of our country, a book prodded my memory and I pulled “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” off my bookshelf (and I think that title is a misnomer). The first two chapters, about fifty pages, are early church, Christianity versus the pagan religions.

But the next 350 pages are all about Christians killing Christians-and that barely finishes the Reformation.

We don’t seem to learn the lessons of history. ‘Christian’ nations have a bloody history of wars and executions and killings. I don’t even want to call these killings martyrdoms. A Christian martyr is one killed for their Christian beliefs. When it is done by those outside of invisible church of Jesus Christ, that is martyrdom. When it is done by those inside the invisible church of Jesus Christ, that is fratricide, killing one’s brother or sister.

“The Family”-Some Scary Christians

It is not often that a book sends chills up and down my spine. I don’t feel that way when I am reading apocalyptic interpretations of modern history based on odd interpretations of Revelations, Daniel, and so on. I don’t feel that way when I am reading about the latest attempt of our denomination to shoot itself in the foot, or knee cap. But Jeff Sharlet gave me shivers.

To think that there is a Christian network woven into American imperial notions leaves me feeling dull inside. I can believe it. It is like a bad dream come true. All of a sudden, all those anti-Christian and anti-American diatribes that we hear on al-Jazeera have a toe hold in reality.

I would not consider myself a political junkie exactly. I think I am just experimenting at the moment, but this book may be the gateway.

So there was the Religious Right, there was the Moral Majority, there was the Christian Coalition, a whole set of expressions of fundamentalist and some evangelical leanings in the political spectrum. But they are public, seeking to ride the news cycle, engaged in the political games of the day. This ‘Fellowship’ or ‘Family’ under the leadership of Douglas Coe bypasses that. Their agenda seems to be within the halls of power, intermingling with the well-placed and whispering in their ears, not standing up and demonstrating in front of their faces.

I see some real theological confusion going on with the covenant God made with the people of Israel through Moses and the covenant these folks seem to see between God and America.

The covenant God made with Moses, reiterating the promises made to Abraham, promising security, prosperity, a land to live in, blessings to those who bless them, cursings to those who curse them, all that came by direct revelation. All that was verbally and completely dictated by God-millennia ago. I do not believe God is re-issuing a variation of the covenant theme with the USA.

The Christian faith now is dictated by the records of those earlier times, the canon of Scripture closed centuries ago. Some may think it weird that the largest faith on the planet takes it lead from a book closed 1600 years ago, a book compiled over several thousand years, but that is for a different blogsideration.

The Family seems to move under a principle of new revelation. Mr. Sharlet does not come out and explicitly use that kind of theological language, but he is a reporter, not a theologian. And as a rather thickly Bible-led Christian, I have trouble explaining what the Family is doing otherwise.

I think the best defense we have is the light of day. Mr. Sharlet’s book provides a whole lot of light and I thank him.

News from the Culture Wars . . .

We are still in the culture wars. At the last General Assembly meeting, we pulled back once again on defining homosexuality as an unordainable offence. G-6.0106b was taken out of the Constitution, pending the Presbytery fights. Every GA, this bit of our Constitution comes under fire once again. We don’t do gay and lesbian weddings, we don’t ordain ‘practicing’ (read: sexually active) homosexuals.

In the meantime, our conservative brothers and sisters in the evangelical churches and more conservative Reformed churches are boasting powerful growth while we bleed congregations.

Well, here’s the thing, are we cutting edge or are we cultural victims? As cutting edge, are we the churches fighting the battle that will eventually engulf the whole of Christendom? Are we fighting for Scriptural interpretation of homosexual behavior because we are the church that is called by God to lead that fight?

As cultural victims, are we so bogged down in the culture wars over the issue of how we deal with the current ‘them’? At the moment, people branded as ‘homosexual’ are ‘them’.

Here is what makes me angry, defining any group of people as ‘them’. I think it is a greater sin to do so then the sins that lead us to define ‘them’ in the first place.

Something both sides might agree on is the remnant motif happening in our church. This is a motif found in Scripture repeatedly. God’s people are punished for transgressing the covenant and a remnant of the faithful return to start fresh. As cultural victims, we might see the remnant of the faithful finally coming out as the ‘victors’ in keeping ‘them’ out.

As cutting edge, we might be the remnant that begins to build the church up once more to include sexual orientation as a blessing of God, not a curse.

A satirical final thought: Jane Spahr was acquitted of charges that she performed a homosexual marriage ritual because, according to the denomination, marriage is by definition heterosexual, so it cannot happen between people of the same gender. I see that application of Genesis where man and woman, God created us. The second part of that command is procreation as the reason for sexual activity. If we are going to be rigorous, if marriage cannot happen between two men or two women, can we really define sex as happening between two men or two women? It cannot lead to procreation.

There are Twelve Tribes, and there are Twelve Tribes

One of my favorite shows on television is “Battlestar Galactica”, dare I admit to both versions? The one currently in its last season on Sci-Fi is some of the best, admittedly depressing, science fiction ever put on the small screen.

