In Hoc Signo

Sermon Notes for Sunday, September 18

2011-09-18T08:29:00.001-07:00

The King of the First and the Last
Matthew 19:27- 20:16
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 18, 2011

"That's not fair!" While 'mama' may be the first word many children say, 'That's not fair!" may be their first full sentence out of their mouths. It seems we have a deep sense of justice built into the fibre of our being. That's not quite as true when it comes to mercy. Children have to be taught gratitude and mercy; they have to be instructed to say "Thank you", and "I'm sorry", or "I forgive you". But if a child senses that another child is being given favorable treatment, especially if that's perceived to be slighting himself, that child is sure to sulk and finally cry foul.

Thankfully we all grow out of this tendency as adults and its no longer a problem for us. Right? Not so much.

* Peter's voice and our hearts: he is our spokesman - confessing, resisting, questioning, denying, and proclaiming.

I. The Kingdom of Self
A. What's in it for me?
* The 'evil eye': envy and pride as source of broken fellowship
* My brother and unexploded bombs – back in 93, 13 people were killed in France by WW2 bombs that were embedded and in the ground and then detonated through erosion. Unless we deal with the old ordinance of our past wars we are in danger.

B. The Rich, Young Ruler

C. The Truth of Rewards

II. The Kingdom of God
A. Serving, not from fear of hell or hope of heaven but from love for Christ
* Calvin on motive for service

B. Serving, because the Fields are full of harvest
* Where miracles happen
* Doug Nichols of OM in India: “All I did was take a trip to the bathroom.”

C. Serving, where we are in the Day

III. The King of Firsts and Lasts
* "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last..."
A. Revolutionaries hate and reject the 'firsts'

B. Status Seekers hate and reject the 'lasts'

C. The King and the Kingdom love and embrace both in a new society rooted in the cross.

* Equally deserving of eternal demolition; equally objects of mercy and grace
* Perfectly Just and Perfectly Extravagant: Just what you agreed and manifestly more than you could imagine.

God is perfectly just and perfectly merciful. His covenant citizens receive exactly what was agreed, and also, by grace, incredibly more than we deserve.

This is how it will be at the end of history. Those who demand their just reward shall receive it – but the wages of sin is death! Those who know they have been given the privilege of mercy will sing with thankfulness the grace of their Master’s generosity.

This is possible because the One who is first made himself last so that we who were last and lost might be found and first. His Kingdom has come and continues to expand with his citizens learning every day to be like the King of Firsts and Lasts.

Sermon Notes for September 11

2011-09-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

First Responders
Matthew 28:16-20
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 11, 2011

For many of us, even writing the date ‘September 11’ is very, very difficult. We are reminded on this date of incredible human suffering, terrible evil, our shock and anger, and fear, along with the inspiring courage so many showed that day as well, on the ground and in the air. Yet the frightening scenes of terror from that day that replay themselves over and over again in our minds, the memory of loved ones and friends lost in the conflicts overseas spawned by that terrible day, and the continuing suffering of those who feel most deeply the loss of loved ones from those awful hours, compels us to pause with our fellow citizens today in a united fellowship of suffering. We gather to worship, but also in our worship to comfort and encourage one another and pray for all who still suffer most deeply the scars of 9/11. Most supremely we come to confess our greatest need – to hear and believe afresh the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the only hope for peace in and among the peoples of the world.

We can add to this the sorrow and pain and fear so many in our own community have felt this week as a result of the fires which have plagued us. Many are weeping; many are wondering and fearful; many are mourning; many are weeping. Who will comfort them? How will they find hope?

Perhaps like me you have paused this week to pray and give thanks for the first responders – the firefighters who risk so much to enter the hell of the blaze and rescue so many. Seeing them work this week also took me back to the scenes of ten years ago when we watched in astonishment as medical personnel, chaplains, firemen, law enforcement officials, and aid workers rushed into areas which we have been trained to run away from. They are rightly called our heroes – our first responders. Let us honor them and give thanks for them. As we do so, we may also learn from them how we too might come to lead heroic and courageous lives of faith. We can do so by seeing the world as it really is, by trusting God’s mercy to be greater than that reality, and offering ourselves as agents of reconciliation.

I. Let Us See the Disaster in All of Its Horror
The Need for the Great Commission: Terror and Tears
“You shall surely die…”
Not an execution carried out but an unavoidable consequence of dancing with the serpent.
The first two towers that fell
The centuries of enmity because of the rage of the one who hates the image of God.

The Object of the Great Commission: Enraged and the Broken
“Nations” – ethnos; the uproar and the One who is ‘Peace’
Psalm 2 and Micah 5
Rachel weeping; Jesus wept; he shall wipe away every tear from their eye.

II. Let Us Trust God’s Mercy in All Its Splendor

Jesus at Lazarus’ Tomb – his anger is directed where?
Rev Tim Keller on 9/16/2001
Demonize? No. Love and Evangelize
Who is the Enemy? Romans 5:6-10
weak, ungodly, sinners, and enemies
The Forgiveness of December 7, 1941.
We have not yet lived long enough to see what God will yet do with the sorrows of 9/11.
Genesis 50:15-21

III. Let Us Offer Ourselves as Ministers of Reconciliation
It is thus that we can enter into the flames of human need and suffering and tribulation, in the Name of Jesus and with his peace.
He is looking for his ‘first responders’

The One Whom We Teach and Proclaim
The One Who is with Us
The One who suffered in and with our sufferings
The One Who Will Make All Things New
“Is everything sad going to come untrue?” – JRR Tolkien

Through Christ, the answer is an eternal ‘yes and amen’. We cannot ignore the world to which we’ve been sent with the excuse that our worship of the sending God is all that he requires. No. There are towers still falling, people still dying and mourning, children still hungry and thirsty, neighbors today who are homeless and fearful. Let us see the fall, let us trust the Gospel, and let us offer ourselves to Christ for his mission in the world he loves and for which he suffered. Amen.

Les Miserables - I Dreamed A Dream (TAC)

2011-08-13T20:03:00.000-07:00

Sermon Notes for Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

2011-08-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

From Banished to Bride: Faith in the Mercy of God
Matthew 15:21-28
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
August 14, 2011

* The power of a truly excellent insult – and a wise retort!

I. Great Distress: The Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve
A. This Woman is all of us - "O Woman..." and Genesis 2:23

B. Her Daughter is all of us
* Banished and exiled, yet Aslan is marching to Tyre and Sidon
* She moves south from Lebanon and he moves north from Galilee
- This is the divine collision of grace
- Her cry ascends to heaven because her need is rooted in hell.

II. Great Faith in Great Mercy: Confessing our Sin and the Savior
* Faith and hearing - Mark 7:25: She had heard of him!

A. Screaming for Mercy
* The Savior's Silence
* The Disciples Plea: Lord, make her go away. "Great" faith: large (Centurion, Matthew 8); Intense (the Woman, Matthew 15)

B. Agreeing with the Verdict
* The first offense of the Gospel is the humiliating assessment of our true condition.
* Only by confessing that we are 'dogs' can we become the objects of mercy
- "The torrents of grace do not flow upward to the heights of pride. He who is himself the fount of life...made himself small. Therefore prepare your riverbeds, level out the mounds of your haughty thoughts, for the Fount of Grace does not ascend into the heart of earthly man, but rather flows downward into a humble, low-lying heart." - Bernard of Clairvaux

C. Great" faith: large (Centurion, Matthew 8); Intense (the Woman, Matthew 15)

III. Great Commission: Walking into Gentile Territory

A. The Purpose of Blessing: Psalm 67 (Acts 1:5, 8)
* The Mission begins IN the Church but it does not end there. Rather it proceeds via the Church into the world and FOR the world to the glory of God.

* From Matthew 10 to Matthew 28 ("Don't go...Go!")

B. Where is our Tyre and Sidon? Where are our Gentiles?
- Romans 11; 15:8-9
* Arrogance is our constant temptation; but since we are the objects of mercy let us becomes the 'vessels of mercy' in the village center.
* The distant distressed woman became the worshipper. This Gospel story is repeated over and over again. Let it be told here too.

Formless and Void

2011-08-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

...and darkness was over the surface of the deep...

Saying So Long

2011-08-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

Its time to wrap this blog up and put it away. Its been especially helpful to people as they tracked Toni's illness and recovery - hard to count how many people have said to me they read this space throughout that ordeal and offered their prayers. We remain deeply thankful for such love. Thanks to all those who have been regular readers or who just stopped by. With readers in places as far away as Russia, China, Egypt, Israel, and several European countries as well, I can only thank God for the opportunity to have written something that was an encouragement to others in such diverse settings. May God continue to bless you all. I may do something like a "Pastor's Page" on the Church website, or maybe a cooking blog (!), but for now some silence seems the only appropriate action on my part. All for love...

"Pondus meum amor meus; eo feror quocumque feror" -

"My weight is my love, and this it is that bears me in whatever direction I am borne."

St Augustine, Confessions XIII, 9, 10.

