Defending the faith

Galatians 1:11-24 (NRSV)

For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

 You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, ‘The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they glorified God because of me.

Have you ever had to defend your faith?  I imagine for Paul it was an uphill battle. The baggage he brought into his apostleship was weighty.  It was understandable why the other apostles (formerly Jesus' disciples) weren't ready to accept him with open arms.  Paul accepts this and confesses this. "I was violently persecuting the church of God and trying to destroy it."  And while even with that confession, it took distance and time for the apostles to welcome him with open arms, they eventually did.

Preparing for my call as a rostered leader sometimes had the same feel.  Like Paul it was a lengthy process, and there was time, distance, and defense of my faith that was required, as it is for all who enter ordained, consecrated, or commissioned ministry in the ELCA.  

But as members of the body of Christ, our access to God through church and faith and hope is not limited by any interview or defense of our faith.  We are welcome.  Through baptism we are made members of the family of God and our inheritance is sealed by the Holy Spirit.

And yet even if not baptized, the doors of the church are meant to fling wide open for all: outsiders, the broken, the searching, the hurting, the hopeful, and the sinful.  Defense of faith is not required.

I'm not sure this view of church is one that the wider world believes in or sees as authentic.  When I hear church spoken of in public forums, this isn't the church that they recognize.

But it is the one that Paul zealously turned from condemnation of to defense and proclamation of.

Some will come into our church without the heritage we have been able to claim though our baptism.  Let us always open the doors wide and let them in so that they can receive a foretaste of the promise for themselves.

God of promise, remind us that the church is yours, not ours.  And help us to proclaim our faith in you by welcoming all who seek you. Amen.

New Wineskins

Matthew 9:14-17 (NRSV)

Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."

In the past I tended to look at this text in an individualistic and personal way, and in some respects that's not completely wrong.  As a motto for life, it falls somewhere near the one I was taught:  "if you do what you always do, you get what you always get."  God is making me a new creation and that's going to involve changes - not always comfortable - or new as the old me becomes the new me.

But I don't really think that's what Jesus is really getting at here.  As I've talked about before, Jesus is all about community and relationship, and as he's talking here to the Pharisees, it isn't a stretch to guess who the old wine skins are.

Jesus is coming to do a new thing.  He's proclaiming the Kingdom of God and that means that structures, identities, ways of working together, and group life is going to change.  The binding that the Pharisees were so tightly trying to use to hold onto the people wasn't working anymore for God's kingdom.  It was time for a new container.

What does that say about our churches?  For one thing, I think it says that they are important.  Structure, the very building itself, as well as the committees, teams, and ministries that gather the community and promote the kingdom in the world are important.

But what's truly key is what that structure contains.  With the help of the Holy Spirit, we contain the work of God's kingdom.  The purpose of the wineskin is to be strong enough to make sure the work is done, proclaimed and able to go out into the broken world.  In that respect, it's important and needs our vigilance.

But two problems can arise.  First, we can put more energy into the maintaining of the structure that we forget what it is for.  And second, we can put so much energy into the maintaining of the structure, that we miss when it needs to be tossed out all together and a new structure needed.

The work of the kingdom is not static, and that in the end is the reply to that statement all churches have made at some point or another when things begin to change and get uncomfortable:  "We've never never done it that way before!"

Change is not for change's sake.  But when, as Bob Dylan sings, "the times they are a'changin," it might be good to look at whether our wineskins are up to the task at hand.

Gracious God: grant us the serenity to accept the things that we can not change, courage to change the things we must, and wisdom to know the difference.  Amen.

The Suffering Servant

Isaiah 53:1-12 (NRSV)

Who has believed what we have heard?
   And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
   and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
   nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 
He was despised and rejected by others;
   a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
   he was despised, and we held him of no account. 

Surely he has borne our infirmities
   and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
   struck down by God, and afflicted. 
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
   crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
   and by his bruises we are healed. 
All we like sheep have gone astray;
   we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
   the iniquity of us all. 

As Christians, this passage from Isaiah is one we are familiar with from Holy Week. The Man of Sorrows, or the Suffering Servant, seems as clear a indicator of Jesus as we can come up with.

In Judiasm, the Man of Sorrows is Israel itself, as a nation that suffered unspeakable pain through captivity and exile and humiliation.  And as Isaiah is a prophetic text, it is easy to see how even modern Jews can read into it the further suffering of the Jews that came even after the exile: suffering under ancient Greece and Rome, the destruction of the temple, persecutions in the Middle ages in Europe and Nazi Germany.

Does this reading take away from our Christian understanding?  I don't think so.