The story has the remnants of twelve tribes seeking the ‘lost’ thirteenth tribe. There is a lot of other religion mixed into the show, but this particular bit caught my attention. The twelve tribes, each named for a sign of the Zodiac, allude fairly obviously to the twelve tribes of Israel. These are the tribal/political divisions of the nation of Israel as they complete the Exodus and conquer the Promised Land. These stories are chronicled in the books of Exodus through Joshua of the Old Testament.

The parallels diverge from each other concerning the thirteenth tribe. In Battlestar Galactica, the thirteenth tribe is ‘lost’, out there in the cosmos somewhere, in a place will provide salvation for the remnants of the other twelve tribes. I am told that this is in parallel with the origin story of the church of Latter Day Saints, but I do not profess to know enough about our Mormon brothers and sisters to speak to that.

I want to speak to what I know. In the Old Testament, there are also thirteen tribes, twelve of whom inherit land in the Promised Land. Those twelve originate with eleven of the sons of Jacob, renamed Israel by God, and two of the grandsons of Jacob. (Jacob is in turn the grandson of Abraham, with whom God made the original covenant).

In other words, one son of Jacob, Joseph, has two tribes ascribed to his family, one for each of his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh (Joshua 14:4). So twelve get land.

The thirteenth tribe is not lost, it is not eliminated, it is not gone. The thirteenth tribe, named for Jacob’s son Levi is given no inheritance among the territories of the Promised Land. Rather, according to Joshua 13:33 “But to the tribe of Levi Moses gave no inheritance; the Lord God of Israel is their inheritance, as he said to them.”

The tribe of Levi has cities and towns scattered among the other tribes. With God as their inheritance, they became the religious leaders, the priests and religious ‘staff’ of the nation. They represented the presence of God among the people, among the tribes, with them and blessing them if the rest of the nation kept God’s covenant.

Having God was not something the people of the Bible needed to go searching for in a far off land. There was no lost tribe that could save them. That thirteenth tribe was always in their midst, God was always in their midst.

But that does not appear to make as good a science-fiction show.

What does the Bible Have to Say About Intelligent Design?

I am not talking about the Creation Story in Genesis. That is NOT Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design, as I understand it's popular meaning, is looking at creation and seeing the hand of a creator in it. Genesis 1 is explicit that our God is the Creator. Intelligent Design cannot make that assumption without a leap of faith. I have leapt, I believe our God is the intelligent designer, as does Genesis 1, but I am asking a different question.

Does the bible give its permission for Intelligent Design to be used? Are we permitted to look at nature in order to see God? Or is God only revealed to us in the bible? Is creation at best the artful project of a God we can then pursue in the Scriptures?

I think we have permission. Job 12: 7-10:

"But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach yo; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.

Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?

In his hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of every human being."

In Genesis 1, we have the story of creation. In Job 12, we have the creation telling the story. Yes, it makes the leap of faith that our Lord is the Creator Lord. It is the bible, after all.

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the RRSV Bible, Copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Educatin of the Nation al Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used b permission, all rights reserved."

We Made the News!

I watched the news this morning with a mix of emotions. The Democrats and the Republicans are angling for the Christian vote. Senator Obama is going to be wooing evangelicals and Senator McCain was portrayed as the candidate without the religious ‘credentials’ in this campaign. This is one reason the theoretical pursuit of a ‘public theology’ has not progressed very far in the last month. The public debate is being run from the political leadership of the nation, not from the church leadership of the nation. And that is how it should be. If a pastor or the leader of a church wants to get into the political arena, more power to them. But I have found myself rethinking the ‘rank and file’ Christian response to public leadership.

There needs to a ‘public theology’ for certain. But that theology should be the church working out its salvation message in fear and trembling against the backdrop of the public arena.

I found it fascinating because this was the lead story on “Good Morning America” today. We are framed in the news reporting as a constituency. I suppose we are, but a constituency full of dynamic Spirit, and a constituency as divided as the number of churches you will find in any neighborhood.

I come out of the mainline, the evangelical wing to be sure, but the mainline. This news reporting was about the evangelical community, not us. They have voices raised in the public debate. I know, “us and them”, a polarizing definition, but it carries perceptive weight in our country.

My ‘public theology’ brings Biblical truth, brings Spirit-filled interpretation, brings the salvific work of Jesus Christ to the public sphere. It cautions against the excesses of power, it stands as a voice to speak grace in a sin filled world where men and women of good character make the best sin-filled choice to tackle a more sin-filled world. The idea of the chaplain, the bringer of religious truth and comfort to a difficult world, speaks strongly to me.

Passing of a Humanist Prophet

George Carlin was just called home to wherever comics who profess no religious affiliation and have their work kicked to the Supreme Court on an obscenities charge go. For him, at best it seemed that God didn't care.

It was especially powerful when, in his standup, he questioned why politicians are forever ending their speeches with "God bless America" or "God bless the USA". He concludes that God doesn't care about America or any of the other two hundred or so countries around the world that blessing us would apparently preclude from divine intervention.