I Saw Eternity the Other Night - Henry Vaughn

2011-08-07T16:54:00.000-07:00

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd.
The doting lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,
Wit's sour delights,
With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure,
Yet his dear treasure
All scatter'd lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flow'r.

The darksome statesman hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog mov'd there so slow,
He did not stay, nor go;
Condemning thoughts (like sad eclipses) scowl
Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without
Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digg'd the mole, and lest his ways be found,
Work'd under ground,
Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see
That policy;
Churches and altars fed him; perjuries
Were gnats and flies;
It rain'd about him blood and tears, but he
Drank them as free.

The fearful miser on a heap of rust
Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust
His own hands with the dust,
Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
In fear of thieves;
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
And hugg'd each one his pelf;
The downright epicure plac'd heav'n in sense,
And scorn'd pretence,
While others, slipp'd into a wide excess,
Said little less;
The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave,
Who think them brave;
And poor despised Truth sate counting by
Their victory.

Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the ring;
But most would use no wing.
O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night
Before true light,
To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
Because it shews the way,
The way, which from this dead and dark abode
Leads up to God,
A way where you might tread the sun, and be
More bright than he.
But as I did their madness so discuss
One whisper'd thus,
"This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide,
But for his bride."

Quotable

2011-08-06T12:05:00.001-07:00

"Everyone wanted to talk to me about silence."

- John Michael Talbot

Quotable: My Weight is My Love

2011-08-06T07:38:00.000-07:00

"Pondus meum amor meus; eo feror quocumque feror" -

"My weight is my love, and this it is that bears me in whatever direction I am borne."

St Augustine, Confessions XIII, 9, 10.

Sermon Notes for Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

2011-08-06T05:43:00.000-07:00

O Love that Will Not Let Me Go
Matthew 14:22-33
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
August 7, 2011

* It was a Dark and Stormy Night
* There is a movement from apparent abandonment to communion, from terror to trust, from overwhelming fear to worship in spirit and truth

I. The Saints in the Storm - Matthew 14:22-26
A. Christ Ascended: King and Priest
B. The Navum of the Lord - our ship tossed amid fearful opposition
* Beaten by the waves: 'tortured', 'harassed', 'terrible distress' (Matthew 8:6)
* This is often our inheritance and it is God's gift to us, his hard mercies, which bring us to the place of deepening faith in Him.
- All is fear and terror: the great dragon of the sea (Yam, from Yammu, Ugaritic name of the Sea Dragon ruling the depths), the apparition on the waters.

- We all have terrible storms, great tempests in which we feel ourselves abandoned: "Where is God my Savior?"
- Like Job, we wish to put God 'in the dock' and question his actions and wisdom; like Job, we discover that God does not answer our questions except with a few of his own! Job 38:4-18

II. The Savior in the Storm - Matthew 14:24-27
A. Christ comes to us in the storm
* Fourth Watch (3-6 am, meaning they'd been in the storm for many, many hours already and were exhausted). Christ seems 'Delayed' (John 11), yet always at just the right time and in just the right way he comes to his own, walking on the waters that rage (Job 9:8)
* The storm rages despite his presence; he does not cause the storm to cease, but is rather fully present in it.
B. He is Immanuel, God with us: "I AM. Fear Not."
* This is the Gospel and it is this word of life that brings faith to birth, faith that saves (Romans 10; Isaiah 43:15-16)
* John Wesley on his way to America

III. The Saint in the Savior - Matthew 14:28-33
A. "Come!" - The Call of the Savior
B. Can we be Saved? Can a Rock 'Float'? - Peter (petros) on the waves
* The gravity of fear, the buoyancy of faith; there is no change in the storm, but only in the heart of Peter.
* Pondus Amoris (Augustine): 'My weight is my love, and this it is that bears me in whatever direction I am borne." (Confessions)
- "My love is the true gravity of my person: if my love looks downward, is attached to earthly things, it will sink by its own weight like a rock in water; but if my love yearns for God, it will rise...like a flame seeking the heights." Erasmo Leiva Merikakis
- And our hearts are divided, loving this world and so tethered that we sink and ALWAYS NEED THE SAVIOR
- Christ is not Savior because we say he is, but because he has saved, is saving, and shall yet save us - he will not let us go.
* The Cry of Faith (though always mixed with fear): "Lord, save me!"
C. "Jesus took hold of him" - this is our true rest, our true peace
* Still the storm rages
* Do not forget your baptism - he saved us in the waters for himself.

In the end, the wind 'grows weary' and the ship of fear and exhaustion is turned into a sanctuary of worship. The very place of our terror is transformed by grace through Christ's presence.

* Alexander Ogorodnikov: “I was placed in solitary - not alone in a cell, but alone in an entire building. My only companions were hunger and cold. The hunger was so great, that I wanted slit my wrists to drink my own blood in order to survive. And the cold? It was northern Siberia. The guards would smash the windows to let the freezing wind come in. You could not flee the cold. The cell is a tomb, with only a weak light present. In my cold, I would pray - so I ‘prayed without ceasing’. I had no experience of the Jesus prayer before this, but this I prayed constantly. This prayer helped me breathe and calmed my heart. I said, ‘Surely God you have not forgotten me’, and as I prayed I would become warm. I can only compare this warmth to the breath of a mother upon her cold child. I cannot communicate this beauty to you. I began to weep and a quiet joy - quiet but uncontainable - began to rise within me. Then I did not notice the passage of time or the cold. In the morning the guards would come with a doctor expecting to find me dead. But I was warm and well instead. The Lord showed me I was preserved, not by my merit but by the prayers of thousands of people, thousands of miles away - those prayers rose to heaven, got over the wires, passed the dogs, and came to embrace me. A voice came to me and said, “You are not alone.” And I wasn’t."

Quotable - On Books and the People Who Read Them, 2

2011-08-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

"All the glory of the world would be lost to oblivion were it not for books."
- Richard du Bury, 14th century Bishop of Durham

"We suffer not from information overload but from filter failure."
- Clay Shirky

"Silence is a diminishing natural resource...We readers must learn to build our own cone of silence; the world will not do this for us."
- Alan Jacobs

London Pics from My Extra Day!

2011-07-31T14:58:00.000-07:00

With my departure delayed until tomorrow, I headed into London and visited the bookshops in Charing Cross Road. Didn't buy anything - though I did find a superb 3 volume first edition of Churchill's "World Crisis', his history of the First World War. It was only 300 pounds...oh well! Saw the place where the old bookshop made famous in Helene Hanff's '84 Charing Cross Road' once stood, together with the commemorative plaque noting the book and the store. Here are some pictures from running around today. The bookshop by the way is Edwards, from around 1855, but not the spot of Marks & Co. That's a little further along - now an empty building again. Hmmmm. Ideas...

Best of Britain

2011-07-31T00:27:00.000-07:00

There are so many things the British do best. Pondering this, the following short list comes to mind:

1. Roundabouts: Brilliant! Why we don't change the whole world to this system is beyond me.

2. Road Signs: Entertaining and incredibly clear.

3. Curry. No, its only half Indian. Chicken Tikka Massala doesn't exist in India, but it may be the new national dish of Britain.

4. Police: how do they manage to be so incredibly tough and nice at the same time?

5. Trains. TRAINS! I love trains and the British trains and stations are a world unto themselves. Waterloo is almost a tourist site on its own.

6. Newspapers. Not sure about this, but while newspaper reading in the rest of the world is way down it seems as strong as ever here - and what a great selection.

7. Tea and scones. REAL scones - not those wedge shaped flour bricks we have in the US. Nope, the sweet, lighter ones from here, smothered in Devonshire clotted cream and strawberry jam.

8. Hospitality: the warmth of welcome here - and London is like the world's bus stop - is pretty incredible.

9. Buses - especially those cool double decker editions.

10. Outdoor Shakespeare: Can you top a cool evening in July with a blanket, tea, strawberries, champagne, and a hilarious performance of a Mid-Summer Night's Dream? I think not.

11. Pubs. Seriously - can there be a better meeting place?

12. Flower Gardens. Stunning.

13. History - name the period, it doesn't matter; Britain is a giant living history text to be opened and read at will and with joy.

14. Villages - I think village/small town life in America is under threat by an over-reaching urbanization, but Britain's little places are enjoying a renewal and protecting their place with zeal and effectiveness.

15. Open markets. Fabulous and cheap.

I can think of more, but will let you add to the list.

On the not so good front:

1. Customer service...slooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww.

2. Taxes

3. Showers (but improving!)

4. Vegetables - always fresh, but always soggy.

5. Traffic in London. Oh my. Worse than ever, and that after restrictions to make it less so.

6. Free refills. "Sorry?"

7. American fast food. I noticed an alarming increase in obesity here - not 'chunky', but real, 'biggest loser' contestant level dangerous obesity. Everywhere. What's changed? Ubiquitous American based fast food chains, and they are jam packed: McDonalds, BK, KFC, Dominoes, you name it. They dominate and its a worrisome trend.

