St. Mark's Lutheran » Meditation

A Remembrance

Parson Brown — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 06:15:05 +0000

Oct 9th was my brother’s birthday. It’s actually been two years since he passed away. The actual date of his death is never the one that hits me. It’s the birthday. I think I remember more picking up the phone that first Oct 9th and dialing his number to wish him happy birthday and hearing ‘this number has been disconnected’ and going ‘oh, that’s right’ and putting the phone back in the cradle thinking ‘of course, you only drove his car into work this morning.’

One of the great stories I was told by one of his co-workers was about moving a data-center. Having worked in the business that phrase is something of an oxymoron. You don’t move data-centers. You build data centers. You move the traffic from the old to the new. You decommission the old. There are just too many things that would never make the transition. Aaron worked for a government security agency. I can only imagine why they were moving a data center. It must have needed to be done. Of all the crap jobs, moving all those boxes and wires would place somewhere high up the crap pile. And that was what the boss said. “I have no idea how this is going to happen.” So he asked Aaron to do it. That was the only name that popped into his head. And he did it. In the process he found a couple of crossed wires. He wrote them up in his report. The boss stared dumb-founded at that fact. A moved data-center should have been full of them. This one had two wires better.

So the next time you are tempted to say, ‘good enough for government work’. It isn’t. Find the two wires.

Even if the system is ok, if you know it could be better, find the two wires. Hell most of us live our lives embedded in systems that are metaphorically missing doors. If someone tries to sell you on the glories of the system – such a great hood ornament – while excusing the missing doors, don’t accept it. Find the wires. Ask for the doors. And if you have the responsibility, it’s being done on your watch, especially you, find the wires.

If you are asked to do a crap job, do it with excellence. If you are just asked to do your job, do it in a way that you find the wires. Don’t settle for having the title – the great hood ornament – and driving a car without doors and hiding crossed wires. Life is too short to live with crossed wires.

So, to the best of the Brown brothers, that is all I have to say about that.

Glory, Holiness, Duty and Other Archaic Concepts?

Parson Brown — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:54:26 +0000

Yesterday was Veteran’s Day or Armistice Day for those who like history. In prepping for Thursday’s bible class I has read this article. The author’s source – the Homeric Epics – is remote from most people. My attempt at a translation didn’t hit the mark yesterday, but I’ll use it here. If you have seen the young Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall, think about the attitudes put forward by the youngest brother who enlists for WW1. The young Princeton lad is full of duty and glory and enlists, surely in part to live up to his Civil War vet father – a man who had no use for ‘Civilization’s wars’ and was living in Montana as far away as he could get.

In that War the West burned out its concepts of glory. Tom Howard in that article was asking just that: where today do you find glory and its companion holiness? His is a familiar lament from a certain section of the church yearning for a more stately form. And that yearning in some should not be denied. There is holiness and majesty in God. But that feeling I think is foreign to most we are called to reach today. It took 2000 years, but I’m pretty sure that those wars of the 20th century burned out a bad idea.

The bible’s picture of the glory of God might often be expressed in grand language (the Hebrew’s thought of glory in images of weight while the Greeks thought in images of light), but that seems to be a nod to God using our language. The “Ur” story in in Exodus 33:22-23. Moses wants to see God’s glory. He is shown God’s backside (in a euphemism). Hannah’s Prayer (1 Sam 2:8) and Mary’s song (Luke 1:46-55) both equate God’s glory to the radical reversal, to the lifting up of the lowly. The Psalms (Psalm 24:7, 85:9, 96:3, 102:15) always equate God’s glory with his work of salvation. God’s glory is not an attribute but an action. By Zechariah 2:5 the glory dwells within (foreshadowing the indwelling of the spirit?). That picture of God’s glory continues in the New Testament. We’ve seen Mary laud the glory of the great reversal. John (John 1:14) equates the glory of God with Jesus who is the fulfillment of grace and truth. The biblical picture of God’s glory is His work of salvation. God’s glory is seen best in what this world sees as abasement. Think of the progression of the Apostles Creed: only son of God to human infant to suffering to crucifixion to death to burial to hell. It is only when the Son has become the lowest that God raises Him up, places Him at the right hand and gives Him the authority as judge. What we think of as glory comes after what the Father thinks of as glory. God’s glory is seen in that work of service. In this world, we see the glory in the backside. In the next, we see face to face.