He also said something very interesting in an interview they replayed with him on NPR. I don't have the quote exactly right and I have not gone back to the podcast, but it goes along the lines of God has created an order here on the earth and religions stomp all over that order with their rules for living and threats of damnation for not living it right.

This from the man who gave us seven words you can't say on TV.

I think the man has a prophetic voice. We live in a nation where there are Christians-some of whom prefer to call themselves 'followers of Jesus' rather than Christians-are trying to steer government to a 'Christian' agenda. That runs the gambit from promoting Israel to bring Armageddon through a thick set of 'prayer cells' across Washington DC's power elite that have confused American expansionist ambition with the order of Jesus to a conservative wing of the church as a whole that would legislate their own social agenda, barring abortion, barring homosexual marriage, barring frank discussion of sexual practice among our young people-and weaving such language into our foreign policy.

George Carlin saw the absurdity of it all and that became the basis for his social commentary-that also made us laugh. He also had a potty mouth which I am ashamed to admit made me laugh all the more.

And he played a Cardinal in the movie "Dogma", which is a review for another day.

Where Scripture and Confession Define Our Work

In ten years as a member of this Presbytery, I have had come into my possession a document as part of our Presbytery meeting packets a piece that has the single greatest concentration of Biblical and Confessional sourcing of anything in my experience.

I am thrilled to have it, but the circumstances are a little depressing.

The references come out of a lengthy transcript of work done by the Permanent Judicial Commission of our Presbytery. In other words, it comes out of the courts of the church. The details of the case are not important. It struck me that the most rigorously biblical and confessional examination of our work as a church comes from its legal branch.

Judicial process is very highly developed in the PCUSA. I would direct you to Appendix A of the 2007-2009 Book of Order where there are more than 50 forms on more than 33 pages to make sure due process is carried forward.

I can't help but wonder if we carried on with that same rigor in all our activities, if life might not be very different in our church. There was a news item from the PCUSA newswire about a consideration before our GA to get a better translation of the Heidelberg Catechism. Amen! Amen! Amen! I grew up on that one in my Reformed heritage.

One commentary I have seen from the Reformed Right is that modern biblical criticism, by its very nature of applying general literary standards to the bible, have de-emphasized its unique and divine placement in our churches. That de-emphasis has lent itself to a decline in knowledge of the bible, much less the Confessions that we draw our primary biblical interpretation from.

What really frustrates me is a nagging thought, in my more ironic moments, that our judicial process has to be so rigorous because if it is not, it opens itself up to countersuit, perhaps even lawsuit in the secular courts. So we are thorough to cover our behinds, what does that say about our priorities?

Chaplaining in Public Debate

A chaplain can be from a Christian faith but has adopted the role of 'internationalist' in terms of religion. We accept personally the truth of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and in that vein we act when with fellow Christians. But we also have to operate within the diverse experience of Christianity, from High Mass Catholic, to simple fellowship with non-clerical Quakers. And we also have to be respectful of other religions, not practicing them as 'clergy' for their practitioners, but providing access to local clergy of that religion, and, in their absence, providing some basic level of resource.

In other words, I may not agree with the teachings of the Buddha or Mohammed, though I personally respect them. In the role of Chaplain, I may have to know more to serve as a resource to those who do believe those teachings.

I think that gives us a window into the Christian faith and the public arena. We will come in to a realm with many people of many different beliefs, perhaps not other formal religions, but various shades of atheism or agnosticism or just general ignorance of faith. As a public leader, I think our public theology should be shaped like the chaplain. We don't subscribe to other belief systems, but we have made a choice to respect those belief systems, to understand them to some degree, and perhaps even to allow ourselves to be in the other person's shoes not just to understand them, but to support them.

What?

Pick your political battle. There was an era of one-issue voting, say, pro or anti abortion. That still informs the political choices of many Christians. It is a line in the sand that public officials are challenged not to cross if they want the votes. A Christian of good conscience in the public arena, demonstrating a public theology, can still love the person, and talk to the person, and agree with the person, maybe even select that person to be their government representative on more than just their position on abortion.

Maybe we dare to go so far as to articulate with due love and truth (though not defend) the position we disagree with when it comes under insulting and divisive attack.

Know what they believe, allow them the respect to believe it, and try by prayer and private conversation to shift them if they believe too far from your own Christian morals. Don't let the public forum be a place where you seek to wield the power of politics like a cudgel to knock down a fellow human being. No matter how tempting.

Quotable Quote

All fundamentalists are evangelicals, but not all evangelicals are fundamentalists. I can cite it when I bring the book to the computer.

The Impertinance of Scripture

Any public theology that includes Kingdom work must include the blueprint for that work, the Bible. Whether Authoritative, Inspired, Inerrent, or somewhere in between, the Bible is the basic set of documents of the faith.

For the sake of argument, I am going to pronounce that the Christian Canon turned 1641 this Easter. I base that entirely arbitrary date on the notation in Wikipedia that St. Athanasius included the books of our New Testament canon exclusively in his Easter address in 367 A.D., C.E., as you wish. The Old Testament was still out there, mostly nailed down, but with a couple more debates to be settled.

