The succession of . . . → Read More: Michael Lewis please see St. Paul….]]>

Michael Lewis is best know for Moneyball, but his is one of the best financial writers around. His secret is that he can take the numbers and tell a story. He can translate from financial Joe to average Joe. This is his latest article on the California or State financial crisis.

The succession of financial bubbles, and the amassing of personal and public debt, Whybrow views as simply an expression of the lizard-brained way of life. A color-coded map of American personal indebtedness could be laid on top of the Centers for Disease Control’s color-coded map that illustrates the fantastic rise in rates of obesity across the United States since 1985 without disturbing the general pattern. The boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction—it is all of a piece. Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.

Michael Lewis doesn’t tread into final causes of such things, but I might suggest reading St. Paul, Romans 1:21-24:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts

Read the article, that is a big storm coming…

But given all of that, it is a remarkable roadmap for how to kill your Faith or blaspheme the Holy Spirit. It is . . . → Read More: Its like watching a trainwreck, the horror doesn’t stop…]]>

I can’t really recommend you read this. It has got to be the most cringe inducing thing I’ve read in a long time. Status obsessed, shallow, vain, conceited, silly…and still heartbreaking.

But given all of that, it is a remarkable roadmap for how to kill your Faith or blaspheme the Holy Spirit. It is a modern example of 1 Tim 1:19 when St. Paul talks about Hymenaeus and Alexander making a shipwreck of their faith.

The author starts out at a good place: creed and a recognition that something is wrong with her dealings with God. But instead of dealing with God as those creeds would say (neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance), the author hypothesizes two Gods. Inevitably the Good Jesus and the Bad judgmental guy. Marcion did something similar and so have many others. She is actually not that far from Luther’s key insight. God deals with us in two ways – his law and his gospel. His law does condemn us. His gospel saves us though not from anything in us. To the author’s credit she doesn’t dismiss the law, but instead of living through the grace, she attempts to keep the law or run from it in a variety of ways.

First she just tries to “be good”, then she runs away “during her college years”, then she finds a church that connects her guilt to “racism and structural inequality”. Yes, there is racism and structural inequality. Yes, Christians are called to do something about it. But, no, that is not the gospel. It might be the gospel in motion, expressed through love, but it is not the gospel itself. The author was still trying to keep the law – “talking about Jesus asking us to do good work, waiting for us to make the world a better place.” Eventually, she does what is the ultimate expression of the religious law – “God called me to be a priest”. Because where else could you work harder? This is heartbreaking.

From there it gets worse. She is obviously very smart – after all, Harvard Divinity School accepted her. At Cambridge “her relationship with God deepened”, but “she quits going to church”. [Hint, leaving the body of Christ is never a way to get closer to God.] She “learns” all kinds of theologies, but “quotes the bible less”. “Her congregants didn’t mind she said”. [Yes, they did, but they'd seen it before. They knew where this narcissism train was heading and did there best to find something in the thin gruel offered probably while praying for you.] Eventually she finds a “guru” and art. [If her guru really cared about her, Dr. Kaufmann from the Harvard school would point out her error and ask her to repent. He might even say those words with her realizing that it was his teaching, God have mercy. He might point out to his bright student that grace is given to those with low IQs and simple theologies as well. He's probably too busy being celebrated and flown around to notice.]

And so she ends up “breaking up with God…I know he’s not the right God for me. I try to remember that.”

The ultimate horror is that Jesus is the right God. She’s just never heard the most important word.

Psalm 51: 16-19 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with . . . → Read More: Ash Wednesday]]>

This morning we took psalm 51 as our text. We know the famous portions – restore unto me the joy of your salvation – but the last four verses spoke a couple of points to me.

Psalm 51: 16-19
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem;
then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Two points:
1) The purpose of repentance is restoration to the community of God; it is not just private.
2) The purpose of repentance is not a hang-dog sorrow, but a preparation for joy.

Look at the progression in the verses. The Lord refuses the formal sacrifice which leads to a broken spirit. The broken spirit (repentance) leads to God rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. That is a communal ideal, Jerusalem the city and people of God. Being restored to the city of God leads to being part of the community’s worship; sacrifice is accepted. Personal repentance is necessary, but repentance is not just a personal bath. It is a rejoining to the people of God.

The Lord welcomes and restores sinners. Dust I am and to dust I will return, but I have not been cast away from God’s presence. The Lord has promised salvation. He builds the walls and does good to Zion. We are a people held in His palm, in His memory. The restoration first seen in Christ, is then displayed in this collection of remembered and reformed dust. The Lord remembers his dust.

Luke 14:1 – 17:10 in my reading is one long extended teaching on being a disciple. The text for this sermon is the summary or conclusion of that section. I drew that boundary because in Luke 17:11 Jesus is no longer ping-ponging back and forth between disciples and Pharisees, but he . . . → Read More: The Disciple’s Life of Repentance]]>

Full Text
Text: Luke 17:1-10

Luke 14:1 – 17:10 in my reading is one long extended teaching on being a disciple. The text for this sermon is the summary or conclusion of that section. I drew that boundary because in Luke 17:11 Jesus is no longer ping-ponging back and forth between disciples and Pharisees, but he is back on the road to Jerusalem. The entire Jerusalem road narrative is about discipleship, but this inner part has been more intense. It has been much more about how the disciple acts while Jesus is not present here and now.

