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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Let me just say two things about this sermon: 1) I really hate it as a sermon. I think it misses the audience, doesn’t point to Christ enough, lacks a real solid textual foundation and doesn’t have the unity of message it should have. 2) I think some of the parts of it by themselves are bleeding raw and cut right to the heart of life. Modern life has lost the saints and the One who makes them and as a result is childish and soulless. We can’t see the problems even though they are right before our eyes. Being a Christian is a call to a life with a larger canvass, not a safe harbor.

Any sermon is a balance or weaving of separate threads. I have a comfort zone being very textual. In my own walk I can’t get over the fact that God speaks in this book, and I want to know as much about it as possible. That comfort zone moves through to application. Basically I have about five outlines: Very simple text-application, a little more complex 4 pages outline with the four pages being trouble in the text, gospel in the text, trouble in the world and gospel in the world (the individual pages can come in any order, when they are text, text, world, world it reduces to text-app), a three point outline (have something to say and say it well, or if you took debate/speech this tends to be a classic argument outline), a question and answer outline, and a refrain structure (multiple images or examples from life that end with the same biblical refrain). All of those outlines are about relating the text we are reading to our lives, or in reality relating our lives to the text. You could say I’m usually about trying to get people to let the biblical text read their lives. This sermon had a different basis in that the liturgical day (All Saints Day) was really the theme. Textual exposition was greatly reduced and the theology of being a Saint was brought forward. The general outline was compare and contrast – living life and interpreting reality from a secular veiwpoint alone (living with a calendar that only has Halloween) and living life with a church calendar (living with All Saints). Instead of being textual this sermon was theological and thematic.

It needed to be better.

Tags: Matthew, Revelation, Sermons, glory, grace 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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The gospel texts are sparse. What I mean by that is they relate just enough information to tell the story and expect you the reader to fill in the gaps from your knowledge and experience. We do this type of stuff everyday of our lives. The closer the person is to us, the sparser our communication can be. Husbands and wives often fall into this trap thinking that one fills in the gap correctly when they don’t. I’ll let you fill in the gap of the example. In the process of fleshing out the story, a peril for a preacher is preaching on the gaps. To preach or pull the main lesson for the text from what the reader has filled in is usually bad. At its best it is an orthodox sermon because the person in the pulpit has the Spirit and the gap filling in pious, but even then it usually has the effect of being distracting as the fill-in does not naturally fit the text. At its worst, the gaps are filled with stuff that contradicts the plain text and lessens or overrides its teaching. The sermon on the gaps becomes a sermon straight from probably the worst places of the preacher.

This sermon has one fill-in that in my studies for the week I could not find another who took it this way. That would usually mean that I would not use it to try and avoid preaching on a gap. I struggled with this because Peter’s reply to Jesus in the text – “look, we’ve left everything…” just did not make sense within the text as it is normally read. The typical reading is to see this as Peter comparing himself to the Rich Young Man and expecting that he will come out looking better. Jesus says is it hard to enter the Kingdom. We’ve already given up everything, so we must have merited entry. Here is why that makes no sense to me. First, if it was really Peter expressing a claim to merit, Jesus would have immediately struck it down. One does not merit the Kingdom. That is a doctrinal point, but one so basic that if you find your reading of a text going against it you’ve got a wrong reading. Second, Jesus has just said that with man it is impossible. Would Peter really respond to with man it is impossible with an assertion of his own work? Third, Jesus’ response is a blessing and a very confusing one as it gives a whole bunch in this time. Eternal life is an afterthought. Something else is going on here.

I leaned on Matthew to fill in the gap a little. The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) all follow a similar outline. (If you want more on that ask me.) Often you can look at the others to get a clearer view of what is happening. Matthew also records the encounter with the Rich Young Man and right after it records the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. My filling in the gaps to make sense of Peter’s response and Jesus’ response to that in this sermon was:
1) The disciples ask who can be saved
2) Jesus says everyone – because God is doing it, with man it is impossible
3) Peter’s response is that’s not fair (The NLT has a good translation from Matthew – We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will we get?)
4) Jesus promises stuff here in this life – the stuff he promises is a new community the church
5) In Matthew Jesus follows this teaching up with the parable of the workers in the vineyard which ends with the saying ‘the first are last and last first’ that Mark just tacks onto the end of Jesus’ response
I filled in the gaps I think in a way that makes more sense than the typical Peter trying to justify himself reading, but since I went out on a limb so to speak and it does play a role in the general outline of the sermon I add wanted to point out from where and why I filled in the gaps.

Tags: Mark, Sermons, grace by Parson Brown
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The guy puts up seemingly 30 posts a day on a huge variety of topics. There are all kinds of reasons for tuning him out or just not bothering. And then Andrew Sullivan posts something like this…

I have never found the theodicy argument against faith convincing. My own faith teaches me that suffering is part of a fallen creation that lives and dies – how could it not be? But it also teaches me that suffering in itself can be a means of letting go to God, of allowing Him to take over, of recognizing one’s own mortality and limits. That to me is not some kind of crutch. It is simply the paradox of the cross.

Or in a follow-up, like this…

My notion of a fallen world is related to the fact of mortality, which embraces almost everything on our planet, and causes terrible suffering to animals as well as humans. The difference is that, so far as we know, only humans experience this suffering as a form of alienation; we feel somehow as if we belong elsewhere, as if this mortal coil is not something we simply accept, as if our home was from somewhere else…That’s why I do not experience faith as some kind of rational choice or as some kind of irrational leap. I experience it merely as a condition of being human.