A Public Theology must be informed (defined) by the Bible. The amazing thing about Jesus is that he was exclusionary "I am the way and the truth and the life" and accomodating, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". It is a real pain in the pocket because it almost feeds the idea of the public and private spheres. Part two of the rendering statement is to render unto God what is God's.

Don't you wish for clarity? And don't even start on the complimentary and confusing movement of revelation from the Old Testament to the New Testament. (As a public figure, I tend to use the term "Hebrew Bible" to define the O.T., but as a pastor, I tell you it is every bit a part of my bible as the N.T.

So move over Constitution, move over Bill of Rights, let me, the Christian, place my holy book on the shelf with you. That is how I do things.

And in the quiet of my own faith, I will try to convince you this is the way to do things. But in the public sphere, how do I evangelize?

And how do I evangelize without using the means and powers inherent in the political system? Because my first point of departure with my Christian Right brothers and sisters is that we cannot use those powers to evangelize.

A "Public" Theology

As a church, I believe we need to think about appropriate involvement for the church and its members in the "public" sphere. For example, take Jesus' words on tax policy, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's."

I use the term "public" sphere as I learned about it in Political Science, that there is a distinction in American politics of the public and the private spheres. I do not wish to debate the merits of this dichotomy, but simply to use it as a starting point for a theological consideration of church involvement in public matters.

I think this theology must contain very strong language that the church is not to be involved in fomenting war in the name of Jesus. This kind of war theology existed during the times of the Crusades. Our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters continue to have a long historical memory of the West and religious involvement in politics. Even when Jesus said, "I come with a sword", it was not a warrior call. It was a recognition that the faith he preached was going to cause division in the world around him. Sin was going to react with violence.

On Sunday, I can preach against the evils of war. On Monday, I can support our government's decision to commit American troops to a battle somewhere in the world. That can be confusing to consider.

I think the first step in our "public" theology is to define "Kingdom of God" work, work designed to reproduce the Kingdom of God here on earth over and against "World" work, a world where we recognize that we are in it with people of many different religions and ethnicities and that we must go with some level of respect for them, even as we consider in our Kingdom work that the Spirit may bring their hearts to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Can We Separate Our Faith and Practice?

We are Christians. Can we in biblical obedience and good conscience decide that we are going to engage in behavior that is not distinctly pursuing the Great Commission? Setting up this division sounded all wonderful and good on the first go around. But can it truly be sustained by people of faith? Or is it our mandate to do as our fundamentalist brothers and sisters do? Should we be using every tool in our arsenal, including the freedom of religion in this nation, to be pressing the Case for Christianity? Should we be seeking to manipulate princes and principalities for the advancement of our faith? Even at the risk of war?

Pursue the question and the answer can become obvious. Of course we can be Christians without manipulating the power structures to pursue our evangelical goals. Until Constantine, there was no power structure behind the Christian faith. And around the world, most nations have Christianity in the minority, without political strength. It must be sustained by other power, the sovereign power of God.

I think the case can be made that Christianity is biblically required to remain OUT of politics. I know, that flies in the face of almost the entire bible. The people of Israel were chosen to be a sovereign nation under the leadership of God. But the faith moved into political structures not set into law by God. The fundamental relationship of faith and politics changed. It has remained changed to this day.

There was biblically created an Israelite nation. God ordained it on Mt. Sinai. No Christian alternative was set in place by Jesus or Paul or anywhere across the New Testament. So we are left with less explicit instructions on uniting our faith and our politics.

So begins a time of Spiritual discernment to find the middle way.

What does a 'secular' government really do to the faith?

The United States is constructed on principles drawn deeply from our Christian heritage. We can argue about which founding fathers (and mothers) were Dieists, Jefferson's desire to strip the bible of all miraculous pieces, who really belonged to their church and who just showed up because that was state law (as in Virginia). But I am a minister in the Presbyterian tradition and I can see the ecclesiological structure of my denomination at the base of the representative government of this republic, to name but a single example of our Constitution's Christian roots.

I think they made the government secular because of the European experience. The USA is two hundred years after the Reformation, at the conclusion of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants that tore the continent apart. William Penn, the Pilgrims, the Hugonots, and so many others came over here originally because this 'new' land (new to the whites) offered a place to get out of the religious turmoil of Europe.

What a lesson for democracy building in the Middle East! We of the West are accused of either being Christianizing or Secularizing, whichever is most convenient to accuse of undermining Islam. Secular state-building, as in Turkey, when it follows 'the Western model', is not about accepting Western values.

Secular state-building is more about preserving the religions from which they emerge. Two hundred and thirty years of secular government in this nation has allowed the various churches of the Christian faith to live in peace and pursue the Great Commission to great effect all around the world.

I think where we have begun to fall down, where there is truth in the Muslim world in their accusations of us being a money-loving, promiscuous society seeking to conquer the world, is that we once had a relatively clear idea of the separation of the salvific portion of our faith from the ethical portion of our faith. Jesus taught us how to treat one another as part of the inbreaking Kingdom of God to a sinful world. Those lessons are the foundation of our society. that is the ethical portion of our faith. The salvific portion, preaching and spreading the faith, that was set aside in the secularization of the governmental system. That was done because the other model, the church and state combined in power and purpose, was a deadly system that weakened the state and left the church a sinful shell of what Jesus calls it to be.