Travel Notes 4: July 30

2011-07-30T14:31:00.000-07:00

Last full day here, and headed back tomorrow. To say I am thankful for these days in Britain would be a wild understatement. The personal times of prayer and reflection, the liturgy and hymns, the magnificent re-connect with the ancient via the stones of the cathedrals, churches, chapels, graves, and houses, the challenging lectures and warm fellowship, and the renewal of acquaintance with friends not seen for several years was refreshing and reviving. I saw things new and things old and trust that I will be able to keep them all in the treasure house of my heart for future distribution to all.

The pictures above are first of all, some of the iconography within St Albans; secondly, Chartwell, the family home of Sir Winston Churchill; and thirdly, Hever Castle, the home of Anne Boleyn, second wife to Henry VIII, and mother of Elizabeth I. Hever was one the new stops on this trip, and well worth the visit, especially to see the magnificent Holbein portraits. I had been Chartwell, but its been 20+ years since that visit, and so - since it is so close to Hever - I decided to stop in. Once again, the visit was rewarding. Toni knows that I always get very tearful around Churchill 'places' and memorabilia, and this visit was no different.

So this was a fascinating trip, encompassing century after century of history and finding once again that the residual anointing in the hidden bones of our Elishas from years gone by will yet prove vivifying for us if we will humble ourselves to listen afresh to their voices rather than succumbing to the modern noise that reduces them to echoes. Looking back over the past several days, here are some of the places I was able to go, some of the stones I heard speak. My only regret - doing it on my own.

1. Hever Castle, ancestral home to Anne Boleyn

2. Chartwell, family home to Churchill

3. St Alban's Cathedral with its remarkable ancient iconography and Shrine, the most ancient Christian worship site in England

4. Ely Cathedral with its amazing testimony in art, together with its astonishing Lady Chapel

5. The Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey

6. Close up with the tomb of Edward the Confessor, founder of the Abbey

7. Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

8. King's College Chapel, Cambridge

9. Home of Oliver Cromwell

10. Duxford Air Field, home to the Flying Fortresses, Mustangs, and Spitfires still in use - and its incredible WW2 Battle of Britain museum

11. American WW2 Cemetery in Cambridge, honoring the dead and missing, especially the air crews, that perished in the effort to liberate Europe from the Nazis.

12. Visited All Souls, Langham Place, and was privileged to write a card of remembrance for John RW Stott.

13. Walked along a path that was once an Anglo-Saxon trade route from the Cambridge area down to the Thames. I recited some Anglo-Saxon lines as I strolled there.

Along the way, I went through beautiful villages, and fell in love with Hadon in Cambridgeshire (Thank you David and Diana!). I shopped at Daunts again, wandered around Hertfordshire for the first time - beautiful! - and felt incredibly blessed to enjoy some of my favorite food from this side of the ocean. I am deeply grateful for the generosity that enabled me to make this trip, and - honestly - can't wait to get back again soon. Thank you for the prayers offered by so many as well; I can't help but think that God has heard and answered you in ways "exceeding abundantly beyond all we can ask or imagine."

My only regret - doing it on my own. Next time...

Ceiling (No, Not the Debt Ceiling!)

2011-07-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

High Ceiling for Worship (King's College Chapel); Mosaic Ceiling in Memory (Chapel in the American WW2 Cemetery in Cambridge honoring the US sacrifice in the air war against Nazis) - I shed a lot of tears there - he Mosaic shows angels accompanying the flying fortresses and mustangs as they make their way across the channel - many never to return; finally, Low Ceiling at Breakfast;

Final Lecture at OICS: Orthodox and Catholic Responses to Secularism

2011-07-29T13:32:00.000-07:00

Dr Brandon Gallaher
Theology Lecturer at Keble, Oxford

The Response of Roman Catholic and Orthodox Episcopal Authorities to Secularism: an analysis of Pope Benedict XVI and Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of the Moscow Patriarchate

I. The Complexity of Secularization
Danger of monolithic views of atheism and secularism/post-modernity
Orthodox need to acknowledge this
- ‘Multiple Modernities’
Secularism/Modernity - overthrow of mystery in the world
Relentless movement of progress will bring about ‘the disenchantment of the cosmos’
This however has not been the outcome

II. Roman Catholic Response to the Secular-Modern
“Dictatorship of Relativism” - avoiding doctrinal ‘shifting waves’, that recognizes nothing as fixed in reference to the truth.
Christian theology should be done in an ecclesiastical context

Regensberg Address and Westminster Hall address
West is forgetting its roots in God
West is relegating God to personal, the west is negating the communal dimension of man, further reducing man to a mere utilitarian object” “calculation of consequences”.
This amnesia leaves man at the mercy of majority rule, technological tyrants, and power
‘Negative tolerance’ - banning crucifixes
“In the name of tolerance, tolerance is being abolished.” - B16
a very apocalyptic vision
“reason pathologies” (when what is rational is exclusively technical and measurable)
“Reason needs faith and faith needs reason...”
“Pathologies of religion” - power structures imposed
Just as Faith is called to purify reason, so also reason assists Faith - “faith is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a helpful contributor to the conversation.”
This sees Enlightenment as Gift and Christian Originated Project
In this sense, ‘Secularism’ is Christian.
He calls the secular person, Pascal like, to imagine the world ‘as if’ there is God - what then?
B16 argues from Toynbee, a ‘creative minority’ making the Christian faith visible and compelling.
What Kind of Episcopacy/Polity does this Requires
Papacy is to lead the way in making the Christian faith credible.

III. Orthodox Response to the Secular-Modern Project
There is a Reiteration of B16’s themes
But Orthodoxy is concerned with Traditionalism as well: Reason and Faith AND Tradition; this may render dialogue difficult or even impossible.
We need to note that Rome is western, but Orthodoxy is East
Orthodox is primarily local and Rome is global
Orthodoxy is post-communist

Discussions between Orthodoxy and Rome (Primarily Russian and Roman)
Met Hilarion: ‘Alliance’ of Rome and Orthodoxy
“Christianophobia”
Systematic war against Christian faith and Biblical institutions: he draws his thinking from Pat Buchanon!
He uses martial and bellicose language on this - ‘repel the onslaught...’
Not about power but love and service - drawing on Eucharistic role of the Bishop
BUT, he also uses military metaphors: church as army, with Bishops as Generals sending signals to the troops on the move. He employs a ‘culture war’ worldview in the service of Orthodoxy

Church and State
Mutual non-intervention and no symphonia
That official position is actually ignored - fiscally, education, etc.
Wkileaks: Hilarion conversation with John Beryl - Met describes the Patriarchate as significant player with political function in the modern state. The Church has a role in promulgating government policy - including ‘limited democracy’.

IV. Positive Responses
There are gifts within Enlightenment thinking
The asymmetrical dimensions of Orthodox must be maintained: Tradition must correct modernity but modernity/secularism cannot and may not correct Tradition.
Secularism is a child of western Christianity where theory leads practice, while in Orthodoxy faith and practice cannot be separated.
If there is no shared culture there can be no shared objectives in regard to moral norms in a civil society. Florovsky: daring witness.
Bottom line on ‘human rights’: they must be guaranteed because of but be shaped and informed by the Church’s moral teaching.

Travel Pictures

2011-07-27T04:44:00.000-07:00

Hobbit Life in Cambridge; the Dedication Stone noting a Nazi Bombing; St Albans Shrine

Lecture Notes 8: Irina Kirillov on Dostoevsky as Prophet Contra Mundum

2011-07-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

Irina Kirillova
Dostoevsky’s “If there is no God, then all is permitted.”

Actually what was written of course was “if there is no immortality...”. This is D’s response to secularism.

Dostoevsky as Prophet
He was a polemicist - and his approach would likely be unpopular now as then.
Dos did not believe in a simplistic approach that suggested a religious society was always ‘good’, but he did know that the loss or repression of religion would create a tyrannical culture. Man is fallen and cruel; without God he does create ‘the end’ of history - a rational, liberal heaven.
There is no love in the Man-God. Love is found in the God-Man
Philip Blond - ‘Broken Britain’ (Red Tory), on the malaise of Britain
D. Bleak Utopia
A society that’s lost it soul is about to lose its future.
Umberto Eco - ‘down to the positive hero of myth...’
these are the replacement idols for our godlessness

Dostoevsky on Rationalism
The conflict between faith and rationality - “If someone were to prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, then I would rather be with Christ than with the truth. My faith is not a childish faith; it has been sorely tried by faith.”
Great Tyrannies Opposing the Church and the Faith
French Revolution
Bolshevik Revolution
Nazi Regime
Maoist China
The Revolutionary view of Jesus: itinerant philosopher who suffers ‘an unfortunate death’
Dostoevsky’s ‘The Idiot’ - showing the corpse of Jesus; Holbein’s Jesus.
The Norwegian “Utopia”

The Negation of Utopia
Dostoevsky wanted to embrace the utopian ideal, but in the end abandons the notion because it is destructive.
It is in prison that he discovers afresh that man is made in the image of God and that man is called to likeness.
“Man in rejecting God does not gain freedom...” - “The Grand Inquisitor”
Notes from the Under Ground
“Twice two is four is nice. How much nicer when twice two is five.”
kill the pawnbroker in the name of social good (Roskolnikov)
PD James - ‘The Children of Men’ ( man of faith exposing the horror of the so-called social good promoted violence). Roskolnikov is an atheist but demands that the raising of Lazarus is read to him. He doesn’t repent, but does recognize that only a miracle can save him.