So where do we find glory? In Christ on the cross. In everyone who portrays Christ amongst us. Not in pomp and ceremony but it service. And what about glory’s mate holiness? 2 Pet 1:3 – “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” Because of Christ’s glory which has grabbed us, we are now equipped not just for life but also for godliness. Where do you find glory and holiness today? Look low.

The Spirit/Saint of the Age

Parson Brown — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:30:24 +0000

That title is from the philosopher Hegel and it shows up in all kinds of quackery from the Age of Aquarius to Gestalt to whatever movement someone else is pushing. It is a hardy perennial. Probably because we like finding patterns in things and we are social creatures – “it is not good for the man to be alone.”

In seminary a layman from the congregation I was assigned to asked me about the revelations about Mother Theresa. The revelations were her years long feelings of the absence of God. I eventually had two answers. The first was based on experience. Per her report Mother Theresa had a very strong encounter/appearance of the risen Christ. If just based on Peter’s reaction on the mount of transfiguration, many things in the everyday world would seem like God is absent after such an experience. That is one of the dangers of direct revelation, and one the reasons that the church has never based doctrine on any form of continuing revelation. It is personal. My second reaction was very Lutheran. Reading the book that was the basis of the question, it rubbed me that her father-confessors never really seemed to offer absolution. They just encouraged her further in her saintly vocation. The Lutheran in me just want to scream, its grace. She gets this better than you do. She offers it everyday, but nobody is reminding her.

But after reading this there seems to be a third answer. Mother Theresa represents the misgivings of the age.

…[Atheists] experience of God’s absence is a truthful experience, shared also by believers. Faith is not a denial of all this: it is a patient endurance of the ambiguity of the world and the experience of God’s absence….

Now not all believers feel that absence. Many live in a wonderful everyday relationship with Christ. And we shouldn’t privilege one over the other. Not all parts of the body are eyes or feet. But especially Lutherans should be able talk about that absence. Luther called it the hidden God. No matter what you did the hidden God disapproved and hid His face from you. Luther’s answer was the revealed God. The Word of God. When the hidden God was too much, you looked to the cross, to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. You let God fight with God. You let Christ handle the tensions that we have now been justified but not yet glorified.

That post continues with this phrase, “patience with others is love, patience with self is hope, patience with God is faith.” We are saved by grace through faith. In a very impatient age, it seems right that the saint of the age had the patience to keep faithful for years at a time while feeling an absence.

A Chaplain and and Atheist go…

Parson Brown — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:55:34 +0000

This story was the original. This is a letter to the WSJ concerning it.

It is a great mutt & Jeff or odd couple story. A military chaplain who “preaches about divine protection…rejects evolution and believes the earth to be 6000 years old. He carries a large KJV bible with him into a combat zone…” and his specialist assistant who “totes writings of Richard Dawkins…and is a full blown athiest”. The military’s thoughts on the matter, “They don’t have to be religious, they just need to be able to shoot straight.” The combat chaplains assistant is the gun that they don’t carry.

The letter is from Chaplain Wainwright who writes, “it became apparent that the problem with the chaplain and the religious programs specialist has nothing to do with faith or lack thereof but with teamwork and leadership. After two tours of Iraq, three IED hits, mortar attacks and other sundry excitement, I attribute my survivability and sanity both to my faith and to the technical and tactical expertise of my chaplain assistants and the other non-commissioned officers whose guidance and example kept me alive.”

The military, because the stakes are so high and immediate, is often an intensification of everyday life. Everyone who practices a faith strikes a balance between faith and understanding. You could say that even the atheist does that with the balance being anything I don’t understand I don’t believe.

