The Church as Bride of Christ

In biblical times, wedding customs differed somewhat from what they are in our culture, but not so much that we cannot relate to the language Scripture uses. It would help if we were as familiar with arranged marriages as some of our Christian brothers and sisters are in other cultures, such as in Central Asia. But since we probably aren't, let's just review a few things.

A marriage contract in biblical times was signed by the parents of the bride and the groom and the parents of the groom (or the groom himself) would pay a dowry to the bride or her parents. This began what was called the betrothal period—what we would today call the engagement. This period was the one Joseph and Mary were in when she was found to be with child (Matthew 1:18; Luke 2:5).

Arranged marriages were regarded as very sensible on several levels. Parents of both parties involved would take great care to ensure that there was the strongest possible support structure for the marriage, common world-views, shared cultural and religious backgrounds, and many other things that would serve to make for a strong marriage – things that many today neglect in favour of weaker grounds for marriage, with consequent bad results that are all around us.

One of the reasons why traditional marriage is being abandoned by so many today is the high rate of divorce in our culture. The more marriages fail, the more people despair of the institution of marriage itself, but that is a different subject.

The biblical understanding of what marriage is goes together with the biblical ideal of a bride. A woman who was betrothed to a man in a first marriage was to be someone who had never been united sexually to any man. In a similar way, her union with her husband would be as his only woman. She would be uniquely his - until their marriage ended in the death of either one of them.

You might be thinking at this point – ah! But what about polygamy in the Bible. Yes. It is true some men in the Bible did have more than one wife, but the Bride in each case was held to a separate standard. No biblical women could have more than one husband at a time. In that way there would never be any doubt as to the paternity of any children she might have.

Women might think that this arrangement was unbalanced, but remember – in those days, long before DNA-based paternity tests, only such an arrangement for brides would ensure that the Messiah would be born in fulfillment of God's promise that He would be a descendant of Abraham. In any other arrangement a child's ancestry would be in doubt making it impossible to prove that God had kept His promise.

So the imagery of purity and consecration were part of the character of a Bride and therefore useful as a depiction of the Church to readers of the Bible.

But, hang on, you may be saying; how can the Church be a pure and consecrated virgin to God when the Church is made up of sinners like you and me? This is where today's second reading comes in. St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, 'Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish'.

You and I, by our sins, are indeed not qualified to be a bride dressed in white and worthy of being presented to a holy and righteous God as His beloved, are we? If God were to describe us sinners in a song that depicted us in all our corruption, covered in the iniquity that besmirches our faces, the song would sound quite different from what we heard this evening in the first reading (!)

They say, 'love is blind', but God would have to be deaf, blind and stupid not to see how unworthy we are of any association with Him. As Isaiah wrote, '(God's ears are not dull that He cannot hear)... your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear.3For your hands are defiled with blood
and your fingers with iniquity;
your lips have spoken lies;
your tongue mutters wickedness.4No one enters suit justly;
no one goes to law honestly;
they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies,
they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.5They hatch adders’ eggs;
they weave the spider’s web;
he who eats their eggs dies,
and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched.6Their webs will not serve as clothing;
men will not cover themselves with what they make.
Their works are works of iniquity,
and deeds of violence are in their hands.7Their feet run to evil,
and they are swift to shed innocent blood;
their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
desolation and destruction are in their highways.8The way of peace they do not know,
and there is no justice in their paths;
they have made their roads crooked;
no one who treads on them knows peace.

So how can God stand to be anywhere near us? Only through Jesus Christ! He, as our Redeemer, has made us His worthy bride. 'Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish'.

This is how God demonstrate His love for us. Not by waiting for us to be His holy bride by our works or waiting for us to somehow atone for our sins and cleanse ourselves from all our unrighteousness. No. Remember, my friend, we are talking about an arranged marriage and God our Father made this arrangement.

In the words of Luther: 'God beheld our wretched state before the world's foundation, and mindful of His mercies great, He planned for our salvation. He turned to us a father's heart; He did not choose the easy part but gave His dearest treasure. God said to His beloved Son: 'It's time to have compassion. Then go, bright jewel of My crown, and bring to all salvation. From sin and sorrow set them free; slay bitter death for them that they may live with you forever'. 'The Son obeyed His Father's will, was born of virgin mother; and God's good pleasure to fulfill, He came to be my brother' (or, to return to the marriage metaphor – my bridegroom).

This was the arranged marriage. 'while we were yet sinners Christ died for us' (Rom. 5.8). First He took on human flesh and blood as man. Then, to make the only successful atonement for human sin, He shed His human, yet holy blood and sacrificed Himself for human salvation. And then, to give us certainty that we are saved as individuals, He gave us the 'water and the word' of the Sacrament of Baptism.

In that washing of renewal, my friends, we are truly made new before God. We can enter into the presence of God, in a white wedding gown as a worthy Bride – but only because God Himself, in His grace and mercy for Christ's sake, has made us worthy to wear white. Just as He has done for those who are with Him in Heaven now, who have 'come out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb' (Rev. 7.14).

'Hasten, as a bride to meet Him, and with loving rev'rence greet Him. For with words of life immortal He is knocking at your portal. Open wide the gates before Him, Saying, as you there adore Him; Grant, Lord, that I now receive You, that I nevermore will leave You'.* Amen.

*Schmuke dich, o liebe Seele (LSB 636) stanza 2.

Pleasure - a Christian approach

'...but she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth'  (1 Timothy 5.6)

Christians, historically, have had a reputation for looking with disdain at pleasure.  But, is it really true that the orthodox Christian teaching is that all pleasure is sin?   No.  What has been the consistent teaching of Christians on this subject is that pleasure, particularly physical pleasure (and, to a certain extent spiritual pleasure), is that there are dangers involved in the experience.

There is a difference between recognising the hazards of pleasure and condemning pleasure. If Christian teaching was that pleasure was sinful, then we would be taught to feel guilty about it.  But that is not taught.  What is taught is that Christians should beware of the spiritual dangers involved when we feel pleasure.  For every Christian's 'old nature' can and does exploit pleasure to strengthen itself at the expense of our 'new nature'.  Even spiritual pleasure can be risky, since the sinful nature will take times when such pleasure is absent to build a case against the new nature as a 'buzz kill' and a joyless waste of time that could have been spent in 'dissipation and drunkenness'.