We are secular in government so we will not be warlike in religion. It is a tradeoff that has worked so far. Iraq may be the Islamic answer to bringing such an ideal into the Muslim world. Iraq has been called Civil War, Muslim killing Muslim, Sunni killing Shi'ite, Shi'ite killing Sunni. This land is the buffer between Shi'ite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. Can we present the ideal of a secular government over and against a Sharia-defined government in a way that is convincing to our brothers and sisters in the Middle East?

Can we convince the fundamentalists in both religions, Christianity and Islam, that secularism is not the death of our religions, rather it is a compromise with sin itself that takes the most inclusive aspects of our religious systems and places them on a level beyond the exclusive aspects of our religious systems? With political power, our faith operates violently. Separated from political power, it has to depend on the power of God, not the power of guns, to get its message across.

Media Observation: Classic Western, "Hang 'Em High"

I saw a western with some theology in the mix. One scene grabbed me in particular and got me listening more closely.

“In God’s name Cooper!!”
“God’s got nothing to do with it judge”, says Cooper, played by Clint Eastwood.
So is our lesson of Christianity in “Hang ‘Em High”, the 1968 Western with Clint Eastwood. God demands justice, Clint Eastwood seeks revenge for the men who mistakenly tried to lynch him.
Then there is the hanging scene. Dano, from Hawaii 5-0, plays the minister is leading the people in “Shall We Gather By the River”, then “Rock of Ages” in front of the scaffolding where six men are going to be hung that morning. And juxtaposed with that is a large crowd of sightseers dressed in their “Sunday” best, with the cold beer being sold prominently mid-screen, and the ladies fro the brothel coming out from the Keno Club to witness the day’s festivities.
The judge has the final theological word. Toward the end, he wishes powerfully that there was someone else standing between him and God, between him and the power to bring justice, life and death, to ‘hang ‘em high’. And Clint Eastwood, who by this moment in the movie has captured or killed most of the men who tried to hang him, has pushed beyond his vengeance.
Two of his attackers are still out there and he wants to turn in his badge. One turned himself in, an old man, who gave up the rest of the lynch mob. He is sick, dying in the prison. Clint forgives the old man and gets the judge to release him.
And Clint gets the man released, but in exchange for taking back the badge.

This isn’t the only time Christian themes show up in Clint Eastwood westerns. He plays a preacher in ‘Pale Rider’, but he doesn’t say much-and really doesn’t preach. And aside from making him take longer to get his guns before he shoots all the bad guys, there isn’t much theological content.

‘Unforgiven’ is the other western that comes to my mind with theological content. The title speaks volumes to the content of the movie. Most revenge motif films have the revenger (I refuse to say ‘good guy’ or ‘hero’) walk away triumphantly or die in operatic tragedy. This one doesn’t. Violence is not glorified. The consequences are not held back. It tells the story of what life is without our Lord.

When I see them again, I can speak with more authority.

The Devil is Sterile in His Own Designs

That is something to think about. I don’t even remember where I heard that line expressed quite that way. The devil has no original control in this world. The devil has no independent agenda. What the devil does is to play off what humans do. Granted, that provides enough ammunition for total self-destruction as a species, but it closes an important door.

It closes the door of the cosmic war between heaven and hell spilling over our heads and hearts. Rather, that battle is fought in and for our heads and hearts.

This accounts for a couple of things. First, why there is very little ‘back story’ in the bible concerning the cosmic battle raging beyond our reality. What we do have then becomes very, very tantalizing. Second, that the devil has manipulated the popular media to pull our attention away from the real battle of good and evil.

For example, take Roman Polanski’s movie “The Ninth Gate” with Johnny Depp. It contains elements of the plots of so many of the apocalyptic supernatural thrillers. It assumes there is a supernatural conspiracy beyond the natural conspiracy toward sin and evil in the souls of humanity.

Footnote: Media Observation-The movie captured me in its pacing, I was disappointed by the ending.

All these supernatural movies and television shows and books and websites, they all draw on a fascination within us that there is something bigger and more conspiratorial going on ‘out there’. And when these stories remain in the real of escapist fiction that we can view with a healthy desire to be entertained, they can be kept in proper context.

But I think our very fascination with the supernatural and the occult is a play on our being in the image of God, an image now corrupted. We have hearts for ‘greater things’. We have echoes of the divine in our very makeup. So says Genesis.

In the New Testament, demons were exorcized in two ways, they were cast out in the name of God and, when that was not enough, through the use of prayer, a more prolonged exposure to the power of the Living God. We don’t armor up with cosmic talismans or ally ourselves with beings of higher (or lower) orders to get the job done.

I think the devil just uses the contents of our imaginations to throw us off the true path to bring in the Kingdom of God.

