St. Mark's Lutheran » Spirit

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.

VBS Ending

Parson Brown — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:25:26 +0000

First some pictures…

Here is the Spotlight Drama CD as a zip file. Just download and extract to disk to see the story we built this week. (Warning! This is a large file. It could take 20 mins to download. If you have trouble downloading, give me a call or an email and I’ll forward that way or mail you a disk.)

Finally, this was a great VBS. If I had to admit it, I was a little worried about the theme at the start. But, by the end this was a great VBS. It got the core gospel message across very simply for many who might never have heard it, or only heard it at long interval. Let me tell you a little way I mean. Here are the five/(six) phrases that someone who attended this VBS will leave with.
1. God Created You
2. God Listens to You
3. God watches over You
4. God loves you no matter what
5. God gives good gifts
(The sneaky Lutheran liturgical propaganda response (inside joke, sorry) to all of them was #6. Thank You God!)

The exacting theologian in me would hem and haw and tweak things. (Most of that has to do with one thing. What we see as good gifts and what God sees are often quite different especially for the young in faith. That Gap in understanding is what leads to things like the prosperity gospel or Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.) The practical theologian says yeah, it’s that simple. It is all by God’s grace in Jesus Christ. In an age that is largely biblically or theologically illiterate, that introduction is a good proclamation. That is the milk of faith. As we live the Christian life we discover the riches of the Kingdom. Give me the Pandas at the start.

What you find in a run on sentence…

Parson Brown — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:30:36 +0000

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Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

Being a Protestant and being a Lutheran Protestant basically means I’m a follower of Christ with Pauline eyes. Most Lutheran ministers would probably point at Romans as there “go to” text. When I collapse back to basics, I go to Ephesians. (I know, all you higher critics laughing about the pseudo-Pauline Pauline. And you friends laughing about when did he ever get past the basics or who let him out of confirmation class.)

Paul is logical, but really that is secondary. Paul is primarily a mystic. Those great chapters in Romans 7 – 11 are similar, but I think we often let the logic roll over the mystic. Paul tells us we have all the spiritual blessings in heaven, and he tells us what those are: 1) standing spotless and 2) adoption into God’s family. But then we press for surety of this, because let’s be blunt, right now we don’t see our spotless garment nor does any government recognize our adoption certificate. And Paul’s surety – we have the spirit. Logically, its a circular argument. Its a mystical argument. In baptism you have the Spirit. God has promised. God keeps his promises.

Also Paul wonders into predestination like those Roman’s chapters, but the predestination here to me is clearer. We are predestined in Christ. We receive our eternal status because we are joined to the eternal one. And this is because all things are moving toward unity in Him. We are being conformed to the likeness of Christ. You don’t get more mystical than that.

And that causes trouble with the logical world. You either get it, or you don’t. It also causes all kinds of trouble in the church. Because we are all being conformed at different rates and paces and on different paths. Just when the church wants to say this is the path, the Spirit seems to blow in a different way. Mystics and dogmatics don’t get along well. Dogma is often the worn path of the mystic. To be a Pauline Christian, to be a Lutheran, is to maintain that tension between the dogmatic better way and the Spirit led path. All the time resting secure in our adoption. Knowing that God’s grace has us covered with all the spiritual gifts of heaven that matter – primarily forgiveness for those “Spirit paths” that are actually detours.

Sermon – “God does not pass by…” – Mark 6:45-56

Parson Brown — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:09:52 +0000

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One little bit of widsom that stuck in my head is a maxim “preach Jesus – he’s preachable”. Its a pithy phrase that sums up Luke 24:27 and elsewhere. That phrase is easiest when you are talking about Jesus’ works and deeds, or when you are talking about the divine nature of Christ. It becomes much more difficult when you are talking mental thoughts or emotional feelings of Jesus. Everyone is happy talking about the love of God, but anger or desire tread on difficult ground. The preacher is climbing inside the head of the Christ – a very dangerous task. The text has the phrase – “He desired/wanted to pass by them.” And yet Jesus doesn’t do that, in fact the phrase is just odd as it is againt everything for which he was walking on the sea. The sermon works that out.

The only other thought thought in this vein has to do with what and how our adversary is attacking people today. There is a meme that each generation is tempted in specific paths. The task of the church and the preacher is to confront that temptation. The pressure on the church is to synchronize with or condone that temptation. The formula of Concord says something like that in Article X paragraph 4. I’m beginning to think that our modern temptation in many ways that we’ve forgotten what it means to be human. We have never been real good at parts of it (suffering, being created creatures, being both body and spirit), but never have we been so able to ignore or change our fundamental nature. Death is always held at bay until we have no time to prepare. We create special places and classes of people to segregate real suffering – like hospitals and doctors or government housing and social workers. We deny the spirit becuase it doesn’t conform to a test bench and so we become materialists. Our humanity is being limited and we are happily giving it away.

The counter to that is not the divinity of Christ, but His humanity. Jesus desired to pass by. Jesus desired to reveal the glory to his closest followers…but instead he climbs in the boat with them. A very human act in the middle of a calm sea of miracles.