But the dangers of physical pleasure to the soul are more common.  In the developed world today, more physical pleasure is available than ever before.  Thus today's Christian should treat pleasure with even more caution than ever before.  If we don't then the current deplorable situation we see today among Christians will be the story of our personal life.   According to a recent survey, 50% of Christian men (and 20% of Christian women) are addicted to pornography (!) No wonder Christian divorce rates are the same, or higher, than the divorce rate among unbelievers.  Christians are falling victim to alcoholism at an alarming rate.  Obesity, and its consequent health damage, is epidemic among Christians, far more so than among people of any other religion.  Internet and video-game addictions are robbing Christians of whole periods of their lives that they can never get back.   As St. James would put it, 'My brethren, these things ought not to be so'.

This is why Christians have historically treated pleasure as they have - because we have always had the same human tendencies to take God-given experiences of pleasure and ruin them by letting our sinful natures take over.  What St. Augustine in his writings called 'voluptuousness' is what Christians today might call 'addiction' to pleasures that make our old nature so strong and well-fed that our new natures are unnecessarily crippled as a result.

'...You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore'  (Psalm 16.11).

St. James did say, 'Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights...' (James 1.17)  Pleasure is one of those gifts.  Plenty of Scripture testifies to the fact that God has created - and Himself experiences - pleasure.  Jesus knew that people saw '...the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' (Luke 7:34).  A far larger body of devotional literature and hymns written by Christians also testifies to the positive side of pleasure.  A great Lutheran chorale has the title 'Jesus has Come and Brings Pleasure Eternal' (LSB 533 - tune: Jesus ist kommen, grund ewiger Freude).

The key to understanding the Christian view of pleasure is the distinction between Heaven and Earth. On this Earth we have pleasure - but mixed with danger.  In Heaven we shall have pleasure 'pure and free from sin's alloy' - to borrow a phrase from William Dix.  Then, in immediate and full communion with God, and His heavenly host, as Paul Gerhardt put it in his great Eastertide chorale 'Auf, Auf, Mein Herz mit Freuden!':  'He brings me to the portal that leads to bliss untold.  Whereon this rhyme immortal is found in script of gold: "who there my cross has shared, finds here a crown prepared.  Where there with Me has died shall here be glorified'.

Women 'Saved through childbearing' ?

As our dear daughter-in-law, Monica has borne a tenth grandchild for our family, my thoughts to to 1 Timothy 2.1-15 and the enigmatic phrase about women. “she will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith and love and holiness…” 

As for 'through childbearing', Lenske reminds us that the GK “dia” does not invariably mean “by means of” (“through”). It may mean “along with” (genitive of accompaniment). The “she” who is saved (given the context) is also the female sex itself, of which at least half of all Christians are members (St. Theodore of Mopsuestia says the “woman” who is “saved through childbearing” is Eve and all Christian women). 

As with all Christians, faith and love and holiness are required for a living relationship with God our Saviour. The Greek here also uses the article “the” as in “The Childbearing” that has “saved” (rehabilitated) the female sex (despite the woman being “deceived” and a “transgressor” she now is the bearer of the Christ-child. 

It is orthodox to call the Virgin Mary the “theotokos” – the “bearer” of God, whose obedience to God compensates for the disobedience of Eve. “Childbearing” includes the calling of motherhood and childrearing (Lenske) making this a very pro-life text! 

Women who bring children to baptism are living out their sanctification by applying their faith to their motherly vocation. In other words, (to paraphrase St.Paul) “A Christian woman will live out her salvation through her vocation, if in child-bearing, with faithful motherhood, characterised by love”.

The Limitations of Apologetics

This past week, many have been talking about the debate between the popular evolutionist Bill Nye and the Australian creationist, Ken Ham. As his opponent used Ham's faith in the Bible against him repeatedly, words from St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2 came to mind, My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, SO THAT YOUR FAITH MIGHT NOT REST ON MEN'S WISDOM, BUT ON GOD'S POWER'.   

With those words, St. Paul expresses something that Christian apologists should share with him, namely his embrace of the paradox that however mighty the word of God is, its use carries with it much that 'human wisdom' will consider weak and unpersuasive.

St Paul's contention is that Christian faith is not a human achievement produced by wise human reasoning, but instead a gift from God to each individual believer.  And, furthermore, to have faith is not to have been convinced by human arguments.  To have faith is to have been convinced by the mysterious power of God’s Holy Spirit, working through either his sacraments or his word.  As he put it, `This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in WORDS TAUGHT BY THE SPIRIT, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words'(vv13-14).

           

If people are tempted to wait for convincing  human arguments or convincing salesmanship to succeed with their minds before they believe, they may never believe.  And even if  convinced by a good sales pitch to become a Christian, what kind of faith would that be if it were merely another human argument?

           

The difficulty in accepting this is that, in ordinary life, we make decisions based on clever reasoning or sales pitches all the time.  Yet, St Paul did not want that kind of thing to be used to explain Christian faith.  Nor, did he want people to believe in Christ only because they bought a human argument.  He wanted them to believe because God Himself had convinced them through the power of His Word.  Only that way could God get the credit for changing people's lives.  Only that way would people credit conversion to the `power of God'.  This was St Paul's announcement to the Corinthians: That Christ had sent him to: [1Cor. 1.17] `...preach the gospel - not with words of human wisdom, LEST THE CROSS OF CHRIST BE EMPTIED OF ITS POWER'.

What St.Paul wanted his hearers to realise was that the word of God is a positive, though mysterious, force – powerful enough to work the miracle of creating and nourishing faith in the hearts of many who hear it – but not overwhelmingly convincing to every human being.

The Good News about Jesus of Nazareth, that He has made atonement for human sin by His death on a cross, and that through faith in His redeeming work, we can be forgiven and have eternal life is based on real historical events and not myth, but even writing to the generation in which the eye-witnesses were still living,  St. Paul recognised that it was - even back then - not easy for many to believe.  As he described it.  ‘Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God’  ( 1 Cor. 1.22-24).

No wonder many today find that even the most skilled debaters, such as debated last week, fail to convince everyone to believe.  It is sadly inescapable that many sinful, resistant, proud, rebellious, human hearts will not be moved by God's word and judge much of what is in the Bible to be foolish.  As Jesus Himself was described as the ‘stone the builders rejected’, so the holy scriptures are vulnerable to a similar fate.  God’s eternal and almighty Son, took on such a humble form during His earthly ministry, that He was easy to despise, so is the Bible.  

And this was not a failure on  God’s part.  It was deliberate.   Please let that statement sink in for a moment.  The aspects of biblical revelation that seem foolish are not mistakes on God’s part.  He intentionally made some Bible stories hard to believe.  As. St. Paul argues in this epistle.  ‘God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;  ²⁸ God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are…’ (1 Corinthians 1:27-28).  

