St. Mark’s Lutheran

This article by Mr. Charles Blow in the New York Times is an interesting article that confirms a longer running idea in kids or young adult ministry. I can remember 12 years ago when the catch phrase was mystery. Youth didn’t like “religion”, but they dug that mystery.

The opening story of the young woman going to Costa Rica for a month to lose her religion, get over hang-ups from it and reconnect as a spiritual person just screams lost. God works in a bunch of ways which we can’t limit Him, and he could meet this young woman in Costa Rica between fifth of rum, but that would seem slight. The Christian witness is that God has told us he will be in very specific places. God has promised to be present where two or three are gathered – i.e. God is present in the church. God has promised to be present in the sacraments, in baptism and the Lord’s supper. God meets us from the outside. In the proclaimed Word and in the Sacraments. God can meet us in what gets labled as spiritual today, but that is not guaranteed. There is no promise of God associated with trips to Costa Rica or in individual seeking.

Unfortunately that is way uncool – emphasizing religion (the communal gathering around a shared belief) at the expense of personal spirituality. Especially when you add the statement that the important religious institution is the congregation – the local place where the word is taught and virtue encouraged and built up. Christ is present in the gathering and the life of that community. That is where grace happens. Larger groups may be necessary as practical matters, but they are not the church. Saying to sacrifice some of you personal spiritual freedom for the good of a local community is way uncool. St. Paul would see this in speaking in tongues and say if you don’t have an interpreter – shut up. Being spiritual and on your own quest is just so much more romantic, but less likely to actually find grace.

Tags: Culture, Word, cross, grace by Parson Brown
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This article from the WSJ is not surprising but eye opening. The jumping off point is President Obama meeting with the Dalai Lama and the Chinese response.

But China’s angry response to the news that Mr. Obama will meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader tomorrow in Washington goes straight to the point. “If the U.S. leader chooses this period to meet the Dalai Lama, that would damage trust and cooperation between our two countries,” said Zhu Weiqun, a Chinese Communist Party official at a Feb. 2 press conference. “And how would that help the United States surmount the current economic crisis?”

The background is that the US owes China a bucket-truck full of money, and China is one of the few places that has the ability to buy more of our nation’s debt. As a nation we like to support things such as religious freedom and self determination, we also like to spend more than we make. When confronted with the choice of reduced spending, or quietude on freedoms, which path does the nation choose?

The Bible and specifically the Gospel of Luke is pretty clear both what it would expect Caesar to do, and what Jesus asks us to do. Luke 16:10-13 – you can’t serve two masters. Luke 22:24-27 – gentiles and great men lord it over their people.

The lord was a patron – “the friend of the people” – and his clients were obliged to him. In the west, under the teachings of the church, that kind of vassalage, while not going away, had to be hidden. Read the quote from the Chinese official again. That kind of vassalage is coming back. He is shockingly blunt – a patron state telling a client state to look where its bread is buttered.

The message of freedom in Jesus is that we have no real Patron but the Father in heaven. Instead of serving the things of this world – serve God first. Serve the God who came to serve us. Serve the God who adopted us into his family. In the church we are all heirs and children of God. That is a much different status than a client. It recognizes the true differences between creator and creature.

You can’t serve two masters. Either it’s the hierarchy of Caesar and money or it’s the household of God. We owe Caesar and money respect, but they should not be our master. We should also not be surprised when the American Ceasar chooses to protect client relationships. If I were the Dalai Lama, I would not expect more White House visits.

Tags: Culture, Luke, economics by Parson Brown
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Here is an article reviewing a split perception of what “Catholic” Universities do to the faith of their Catholic charges.

The money quote…

The CARA report now suggests that Catholics at non-Catholic schools tend to fare worse as far as fidelity and practice goes. But the larger issue is that Catholic higher education simply can’t bear all the weight of passing on the faith.

Parents and families are the greatest single influence on a young person’s faith, experts note, and the deterioration of family life often leaves Catholic students religiously adrift even as dioceses, parishes and the shrinking priesthood are increasingly ill-equipped to take up the slack.