A question I left with the Sunday Bible Class

Parson Brown — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:46:36 +0000

Text: Hebrews 4:12-13

We are studying the book of Hebrews for about 6 weeks on Sundays. Last Sunday we read Hebrews 3:1 – 4:13 which is one sermon or section of the book. The theological start by the writer of Hebrews was an assertion of the superiority of Jesus as the son and heir compared to Moses as a faithful servent in the entire house. The implication was that if disobeidience to Moses brought 40 years in the wilderness and eventual death of that generation, don’t ask what disobeidience to Jesus would bring. Today! if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.

The last line is that the Word of God is living and active. The question I left the class with was how is the Word of God living and active in your life? Maybe I’m wrong, but the more I pondered my own answer to that question that more I thought that this is the key problem of the modern American Church. Too much secondary theology. Too much talk about the Word, and not enough Word itself. The Reformation understanding of preaching and teaching and the interaction of disciples was right there (Today!) was the Word of God. The Desert Fathers sought to apply the Word directly to themsleves. We moderns talk about the Word. We talk detached from it and at a distance. We are comfortable talking about the Word, but we rarely read it ourselves. That Word is living and active. The Spirit asks us to do hard things. We don’t like hard things. In this world where trust has been drained from almost everything, that is the challenge. Open up the Word and don’t read it at a distance. Put yourself in the story. Let the Word read you. Today! Don’t hardern you hearts.

Pentecost Sermon – “The Half-Known God”

Parson Brown — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:22:34 +0000

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On reflection this might have been a better sermon for Trinity Sunday, but the text was John 15:25-26 and John 16:4-15 and that came up on Pentecost. The core statement is that we moderns just don’t biblically undertand the Spirit or the personhood of God. We push Father, Son and Spirit together into a giant gnostic generic Spirit-God. When you do that, your God ends up looking like you and not like He revealed Himself in the Scriptures.

Specifically the Holy Spirit is not a mushy person. His first job is to convict the world: To convict it of sin, convict it of true righteousness, and convict it of who is the judge. After that conviction, the Spirit leads His people into all truth. A great text pointing to law and gospel. First we are convicted by the law and then restored in truth by the gospel. The Spirit does this through His means of Word and Sacrament through that fuddy-duddy place called the church. The adversary tries to sow a bunch of FUD becuase we’ve mushed the persons together. He tries to get us to find the Spirit everywhere but right there in the Word and Sacrament to the point we often denigrate the gospel offer thinkning God can’t really be there. But God keeps his promises. He’s there in that Word, Water, Bread and Wine.

The edge of the cliff

Parson Brown — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:57:03 +0000

Text: Hebrews 6:1-12

Hebrews is not a book for the lighthearted or the new Christian. Its argument is the centrality and sufficiency of Jesus Christ and it assumes a large background of knowledge about the OT and How God interacted with his people. The ultimate purpose as I’ve read it is to argue apathetic or stagnating Christians to a fuller living of the faith. Our text quickly reviews just what the writer takes as basics of the Christian faith: 1) Repentance, 2) Faith, 3) Baptism (i.e. ablutions), 4) Laying on of hands (ministry?), 5) resurrection of the dead and 6) eternal judgement. When you think about those things, they can all be intellectualized or made point in time events. A person can give assent to them (i.e. express belief in them) without attempting to live out that belief.

The background to the next portion is Israel on the verge of the promised land. They send out 12 spies. These are people who witnessed the Exodus and who stood at Mt. Sinai. They expressed belief in God and took part in the ritual life of the community, yet when they came back from spying out the land, they did not live out what God intended. (Numbers 13 – 14) And the punishment was death in the desert. Not a single person of that generation would enter the Promised land. The writer of the Hebrews says be careful that you do not receive the same fate. If you have been to the promised land, tasted the heavenly gift (forgiveness of sins), and turned away, there is no restoration.

This does not speak of sin and repentance, but the sin against the Holy Spirit – calling God a liar in his promises. Just how far can one go in apostasy before committing that sin? We don’t want to know. If you walk up to a cliff, do you want to find out where that tipping point is that throws you over it? Instead son’t be sluggish,”but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Press on in the faith. Live and grow in the faith. Don’t map out that cliff edge.

Shepherded by the Wind

Parson Brown — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:44:30 +0000

Text: Jeremiah 22:13-23

The Spirit of God is often pictured as the Wind. We do not see the wind itself, but we see its effects. The frightening thing about that what happens when we lose the ability to recognize the true prophetic Word from the wind itself? Martin Luther worried about such a happening. He would talk about it in his Freedom of a Christian saying, “there is no more terrible disaster with which the wrath of God can afflict men than a famine of hearing the Word…” Jeremiah has been speaking the Word to the Kings of Judah right before the fall of Jerusalem. God cries out, “I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, ‘I will not listen.’” The result is that the wind will shepherd all your shepherds. To Jeremiah, the Word of God is self authenticating. You know it when you hear it. Your only reaction is to repent and follow, or to deny it. As horrible as the call to repentance might be, being left without the Word is more horrible. It is not that you cease to have Spiritual things, but that you are shepherded by the wind. And that wind blows here and there, knocking things down and eroding the buildings. If we deny the Word, we reap the wind. The world is full of prophets saying ‘here it is’, or in Jeremiah’s vein, ‘Peace, Peace.’ And people without the sure Word get blown from this one to that one, but they never find it or receive peace. That is only found in the Sure Word of Jesus Christ. In Christ we find our rest from being shepherded by the Wind.