Jesus once explained why He told difficult parables by quoting Isaiah 6.9-10, saying, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."  ⁹ And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant,

 ¹⁰ he said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that 'seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand'  (Mark 4.9-10).

It is significant that, as one observer noted, Jesus Christ, after His resurrection, could have gone back to Pontius Pilate and made it unmistakable that He was the victor over all, even the power of Rome, but Jesus chose not to.  Instead, the risen Christ appeared so subtly that even among His own disciples, 'some doubted' (Matthew 28.17).   

God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, but that does not mean He desires it to be easy.  It’s like a teacher in school who desires all her students to get ‘A’s and graduate with honours.  But that does not mean that that same teacher is going to make every test so easy that everyone get’s ‘A’s, nor is she going to make it impossible to fail.

In a similar way there is no contradiction between God’s desire that everyone be saved and His use of difficult things such as we find in Scripture and His love for us.

God both loves us and challenges us.  He both provides salvation for free (at His expense) and stretches us through tests of our loyalty toward Him and faith in Him.  If people fail in meeting those challenges, it is not God’s fault, but the sinner’s fault.

God does not send any test of faith that is impossible to endure.  With every temptation there is a way of escape that we might be able to be saved and to bear with things that make others abandon  God and perish.  

Sometimes we are required to honestly admit our own weaknesses before we can benefit from the strength of others.  A person faced with a great physical weakness may have a very difficult time unless he admits his weakness and looks to others who are physically stronger to help him. 

A person who is swimming in deep water with 1000 miles to go to get to land would

be foolish to refuse the help offered by a passing boat.  He would have to admit his limitations, and let himself be rescued or death by drowning would be the only outcome.

The trouble in realm of faith is that people often don't understand that their sins have placed them a 1000 miles from God.  Their guilt has spiritually bankrupt them before God.  Just being an ordinary human being places one in a most extraordinary position of weakness before God.

It is God's word, the Bible, that lights up the balance sheet and shows us the overwhelming

overdraft in our accounts.  It is God's word which lights up the waves and shows us the impossible swim that faces us without His help.

Indeed the Bible itself is the lifeline extended by God. Its message about Christ, strengthened and empowered by the Holy Spirit of God, is all we need to which to cling and we are lifted from the waves, redeemed forever and all our debts paid.

           

As S.Paul taught: `...the message of the cross is foolishness to those WHO ARE PERISHING, but TO US WHO ARE BEING SAVED IT IS THE POWER OF GOD'.  To the Romans he wrote: `I am not ashamed of the Good News about Christ, for IT IS THE POWER OF GOD TO SAVE THOSE WHO BELIEVE'  (Rom. 1.17).

St Paul's commitment to this message with Christ's work on the cross as its centre is what he meant when he said: `...I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified'.  

When we recognise this, then we too, with St Paul, will be determined to `...know nothing...except Jesus Christ and him crucified' -- not our own pride, not our feeble strength, not our sincerity, nor the overrated goodness of our hearts, not our salesmanship, debating skills or wise human arguments, not even our scientific evidence  -- BUT ONLY JESUS CHRIST!   `the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom' the Bible says.  May that reverent respect for God and His ways, be ours through faith in Christ's Jesus unto life everlasting. 

'sola scriptura' today

‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away’  (Jesus in Matthew. 24.35, Mark 13.31 and Luke 21.33)
One of our mottos as Lutherans is ‘Sola Scriptura’ (Scripture alone). This describes how we choose to limit what we regard as God’s authoritative word to the words of the Bible.   It is a position on divine revelation that requires an explanation to our friends, neighbors and family who, as never before in our lifetime, may not only fail to understand it but may even find it offensive.
The easy part is explaining that we believe to be divine revelation what we know Jesus of Nazareth believed to be God’s word.   He was crucified to redeem us from our sins and and rose again from the dead, so He is in a unique position to know!  He believed in the authority of the writings of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms and so we believe the Old Testament is God’s word—as Jesus did (Luke 24.44)  We also believe what the apostles of Christ have written to be divinely inspired, as they themselves believed (2 Peter 1.21)  Only ’Scripture’ is ’breathed out by God’ (inspired) in this way (2 Timothy 3.15).  It is easy to assert that, as Christ and His apostles did, so we believe that the Bible we hold in our hands is the most perfect thing we human beings encounter on a daily basis.
The hard part is explaining that we treat other people’s religious impulses and insights as of lesser authority.  One might think that simply pointing out that other people ’are not Jesus’ and that the apostolic witness was unique would be self evident, but not these days.   Alien to many people’s thinking today is the apostolic willingness to ‘let God be true and every man a liar’  (Romans 3.4).
Unlike people today, the apostles did not ‘believe every spirit’  (1 John 4.1).  St. Paul went so far as to say,    ‘even if we (!) or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.   As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.   For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ  (Galatians 1.8-10).
The polite thing to do today is ‘please man’.  If someone feels divinely inspired, even if their ‘gospel’ contradicts that apostolic Gospel, we are supposed to listen and make approving noises.
Yet, with every possible sensitivity to people’s spiritual intuitions and religious feelings, we choose to say ‘no thank you’ to their new twist on God, and we should do so carefully, as St. Peter teaches, when he says, ’Have no fear of them, nor be troubled,  but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame’  (1 Peter 3.13).
It is lamentable but true that, when it comes to new religious insights, ’people ruined it’ and nobody’s spirituality can now be trusted to have the same authority as the Bible.  In all humility, ’Sola Scriptura’ is simply a Lutheran ‘self-limitation’ that we reckon will do us less harm than ‘believing every spirit’ would do.   We may be wrong to limit ourselves this way, but we have been burned in the past and we have scars.  Please understand.
We can only hope that people will be polite enough to permit us to obey God rather than men and the freedom to choose between their voices.

“Life after death - proven”

The world is rightly fascinated by that growing body of testimony consistently coming from people who have been resuscitated after clinical death and lived to publish their experiences.  People who have come back from hell feel as though they have been given another chance by the grace of God.  People who have had heavenly experiences and been re-united with loved ones in paradise have said that death no longer frightens them since they have been there and done that.  Even the blind report being able to see during these experiences, some for the first time in their lives.   They say they never felt more alive than when they were ‘dead’.

Lutherans should have mixed reactions to this.  On the one hand, we rejoice that further evidence is available  (if more were needed) that God, heaven and hell are real and our souls do survive death and every human being does live forever, as the word of God teaches.  