In teaching the faith there are always two components. There is the academic stuff, the faith that is believed. I bring out what in the modern world is a dirty word, the dogma or doctrines of a church. Those are the content of what a church teaches. Then there is the actual faith. Not the faith that is believed, but the faith that believes. This is most definitely taught. Most importantly that faith is taught by God through the work of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:3, John 6:45). That faith is also most clearly taught through the parents. God works through means. He can work directly, but more often in this world through his agents – in teaching faith through parents. (Prov 22:6, Deut 6:7, Eph 6:4)

This teaching is the fundamental work of a congregation. The commission in Matt 28:18-20 is to make disciples. Our congregations are the kingdom. They are the seed-bed where teaching and learning takes place. Both the academic kind, and the living kind.

The article ends with what is essentially a prayer. “Viewed from that perspective, perhaps Catholic colleges should be praised for providing young Catholics a sanctuary and incubator for at least some of the tenets of their faith until, let us hope, these men and women help birth a wider Catholic culture to better support their own children.” That culture the author is praying for only comes from the faith that believes. We don’t built monuments and institutions, as important as it is, to doctrines or things we firmly grasp. We build them to the transcendent Christ – the author and perfecter of our faith (i.e. the one who lived it perfectly). And how was that exactly. He feared, loved and trusted God the Father above all things. Enough to carry the cross and commit his spirit. The living Faith of Jesus.

Tags: Culture, Meditation, cross by Parson Brown
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I probably should not add this, but I’m going to write it anyway. Read Luke 5:1-11 in your favorite translation. When I was translating the lessons for the week what I see is a very funny moving to a very serious situation. I want to focus on Luke 5:5, Simon’s answer to Jesus.

Jesus has commandeered Simon’s boat to continue teaching. Simon has worked all night and got nothing. He’s cleaned the nets and just wants to go home. This itinerant preacher gets in his boat and starts making requests. Peter obviously complies, but then when Jesus is done teaching he turns to Peter and tells him to go back out to sea. Peter has just finished cleaning up and wants to go home.

My translation would be something like – “Chief, although we worked this whole night and nobody caught nothing, now at your word, I will let down the nets.” Reading the situation and the language his reply is sharp sarcasm. The ESV translates it as – “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets. (Luk 5:5 ESV) ” If you are giving it a close read, you might catch it. But c’mon man, that is pure Biblish. You can see the Jesus as Washington crossing the Delaware with his hand out and a golden halo with Peter rowing the boat and gazing doe eyed at Jesus. And that is boring.

The change in this story is in Peter. He goes from this sarcastic put upon peasant calling Jesus “chief” to a man scared for his existence at his encounter with God and grabbing at Jesus’ feet and calling him Lord. A purely literal translation like the ESV misses that. Unless you are going to read the Bible very closely, everything comes off as this pious gauzy picture. These people were real. They had real lives and wants and emotions. And those real people met a real Christ. It is that real encounter with the living Christ that the Word causes.

Do yourself a favor and get a translation that lets you read God’s Word. The danger of swallowing bad theology from the translator is much less than the danger of never opening the word because you think it is boring or just pious stories.

Tags: Culture, Luke, Word by Parson Brown
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This is from Rod Dreher and takes its jumping off point from an evangelical church that is holding mixed martial arts (MMA) viewing/fight nights. The Fight Club for Jesus title is kind of funny, but the larger point is not just to ridicule the impulse. Rod takes the efforts as good faith actions to address a perception.

The Lutheran emphasis is law and gospel. Law is the requirements of God that we can’t keep. Gospel is what God does for us in Jesus. We will even talk about active and passive righteousness. Active Righteousness is the outward keeping of the law, but that active righteousness does not earn you anything. Salvation, justification or absolution is a gift. We receive it passively through faith in Christ. Passive will never make anyone’s list of masculine virtues.

Yet Christ ordered us to pick up our cross and follow him. That is an odd mixture of active and passive. You get nailed to a cross. (Mel Gibson’s line in his current flick – you need to choose if you are the one on the cross or the one pounding the nails – comes to mind.) Yet especially in the Gospel of Luke which we are reading this year – Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). Jesus chose the cross. He put himself on the cross. And he tells Christians to do the same.