More than anything, all of Scripture - the Bible - is a book of faith.  We can not project ourselves into the minds and hearts of those who wrote it, nor can we force only our reading onto it.  Instead, as a book of faith, scripture opens our minds and hearts into relationship with God.  One of the problems for me with a so-called literal interpretation of the Bible is its ignoring just how scripture works on different hearts and minds to build relationship between God and God's people.

This passage has helped me to understand Jesus and the suffering of the cross more than some other passages.  That it was perhaps written initially about Israel primarily does not take away from that.  Jesus was the suffering servant and in this passage is everything we need to point to him as such.  That my Jewish friends and neighbors find comfort in it in another way does not diminish that. 

Both of us through it are brought into deeper relationship with God as a result of Isaiah's words of faith.

God of ages, thank you for the gift of your word, both your word in the pages of scripture and your Holy Word in the form of our savior.  Let us remember that your word binds, heals, connects, builds and carries throughout the centuries to bring us into everlasting relationship with you. Amen

Passover

Exodus 12:1-13, 21-28 (NRSV) The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the LORD. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go, select lambs for your families, and slaughter the passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood in the basin. None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning. For the LORD will pass through to strike down the Egyptians; when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over that door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down. You shall observe this rite as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. When you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this observance?' you shall say, 'It is the passover sacrifice to the LORD, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.'" And the people bowed down and worshiped. The Israelites went and did just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron.  The day after John the Baptist calls Jesus "The Lamb of God" in the gospel reading, this is the text we get for the day.  This is what happens to the lamb of God. The Passover story has always been one that has sparked my imagination more than many others in scripture.  I can remember as a kid being invited to the Seder at one of my father's co-workers at Passover.  Everything about the prayers and the meal enthralled me.  I wondered then why we didn't get to celebrate it and felt a bit of envy that kids sometimes get when they feel like they are missing out on something. Yet in every real way as Christians we aren't missing out.  The connections between Passover and Holy Week/Easter have been made over and over.  The blood of our Lamb and the salvation through the cross are our new Passover.  (I never really noticed before that even the markings on the door of the Israelites has a cross like shape). Death holds no sway any longer. Making connections between Old and New Testament stories (and specifically their symbols) has never been my strong suit. It was always the personal element of the stories that grabbed me. And nothing could be more personal than our Lamb of God.  "This is the Lamb of God," John the Baptist says, and in that phrase there are many possible meanings. Lambs were symbolic in many ways.  The passover story gives us one powerful one. But our Lamb, regardless of why John called him that, from that moment on made everything personal.  He connected with outsiders personally.  He took on suffering personally.  He loved and loves us personally. I still love the Passover story and sometimes wish we had the deep, personal and communal connections that the Seder meal offers our Jewish sisters and brothers.  But we have our Passover lamb.  And everything about him is personal and communal. Lamb of God, you love and save us daily.  Thank you.  Amen.

Moments

Psalm 40:1-11 (NRSV)

I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.

He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.

Happy are those who make
the Lord their trust,
who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.

You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you.
Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted.

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required.

Then I said, “Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me.

I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation;
see, I have not restrained my lips,
as you know, O Lord.

I have not hidden your saving help within my heart,
I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;
I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness
from the great congregation. 

Do not, O Lord, withhold your mercy from me;
let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe forever.

Do you have a moment?  A moment where something amazing happened? A moment that changed your life and made you see God in a new way?  Opened up scriptures and love and hope for you with a power you aren’t sure still that you understand, but can totally accept?

I’ve heard great stories from many people about those moments.  One of my favorites is from Dr. Timothy Wengert (who I realize I quoted yesterday, and I imagine I’ll quote again…) who tells of how his mother, after spending time with her pastor for instruction, walked to her bus one day after her session, turned on her heel and went back to her pastor to exclaim, “Pastor!  Jesus died for me!” as the realization struck her.

It’s a blessing and a gift when we get a moment like that.  Sometimes for some folks, that moment happens in a great book or song or other piece of art or literature.  Something that makes them see or notice something in God that they’d never noticed before.

My something is Psalm 40 – or more precisely, the song, “40,” by U2.  I’ll talk in more detail in my sermon on Sunday about its affect on me, but suffice it to say that when I read the words of this Psalm now, the music swells in me and God feels oh-so-very-near. 

It’s a moment that was so important to me that I capture and remember, that not long after my commissioning as an Associate in Ministry in the Lutheran Church, I had the number ‘40’ tattooed on my right forearm.  It’s a constant reminder to me that God has set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure and putting a new song in my mouth.  A song of hope. 