We also rejoice that these things, formerly considered mere doctrines, have now been proven scientifically, since vivid experiences had by souls cannot be explained away as ‘brain activity’ when a brain has been disabled.  So writes renowned Harvard professor of brain surgery, Dr. Eban Alexander, in his best-selling book, ‘Proof of Heaven’ – having himself been a disembodied soul, his body comatose with meningitis for seven whole days.  

On the other hand, we should not take people’s experiences as anything more than ‘tours’ of the afterlife given to their souls by forces beyond their control.  Because they vary so much from person to person, little ‘objective’ data about the afterlife has accumulated as a result of these ‘tours’.

Some of these souls – particularly unbelievers - may even have been deceived during their time away from the body, much as they are deceived whilst in the body into false belief and doctrines of demons.   Testimonies from disembodied souls that contradict the Bible cannot be trusted since ‘God…does not lie’ (Titus 1.2)

Believers know that God will not let any souls ‘blow His cover’ or see what He does not want them to see.   Speaking of himself, St. Paul wrote, ‘I know that this man was caught up into paradise - whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows - and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter’. (2 Corinthians 12:3-4).  

We mortals cannot survive even clinical death without God’s permission.  Although an amazing resuscitation suggests that, with modern medical technology, we can give ourselves ‘second chances’, we really can’t.   Many resuscitations fail, and those that succeed only succeed with God’s help and approval.   

Meanwhile, we may say with St. Paul, ‘If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.  I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better’  (Philippians 1:22-23).

'Speaking of Life...'

As our nation’s president begins his second term and a new congress moves forward into 2013, pro-life Christians contemplate this year the 40th anniversary of the legalization of abortion, the supreme court decision known as ‘Roe v Wade’.

 As we lament a decision that has resulted in the tragic loss of over fifty-five million lives, our grief is further compounded by the facts that legislation overturning Roe v Wade seems less likely than ever and our tax dollars will be funding these killings more than ever - with no escape in sight. A real-time counter showing the world-wide tally of aborted children growing by the minute at www.numberofabortions.com

 “What can we do?” is the question. Yet we should not ask that question in despair. For the answer to that question has remained the same since the beginnings of Christianity in Roman times. We are to ‘speak the truth in love’, as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians (Eph 4.15) and we are to ‘speak truth to power’ - an American tradition going back to the revolution that launched this nation.

 Even if we are not able to legislate the culture of life that we embrace, we can and must still preach it. We must speak of life, and let the Church of Christ prevail against the gates of hell rather than the other way round (Matthew 16.8).

 We should also note that abortion is on the retreat as a choice, despite all its political support. The latest report from the Center for Disease Control shows that abortions declined by 41,057 compared to last year, a one-year drop of nearly 5%, the largest drop recorded by the CDC in more than ten years. Moreover the report documents abortion rates and abortion ratios lower than any seen since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.

According to CBS news, ‘The CDC says that “multiple factors are known to influence the incidence of abortion” and goes on to list several: the supply of abortionists, pro-life laws such as waiting periods, parental involvement, increased acceptance of non-marital childbearing, population shifts, the economy, and factors such as contraception impacting fertility’.

We need not give up, but should continue to speak up and speak out as people who know the true freedom from death that comes from faith in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As the secular culture promotes its culture of death, we owe it to our neighbors to to promote our culture of life; not aiming to force Christian morality on them by law, but offering our neighbor a faithful and blessed alternative to death. We can remind our neighbor that there is love and support to be found in God that provides them with a ‘choice’ they may never have considered.

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The Joy of Faith Exercised

'Surprised by Joy' is the title of one of C.S.Lewis' books in which he describes how his faith was exercised by the death of his wife, Joy.

Joy is not something that people naturally expect to be associated with suffering.  For Christians, however, it is different; because, when suffering affects believers, there is, in the midst of it all an exercise of faith.  And there is joy in that exertion.  It is a bitter-sweet joy, but it is a joy nevertheless.  Perhaps it is a joy that only believers can know.  It is the profession of the faithful that, if we feel joy in the midst of pain, it is because '...the extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us’ (2 Corinthians 4.7).

The apostle St.Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians contains great wisdom for us as we ‘groan’ over the troubles of life. He knew all about troubles! He writes, ‘We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body’.

In these times of ease and convenience we don’t like hardship. When difficulties present themselves, rather than rise to the occasion as believers, we act like spoiled children who cannot put things in perspective and fall to pieces rather that react like people who trust God.

In our affluent world we are particularly vulnerable to reacting badly to hardship. We are challenged by the example of St. Paul, who saw hardship as part and parcel of life on earth. The outward circumstances of life in which ‘stuff happens’ combined with his own physical limitations did not deter him from praising God and seeing a divine purpose working itself out in his life, nevertheless.

‘We have this treasure in clay jars, so that the extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us’, he wrote. The weaker he felt, the more the apostle saw the strength of God and His grace being sufficient and, indeed ‘perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor. 12.9). So what, if God said no to his prayers, that the ‘thorn in his flesh’ be taken away?  He would live with it, if that was God’s will, and even ‘rejoice’ at the exercise of faith that was involved.

He offers us comfort when he writes, ‘though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands’ (2 Cor. 4.16-5.1).

Deferred glory and deferred comfort was worth celebrating for St. Paul and should be for us, too. We fix our eyes on the glory that awaits us beyond this life, just as Jesus fixed His eyes on the accomplishment of our redemption. ‘For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross’ (Heb. 12.2).

After all, we are all beneficiaries of the suffering of Jesus that accomplished the forgiveness of all our sin and opened the kingdom of Heaven to all believers.

As Christ is risen and has re-assumed His glory, so He promises that He goes to prepare a place for us who trust in Him, in a glorious world to come.

‘Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling’, and God expects us to be ok with that. The glory is coming.

The Box

Just before my birthday this year, I came home to find a box sitting on a ledge on one side of the front porch.  It contained some presents from my parents and they had written a smiley face on every side of the box.  As I picked it off the ledge to bring into the house, the thought occurred to me; this box could easily have fallen off the ledge and perhaps never been found.  It could have languished outside, smiley faces and all, and its intended purpose would have been in vain.  How sad that would have been!

But because I brought it inside, it was safe and my parents hopes for it were realized when I opened it up and cherished its contents.  I should also add that I kept the box, too, as a reminder of the hopes that God our heavenly Father has that we will benefit from the gift that He has given us in the form of the forgiveness of our sins and the ongoing communion with Him that is the supreme ‘gift that keeps on giving’.