In some ways I’m the odd ball. I’m a Chaplain Wainwright type guy. Let’s get competence and good practices as a base. To me faith doesn’t make up for stupidity, nor does it cover lunacy. Now God might save you from that bullet, God might bless your completely nuts program, but you stand a better chance of that happening by planning for it. That odd ball nature extends into the basis of faith. I believe, but that belief is not just something ungrounded. Read John 14:8-11. “Or at least believe because of the work you have seen me do.” Our faith is based on something solid. And yes I know that everybody and his brother has published a book debunking the gospels. Guess what, if you are being fair, the gospels hold up. There was a guy named Jesus. He actually did perform miracles. And they nailed him to a cross. The crowds that had followed him were all dispersed. But three days later, he was back. The tomb was empty and he appeared to a bunch of fishermen. Fishermen and a former zealot named Saul who got a special appearance traveled the known world telling just that story. This Jesus came back. That is the work I’ve seen him do.

If I needed complete understanding of something to believe it, I’d never drive a car let alone ride an airplane or type this message on a computer. In the words of an old hymn, “proofs I see sufficient of it, ’tis the true and faithful word.”

Observation/Cryptic Sayings

Parson Brown — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:14:17 +0000

The gospel last week included the saying “pick up your cross and come after me.” The gospels were written after everything that happened happened, but in the moment, think how nonsensical that must have sounded.

Higher Critics, like the Jesus Seminar, reject all saying like that as inauthentic (i.e. Jesus never said them, the church made them up). One can understand such a reaction, but then read John 7:14-36, pay close attention to the end and the Jewish questions. “What does he mean by saying…”

The golden gut isn’t always reliable, but doesn’t that have the feel of truth. Some guy is walking around doing amazing stuff (i.e. the miracles). He gives teachings like the sermon on the mount and some of the parables. He eats with sinners and pokes up the status ladder instead of kicking down. And occasionally he says things like ‘pick up your cross’ or ‘where I am going you cannot come’. OK, Jesus, whatever you say. Just keep the bread coming and the show rolling is a natural response to those enjoying it. To those being poked, the eccentricities compound.

Rough edges, eccentricities, cryptic remarks, call them what you will, but Christ the prophet holds together contra the Jesus seminar. This is an example of something that makes complete sense in the original setting. Translating it to us is tougher. Where do those who follow Christ poke up the status ladder today? Who do they poke at? (Christ and prophets almost exclusively save their best poking for religious leaders.) What are their cryptic sayings that cause people to say “what does he mean?”

There and back again (or a pattern of Religious Education)

Parson Brown — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:55:09 +0000

If anyone is a Tolkien fan, that title is the other name for The Hobbit. And it expresses a truth about learning to live a faith.

The first step in living a faith is to actually have a home. Find a community. Attend regularly. Be active in its life. Know what it teaches. Try living what it teaches. Become good at living what it teaches and living with others in that faith community. Be a part of a Shire.

At some point the Shire starts to look small. Guess what, it probably is. All of our faith homes have their own languages and favorite bad arguments. (Of all things the LCMS likes to argue purity. It may get hidden under other doctrines, but it is always about are you keeping the doctrine pure enough.) You are faced with a choice. Turn against that community, or set out for a little while. And don’t set out too early. There is a big difference between the pilgrim and the wanderer. The wanderer is just lost. The pilgrim has a home. A basis for judgment.

The pilgrim, while out there fighting dragons and orcs, tends to remember what was good about the shire. Bilbo wanted to return. Frodo would also. Now when Frodo returned the Shire had been scoured. It wasn’t the same place he left for good and bad. The pilgrim goes there and back again. Maybe multiple times.

American life tends to produce wanderers. The church wants to produce pilgrims, but first it wants to call the wanderers to rest – rest in the grace of Jesus. The American myth machine has built up the wanderer. The rebel without a cause. The man on the road. Can the church learn again to call to rest and then build up pilgrims?

Two things spawned this slightly batty reflection. Gordon Atkinson’s reflection on teaching his own kids to be pilgrims. And Stephen Prothero’s primer on the World Religions which finally breaks the claptrap that all religions if you dig enough are the same. They are all the same to the wanderer who doesn’t have a place to go back again. To anyone in a Shire, they are strange and horrible and wonderful things. Things that remind you of the grace of the Shire.