* Dostoevsky’s work opens up the jaws of hell. “After preparing this paper, I wanted to go to Church and have communion, and cleanse myself of contact with this evil.”
Man is a sinner, fallen, and cannot save himself.

The Revolution
“By 1966 there will not be a single member of the clergy left alive in the Soviet Union”

Under Lenin, priests were crucified, and sometimes they were nailed to the floor, and then had their eyes ripped out. Lenin would shake with rage and shout, “All must be destroyed!”

“All slaves must be equal - inequality is the great evil: cicero has his tongue cut out, copernicus has his eyes gauged out; shakespeare is stoned to death.” - The Devils

He nowhere suggests Theocracy, but remains silent on such macro-notions, pointing us back to our own interior telling us to trust in and confess Christ.

Lecture Notes 7: Alexander Ogorodnikov - The Suffering of the Russian Church

2011-07-27T03:36:00.000-07:00

This address passed through two translators, and was more of a conversation than outlined presentation.

Alexander Ogorodnikov
Godlessness and the Russian Experience of Tyranny

The War Against Religion

The unprecedented challenge to the Faith and the Church in the 20th century was Totalitarianism - by means of violence asserting itself as the new religion. In Germany, the Nazis sought to make Arianism the new religion, while the Bolsheviks sought the elimination of ALL religion.

In 1923 there was a Tribunal held in Moscow by the powers - a show trial - in which God was tried, found guilty, and condemned to death.

Lenin gave the order to exterminate religion:

In 1939, there remained 4 out of 400 Bishops.

1952 - 5 year plan to destroy all churches and a further strategy employed which would lead to the elimination of the word ‘God’ from the Russian language. Destruction of icons and other visible religion. Not a battle against religion alone, but a ‘storming of heaven’ to overthrow God and bury him.

The term was not ‘atheist’ but the more specific ‘godless’

What they could not extinguish was the quiet courage of faith. Quiet family faith endured. That said, while there were thousands and thousands of martyrs, there were also many more thousands of apostates.

Results

The blood of the martyrs was sprinkled across the ground of Russia as far as its widest boundaries.
The miracle of the re-birth of the Russian Church was through the seed of this prophetic martyr blood.
The Church was founded on the blood of martyrs and this has been witnessed again 2000 years into her history, this time in Russia. The modern massacre could not succeed in its objectives. Yet in 30 years in Russia there were more martyrs made than in all the previous years of the entire Church’s history combined.
What happened to turn things around was WW2. It began in Russia on the day of the celebration of the Feast of Russian Saints. While every Russian suffered unspeakably, and the persecution of the Church returned after the war, Stalin - the former Seminarian(!) - knew that people would not die for the sake of the communist ideal, but for a unified nation. The Germans had started to re-open churches in the occupied territories. In 1943, Stalin met with 3 hierarchs and asked them to re-found (form) the Moscow Patriarchate. He allowed the opening of seminaries and released some priests from prison. This was a brief respite from the persecution.
The Bishops were released from the labor camps but were under constant surveillance (kept in a golden cave)
Both Bishop and godless official were working on the same project: national unity. But the Church re-opened was a religious museum with a performance of ritual; any deviation from the form resulted in re-imprisonment.
In the 1970s an independent Christian community began to form
This development signaled the rebirth of the Church in Russia, though the official hierarchy refused to recognize it.
On a certain feast day, a Bishop was preaching to a large congregation, some 60% of whom were youth, and not a few were Jewish converts as well, he said ‘your parents brought you to church...’ - revealing he knew nothing about the Church or what the Lord was doing in calling again a new people to himself.
This chasm between perception and reality has left a schism in the contemporary church
The Bishops came to the West and told western leaders that there was no persecution of the Church in Russia and that those in the prisons had to be criminals. It is tragic that such voices as Solz and others were not heard.
The emergence of the ‘separatist’ movement - living church - looked to be missional - apologetics, evangelistic, etc., but so many were new converts and thus young in the Faith. Only later did they discover the depth of Church life beneath the surface of the visible church.
The strength of the Orthodox experience for survival was Sobornsk - the spiritual father, the elder, the staritz. People attended prayer services on the anniversary of the October revolution.

Perestroika: the Path to Freedom

The genesis of this meant that the suffering ended. While the country needed a new leader, the Church was not able to provide such. The captive church could not produce a leader. Yeltsin emerged proclaiming himself a democrat. The fall of communism created an ideological vacuum. A ‘meta-idea’ was needed however for the society. The idea that was essential was repentance.

The Russian Hierarchy refused to repent (Bulgarian and Romanian experience was different)

The new situation appears to have the seeds of a new totalitarianism through secularism.
There is a strong anti-clericalism among the members rooted in their experience of the Church’s connection with abusive power. There is massive growth in the Church, but resistance to various expressions of Church authority, and not as much growth in the numbers of priests. Still though, little opportunity for initiative on part of the laity for the Church
there was a massive influx of ‘Protestant’ missions (these were mostly evangelical sects of course) with large expenditures in the 1980s, but this mission has largely failed. Before they came there were approximately 500K protestants in Russia and the number is now the same.

Testimony from a Soviet Prison

2011-07-27T03:16:00.000-07:00

Alexander Ogorodnikov
Lessons from Prison

1. One must NOT be afraid - “I am a weak person, but when God gave me the gift of prison, he gave me strength to serve him there.”

2. Fires of Opposition Serve our Holiness - “I met a man who had spent 47 years in that hell and he shone with the light of Christ. I asked him how that was possible. He replied, ‘In the fires of this hell, all that is evil is burned - my hate, lies, self-love; all that remains is love.’

3. The prison was a school of Christ.”
“I was placed in solitary - not alone in a cell, but alone in an entire building. My only companions were hunger and cold. The hunger was so great, that I wanted slit my wrists to drink my own blood in order to survive. And the cold? It was northern Siberia. The guards would smash the windows to let the freezing wind come in. You could not flee the cold. The cell is a tomb, with only a weak light present. In my cold, I would pray - so I ‘prayed without ceasing’. I had no experience of the Jesus prayer before this, but this I prayed constantly. This prayer helped me breathe and calmed my heart. I said, ‘Surely God you have not forgotten me’, and as I prayed I would become warm. I can only compare this warmth to the breath of a mother upon her cold child. I cannot communicate this beauty to you. I began to weep and a quiet joy - quiet but uncontainable - began to rise within me. Then I did not notice the passage of time or the cold. In the morning the guards would come with a doctor expecting to find me dead. But I was warm and well instead. The Lord showed me I was preserved, not by my merit but by the prayers of thousands of people, thousands of miles away - those prayers rose to heaven, got over the wires, passed the dogs, and came to embrace me. A voice came to me and said, “You are not alone.” And I wasn’t.

4. Prison is Witness: I was jailed first with true criminals - mafia, rapists, murderers. Sometimes this cell would have up to 60 people in it. They would say, “Alexander don’t pray for us today, we want to play cards.” In the morning they would stand silent until I had finished praying. I was able to share Christ with them all, in word and example.

Travel Notes 3: July 26

2011-07-26T14:34:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy writing and posting lecture notes from the first two days of the IOCS summer school, but its time for some travel notes.

First of all, it was COLD today - OK, chilly: 55 for a high, cloudy, but no rain. Am I complaining? No! The cool days and cooler nights are a great relief, as everyone who's been roasting in the South Texas oven with me this summer can testify.

I had two free hours this afternoon, so I wandered through an open air bookstall (shock) and also renewed acquaintance with the Kings College Chapel, one of the most breathtaking spaces for worship constructed here. Pictures asap - I'm having some trouble with uploading pictures here, but hopefully tomorrow that'll be resolved. I am always taken by the initials inscribed on the organ casement, donated to the College by Henry VIII. One sees not only the expected HR, but also RA, and even one HA - the A being for Anne Boleyn, Henry's ill-fated second wife (he had her beheaded on trumped up charges of adultery), the mother of Elizabeth I. Yesterday I went to Great St Mary's Church (distinguished from Little St Mary's), which was a hotbed of Reformation preaching, including the ministry of Martin Bucer. The great Strasburg Reformed leader was buried in the church, but his body was exhumed and burned during the reign of Mary Tudor (daughter of Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, whom he divorced to marry Anne Boleyn - following this?). Anyway, I was very saddened to see that the only testament to Bucer in the Church was a very small plaque in the floor near the altar, and that was hidden under the leg of a bulletin board!

Tomorrow I'm planning to visit Little St Mary's Church, built in 1352, and once served by a Rector named Godfrey Washington - the Great Uncle of George Washington. I'm also planning some time at the American Cemetery for WW2 dead. Many thousands of Americans were stationed in this region's air fields during the war, and many gave their lives in the effort to defeat fascism. I also discovered a small village church nearby with an inscription over the door informing all that the church was established in the 1300s, but was rebuilt after 'being bombed by the Nazis'! I checked with some locals and the bomb - no doubt intended for a nearby air field - hit the church only one hour after the conclusion of a Sunday morning service. Again, pictures as soon as I can upload them.