Sadly, however, many today, who have also been redeemed by the blood of God’s Son, so that they could enjoy the gift of everlasting fellowship with Him,  leave this gift neglected outside of their lives like that gift box left outside of my home.   They may have noticed it in passing, but thought to themselves that they would deal with it at some later date.  They leave God’s gift outside,  in all weathers, ignoring His hopes, His smiles, and risking the loss of that gift altogether when the time comes when it is too late to retrieve it from its precarious position on a ledge somewhere outside of their lives.  ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’, Jesus says to all whom He has redeemed  (Rev. 3.20).  

God’s gift of fellowship with Him, Communion and Participation in His life is not a one-time thing, like a box that we open once and then discard.   Partaking of eternal life is something that God is ever-hopeful that we will continue to do throughout our earthly lives and forever after.  In that way we will not only be ‘saved’, but safe.

By all means, ‘open the box’, but do not throw away the box.  Yes, you have been ‘saved’ by God, but you must take steps to keep the faith that God has given you by His grace.  He has called and enlightened you, just as Luther says ‘he called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith; in which Christian Church He forgives daily and richly all sins to me and all believers, and at the last day will raise up me and all the dead, and will give to me and to all believers in Christ everlasting life. This is most certainly true’.

And that which keeps us all in the one true faith is participation, fellowship (koinonia) with God that comes with a living connection to the life of Christ, by His word, His sacraments and His Church.   The Church is the context in which God ‘forgives daily and richly all sins’.   ‘Be all be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure’,  writes St. Peter  (2 Peter 1.10).  Don’t leave the box on the porch.  Take it in to your life for only then will you fully enjoy its contents and only in ongoing fellowship with God will His hopes and investment in you be realized.

'the Resurrection of the Body'

Easter is a time when we marvel at the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  One of the most reliably documented and established facts of history, the miracle of life returning to the crucified, dead and buried body of Jesus is not just an astonishing phenomenon in itself, but a source of great comfort to all believers.   This is because of the connection between Jesus’ bodily resurrection and our own.

‘Because I live, you will live also’, Jesus promised (John 14.19).  And His apostle, St. Paul, in his writings explains how this affects us, even after physical death.
Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul said, ‘in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ’  (1 Corinthians 15.20-23).

By calling the resurrection of Jesus the firstfruit of our resurrection, St. Paul taught that since the bodily resurrection of Jesus took place we can expect our own bodily resurrection to follow, for we belong to Him.  The term firstfruit refers to the Old Testament practice of offering to God the ‘firstfruit’ of their crops, a sheaf of grain to represent and anticipate the rest of the harvest (Leviticus 23:9-14).

Referring to the sacrament of baptism, that unites all believers to Jesus, St. Paul’s assertion was this:  ‘For if (through baptism) we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his’ (Romans 6:5).

St. John’s reasoning is similar: ‘Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is’  (1 John 3.2).

In the Apostles’ Creed, when we confess our faith ‘in the resurrection of the body’, it is the belief in the future of our own bodies to which we refer.
This resurrection of (every)body is promised on the last Day – the Judgment Day.  Both those who are banished to hell on that day and those who will spend eternity in Heaven receive their bodies back.  Although their bodies may have been reduced to dust after centuries of decomposition, the Bible says,  ‘those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt’  (Daniel 12.2).

A resurrection of human bodies is not, strictly speaking, necessary.  God’s angels have a complete existence without bodies.  Also, in Luke 16,  Jesus revealed that the souls of the dead even have sensations without bodies. Nevertheless, a bodily existence is what God designed human beings to have, and have them we shall.

If the judgment Day occurs during our earthly lives we will not need a bodily resurrection, but we will need to be changed and God will change us to be like the resurrected Jesus. ‘Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,  in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’.

The Thrill of Participation

Probably second only to the sadness of unrequited love is the depressing feeling of being left out of a pleasurable shared experience.  Others get to enjoy it – you are left out;  what could be worse than that!  It is a kind of ‘Hell on earth’ to miss out in that way. Contrast that difference between the sadness of being excluded and the thrill of full participation in something wonderful and you will have touched upon a key insight in Christian belief.

God’s Word describes some ‘entering into the joy of your Lord’ and others being ‘cast into outer darkness… (where) there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matt. 25.23-30), This applies to more than the end of the world or Judgement Day.  It also describes the difference between participating in the life of the Body of Christ and not participating.

By the ‘thrill of participation’, I do not refer to merely attending church activities – even the Divine Service.  People can attend things, but still be left out of the true benefit of the activity.  True ‘participation’ has to do with the original meaning of the word.  ‘Participation’ is but one of several shades of meaning of the single Greek word: Koinonia.  Other meanings of that word are ‘sharing’, ‘fellowship’ and ‘communion’.

The thrill of Koinonia belongs to those who, not only show up and ‘walk’ with other people, but who – above all - walk with the Lord in repentance and in favour with God and men. ‘…if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin’  (1 John 1.7).

Talk to sportsmen and they will make a distinction between simply being ‘in the game’ and being ‘in the zone’!  Being in the zone means ‘You have total focus. Your performance is effortless. You are in synch within yourself, and you display total dominance in whatever you are pursuing’.   There is nothing hypocritical, superficial or perfunctory about being ‘in the zone’.  And the result is thrilling.

That is what God intends Communion to be.  Fellowship with Him is supposed to be full integration into His life.  Those who are ‘double-minded’ - who try to ‘serve both God and Mammon’; for example, will not know the thrill of participation.  They may show up, but their spiritual walk will be hindered by the weight of un-repented sin.  Far better to ‘lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,  looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith’  (Hebrews 12.1-2),

Being in Communion starts with ‘going to Communion’, but does not end there with the forgiveness of sin.  ‘How can we who died to sin still live in it?’  (Romans 6:2).  No, communion does not end with God’s forgiveness; it BEGINS with God’s forgiveness.  It continues with a discipline to forsake sin and follow Christ who leads us in ‘the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake’ (Psalm 23).

‘Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.   For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved’  (2 Corinthians 2:14-15).

Remember the comparison I make between the Christian life and soaring in a glider.  Don’t let divided loyalty to God force you to hit the ground.  Remain aloft by His grace.  Live every moment ‘prayerfully’.  ‘Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works (Hebrews 10:22-24).  Taste the thrill of full participation, full communion and koinonia and you will not look back.

Taking your meds?

Anti-rejection drugs are daily medications taken by organ transplant patients to prevent organ rejection. Such drugs, also called immunosuppressants, help to suppress the immune system's response to a new organ. When a new organ is placed inside a patient's body, the patient's immune system recognizes the organ as foreign tissue and tries to reject it.