The world would like to tell us that religion is for wimps – all that talk about compassion and love and what-not. But scratch below the surface. The call of Christ is to be a full person. Don’t be conformed to the easy road of callousness and the whims of your body and mind. Instead, with the intervention of the Spirit, bend and shape yourself in the proper ways. Pick-up your cross and follow. Justification is passive, but the Christian life, especially in this world, is active. I don’t know if MMA for Jesus is really bending our wills in the proper direction, but recovering that dare I say it Wesleyan sense of active struggle for holiness is important. We co-operate in our sanctification and it is a daily activity. I am that sinful a person. The laws of God are good. Jesus came to fulfill them, not to abolish them. By fulfilling them he secured my salvation, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore them. They are still the task before us.

As an add on as part of the numbers that we track, I look at the male/female ratio in our worship. There are many different puts and takes, especially in an active and growing but smaller congregation a couple of people can make a big difference in the percentages. I’m not really sure what to make of this type of statistic if anything should be. Any thoughts?
Male/Female

Active Attendance Attendance
14586 Roster 2010 2009
Male 50.1% 44% 53.0% 45.4%
Female 49.9% 56% 47.0% 54.6%

Tags: Church Direction, Culture by Parson Brown
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I’m Lutheran – I believe teach and confess this. But I also like to think or lay claim to the title catholic – as in the one holy, catholic and apostolic church.

This article from the Wall Street Journal on Catholic schools had one of the most hopeful sentences I’d read in a long time.

Tim Busch has an answer to the epidemic of closing Catholic schools. And it has nothing to do with vouchers…”We can’t wait for vouchers, and we can’t look to the old model of relying on our pastors and bishops to come up with the money and answers,” says Mr. Busch. “If we want Catholic schools for our children and our society, we have to adopt new models that let us compete.”

That is a sign of hope and renewal. And if the stodgy institutions can’t adapt or move fast enough, well, its too important to wait. As a minister, I would pray that we could provide some of the leadership. If we can’t or won’t, don’t just sit there. The gospel is too important to be locked up in old wineskins.

Tags: Culture, Word by Parson Brown
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Full Text

The gospels present everyone as recognizing the authority of Jesus. They all knew he was different. What they didn’t all do is react the same way. Luke portrays a difference in the Synagogue resposne and the response of people gathered in the house.

Our society places a high worth on work and money. So high that we have been willing to destroy or at least seriously lame our communities and social stuctures. We work 12 hour days away from where we live. When we return we don’t have the energy to do anything. So we make up words like quality time. Leaders are divorced from those ruled. Children from parents, neighbors from neighbors, family from family. All of this in the name of making a living.

If we are being honest, unless the peak oil scenarios are right and we are all forced closer to home by just being energy poor, this isn’t going to change any time soon.

Being the church will mean operating within those constraints. It also means pointing out the consequences of certain decisions. The distinctions that Luke calls out in the responses of two groups to Jesus are paradigmatic. The synagogue sits in wonder and makes reports, but fundamentally does nothing. Way too many of our churches are really synagogues. The houses respond in service and bringing all the wounded to
Jesus.
A world divorced and divorcing itself from community creates a lot of wounded. The house has the cure. It may look like many of the churches are dying, but that is how God works. Things die, so that he can take the glory in bringing them back. The real choice for churches is do they want to rise, do they want to act like the house, or are they content being the synagogue and burying the dead?

Tags: Culture, Luke, Sermons, economics by Parson Brown
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There are actually two background stories to this post. The original story is the Tiger Woods saga. No expansion necessary I presume. The secondary story is Brit Hume, the Fox News Analyst and former anchor. Mr. Hume had audacity to publicly practice Christian evangelism. Here is a great round-up of that background from getreligion.org, a blog dedicated to looking at the coverage of religion in the press.

The net is that Mr. Hume on live television gave the advice to Tiger Woods to look into Christianity because it is a religion of forgiveness, it is a religion of sinners. Mr. Woods is thought to be Buddhist, which Mr. Hume correctly noted does not have a concept of personal sin nor of personal redemption.