The food in the college has deteriorated significantly since my visit here two years ago, but the food around Cambridge remains pretty good. I'm determined to find a good curry tomorrow. I'll probably gain 50 pounds while I'm here but I can't resist flapjack, McVities, and sausage rolls. Oh, and I did get the 'must have' Mushroom, Steak, and Guinness Pie at Browns. Yes, I'm running in the morning...Ok, walking everywhere too...but that makes me hungry! In the immortal words of the consummate Englishman Winnie the Pooh, "I have a rumbly in my tumbly."

The best part of the summer school so far has been the fellowship with other Pastors from so many varied backgrounds - and arguing with Christian socialists about what constitutes a Christian economic system. Such fun! And we all like each other too. Great discussion tonight over beer with Fr Alexander (Antiochian) about the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ and how that works out in Eucharistic theology, both East and West. Theology and Beer - heaven. OK, mid-heaven.

Weird stuff:

1. I have not yet been waited on in the college or any eating establishment by an English person. All these jobs are taken by Eastern Europeans, mostly Poles so far as I can tell. I have no idea how many people from that part of the EU have moved here, but it must be very high indeed.

2. Half the population of Japan is here and touring Cambridge.

3. During a tea break I was offered BAG of tea IN A CUP with HOT WATER. WHAT???? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Is this Albuquerque or something? Oh, and it gets worse: the fellow serving it, poured milk in the cup ON TOP OF THE BAG. Yes, he was Ukranian, but we're talking tea in England people...TEA! They can't let the newbies serve the national drink without proper training. There's a way to make tea and that's not it. It takes a pot, boiling water, and...oh bother, drop by for a demo.

4. I will not complain about the price of gasoline in America - for at least one week after I get back. Oh my.

Lecture Notes 6: Pray Without Ceasing; Prayer as Answer to Secularism - Metropolitan Kallistos

2011-07-26T09:51:00.001-07:00

Metropolitan Kallistos
Our Orthodox Response to Secularism, Part Two: Pray Without Ceasing

How we respond personally to the challenge of secularism.

I. A Map of the Spiritual Way in the Orthodox Tradition (noted in Origin, Evagrius, Maximos, and others).

A. Praktaki (Praxis): As the Fathers use the term, not external activity or vocation, but the struggle to acquire internal virtue and subdue passions; this begins with repentance (metanoia) and ends with apatheia - not apathy, nor the denial of feelings, but freedom the rule of passions in order to enjoy a new dynamic for life: “The fire of passionlessness”.

B. Physiki: The Contemplation of Nature, seeing God in all things and all things in God. One *might* employ a term like panentheism for this notion (not pantheism, all things God and God all things, losing the Creator-creature distinction, but rather the presence of God in the creation and the life of creation in God and dependent on God. “See Christ everywhere, and rejoice in him” - Schmeman (Pan-Christification)

C. Theologia: The vision of God. Not theological study in the academic sense. Physiki is to apprehend God in his works, but theologia is to encounter God directly, above language, image, or intellectual concepts.

* These are not ‘stages’ - one discarded when mastered so that the disciple moves on to the next. No, rather different mysteries into which one goes more deeply, all three together. The life of contemplation begins with the second.

II. Physiki as Response to Secularism

A. We don’t live in the world as if there is no God, but in the world finding God everywhere:
* Herbert’s ‘The Elixir’:
    Teach me, my God and King,
        In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
        To do it as for thee:

        Not rudely, as a beast,
        To runne into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
        And give it his perfection.

        A man that looks on glasse,
        On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
        And then the heav’n espie.

        All may of thee partake:
        Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture (for thy sake)
        Will not grow bright and clean.

        A servant with this clause
        Makes drudgerie divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
        Makes that and th’ action fine.

        This is the famous stone
        That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
        Cannot for lesse be told.

B. Nature as God’s Book: Psalm 19
“Love the trees; he who does not love the tree does not love Christ.”
Or God's Grandeur, by Hopkins:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

- Maximos - The world finds it origins in Christ and it is to Christ that all will return. ‘from him and through him and to him are all things...’: Logos and Logoi
- Palamas: Divine Energies (distinguished from his essence): God permeating the creation, everywhere present and filling all things. Without the presence of the Creator in everything and anything, the thing would collapse and cease to exist.
- In him we live and move and have our being
- He upholds all things by the word of his power
- In him all things hold together

III. The Jesus Prayer as Physiki and Response to Secularism
(Arrow Prayer)
A. Two Kinds of Prayer Usage
Fixed - Making the Jesus Prayer part of our regular prayer life
Free - To Unite the Jesus Prayer with our everyday activities.

B. “Create Silence” - Kierkegaard. We live in a loud and boisterous age and we stand in desperate need of silence.
The constant repetition of the same simple words leads us to interior silence
This counters the endless multiplication of words and the cheapening of words
* Von Huegel - “Man is what he does with his silence”
* Silence is not a void but a fullness and allows us to note the presence of the Other. Silence is a presence and in its midst is God. Psalm 46 - “Be still and know that I am God.” Silence allows listening and thus relating.
- Free use: walking about, counseling, committee meetings, in pain, despair, and so on. This kind of praying unites work and prayer time. It makes our work prayer.
- “Pray without ceasing...” - 1 Thessalonians 5
- “Not people who say prayers from time to time, but who are prayer.”
Pray-ers

IV. Prayer, Encounter, and Facing the Secular Challenge - Moses at the Burning Bush
“Take off your shoes.”
“Holy Ground”

To pray is to stand before and in the presence of God to encounter his holy presence around us and his holy earth beneath us. All of creation is his and all of Him is given in Christ to his creation.

More from RB to EBB

2011-07-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

Meeting at Night
BY ROBERT BROWNING

I
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Lecture Notes 5: Transfiguration as Answer to Secularism

2011-07-26T04:33:00.001-07:00

Metropolitan Kallistos

Our Orthodox Answer to Secularism, Part One: The Transfiguration of Christ

I. Three Possible Attitudes in Response to Secularism

Pietism: limit the faith and life of religion to the internal sphere. Dis-engagement from culture; safe within your personal sanctuary, you set a deep chasm between yourself and the world. This is utterly inadequate and isn’t in fact an answer at all. People become ‘church mice’. (I call it isolation)
Secular Christianity: Under the influence of those who followed Bonhoeffer (though mistakenly, says Ware): “Live in the world as if there is no God.” This is the embrace of the secular world on its own terms. But this leaves out both the nature of the fall and the need for repentance (metanoia). (I call it imitation)
Transfiguration: The fallen world is neither rejected nor naively accepted on its own terms; rather we are called to discern the presence of Christ in the world. This means we note our own need for personal transformation and the need for the fallen world’s transformation as well - the presence of the future with us now giving us hope. (We live with insulation and pray for transfiguration): Revelation 21:5 - Not, “I make all new things”, but rather ‘All things new’; not a different reality but this reality renewed and transformed - transfigured. Resurrection was not in a different body, but the self same body in which he suffered and died, now transformed: “see my hands and my feet - it is I myself.” The wounds visible are pledges of continuity and victory, and thus the promise of transfiguration. 1 Corinthians 15 - a ‘spiritual body’; not a de-materialized body, but one that is filled with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. His body made new is the hope of a world made new.
Thus our calling is to ‘Christianize’ this world (or, I note, at least trust that Christ shall do so).

Three Questions Concerning this Vocation
Tolstoy’s Story of the Three Questions: The most important moment? The most important person? The most important task?

What does Christ’s Transfiguration tell us -

About Christ?
What is the Light which shone forth? It was the uncreated light of God, the light of the Holy Trinity. Noted especially in texts for the Feast.
Supra-essential
“A light that transcends the senses...” - Maximos
“The eyes of the Apostles don’t see the light by natural eye sight but by eyes transformed by faith.” - Clement of Alexandria

Christ is thus Truly God; note context - Peter’s Confession
But note that Christ remains truly human. His humanity is taken up into the God head but not abolished. Rather it is rendered transparent - the Godhead shining forth from it. The eternal glory was always his - from conception and throughout life, even in deepest humiliation. Glory was not added and humanness was not taken away.
He is transfigured not by assuming what he was not but by opening the eyes of the disciples to who he always was - and is. He was not changed, but the disciples were changed.
Christ is one person in two natures.Our human nature taken up into God and being transformed while remaining completely human as well.
Into the one river of truth many streams flow” - Clement of Alexandria (on the use of Hellenic categories in Christian thought).