God of hope, thank you for the moments, the music, the people you put in our lives that help us to see you more clearly. Amen

One Gospel

Galatians 1:6-12 (NRSV) I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! Am I now seeking human approval, or God's approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.  "If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ."   Paul knew that the business he's been called to isn't one that is always going to make him popular.  After he left Galatia, the church was led astray by other teachings, most likely those of Jewish Christians who claimed the Galatians needed to still follow Mosaic Law. There's only one gospel, says Paul.  Then and today.  There are still a lot of quick fix gospel schemes out there, ones that focus not on the saving work of the cross, but instead on practices that will make our lives better, richer, faster, stronger...whatever it is we want to be more of. But we are already more, says Paul.  We are already "justified not by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ."  Getting circumcised isn't going to save you, says Paul.  Christ already did. And as my professor Dr. Timothy Wengert says, quoting his own professor, Dr. Gerhard Forde: "What are you going to do now that you don't have to do anything?"   The Gospel perhaps doesn't always win popularity contests because of its breadth and wideness.  The brokenness that is healed and forgiven in me is also forgiven in you. It's also forgiven in the neighbor you aren't especially fond of or the group of people that intimidate me.   The freedom of the gospel frees us to become the new creation God intends for us to be.  Without hesitation God claims us before we can decide.  Loves us before we love back.  Makes strong our weakness.  Uses our suffering as healing.   It's that simple.  It's that complex. Getting circumcised isn't going to save you.  Following the right steps or praying the right way isn't going to save you.  Worshiping the right way or singing the right hymns isn't going to save you. Christ already did. So, what are you going to do now that you don't have to do anything? Good and gracious God, you have made me.  You have claimed me and I am yours.  Let me never forget that claim or ever discount the claim you have made on my neighbor as well.  Help me to love them as fiercely as you love them.  Amen.

Words of the prophet

Isaiah 51:7-16 (NRSV)

Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people who have my teaching in your hearts;
 do not fear the reproach of others,
and do not be dismayed when they revile you. 
For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool;
but my deliverance will be for ever, and my salvation to all generations.


Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord!
Awake, as in days of old,
the generations of long ago!
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces,
who pierced the dragon? 
Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep;
who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over? 
So the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
 they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.


I, I am he who comforts you; why then are you afraid of a mere mortal who must die, a human being who fades like grass? 
You have forgotten the Lord, your Maker,
who stretched out the heavens
   and laid the foundations of the earth.
You fear continually all day long
because of the fury of the oppressor,
who is bent on destruction.
But where is the fury of the oppressor? 
The oppressed shall speedily be released;
they shall not die and go down to the Pit, nor shall they lack bread. 
For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar - the Lord of hosts is his name. 
I have put my words in your mouth, and hidden you in the shadow of my hand,
stretching out the heavens
and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’

When I started doing this devotional piece for my blog, I used whatever reading the ELCA emailed out as their reading of the day.  But lately, partly because of my schedule and partly because I wanted to think more about what reading to do, I’ve been choosing myself from one of the three lectionary texts assigned for the day.  It gives me a bit more time to think about it, and I hope make it more relevant. Today is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s actual birthday, and the day the Lutheran Church commemorates King.  Isaiah seemed to me a fitting reading for that.

I was recently at a gathering where we discussed who our modern prophets were.  The facilitator of the conversation was looking for current ones, but more than one in the group said MLK, and really, has there been a one such as him since?  I don’t think so.

It’s funny because we ask for prophets but when we have them we seem to either disavow them or kill them.  Although Isaiah’s death is not recorded in Hebrew Scriptures, tradition has it that he himself was martyred, sawn in half.

We may not have prophets today of the stature of Isaiah or Jeremiah or MLK, but they exist.  I’ve seen them in congregations and in the world – truth tellers who tell things as they are and how they will be if we continue on a path.  Not necessarily what we want to hear a lot of the time.   It’s a sticky wicket in the United States.  We don’t want our politics and our religion mixed, not in church and not out of church.

But where would things have been had MLK and Isaiah not mixed politics with religion? 

Of course, the mixing of politics with faith inevitably leads to “what” politics and “whose” politics, so it isn’t always easy to discern when “truth” is told in context of religion whether we are hearing prophesy or ideology.

But another prophet helps us here.  Micah 6:8 serves as a great reminder: What does the Lord require of us but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God?

I’m thankful for the witness and prophetic wisdom today of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who took these words to heart.  And I hope that when I hear prophetic words of wisdom that show the heart of Micah's call, that I will recognize them!

Lord of all, you send us prophets and we ignore them or kill them.  But you don't give up on us.  You keep sending them so that we may hear your truth and your truth may set us free.  Thank you.  Help us to recognize those words of truth when we hear them.  Amen