Teaching the Faith

Parson Brown — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:23:18 +0000

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.

Mysteries in the Spirit

Parson Brown — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:33:44 +0000

Text: 1 Cor 14:1-12

Looking at the passage for today those in Corinth are hungry for what Paul calls spiritual gifts. If you read closer you realize that these spiritual gifts are not the list of love, joy, peace, patience, etc but are manifestation of the Spirit such as speaking in tongues. Paul directs them instead at two things: 1. prophecy and 2. building up the church. I could be wrong here, but that word prophecy is not the popular imagination of telling the future, but simply the speaking of the Word of God. At a minimum, that is supposed to be the guy in the pulpit. Now I’m sure there are many times when what that guy says sounds like he is talking in a tongue, but it should go beyond that. We should not be looking at speaking the Word to God alone in showy babbling tongues, but speaking the Word to each other. Instead of being foreigners to each other, we are to be brothers and sisters. Instead of looking for ways to look holy without saying anything, look to build up the place where we meet prophets and hear the Word. Is there some way that you can share the Word of God and prophesy to your brothers and sisters?

Fear, Love and Trust…

Parson Brown — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:15:04 +0000

Text: 2 Kings 9:17-37

In confirmation class last night we were covering the 10 commandments and Sinai in Exodus. The opening question was – what does it mean to have a God? Luther’s explanation in the Small Catechism to the first commandment is that ‘we should fear, love and trust God above all things.’ If you say that having a God is that thing that you fear, love and trust above everything else, it is impossible to not have one. All you can say is that you are following better or worse ‘gods’. The most common ‘god’ is probably our belly. Our appetites drive us from one thing to another. Some might deify their mind. Some might deify the nation-state, ancestors or other family members. All of those things have an element of fear in them. The state holds the sword, family members exert all kinds of psychological influence. In between running from one idol to the next, we stop and think about the loving arms of Jesus. We trust that he will always be there. And there is truth in that. But that view is a very domesticated view of Jesus. Aslan, the Christ figure in Narnia, is a wild lion. The Jesus of Gospels says things like ‘go and sin no more’ and ‘be holy as you Father is holy’.

And then you get to our text. God said through Elijah that Jezebel would be eaten by dogs. Later God through Elisha annoints a new King for Israel. A King who kills the the old one and throws Jezebel, the queen mother, out the window and then sits down for a meal. When they get around to cleaning up the mess – to bury the body – Jezebel has been carried away by dogs.

Luther’s definition of God includes fear. Is the God you serve a nice domesticated lion, or is he wild enough to say things like ‘I am about to spit you out (Rev 3:16)’ or ‘follow me, let the dead bury their own dead (Matt 8:22)’ or ‘You are badly mistaken (Mark 12:27)”?

Being a church

Parson Brown — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:04:43 +0000

Text: 1 Cor 5:9 – 6:11

The text is about how people get along with each other and about making judgments. Underlying it is a much different and healthier view of what the church is. For most of the 20th century in the West the church was thought of by its people as an institution, and one of those institutions freely joined or left. That placed the individual in the position of judge or magistrate. One could freely choose which church to be a part of or freely choose to not be a part.

Paul has a much different thought. The church is those people called by God to follow Jesus Christ exemplified by sanctified lives together. In that western institutional church the goal is numbers alone. If someone is living immorally, but claiming to be part of the church, the institutional church turns a blind eye. Or it might go so far as justifying and supporting the behavior. You don’t chase away numbers. In Paul’s church, the church drives them out, and leaves them to God’s judgment. The purpose is not numbers, but in helping people live sanctified lives. Which one is showing love, the one that enables immorality or the one calling you back into relationship with Jesus Christ?

Living sanctified lives together as the people of God. Do we always get it right immediately? No way. Does that body take a painful amount of time to see the right? Often. If you act like the church is a called people in a world that treats it as a come and go institution are you going to be taken advantage of? Yep. So, do we complain about that. Not according to Paul. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? Being church is not an easy calling.