The central teaching of Buddhism is “you suffer because you desire.” The central prescription of Buddhism is “purge yourself of all desire so that you won’t suffer.” It is fascinating that in Tiger’s case this is true. (No “great religion” would be that if it wasn’t a true description of a large part of the human experience.) Tiger desired many different women (all of them apparently who look like Barbie). Tiger also desired a pretty wife, kids and family core. Tiger’s desires led to his suffering. But here is the rub. To avoid suffering, the Buddhist teaching is not just to avoid letting your lust run but also to let go of the desire for the nice stable family life. It is your desire that causes suffering. There is no judgment made on the goodness or badness of the desire.

The Christian teaching is not that desire in itself is bad. The Christian teaching is that mis-ordered desire acted upon, otherwise know as sin, is what leads to suffering and eventually death. God created the cosmos to function in certain ways. Roman Catholics would call that natural law. In the Lutheran tradition is is all part of the Kingdom of the Left which is governed by the law. It is when we make choices that operate outside of that law that we sin and bear the punishment for that sin. The orthodox christian teaching goes further than that. It says that our desires after the first sin known as the fall are by their very nature mis-ordered. Natural man, if not constrained by some other force, would every time choose to exercise his desire contrary to God’s law. Without the grace of God we could not choose correct desires or restrain bad desires.

That horrible condition known as original sin is man’s predicament. As St. Paul would cry out, who will rescue me from this body of death. (Romans 7:24) Under no obligation to do anything, it was man who chose to sin, God chose grace. And that grace was something very specific. It came through a specific people – the Children of Abraham, the Jews. It comes in a form that our natural man would despise – a powerless peasant tortured and killed. God out of His grace sent His son Jesus who atoned, made restitution, payed in full our sin. He experienced in full all of our due suffering. And he did that while never making a choice that went against the desires of God. Jesus suffered without a mis-ordered desire. And the Father would not let that be the final judgment and raised him from the dead and placed him on the throne.

Buddhism, if all you know is the law, is attractive. Under the law, the best you can do is minimize suffering. One break with the law and you bear its full penalty. But the law is only half the story. The law is only a teacher. It points us toward the one who by grace has restored us. It points us to the one who desired a people and actively came to call one out of the wreckage.

Christians, that people called by God, are sinners who have been made saints by the grace of God. Brit Hume was right in what he said. If Tiger wants to have hope of something beyond the suffering produced from his desire, He needs the gospel. Natural man doesn’t desire grace. He wants to save himself, even is all he can do is avoid more suffering. God through his Word and Spirit offers grace and forgiveness. And only in that Spirit can we be saved from this body of suffering and death.

Tags: Culture, Romans, cross by Parson Brown
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Read David Brooks today. (He’s using this as source material.)

For most of the church’s existence in the US, it has had a cozy relationship to the culture. A Christian could blend in. Those days are ending fast. The church will need to adapt to being pilgrims or strangers in a strange land as the Bible would say. And that is going to be very difficult.

Tags: Church Direction, Culture by Parson Brown
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This is from a review of a new book called after lives…

Augustine won out in his battle against two early Christian thinkers, Origen and Pelagius, who were declared heretics for suggesting that moral self-help could co-exist with divine grace as a means of gaining salvation. Mr. Casey notes an irony: The Vatican has never formally repudiated predestination, but the church “now in practice allows the faithful to be as cheerfully and unconsciously Pelagian as everyone else.” And “everyone else” is just about right when it comes to the U.S. A recent Gallup survey reported that 71% of Americans believe in heaven and that 93% of them think they have an excellent, good or fair chance of getting there.

I’m not sure if there is a better definition of what is wrong with religion and specifically Christianity in America. Last week we read Jesus in the Gospel of mark telling the disciples “how hard it is to enter the reign of God” (Mark 10:24) and that it is only possible with God (Mark 10:27). 93% of America has accepted the cheery notion of an easy heaven. They have accepted the Gospel without feeling the weight of the law. Matt 7:21 might be instructive to those thinking of a warm-fuzzy Jesus.

And you get the quip that we are all Pelagians now, which goes hand in hand with the above. If you think you can save yourself thorugh moral improvement, the natural consquence is a watering down of the the level of moral improvement needed until the general notion of I’m a good person, after all I’m not Charles Manson, is the required bar. What I’d really like to know is why those 7% didn’t think they had a good chance at heaven. Probably the 3.5% hard core atheists who object to the question and the 3.5% that have read the gospels.

Tags: Culture, grace by Parson Brown
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