The man has a firm grasp of what Lutherans would call living under the law and the need for the gospel. But maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising. Said in the best of ways – “only the sick need a doctor.” Would that God would send His church a crop of ministers with that deep understanding and turn my own heart toward that cross.

Tags: Culture, cross, grace by Parson Brown
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A quick note – I’ve been a slacker about writing most of this summer. It has been a summer full – full of joys and of sorrows. I intend to get back to a 3 – 4 day a week cycle God willing.

Text: Mark 13:28-37

Maybe it is a psychological thing, my good daughter Anna has returned to school and candy corn is appearing in the store aisles, but today felt like autumn. The sun felt that much less intense on the forearm. The air felt crisper than the summer fullness. We pick up those signs. The longer we live on this earth, if we are perceptive, the more we just know what is coming.

Jesus is telling the disciples something that they will know and something that they won’t in the gospel reading for today. The first part most scholars think is talking about 70AD, the distruction of Jerusalem. Jesus is telling them to be observant, learn from the fig, you can tell when the seasons are changing, so when you see these things the end of the temple is near. While that will seem like the end of the world, it won’t be. That time, when Heaven and Earth will really pass away, you won’t know. You know what? The command is still watch. We watch and we can discern when an older order of things is passing away, when the temples of the world are being judged and torn down – a small letter day of the Lord. That watching is preparation for the capital letter Day of the Lord so that we might be found awake and faithful on that great and glorious day.

Tags: Mark, Meditation, glory, grace by Parson Brown
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I’ve heard it from at least two preachers who I really admire for their wisdom and their craft that “all good sermons are first preached at the preacher.” The main point is that if the preacher himself doesn’t need it or resonate with the message he is delivering it probably can’t be a good sermon. This one falls squarely in that camp for me. I pray that my congregation was able to get something out of it as well. If you are going to read it, the thing you probably need to have in your head is that my brother died on the 24th of August at the age of 35. After spending a little over a week in Baltimore, MD cleaning out and settling his place, this was more first week back in the pulpit. The primary text was Isa 35:4-7

Tags: Isaiah, Sermons, glory, grace by Parson Brown
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Last week was VBS and this week we are sneaking in a vacation betwen VBS and a couple of planned day. But I did have a couple of thought I wanted to post on this sermon. It was a little more intellectual. Some days I go to various different public places (wegman’s cafe, McDonald’s/BK, a few others) and will strike up conversations with people. Eventually I like to get around to asking a question like ‘What makes Doug Doug?’ There are basically two types of answers I hear – a materialist answer where this body and life is everything and a some form there is something more. Call that something more a soul for now.

The sermon really addresses the materialist tendency, but there are problems with the Body & Soul people as well. Here is a link to the biggest one. While not as explicit as I am the way, the truth and the life, there is no way to the Father expect through me, the text of the sermon (John 6:51-69) addresses the underlying reality of things. There is a spiritual reality (“the things I am telling you are spirit). It also make a huge claim that Jesus is “the one who came down from Heaven.” Jesus is the Bread of Life, the only one who can feed the Spirit/Soul. Even if you answer body & soul, the many-paths crowd would react “this is a hard teaching.” We want out own way to God. We want to feed ourselves. God doesn’t allow that. By grace he’s picked the only way – his Son – Jesus.

Tags: John, Sermons, grace by Parson Brown
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Text: 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Paul makes complete sense, and then he doesn’t. In some ways it is easy to understand Peter when he said of Paul in 2 Peter 3:15-16 – “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand…”

The daily readings have been taking us through 2 Corinthians, and I’ve ignored them here by and large. The overwhelming sense of 2nd Corinthians to me has been of unease and unsaid recognition. (The Eastern District convention took its theme from 2 Cor, and we as a church have read it from the lectern this year, but it is still difficult.) Paul took these people to the woodshed in 1 Corinthians, and I wonder if that experience colored their entire communication from that time on. They (or some of them) question Paul’s authority. Paul defends it, but with a desperate mood – like he knows they won’t listen. As a parent you know that when you pull the “because I said so” card out, the child is probably not listening. You’ve lost the argument and now you are hoping against hope that the child still has a healthy fear of you as their parent. And so Paul says – “I must boast; there is nothing to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions…” Paul is pulling the becuase I said so card. I’ve seen the surpassing glory of heaven.

But he backs down from there. Instead he points at his troubles. “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamaties, for when I am weak, then I am strong.” The authority of a Christian comes not from the glory first, but the glory after the cross. When our lives and our witness take a cruciform shape, then we are strong. The authority of the World will not brook insult. It owns the sword and it uses it. The authority of the Word resides not in power, but in weakness. In our weakness, in what the world says shouldn’t be, it is there that God is able to work – because only the power and grace of God could sustain it though the thorns.

Tags: Meditation, cross, glory, grace by Parson Brown
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The prayer book that I have been using has the days scripture readings (OT, Epistle and Gospel), a 4th reading from the church and opening and closing prayers. Tuesdays the opening prayers come from the Book of Common Prayer. The original version was the work of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury – the English Reformation prelate. The book has gone through many revisions and “updatings”, but many of Cranmer’s words survive. It really is a testament to his understanding of human nature and of church teaching that so many still speak. The one that was in today really spoke.

O God, from whom all good proceeds. Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, for ever and ever. Amen.

With our sin clouded mind we see good as evil and evil as good. And even when we see aright, we don’t always act with love. Grant by your inspiration that we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guidding do them. All good proceeds from God and returns to God – by the Word and through the Spirit. Amen

Tags: Meditation, grace by Parson Brown
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