“Thy Kingdom Come”

This may be the most underrated line of the Lord’s Prayer. Three words usually shoved off into the distant future of the Second Coming. And while we, as Christians, will never openly say it, after two thousand years, the prospect of an imminent return has lost some of its luster, may God prove me wrong!!!

What is the Kingdom but all that is good and wonderful and loving and expected from our God for God’s creation? It is not yet complete, but it is already here.

A recent theological exposition got me thinking about this. The book of Revelation talks about a New Heaven and a New Earth, for the old will pass away. The Greek translates better “Renewed” Heaven and “Renewed” Earth. Thus the old passing away is NOT the complete destruction of what we have for something new.

Thy kingdom come is a call for the renewal of our world. Thy kingdom come is a prayer from our lips to God’s ears that the beauty and sanctity of God’s kingdom may be realized here and now. We are calling for the old to pass away in order to be renewed in God’s all encompassing grace.

That’s assuming we really want it. My fear is that we are so used to our own ways that we don’t want to give them up. We live in the richest country in the world. We can get more than anybody else in the whole world. Best of all, we have so many things to distract us, for example, the internet, television, video games, that we can ignore and tune out all the yucky stuff that might bother us.

Thy kingdom come will challenge our current standing. The kingdom is not here. We are supposed to want it to come, that is what Jesus taught us. But do we really?

Remember how we talked about Spiritual Warfare? How is this for the devil winning without firing a shot?

Spiritual Warfare

A line in “Urban Ministry” by Harvie Conn and Mannie Ortiz caught my attention. It says we are not prepared to deal with spiritual warfare in the West because of our “present worldview and dysfunctional theology”. That is a challenging statement if I have ever heard one.

What is spiritual warfare? As I understand it, it is the devil fighting for the hearts and souls of people by any means at his disposal, temptation, deception, apathy. It has to do with the sin in us, our fallen condition, the sin outside us, a world governed by sin, and in the cosmic battle of Good and Evil, Angels and Demons, Satan and Michael. It assumes a layer of reality to the book of Revelations that makes some people very uncomfortable.

I do not want to argue with our lack of preparation, because I believe it. Spiritual warfare is the stuff of a Frank Peretti novel, not ‘reality’.

I think we reject it because of its militaristic language. The church has sought to become truly transformed by the power and imagery of the eternal Peace of heaven. I think that has been exploited by the devil to turn us away from believing in the possibility of a real, horrid, demonic entity that seeks our destruction.

So don’t think about ‘waging war’, think about ‘waging peace’. Think about all the things that we need to do as Christians to place a reasonable, dignified, just, loving, godly existence in this world. Every tool and strategy of Satan needs to be met with a counter tool and strategy from Jesus, carried out by Jesus through his followers-us.

Now comes the ‘means’ debate. To wage war is to engage in sinful activity. In the world of politics and world order, we use sinful means to overcome more sinful means. Is that acceptable in the realm of the cosmic? The bible uses war language, but is that allegorical to what the real ‘means’ should be? When Paul outlines the whole armor of God in Ephesians 6, is the implication that we should clink when we walk?

But we are not ready for that debate. The very question of whether or not we are at war is up for grabs. Many good and faithful Christians do not embrace this language or this idea. I do not know how we can look at the world around us with all its destructive tendencies and not see this cosmic battle for the hearts and souls of the people.

This does not mean a victory for the devil, although sowing discord is so damaging. The war goes on no matter what you call it. And God is on our side.

Prayer-It Does A Body Good

Since Easter, my sermons have been focused on prayer. I am not posting the sermons themselves, because I am finding that the preached word is far different (and hopefully more Spirit-filled) than the written manuscript. Besides, sermons are a different genre from blog entries. Of course, I have yet to define the genre of ‘blog entry’.

The fact is prayer shows up in many different genres of Scripture, in different contexts, for different purposes to the reader (although always communication with God in the biblical narrative) and its fundamental place in the Christian ADL’s (activities of daily living) cannot be overrated.

This is a three week series two thirds complete. It began in 1 Timothy 2, where Paul lists the stuff Timothy should be doing in his life of communication with God, supplications, intercessions, thanksgivings, and prayers. I always thought the first three were types of the fourth. Maybe they are, but not to Paul, not in this passage.

Paul builds a conflict into this passage. Against the backdrop of the church getting thrown out of the synagogue, against the backdrop of persecution, Paul is not making life easy for Timothy. First, he tells him to do these four things on our list, especially for the king or whoever is in charge, for the purpose of allowing Christians to live lives of peaceful dignity and godliness.

Except, of course except, that God wants the world to know the truth and to be saved. That is a problem because the message of salvation that Paul is preaching, the truth that he is proclaiming is an exclusive truth. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. No one gets to God but through Jesus. And he is preaching this in an empire that was probably more superstitious than religious, more syncretistic than diverse. Pretty much every god and religion was tolerated as long as they were tolerable in turn to the Pax Romana and the desire of Rome that everyone obey the Emperor.

This is not to say Christianity was not tolerable to the Pax Romana. And Jesus himself said to give to the emperor his due and to God, God’s due.