About Ourselves?
The Trans discloses the nature of God but also shows the true nature of humanness.
Kantakion of the fore-feast; small vespers as well. Transfigured Savior has made disfigured man shine with light. Here the last Adam shows us both the nature of man before the fall and the nature of man - glorified - as he will be in resurrection.
It looks back at the fall, through the cross, and to the consummation. Salvation is not merely a return to Paradise but a new beginning and new hope rooted in Christ.
The Transfiguration becomes the inauguration of the Parousia -
“After eight days...” - the new world (just as it was also the first day): the eighth day is a unit beyond time - the presence of the eternal in the temporal
Matins on the Feast Day

About the World?
The Transfiguration is cosmic in its scope. We are not saved from the created order but with the created order: Romans 8 - ‘the revealing of the sons of God’, etc. in response to the world’s groaning, waiting for redemption.
His CLOTHES are shining as well - the material he wears - man made and utterly of this order - is also subjected to being the vehicle of the out-shining of divine majesty. The material world is taken up and all is in service to God.
The material is not secular but becomes - with Christ - the means of revelation and service, even at the Cross.

The Context: Before and After
Before: Same Sequence in all the synoptic Gospels -
Peter’s Confession
Jesus’ Prediction of his Coming Crucifixion
Peter Scandalized
Jesus’ call to be his cross bearing disciple
Jesus’ promise of his coming in glory (the Kingdom).
Tabor amplifies and affirms Peter’s Confession
Tabor also points forward to revealing glory on this mountain and the mountain of calvary. Same three disciples here as in Gethsemane
Witnesses of his uncreated splendor, the same are witnesses to his suffering and agony.
These are not two mysteries, but two aspects of the one great mystery.
Luke 9:31 - the exodon; thus the connection between Tabor and Calvary is explicit.
In the brilliant light of transfiguration it is the cross that is discussed
Note 1 Corinthians 2:8

Note hymns for the Day as commentary on the event.

This means we cannot leave out the CROSS when it comes to the message of transformation. There is no theosis without kenosis.

After: Same in Sequence
Peter wishes to remain
Jesus says No
They encounter the demonized, suffering world; they enter into this suffering rather than staying upon the mountain.
They encounter the failure of our ministry
They discover afresh the power of Christ.

Lecture Notes 4: A Christian Response to the Global Economic Crisis

2011-07-26T02:48:00.000-07:00

Wow - this was one with which I have the strongest possible disagreement. The notes are what he said, not what I think. I asked some pointed questions, and I'm afraid the answers offered were as unsatisfactory as the talk itself. Dr Hughes is an able scholar, and of course he was speaking within the British context. Nevertheless, the defense of forced redistribution of wealth rather than the creation of new wealth was, as I see things, deeply troubling.

Rev Dr John Hughes
Moralism and the Market

Morality and the Market

* Claims that the Free Market is bound up with secularism.

Since 2008-09 intl leaders note that the mkt cannot be an end in itself. “It should be free, but not values free.”

“Are there global economic rules? Markets cannot self-regulate but they can self-destruct.” - Gordon Brown

This is a disavowal of liberal market

“Wealth without fairness...capitalism without a conscience...markets are there to serve...we must shape capitalism to serve...the market is not an end in itself but rather a means to an end...” - David Cameron

The politics of virtue is on the rise.

(But whose principles informing whose conscience?)

Completely laissez faire approaches are only materialist in their view of humanity. It is utterly Darwinian.

Secularism - according to Schmeman - areas of life are viewed as separate from God; Faber notes the dis-enchantment of the world authored by the Puritans led to a work ethic that was inherently secular and materialist.

(Watch out for the Law of unintended consequences!)

The market crisis was a moral crisis in relationship to risk, debt, and de-regulation. These are choices made, not inevitabilities that were impossible to avoid.

“We need rules that make hedge funds and risk visible...” - G Brown

Move away from a culture of irresponsible debt to a culture of Jubilee.

(Seriously???)

But what is needed is not the pruning of excesses but the a new moral economics and mutuality in market relations.

Red Toryism - Philip Blond (formerly a theologian of the RO)

Re-Moralization of the Market
Classical Liberalism cannot offer authentic moral ends
Resistance to monopolistic capitalism strangling the economy
This is the distributization envisioned by Chesterton and Belloc

2. Re-Capitalization of the Poor.

Compass Group (Blue Labor)

From work ethic to ethic of care
Free from poverty and exclusion

Making economy more local.

The co-inherent economy is ‘body-politic’; it is Christendom in its orientation.

Questions

What is the role of the state?
Blond - some role; Compass, more so.

International Justice?
Though global, Blond and Compass are primarily concerned with national issues.

What is the ‘theology’ of the proposals being made.

Caritatis in Veritate - B16 (3rd Encyclical)

Economic Sphere is not Neutral
Economic Decisions are moral Decisions
Profit not an end in itself, but rather service.
Socially responsible businesses
Unionization as Protection of workers (Oh really? Which workers?!!!?)
Decision Making at Local Level rather than state centralism
Global Collaboration
World-wide re-distribution of Energy and Economic Resources
World Polity - Family of Nations
Waste of Intl Aid by Oppressive Governments is Condemned
Large-Scale re-distribution of wealth global
“Civilizing the economy”
- Charitable works associated with private companies

Implications

Charity as ‘Gift-Exchange’
Augustinian and Johannine - participatory not merely private, and reciprocal
Love moves to courageous action

Sharing is at the Heart of the Gospel Message

C. The old division of nature/grace and faith/reason must be overcome.

Lecture Notes 3: Secularism vs Christian Democracy

2011-07-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

While this lecture focused on the situation in Britain, the principles in play have a great deal to do with the debate and conflict in America about Religion in the Public Sphere.

Dr Jonathan Chaplin
Between Theocracy and Secularism: Religion and the State in Britain Today

The emergence of a secular priesthood: journalists, stars, academic ‘experts’. Secularism is in fact parasitic in terms of legal tradition, and in large parts of its intellectual vigor, living of the Judeo-Christian capital of the West.

Basic to the secular ideal is the radical separation of the religious and the public and jurisprudential spheres.

Citizens may not appeal to their religious views in regard to their approach to law
There is an ‘empirical world’ with which religion has no inter-action.
‘Theocracy’ is a scare tactic
Theocracy is a misunderstanding; what they object to is in fact an ecclesiocracy.

Varieties of Secularism (Not the ancient notion of the secular but the idea that there is an area or areas of life not under God)

Militant Secularism: state officially committed to a secular/atheist position which the state propagates through state action - either passively or aggressively, either violently or by exclusion.

Exclusionary Secularism: state seeks to keep the influence of religion and faith out of public policy and debate; does not oppose private religious belief, but restricts the public manifestation of religion. Religion may be prevalent at the personal level but invisible at the public level.

Impartial Secularism: State refrains from endorsing a religion or creed, adopting a stance of impartiality or neutrality towards all. Since the state cannot judge religion’s truthfulness, it should refrain from such judgments.
Theology of Freedom to the Call of the Gospel
Theology of the Church: Church stands under the authority of Christ in a way that other ‘spheres’ do not. This is not immunity for the Church, but it is to say that no human authority can restrain the Church in its mission.
Theology of the State: the limits of the state. Note the subversive nature of the ancient Church(Horsley, Wright, etc). The state may assist the Church, and should through the maintenance of peaceful conditions for the Church.
American system and in particular first amendment
The US Courts have imported an alien version of secularism - namely (B) - to replace (C).

Justifcatory Secularism: state refrains from officially offering religious justifications for its laws and actions. For instance, the state may say, “This violates the human rights of the foetus”, but may not say, “This is a violation of the image of God”.

Benefits of (C): Impartial Secularism

State is Humbled - it acknowledges its incompetence
The Church is Protected for its Gospel mission rather than being identified with the state.
This does not imply religious neutrality when it comes to Law: all laws are a legislation of morality, which is inescapably religious in nature.
Allows appeal by the state to the religious heritage (note recent example of Italy and the posting of crucifixes in state schools).

Exclusive Secularism’s Problems
It does in fact imply justificatory secularism
Separation of jurisdiction does not mean the separation of religion and state. A ‘religion-free state’ is mythological.
ES presupposes that secular speech/reasons unites people while religious reasoning/speech divides.
ES further presupposes that secular speech is rational and objective, while religious speech is irrational and subjective.
Yet both C and D are false.
ES’s damaging consequences
Catastrophic violation of individual rights
- the track record is that the religious are marginalized. This liberalism is illiberal.
Deprivation of society of an indispensable resource for moral consideration.
Theological-Cultural Amnesia at work.

Not Christian Nation but Christian Democracy
The Church does not rule the state (Gregory VII’s age even recognized the different jurisdictions): What people truly reject is ecclesiocracy - clerical domination of the state.
But what of ‘Christian Nation’? It seems to pre-empt true debate and it favors one religion over others.
In Christian Democracy, Christians engage, work through political and legal positions, and then work in the culture for these positions (say everything from life and death to ecology and economics).
Church must be alive and helping her members and office holders to be wise and diligent in their public service.

Egalitarianism as Heresy

2011-07-25T04:50:00.001-07:00

Just want to note in passing, reflecting on the lecture on Marxism, that egalitarianism before the Law is one thing, but this cannot be confused with the demonic envy that demands the revolutionary overthrow of those who appear to have more by those who think they have less. Envy turned the primary angel of light into a ghastly, beastly monster. If envy can do such a terrible thing to an angel, how much more ourselves. We must always be on the guard then against this terror. Inequality of gift is not inequity; equality of opportunity cannot guarantee equality of outcome. Marx looked at the injustices of the society around him - noted by Dickens as well - but without a sound doctrine of man's fall, he lept in horrid self-righteousness to the condemnation of the classes he hated. Blame-shifting as old as Eden, accompanied by Utopianism fueled by envy and hate, threw the whole world into a bloodlust. The same demons crouch before every door. Beware. Beware the Messianic state. Beware making saviors of candidates, of whatever party. Fallen man and fallen society has but one Savior, one Lord.