A similar thing happens when God puts a 'new heart' in us by '... the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior'  (Titus 3.5-6).  For the rest of our earthly lives, our sinful nature will try to expel the 'new nature' that God has given us from our souls.  We need to take 'anti-rejection medication', so to speak.  That would be what Christians call the 'Means of Grace' - God's word and sacraments.

These are powerful spiritual agents that remain outside of us and useless to us unless taken religiously (if you pardon the pun).  Those who think they can remain Christians, yet not receive the saving benefits of the Means of Grace are like transplant patients who refuse to take their anti-rejection meds.   They need to ‘repent’ of not taking their meds, if you see what I mean.  Otherwise there is a real danger that they will eventually become spiritually ill and reject the Spirit of God and the new life that was given to them to provide eternal life.

Now they did not have organ transplants and immunosuppressant drugs back in New Testament times.  But they did have to eat.  And so Jesus used the urgency of nutrition to make His point.

‘here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die (Jesus said). ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

 ⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

 ⁵³ Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

 ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

 ⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.

 ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him’  (John 6.50-56).

Do you see how that phrase ‘remains in me and I in him’ resembles organ rejection?  Without the transplant patient eating the anti-rejection drugs, a vital organ transplanted into a body may not remain in the body – and the results would be death.   You can see the urgency in taking those meds.

The tone John took in his preaching was that of urgency also as he shouted, "Repent! For the Kingdom of God is near"  to his audience.  This same Kingdom of God, new life and the Holy Spirit came upon each of us when we were at the font, becoming baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It was there that the Holy Spirit entered into our hearts, creating within us saving faith in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again to purchase that new life for us with His blood.

The baptism of John the Baptiser differed from the baptism of Jesus in that John's baptism brought the newly baptized to look forward to the Messiah who was to come and bring about total forgiveness by what He would later accomplish.

By contrast, the baptism of Jesus, that which we have received, has brought us total forgiveness on account of what Jesus has done for us on the cross. 

Using a phrase that was later taken up into the Divine Service, St. John the Baptiser proclaimed about Jesus, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!  (Jn. 1:29-31).

In the Divine Service  that is what we proclaim because it is Jesus Christ who takes away our sin by the power of His forgiving touch.  Abide in Him and He with you.  ‘Walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin’  (1 John 1.7)  And the Spirit of Jesus Christ Who has caused us to repent, will  raise us up again.  Amen.

'To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy-- to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

What Gets Your Juices Going as a Christian?

All my life as a Christian I have been caught between the cross-fire in the war against ‘subjectivity’ in spiritual things. Luther railed against the ‘schwermer’ (the fanatics) and Lutheran churches ever since have been scenes of conflict between those whose goal it is to protect orthodoxy from emotion and those who are addicted to the ‘high’ they get from emotion in their spirituality.

So what are we to make of the ongoing attraction of pleasure as a feature of Christian worship? Is it always ‘wrong’ to enjoy devotional experiences? Is the current interest in ‘spirituality’ today just another sign of contemporary hedonism – transferred into our religious experiences?

As Christians we do not subscribe to the dreadful anthropological theory that human beings are mere animals whose thoughts and emotions are nothing more than the result of electrochemical processes in their brains. We are not materialists. Having said that, we recognize that we are spiritual beings with material bodies, whose thoughts and emotions are influenced by neurotransmitters and other electrochemical agents in ways similar to that of all conscious living things. We accept the fact that our souls are hosted by and in some ways limited by our bodies in a fallen world.

Part of the reality of the religious scene in general and the realm of spirituality in particular is the routine stimulation and manipulation of the brain by practitioners to achieve an altered state of consciousness. Such exercising of the brain in religion encompasses a broad range, from the academic-sounding cerebral use of complex rationalistic concepts to the decomposed ‘language’ of glossolalia and everything in between.

Leaving aside the manipulation of the brain by mind-altering substances, legal and illegal, found in some religions, an altered state of consciousness can be achieved by means of words. Language is one of the most potent brain stimulants in religion. Language is a divine gift – a miracle to which we have become so accustomed that we take it for granted and often abuse it.

Neurobiologists tell us that the area of the human brain that processes language is located right next to the area of the brain that processes transcendent and religious concepts. Synaptic connections being what they are, language and spiritual thoughts overlap and we find words to be very evocative and spiritually charged.

The use of language to achieve an altered state of consciousness is, of course, not just a religious phenomenon. It is used by everyone from child-minders to horse-whisperers to calm and focus minds. Lovers use ‘pillow talk’ and lovey-dovey language to generate feelings of intimacy as mind-altering as those generated through sexual activity. As they say, the most important sexual organ is the brain.

The use of language among lovers has much in common with the use of language in spirituality. The common denominator and ‘bottom line’ is pleasure – specifically the pleasure associated with intimacy. ‘Sacred pleasure’, if it can be achieved, is a kind of ‘holy grail’ for spirituality. Religious practitioners quite understandably long for religious exercises that are as pleasurable as they are obligatory. If we must resist the pull of gravity (that is ‘the law of sin that wars within our members’ (Rom. 7) in order to soar into a meaningful heavenly conversation with God, wouldn’t it help if we could ‘get our jollies’ at the same time? What if Christian devotional exercises could be, on some level, genuinely pleasurable?
Having crudely described the holy grail of spirituality, it is hard to identify very much else that can be said to be held in common among the myriad seekers of pleasurable intimacy with God. What one does find are schools of spirituality that seek to guide individual believers into common experiences of intimacy with God.

Such schools of spirituality are by no means conducive to unity among believers (This is a real understatement!) Splits between believers have often been caused by clashes between them over ‘what gets your juices going’ spiritually. Some clash over whether pleasurable intimacy with God is even right or valid. ‘If it feels good, it can’t be right’, they reason.

Often such splits are defined by their doctrinal disagreements even though some ‘doctrines’, such as the ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’ or ‘devotion to the sacred heart of Mary’ are less dogmatic than they are experiential. Speaking in tongues and endless repetitions of the Ave Maria, despite the diversity of their denominational origins, have much in common with each other. Both are among many manifestations of the use of experiences and mysticism to stimulate and manipulate the human brain to achieve a pleasurable altered state of consciousness. They are examples of devices employed in the up-hill effort to enjoy an intimate relationship with God.

Perhaps aware that the word ‘spirituality’ attracts book sales, recent Lutheran authors flirt with a kind of ‘bait and switch’ game claiming to describe spirituality but ending up discussing how Lutheran appreciation of objective doctrines rescues Lutherans from the perils of subjectivity.
Consigning the experiences properly associated with spirituality to the realm of dubious subjectivism and fleshly pleasures, these Lutherans fail to do justice to the way that even Lutherans are wired neurologically as human beings. Is the best we Lutherans can do to arrive at an almost Buddhist renunciation of all fleshly experiences in our efforts to cultivate an orthodox spirituality? Offering a ‘spirituality’ like this, without subjective experiences, is like offering a feast without food.