But back to Paul. He recognized the inherent disconnection between the kind of life God desires for God’s people and the reaction of the world to God’s truth. According to legend, he will be martyred because of that disconnection. And he begins Timothy’s instruction by telling him to engage in dialogue with the Divine, in supplication, intercession, thanksgiving, and prayer (the order is changed for effect).

Supplication is asking for things. Bring peace to Iraq. Bring new members to our church. Those are supplications. Intercessions are made on behalf of other people. Heal my loved one. Help my friend find a new job. These are intercessions. Thanksgivings are the most obvious, thanking God for what we have. If we don’t like our kings and those in authority over us, this might be the hardest thing to do before God.

But what are the prayers? How are they different from the rest? Are they? Could Paul simply be repeating language for effect?

I came to the conclusion that the prayer in that list was another category in how to communicate with God. I think at its most basic, it is just that, communicating with God, not asking for things, not offering up other people, not thanking God for something around us, but simple communication. Here I am, there is my God, we’re talking. I praise God’s name. I find strength in God’s power. I am just filling the well after spilling the living water all day.

But whatever it is, Paul tells Timothy to get in touch with God before taking on the world. We should take that advice.

"Reconciliation", by Benazir Bhutto-a Reaction

The former Prime Minister of Pakistan and recent martyr to the cause of democracy in Pakistan and around the world, Benazir Bhutto, left behind a powerful book, finished as her life came to a tragic end.

"Reconciliation" covers a lot of territory in its three hundred pages.

She lays charges at the feet of the West for what we have done as a ‘civilization’ to exacerbate conditions that have led to our global war on terror. She lays out the tragic but still-hopeful history of her beloved nation and her family’s sacrifices to build a sustainable democracy. She speaks of her beloved Islam and indicts the extremists who have sought to turn her religion into a sponsor of terror instead of a sponsor of peace. She takes to task and then takes apart the governing paradigmatic foreign policy essay “The Clash of Civilizations” by Samuel Huntingdon.

She leaves us with several conclusions. First, democratic ideals are NOT antithetical to Islam. Second, the “global war on terror”, in large measure, is a battle within Islam between moderates and extremists. Third, much foreign policy by the democratic powers of the West, especially the United States, has fed into the battle within Islam. Fourth, if the West would feed the democratic processes at work in Islamic nations, the ideals could emerge and as they did, as the economic benefits were advanced to the people of these nations, extremism would be starved on the vine.

What job does that leave for Christianity? How does the Church, seeking to fulfill the Great Commission, consider its role in the workings of Pakistan and other Muslim nations? Extremist Islamic rhetoric equates any mission work we do as continuing the Crusades of eight centuries ago. Even moderate Islamic reaction to the presence of missionaries has been to outlaw such behavior. There is also an identification of Western missionary activity with perceived Western ‘imperialist’ activity.

I believe peacemaking is part of the Great Commission. According to 1Timothy 2, God desires everyone to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. The purpose for that is mentioned one verse earlier, so that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and dignity. Maybe our place in the mission field of the Islamic nations is to take the lead in bringing real peace, in bringing real, sustainable economic growth, in bringing real freedom. Maybe the place we must start is in the deeds that mark us as believers in Jesus Christ. The words will follow.

Remember the hymn, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

Media Observation: The movie "Doom", 2005

I wasn’t expecting to find a distinctly Christian character in “Doom”. I was indulging my genetic masculine predisposition to violent sci-fi shoot ‘em up bug-hunt type movies. I played the video game with a certain amount of blood thirsty glee. Besides, the Rock does pretty good violence.

Basic movie premise, an elite team of Marines goes to Mars via some cool wormhole bridge to kill things threatening humans up there. One of the Marines was a Christian, a counterpoint to a particularly disgusting character with amoral tendencies toward women, drugs, and so on. The Christian is nicknamed “Goat” (a play on the Lamb of God? A reference to the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew? Or was Lambchops just too uncool for a Marine nickname?).

“Goat” sticks in my head for two scenes, one negative and one positive, both in sick, violent, sci-fi, shoot-em-up bug-hunt ways.

On the negative, Goat takes the Lord’s name in vain. Punishment for breaking the Fourth Commandment? Self-mutilation. He carves a cross into his forearm with his combat knife. I think we were supposed to take note of the extensive scar-tissue.

On the positive, okay, not positive, but rather interesting, Goat, like most of the humans in the movie, gets turned into a flesh-eating demonic creature by other flesh-eating demonic creatures. To stop them, they must be shot with extreme prejudice.

They play a minimal subtext where Goat calls these creatures demons. Then, while his redeemed nature is still in some kind of control of his free will after he is bitten/infected, he chooses to kill himself rather than lost his free will and his soul to this evil. It is grotesquely comical to watch him bang his skull on bulletproof glass to kill himself.

That was a lot more introspective then carving a cross in his arm. I still haven’t decided whether I like it or not, but it made me think.