The focus on being a disciple gives the section a heavy law feeling and it does end with millstones and the blunt saying about being an unworthy servant. But it is right there where the gospel enters. Of course that is how we would act. If we had a field slave and he came in we’d tell him to go clean up and make dinner. But that is not how God acts. In Christ – God serves the dinner and washes the feet. The unworthy slave is told to sit, eat, drink, rest…while the worthy son is crucified.

It is just that love for the unworthy slave that should inspire the life of repentance. We no longer have to look pious. We are not part of a religious club where membership depends upon our status or appearance. We have been seated at the table. We repent not because it atones for sin or gives us any merit. We repent because we desire to be closer to the heart and mission of the God who loved us first. We repent as a plea – Lord come quickly and finish what you started.

Here is the simple Christian answer. We have done something terribly wrong and its fouled up this entire existence. To our relative way of thinking our petty sins aren’t that bad. But to the absolute standard of holiness. . . . → Read More: Suffering & A “Good” God]]>

This link has a Sullivan reader giving his logic on why suffering should lead to atheism.

Here is the simple Christian answer. We have done something terribly wrong and its fouled up this entire existence. To our relative way of thinking our petty sins aren’t that bad. But to the absolute standard of holiness. We don’t measure up; and never can. The whole world groans under that weight. And some people get it worse than others. And that s*cks. The Father knows that. Knowing that he didn’t wash his hands of it. He sent His son into it. And this s*cky world did to him what it does to everybody. It kills everybody. This existence places all of us under the cross. A cross that God did not dodge. He promises not the perfection of this world, but the recreation. Everything under the cross heads to the fire. But starting with His son, and following through with all those found in Christ, we long for that new creation.

Time is lived under the cross. Eternity in the resurrection.

Claiming that you haven’t done that much bad is just a way of saying, I’m not really a sinner. Grace begins at repentance.

I’ll just say I hated the text this week. It was harsh and rough, and I couldn’t escape it. Everything I read to prepare for preaching just lead deeper into the heart of repentance. Everything lead to heart rending stories. A better preacher would have been more winsome. Me, . . . → Read More: Deep Lent]]>

Full Text

I’ll just say I hated the text this week. It was harsh and rough, and I couldn’t escape it. Everything I read to prepare for preaching just lead deeper into the heart of repentance. Everything lead to heart rending stories. A better preacher would have been more winsome. Me, all I’ve got is a little logic and I’m too stupid to dial it back a bit and too slow to dodge. I hope and pray that the Spirit used this better than the words said.

Sermon Text: Mark 5:21-43

In this sermon I did something that probably would have received low marks from seminary profs. I probably strayed too far into allegorizing the text for the application. That is part of the reason why the opening includes the remarks that the reading might be idiosyncratic. It probably comes . . . → Read More: Sermon – “Daughter…” – Mark 5:21-43]]>

Full Text

Sermon Text: Mark 5:21-43

In this sermon I did something that probably would have received low marks from seminary profs. I probably strayed too far into allegorizing the text for the application. That is part of the reason why the opening includes the remarks that the reading might be idiosyncratic. It probably comes from studying Hebrews in Bible Class which contains an extended allegory on Melchizedek, an obscure OT figure. A full allegory has four levels of meaning: Literal, Christological, Moral and Mystical. It is not that an allegory can’t be true, but that modern textual methodology calls it a foul ball. What one person sees in an allegory might not be universally applicable. An allegory can be too cute for its own good. The other side of the balance sheet is that the church for 1200+ years primarily read the scriptures as allegory. Only with the advent of the pre-modern university did a heavily literal approach start to take priority. It can be said that the reformation was really and argument over which level of allegory was the most important. The Reformers argued for the Literal and the Christological while the late medieval Catholics emphasized the mystical and then the moral. (And that paragraph is one that could be picked apart to death as to those who really study this stuff that is really superficial to the point of being wrong. Forgive me the brevity.)

When reading a text, and in preaching on a text, those levels of meaning are still important. You can talk about a moral meaning from a text without necessarily allegorizing. The literal events of this text were the faith of a woman in the power of Jesus to heal, and a demonstration of that power even over death. To transfer that text to modern day you would emphasize the power of Christ in the the people who live by faith. I still did that, but in a way that makes the literal meaning of the text receed into the background.

A contrast is established between Jairus who approaches Jesus from the front and the unnamed woman who approaches from behind. I tried to set us or most moderns up as Jairus – the respectable churchman who approaches Jesus desperate but asking for a favor. The flip is that Jesus calls the low status unnamed woman daughter. While we might associate with Jairus, salvation, peace and health are in approaching Jesus like this woman – in fear and telling the whole truth. [Think confession and absolution.] Jairus and the disciples are amazed at the power of Jesus, but it is the woman who is called daughter. In fact it takes a miracle of Jesus – a raising of the dead – to convert us from thinking of ourselves a Jairus (fundametally respectable and ok asking for a favor) to thinking of ourselves as the woman (bloody and unclean with sin). And when Jesus does raise us from the dead, we must be fed with the Word of God. See what I did, certain elements of the story like how a person approached, physical attributes or physical needs are read as symbolic. If you agree with my symbolic readings it makes sense, but you might just as easily think I’ve gone off the deep end.

All that said, I think the sermon conveys truth. I would defend its textuality on the basis of the words and events narrated and how the church has matrixed those words and events through time. Being called a child/daughter by God is the result of accepting the Gospel which follows repentance. True repentance is the work of God in us – a raising of the dead. It is the poor that are blessed with the Kingdom of Heaven. The church has consistenly talked about sin as a disease. This was not an academic’s sermon, but I think it might be closer to the way actual people think.