Lecture Notes Two - Communism as Secularized Eschatology

2011-07-25T04:29:00.000-07:00

Communism as Secularized Eschatology - Dr Mihail Neamtu (Romania)

Communism as a Heresy

To what extent does the presence of totalitarian movements highlight the failures of the political world to speak to the spiritual aspirations of man?

I. Secular Age

(Even before Spinoza)

Privatization of Faith/Religious Belief
Demythologizing the Bible

In regard to the first the confessional wars were the foundation from which western rationalists launched the project to eradicate religion from the public square to make the society safe.

Intellectuals become the new priests of the church of secularism.
- belief in revelation (and corresponding religious devotion) is a sign of weak mind.
Theological Political Treatise (published anonymously at first) is the primary work describing his project.
This is not only a cosmological revolution, but an anthropological one as well; after all, one cannot alter one’s view of God without altering one’s view of mankind.

When Eschatological Deliverance disappeared, secular versions took its place. The French and Bolshevik Revolution are examples of this outcome.

Collectivism Myth of Flourishing

This took the place of Spinoza’s individualism, and places power in the hands of the state. Hence political utopianism. The Utopians searched for a new heaven and new earth but without the possibility of creating a new man.

Marx left behind the Socratic imperative: its not our task to understand the world but to change it.

Marx’s Tools for Change
Replace God with History (Upper Case ‘H’)
Materialism (Revelation prevents revolution)
His avowed atheism was influenced by Feuerbach
Mythology - a re-telling of redemptive history
fall is alienation
redemption is salvation by workers or party
consummation is the communist state
Hatred - Currently dominated classes had to be overthrown and/or eliminated/re-educated.
For this there must be a revolution of the proletariat against the ruling or dominant classes
Envy is central fuel for the fires of hatred; egalitarian envy is thus central to the Marxist project.

His Conflict with Hegel - a critique of Idealism: Marx seeks to reverse the Hegelian personal process of transformation and transplant it into the communal historical context.
Hermeneutics of Suspicion - While Hegel valued art, revelation, and philosophy, Marx sees these are bourgeoise. The person must disappear and the class must become all.
Ay his funeral Engels said, “As Darwin discovered the evolution of the human species, marx had discovered the evolution of human history.”

Heirs of Marx: Lenin and Stalin
From the critique of privatization to collectivization
One thing to criticize the wealthy, quite another to pursue the collectivization of their property by force.
Not just theft, but economic stupidity: central planning simply did not and cannot work because it ignores the individual.
Lenin introduced the Gulag system: central planning forced the emergence of slave labor.
Cult of the Supreme Leader: The Messianic State.
in 1932 famine in Ukraine targeted elderly and children; 25m lost.
Ugliness of the Urban Space: demolition (iconoclasm) of the egalitarianism, resulting in mass produced ugliness: ‘raging squalor’. Communism mutilated art and banned religious expression. “If the early Christians knew they believed, the Communists believed that they knew.”

Communism as a System of Lies
Not Pravda, but Masks
Ethics of Denial and Duplicity
Culture of Fear
“Why did KGB operate in groups of three? One could read, one could write, and one could keep an eye on the intellectuals.”
Show Trials - Fraud in Justice
Lying is endemic to and fundamental to Communism.
Here we see the offspring of the father of lies
The party was the new ecclesia and the party leader the new universalist Messiah.
Discipleship was reshaped into state service.

Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy

2011-07-25T03:36:00.000-07:00

This formed a vital aspect of lecture one:

“Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its katharsis of such emotions. . . . Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Melody.”

Lecture One Notes: Art - From Ritual to Voyeurism

2011-07-25T03:10:00.000-07:00

I will post some parallel comments later, but here are my notes taken during the lecture. This was a fascinating 90 minute presentation on art in history, especially art as service to God and art as antagonist to the Faith - as well as the possible future path Christians can take to recover art in and for the Church. OK, one personal side comment: inconography is inevitable - even the absence of artistic expression in the Church - bare naked space - is a statement of doctrine and an invitation to and encounter with mystery. The iconoclast is an iconographer as well.

Dr Andre Andreopolis

The Place of Art: from Ritual to Voyeurism

I. Theories of Art:
Entertainment
Communication (deriving meaning whether with words, sign, music, but generally non-discursive)
Definition of Space
Identification of Persons (not just uniform or vestment, but all clothing defining moment and person - saying who we are in the sight of others)
Art provides non-discursive narrative - the way of existence

II. Origins of Art
From an anthropological point of view we see art emerging as defining the foundation of human culture. Why the cave paintings? Not utilitarian! Not a how to manual for hunting. They furnish an ‘as if’ pathway - the way of imagination. This marks a differentiation in reality - the visible and the ideal.

Scripture as written within a dramatic context - the drama/re-enactment involved in liturgy.

Rituals of the Egyptian tradition; life and death of the sun, etc.

Mysteries: originally, the presence of the ritual: thus the sacrament - ‘as if’ productions, something beyond what the senses communicate. Pointing to a more complete reality.
Tragedy in drama: how metaphysical identity is being communicated. Modern psychology was founded largely on one myth of tragedy: Oedipus.
Aristotle (Poetics): tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete, possesses magnitude...pity and fear and bringing about purification (catharsis): thus it is transformational. One does not merely ‘watch’ or ‘spectate’ but participates - enters into - what is being performed.
Imitation - world of ideas/world of senses; how does imitation of a thing compare to its archetype?
In Aristotle - coming to see more clearly the archetype.
Plato: in an ideal state we would not need art, except for the military.

Art in Biblical Tradition: comes after the fall. Thus does it take it further away from paradise? No an instrument of our recovery.

In Christianity

The ‘as if’ is a statement of reality
notes distance but also proclaims the union of history and eschatology.
Both remembrance (imitating an action) but anticipation (mystygogy): not just in imagination but in reality entering the future.
On Icons - what was the seventh ecumenical council saying about the question, “What are we looking at?”
The Biblical command against images - noted by the iconoclasts - that is the basis of the scandal
BUT the issue is really Platonic in its origins: how does the visible connect us - if at all- with God? This is how the fathers approached the issue.
How does the icon assist in regard to mystygogy?
Same person with defense of icons is the SAME person who codified musical notation - eight modes - John of Damascus; same generation, same issue.
Arius illustrates the use of music/hymnody to instruct.

At Renaissance the ‘as if’ shifts
Use of art apart from the ritual - not for purification but for stimulation, liberating art from the Church
This caused the emergence of ‘the artist’, a ‘prophet’ but of a non-religious person. This is the genesis of the secular. 16th century sees this in particular; the artist is seen as ‘creator’.
We know very, very few names of ‘artists’ before this time in the Church - whether iconographers, painters, or sculptors.
Ancient Church had a negative view of the artist - especially within the theater (not unlike its view of soldiers). But it had a positive view of ‘the artisan’, those who serve and hence sign the work ‘by the hand of...’

Humanistic Art
Art as recovery of human person (note to self: Alan Jacobs on Nazis reading Goethe; just because one enjoys Beethoven does not make one a better person; it could be nothing more than hedonism, but on a higher level).
Stimulation of New Desire - Note Marquis de Sade, on production of desire and then the satisfaction of that desire.
The French Revolutionaries and Romantic movement enthrones and seeks to embody this ideal.
Postmodernity as heir of this movement, but primarily re-establishing distance between viewer and work: “This is not a pipe.”
Influence of Da Da.
PM brings critique of questions to modern art. But supremely it is not about the meaning intended by the artist (those this is still ‘meaning’).
The pop art of the 60s: Andy Warhol as supreme artist/prophet; as a project of self-definition, yes pop art was prophetic and ‘real’
But Monet does not simply give us an alternative view; but the pop and modern artist suggesting/telling us to look more closely at who we are and commanding us to disbelieve what he rejects.

Next?
Meta-Postmodernity?
Art that denies connection between art and life
Is it possible to continue to engage with post-renaissance styles and in the service of the Gospel and the Church?
A Recovery of the Liturgical in art as that which is ‘time-resistant’ art.
Christian art is not the same as ‘socialist art’, promulgating an idea for the masses via speech, drama, music, picture, etc. In fact, in Christian history there is sometimes art work that leads to the idea and to its proper formulation as doctrine.
Rublev’s Trinity or Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion or a Kontakion, we are allowing the ‘artisan’ freedom’ to instruct and inform us. Art remains open as a place of discovery and a means of proclamation.

A Couple of Travel Pics

2011-07-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

It turns out that the coronation rehearsal scene in The King's Speech was shot, not in Westminster Abbey where the event would've actually taken place, but in Ely Cathedral. The stage version of the Coronation Chair is on display there and you can take a seat in it - which I happily did, feeling momentarily regal.