Easter Sermon 2008

Sermon Mar. 23, 2008 Luke 24:1-35 Easter Sunday
“This Is That Of Which I Speak”
It hasn’t really felt like Easter this year. I don’t know if it because Easter is so early, but the awe and wonder isn’t what it usually is. It may just be the news of the day. I don’t know if it is the bipolar reaction to the economy in the media. One day, doom, despair and recession, the next, oh no, an indicator is good, we are coming out of it. I don’t know if it is because we have been at war for five years, we are at four thousand dead. I don’t know if it is because this is the most convenient war we have ever fought. There is no draft, there is no rationing, there are no shortages. If you don’t look for it, you won’t see it at all.
The way the world is at the moment, it feels more like Good Friday, the death of Jesus, rather than Easter morning, Jesus come back to us.
It was that way for the apostles. They did not believe the news of the women. Mary Magdalene, Joanne, Mary the mother of James (apparently not to be confused with Mary the mother of Jesus) and the rest went to the tomb with ointment and spices to embalm the body of Jesus. They did not find Jesus in the tomb, but they did meet two men in dazzling clothes-angels. They reminded the women of Jesus’ own words, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. Then, verse eight, “they remembered his words”. And they believed that Jesus was risen from the dead.
When they returned to the apostles to tell them this, those condescending QUOTE leaders of the church UNQUOTE decided their story was an idle tale and they did not believe them. At least Peter was curious enough to go check it out. He went, saw the empty tomb and the linen clothes inside, but, instead of coming back to speak of what he saw, just went home amazed.
Then Luke follows two of them were headed for Emmaus. They were having an animated discussion about everything that had happened. Jesus was dead, but the women were saying he was alive. How do you get your mind around that? When Jesus joins them and pretends ignorance, they give him a recap of the events of the last few days. And at the very least they confirm the “idle tale” of the women. They saw the empty tomb, not the angels, but the empty tomb. Something was happening, but they had no idea what. And unlike the women, they could not believe it was Jesus resurrected.
And Jesus clobbers them with it. The sanitized version appears in Luke, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” A more contemporary rendering might be “Hey, stupid! You’re thicker than a brick! Remember what the prophets said?”
Now the angels at the tomb only had to remind the women of what Jesus had said. They thought back to Jesus’ words in Galilee and bingo, the light went on. Jesus was alive! Jesus was resurrected from the dead! That was God’s promise fulfilled! They remembered and believed. That was why the tomb was empty.
But now we have these two jug heads. Jesus starts with the same reminder. Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and then enter into his glory? For the women, that was the trigger point. In that instant, they got it. But not these gentlemen. Jesus has to go back to Moses, he has to go back to the book of Genesis, and then through all the prophets, all the way through the Old Testament, interpreting to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures.
What a glorious time that was for them. Their hearts burned within themselves while Jesus spoke.
The only problem is they still weren’t getting it. They are hearing all this incredible stuff and they are deeply moved, but Jesus is standing right next to them and they don’t see him. They are hearing all the promises of the bible but without believing Jesus was alive. This was seven miles of walking stupid.
So they get to the village. Jesus was going on, but they urged him to stay. It was almost evening, the day was nearly over, the evening rush hour was beginning, they wanted him to stay, and he agreed.
These two disciples were obviously not auditory learners. Telling them stuff was all well and good, but they did not break out to reach the conclusion that Jesus was aiming for. They did not get it that Jesus was alive and standing right there with them. Rather, these two guys were obviously visual. Jesus repeated the Last Supper. He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.
Baddabing! Their eyes were opened and they recognized him! And he vanished from their sight. So back they go to Jerusalem, tell the apostles, and they all finally believe it after corroborating evidence that Jesus appeared to Simon as well. Our final verse says, “Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he, Jesus, had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
Now imagine the women listening to this. Early dawn, they’d gotten the good news and believed it. But the men didn’t believe, they dismissed their testimony as an “idle tale”. But now, these two spend hours with Jesus teaching them, hours having their hearts and minds all fired up, hours having the bible explained to them in detail, they still didn’t figure it out until Jesus broke some bread for them. Then, they walk seven miles back to Jerusalem to tell the apostles. It took a round trip from here to Menlo Park Mall and a visitation of Jesus to Simon and an entire day for the men to believe what the women knew first thing that morning.
This sounds like a marriage. The wife knows the truth, but the husband doesn’t believe her, not until he figures it out for himself, and not until he figures it out the hard way.
No matter how long it took them to believe it, the Good News is that Jesus rose from the dead.
When we walk out of here this morning, we will still be at war. Our economy will still be wildly unstable. Poverty, climate change, all those things will still be there. What will be different is us. The Promise of Easter will suffuse us to our very souls. Jesus conquered death. People will still die, in Iraq, elsewhere, but in Jesus is the hope of heaven. Jesus conquered sin. Our economy is sliding, a lot due to greed and sinful business practice. In Jesus, we know there are things bigger and more eternal then any market fluctuation.
When we walk out of there, may the joy of Christ Jesus, risen from the dead, savior of us all, surround you and kindle in you a love for God and neighbor that will sweep us into Christ’s vision for us this year and for all time to come. May the bad things melt in the light of our Lord Jesus. May his grace be sufficient and his love all encompassing for us.
Amen.