Part of the reason for Lutheran suspicion and disdain for experiential spirituality is that feeling a pleasurable intimacy with a god is not exclusively Christian. Yet, since when do Christians deplore using their brains, just because non-Christians use theirs? Just because we are all using the same ‘wiring’, does that mean it is uncertain or unlikely that the true God is involved in such use of our brains? After all, the true and only God is the one who has given us our brains in the first place.
No human brain is intrinsically Christian. If non-Christian brains have experiences associated with false gods that does not mean that such experiences are un-available to the true God. If anything, the opposite is true. Spiritual experiences available with the True God should make the subjective experiences with the false god’s feel like cheap fakes by comparison!

Recent efforts to elaborate upon ‘Lutheran Spirituality’ have failed to address these issues. I suspect that, in our zeal to avoid subjectivism tainted with sinful flesh we are underestimating what God can and is willing to do. And in rejecting intimate experiences with God as a priori dubious and heretical, we are letting our doubts get the best of us, and cheating ourselves out of a much more pleasurable spirituality than we feel is available or legitimate.

We excuse ourselves by insisting that we do not doubt God – we doubt man; we doubt ourselves. So we have not because we ask not. We find not because we seek not. And where is this emotionless, dispassionate piety exemplified in God’s Word? Nowhere. Emotionally dead orthodoxy is probably a remnant of enlightenment rationalism disguised as good Lutheranism, rather than genuine Christianity.
But, we argue, only experiences that are from God, like the Means of Grace, like the dominical Sacraments, are valid experiences for spirituality. This sounds reasonable: if the experience is ‘from God’ it’s legit; if it’s of human origin its not. But is that what we find in real life? Is this even what we find in Scripture? Or is spirituality more nuanced, less clearly defined, more of a mysterious mix of the divine and human?

Did God give us such enormously complex brains so that we could only interact with a few sacraments intended for the forgiveness of sins?

What do we find in Holy Scripture? The Bible exposes us to all kinds of ecstatic spirituality that we are taught today to dismiss as limited to biblical times. St. Paul says, ‘I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also’, and we have no clue what he is on about. He says, ‘I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you’, and we exclude his experiences from consideration because he was an apostle. We read his apostolic direction, ‘do not forbid speaking in tongues’, but we have seen congregations torn apart by that practice. (1 Corinthians 14.15,18 & 39).

We are also pretty hypocritical on this score, as well. I say that because many a believer, denouncing the smell of incense, will actively promote the sound of their favourite inspirational artist. And many, turning up their noses at the sound of ‘Casting Crowns’, will get misty-eyed at the sound of a Mozart or Schubert Mass, sung by a choir. We all have different stuff that gets our juices going as Christians, so why disparage others? As we read in Romans: 4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's’ (Romans 14.4-8)
Maybe the problem with spirituality is that it belongs in that growing catalogue of things about which it has to be said that ‘people ruined it’.

Nevertheless there is something to be said for re-habilitating the concept of spirituality in our circles. I only appeal to us to do justice to the subject. Let’s really pursue and expect pleasurable intimacy with God and heavenly things – each one of us ‘being fully convinced in his own mind’, as the Bible says.

Revisionist History Channel and Jesus

BEWARE of a phone call from the History Channel offering you a free 30 day preview of their DVDs as a ministry resource! Unless you are 'Church of Satan', you will find the History Channel hacks have nothing edifying to offer with their biased anti-Christian 'documentaries' about our Lord Jesus Christ. The following were some of my reactions:

Judas, Betrayer or Friend?’ has a polished appearance and loaded with scripture, but all the ‘scholars’ undermine the Gospels and viewers are taught that the Gospels can be wrong and biased about Judas. The holocaust is held up by the end of the show as the result of Christian tradition that Judas was the only ‘Jew’ among the apostles, a thief, greedy and whose name sounded like ‘Jewish’ in German: ‘Jude’. The show finishes with a clear depiction of Christ’s death as redemptive, but the damage had already been done rendering this show likewise unsuitable for Christian audiences. It contained some very obvious examples of exploitation of the audiences ignorance of the Bible. One ‘scholar’ announces that Jesus never calls Judas ‘betrayer’ or ‘traitor’, but only friend. Yet those who are not biblically illiterate will know that Jesus does say of his betrayer ‘one of you is a devil’. Is ‘devil’ another way of Jesus calling Judas ‘friend’? Or the Greek language is invoked to undermine the English word, ‘betray’. It literally means, ‘hand over’, little more malign that making an appointment. Yet what about the Bible quoting Jesus asking Judas, ‘do you betray the son of man with a kiss?’? It is the same Greek word. Is Jesus simply asking, ‘do you make an appointment for the son of man with a kiss?’? The show was counting on people being ignorant of the scriptures and then exploiting that ignorance. That sounds pretty diabolical, don’t you think?

‘Paul’, another show dominated by attempts to make St. Paul interesting by making sensational, often inaccurate claims, such as exaggerating the difference between his theology and that of St. Peter and the original apostles. Prominent among the liberals interviewed is Dr. John Gager, ‘re-defining Paul’. I almost switched it off after the narrator claimed the Gospel in St. Paul’s teachings shows him to be ‘the master of spin’ (!). I concluded I could not use this in my parish. Would I really want to have people taught by a DVD that St. Paul’s zeal was driven mainly by his conclusion that the end of the world must be imminent because the resurrection of Jesus showed that the dead were already starting to rise, reasoning he never articulated in any of his writings? Dr. Pamela Eisenbaum, a Jewish feminist, teaching at a liberal Christian seminary, says, I don’t know that Paul ever made it to Rome. I think that might have died in Jerusalem…’ Since human opinions are on centre stage, I might as well say what I think. And my question is, ‘why focus on what the revisionists are saying; are sensational new claims that make good television, the only things viewers should hear?’’

‘The Execution of Jesus’ is from the History Channel’s ‘Mysteries of the Bible series’. Although nicely narrated by the English actress Jean Simmons, very soon into the show viewers were subjected to the cynical materialistically biased prating of Jesus Seminar founder, John Dominic Crossan who announces that Jesus never called himself divine. ‘Since when?’ Well - since the ‘Jesus Seminar’ becomes the real star of the ‘Act I’, that begins with the alarmist observation that the gospels were written after Jesus’ earthly lifetime, ergo we have absolutely no written eyewitness testimony (!). Act II is about holy week, ruined by Crossan’s stupid doubts that Lazarus was really raised. Acts III & IV is about the triduum, ruined by narrative saying, ‘…scholars attempt to separate poetic license taken by the gospel writers from the actual events of the day’ and more of Crossan’s doubts (repeated from an earlier segment) and his own admission that, if it was not for the cleansing of the temple, Crossan has no idea why Jesus’ execution was sought. Act V is wholly devoted to the resurrection, ruined by more ‘scholars’ trying to explain it away as psychosis or myth. Would I inflict this on members of my parish? Far from it.

The Last Supper was the subject of a DVD from the History Channel devoted to ‘the holiest meal in the history of Christianity’. With the biblical narrative read by the late Jean Simmons, there is mercifully less of the Jesus Seminar hacks, but Crossan still pops up routinely as ‘scholars struggle to re-construct (read destruct) what actually happened’. Never is there the slightest hint that anyone regarded the bread and wine as anything but symbolic. For this reason alone, I would never contaminate my parishioners minds with this program.

With ‘Mary of Nazareth’ we get a program that is far more reverent in its depiction than any of those dealing with Jesus. Yet it is a program with inexplicable omissions: Lots of references to angels are made (including the non-biblical immaculate conception); why not mention that angels guided the shepherds to the stable to visit the newborn Jesus? How else did the shepherds know to go there? Other omissions are even more strange. Why omit the child Jesus in the Temple narrative? This had to be bad editing, with this important part of the story ending up on the cutting room floor or something. On the plus side there are comments from Dr. Paul Maier several times. But still, I would not waste the money on this DVD or the time to show it to my parishioners.

‘James, Brother of Jesus’ was a good documentary on the ossuary that may both prove in stone the existence of James, Jesus and his step-father, Joseph.

The 'Apostles Collection – 2 DVD set' was harmless and quite good. Perhaps, at some point in the future, I may obtain a copy, but not now.

After viewing all the DVDs sent to me by History Education, It did not take me 30 days to conclude that they are quite unsatisfactory for my pastoral use. I will NOT tolerate the Holy Scriptures being assaulted in this way, as I am sure no other religions would tolerate such disrespectful treatment of their holy books.

Passionate about the Passion of Christ

The Latin variations on their word for suffering: 'passus', 'passio' and so forth, are the origin of our word 'passion'. It is from the word 'suffering' that we get the word 'passion'. But in modern English we don't tend to mean pain when we use the word passion. If you tell me baking cookies is your passion, you are not saying you find cooking a pain. Likewise if I hear that she loves him with a passion, I don't understand by that that she finds him to be a pain.

So language changes. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, for the purposes of preaching the Gospel, I'm glad that 'passion' doesn't mean 'pain and suffering' to us today! Because it is the modern understanding of the word 'passion' – an intense and all pervasive driving force of love - that best describes the impulse behind God's Son dying on a cross for the sin of the world!

For, if we focus on the original meaning of the word passion, as in 'Ooo doesn't crucifixion really hurt', then what are we doing? Or, if we emphasize what a terrible thing it was to cause Jesus so much suffering; again – where are we going with this? You see, there is a right way and a wrong way to meditate on the passion and sufferings of Jesus Christ.

This is why we are not here this evening to express outrage at the way those Jews or those Romans mistreated Jesus. We know God is not impressed when we congratulate ourselves that we are not as evil as 'those people'.

Nor are we here to merely sympathize with Jesus, like the women who wept for Him as he staggered by them carrying His cross. You may recall that Jesus actually said to those women, 'weep not for me' (Luke 23.27). His view on that has not changed.

All the wrong ways to meditate on the passion of Christ have one thing in common: they aim to achieve God's favour and earn His approval. Such meditation has the opposite effect of what God intends!

God wants us to take away from the passion of the Christ one message only and that is that none of us could earn God's approval nor make up for our own sins and failures necessitating God's Son's coming into the world – to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He had to save us from our sins or else we would be lost to God forever. That is the precise message of the passion of the Christ.

During this 2011 Lenten Season, we have been turning our attention to the miracles of Lent. I would suggest to you that the sacrifice of Christ by which He redeemed sinners like you and me is the great miracle of Good Friday.

Webster’s dictionary defines the word miracle as “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention.” It seems most appropriate to describe as a miracle the intervention to save humanity that the atoning death of God's Son is. It is most extraordinary that God would do this and the most wondrous example of divine intervention there is.

St. Peter wrote: “Christ . . . suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.”

The salvation of the human race is truly God's passion – an intense and all pervasive driving force of love. When Christ was hanging on that horrible cross, He was thinking not of Himself but rather of you, me, and the whole world.

And it was truly 'passion' – in the modern sense, meaning love – that was the impulse behind His saving us and the plan to do so from the very creation of our world.

Scripture abounds with the use of this word 'love' to describe the accomplishment of God's work of redeeming the world through Christ' crucified:
• In Galatians 2:20, we read, “Christ . . . loved me and gave Himself for me.”
• In Ephesians 5:2, we read, “Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
• In Ephesians 5:25, we read, “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”

Jesus Christ, out of passionate love for us, accepted the full punishment for our sins and the sin of the whole world, as I said in my opening text:
“Christ . . . suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.”
It was a miracle that God would take us, in our unrighteousness, ruined and contaminated by sin and not discard us forever, but instead choose to save us – and to do so despite the unthinkable pain that it would cause Him! But He did it! That is the miracle of Good Friday – the miracle of the passion of the Christ!

As the result of that miracle of Good Friday, you and I can rejoice in the Gospel, the Good News that although '...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23–24).

We will spend eternity benefitting from the fact that “The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” as St. Paul wrote to the Romans (Romans 6:23).

To be sure, the phenomenon of three hours of darkness at mid-day, the torn temple curtain, the earthquake, and the other miracles were all supernatural events intended by the heavenly Father to set apart the death of His Son from absolutely every other death—past, present, and future, but the greatest miracle on Good Friday, is the passionate love that was the impulse behind Christ crucified.

As I like to quote Isaac Watts, 'Here His whole Name appears complete; nor wit can guess nor reason prove which of the letters best is writ, the Power, the Wisdom, or the love'.

The love of God, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit for us, is certainly different from the other miracles of the Passion. In fact it is absolutely unique.

And there is nothing like the Gospel. Just as it was God's passion to make it a reality for us, so it deserves to be our passion that the awesome price paid in blood by Christ so that our sins might be forgiven that we need not perish but have everlasting life, should be proclaimed to the end of time and beyond. Amen.