I took the picture of the lamp post during a run yesterday. No wonder CS Lewis made these lovely lights such an integral element of the Narnia stories.

Travel Notes 2: July 24

2011-07-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

After a very heavy night's sleep I headed over to Ely to visit the Cathedral there - one of the most magnificent and ancient places of worship in Christian history. The whole scope of our redemption is shown in the astonishing ceiling panels bearing brilliant pictures of the fathers and the prophets leading up to the Christ and His Kingdom. The stain glass windows and ancient iconographic images on the columns (covered over during the Reformation), the soaring triforium, and beautiful memorials all bear witness to the saving work of Christ - and the fidelity and martyrdom of those who gave all to bear witness to the same through the centuries. Queen (and Saint) Ethelreda was the founder of the Church that became this Cathedral - that's in the 700s. Between St Albans yesterday and Ely today, I am immersed in a glorious and cruciform history which humbles the proud soul.

Just outside the Cathedral is (ironically) the home of Oliver Cromwell - he and his family lived in Ely for some years. The Fens in east Anglia were long a hotbed of radical anti-monarchist sentiment, and those reached their zenith in the Civil War that resulted in the beheading of Charles I and the interegnum, that brief period on the 17th century when England was without a Monarchy and Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector. He was the great grand-nephew of Thomas Cromwell, the reforming - and often (long before the term came to be known) Machiavellian counselor to Henry VIII.

It was then on to Cambridge and registration for this week's classes, beginning tomorrow morning. It was wonderful to renew acquaintance with Church of Ireland Priest, Fr Patrick Comerford, and many other friends as well - especially Fr. Alexander, Chaplain of the Orthodox Institute at Cambridge. After Vespers, there was a friendly reception at Wesley House, and then I enjoyed dinner with Patrick and Gunther, a Lutheran Pastor from Iceland - its an ecumenical group to be sure!

Now to get some rest and be ready to give full attention tomorrow to what promises to be some very good lectures. Time permitting, I will get some lecture notes up as we go through the week.

Quotable - On Books and the People Who Read Them

2011-07-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

"A book is like a mirror: if an ass looks in you can't expect an apostle to look out."
- G C Lichtenberg (18th century scientist, quoted by Alan Jacobs - told you this was good!)

Travel Notes 1: July 23

2011-07-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

1. St Albans - After a good run, and a better breakfast, I headed off the St Albans to visit the Cathedral there, the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in Britain. The city and cathedral are named for England's first martyr, beheaded by the Romans, his shrine and reliquary now within the Cathedral. Please note that this martyrdom took place in the second century, long before Augustine of Canterbury (not to be confused with St Augustine of Hippo) was sent by Gregory the Great to convert the Angles. The Celtic Church had been there for centuries already, and was subjugated to Rome by Augustine, and not without great threats of violence against them by the Papal emissary, a surrender finally made official at the Synod of Whitby. The Cathedral itself, once a parish church, has a remarkable history, including being the home of Benedictines for many centuries, and consequently witnessing the abolition of that order and the stripping of the Church's material wealth prior to and during the Reformation (Prior to by Cardinal Wolsey and during by the agents of Henry VIII, especially operating under the orders of Thomas Cromwell). Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury who presided over the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, an ABC I remember well, was once Bishop of St Albans and is buried in her churchyard. England's only Pope - Adrain IV - was also from St Albans.

The city center offered a terrific Market Day - wonderful fare, with entertaining fishmongers and butchers gathering crowds to whom they could flog their goods. After searching numerous shops in futility, I managed to buy the right plug converter for my computer at one of the market stalls, and that for a couple of pounds. No souvenirs though - not even a salt and pepper shaker, but I bet I can find that in Cambridge. Sweet. OK, pictures tomorrow.

2. Food - What the British do exceedingly well should always be enjoyed: port; meat pies; sausage rolls; tea with scones and clotted cream; fresh, crisp vegetables, and breakfast. What the British cannot do, no matter how hard they try, should be avoided, and this is especially true when it comes to steak. I learned thirty years ago that getting a steak in Britain is always an astronomical gastronomical error. It still is. Proved that tonight. I finished the piece of meat out of sympathy for the cow that had the misfortune through no fault of its own to be raised, slaughtered, and prepared for a meal here rather than in Texas - or, say, France. I kept smothering the thing with sauce in hopes of improvement, but to no avail. Even the knife didn't want to cut it. The port was good though!

3. Books

A) Finished the little Churchill biography on the trip over. Nothing new, but a good intro and summary for those unfamiliar with the greatest man of the twentieth century - and maybe any other century as well, save the Apostles Peter and Paul. But as is the case with all of Paul Johnson's books, the prose is superior and the book un-put-downable.

B) Hard to find sufficient superlatives for Alan Jacob's little book on reading. Pages 46-53 alone are worth the price of admission. If you are a reader, this book should not be missed. Jacobs HELPS! His notion of 'whim' is superb and a great tonic to the soul burdened by the thought of reading that is undeniably not to one's (at least current) liking, not to mention those reading in a never-ending race to finish the 'top 100' so as to have something intelligent to say at dinner parties. It is filled with admirable - and often hysterical - quotations, many of which are going straight into my little note book for future deployment. Only Austen scholars would make the connection between the great novelist and the philosopher David Hume; only a scholar of Jacob's acumen would make that connection so memorable and compelling. And then there's that bit about reading, culture, and being a better person - and Machiavelli and the Nazis. Yes, worth reading.

* And what is it with Wheaton??? They not only have Jacobs teaching English Lit, but Kevin Vanhoozer on theology! That's an embarrassment of riches.

4. Weather - Perfect. Yes, perfect. Partly cloudy, high of about 72 with 50 or 55 at night, light winds, occasional gentle shower. Its heaven compared to 147 degrees and a drought in the Hill Country. Yes, I'm rubbing it in a little. Actually, no, I'm just incredibly grateful.

Run tomorrow again, worship, and then on to Cambridge.

To the UK Today

2011-07-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

Heading off to Britain today for classes next week at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. I will try to post pictures here and on FB as I'm able. But here are a few from the College I thought you might enjoy! Cromwell's head is buried in the college grounds - lets hope I keep mine while I'm there!

"Off with his head!"

From Robert Browning

2011-07-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I published an excerpt from a love letter written by Elizabeth Barrett (Browning) to her beloved Robert Browning. Its only fair that I give Robert some space for a reply. Here's an sliver from one of his masterful - and romantic - responses:

When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest ... and there is no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on, patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and I will console myself, to the full extent, with your knowledge—penetration, intuition—somehow I must believe you can get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or writing it.

He knew that she knew him, and what he felt and thought, even when, wordsmith though he was, his pen could not give voice to his soul.

Quotable

2011-07-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Matthew Henry on Adam and Eve -

"She was not made out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side, to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

In the Book Bag

2011-07-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

Sure, I have to pack my jeans and shirts, but most importantly I have to pack some books for the trip. I'm taking along some short reads:

1. Churchill, by Paul Johnson (my favorite historian on my favorite person)

2. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distractions, by Alan Jacobs (my favorite biographer of CS Lewis on the subject of reading more deeply and joyously)

3. Water from Stone, by Jeffrey Greene (The story of the Selah, the Bamberger Ranch and Preserve in Blanco County; I mentioned this last Sunday - so I'm taking some Texas to the UK with me; great story of restoring the soil, with the important emphasis on the relationship between land and people).

4. The Jesus Prayer, by Lev Gillet (An introduction to an Orthodox prayer tradition)

5. Ascension Theology, by Douglas Farrow (a Roman Catholic Theologian whose work heavily influenced Michael Horton's 'People and Place', this is a follow on volume to his previous work on the same subject).

* Yes, of course my Oxford Book of English Verse is making the trip; one should go nowhere without great poetry. God bless Q!

Choruses From the Rock - Part Five

2011-07-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore;
Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste;
Let the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone.
Let the fire not be quenched in the forge.

III

The Word of the Lord came unto me, saying:
О miserable cities of designing men,
O wretched generation of enlightened men,
Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities.
Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:
I have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless palaver,
I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
Many are engaged in writing books and printing them.
Many desire to see their names in print.
Many read nothing but the race reports.
Much is your reading, but not the Word of God,
Much is your building, but not the House of God.
Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,
To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?
1st Male Voice: A Cry from the East:
What shall be done to the shore of smoky ships?
Will you leave my people forgetful and forgotten
To idleness, labour, and delirious stupor?
There shall be left the broken chimney,
The peeled hull, a pile of rusty iron.
In a street of scattered brick where the goat climbs,
Where My Word is unspoken.
2nd Male Voice: A Cry from the North, from the West and from
the South
Whence thousands travel daily to the timekept City;
Where My Word is unspoken,
In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels
The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit,
The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,
And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."
Chorus: We build in vain unless the Lord build with us.
Can you keep the City that the Lord keeps not with you?
A thousand policemen directing the traffic
Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.
A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots
Build better than they that build without the Lord.
Shall we lift up our feet among perpetual ruins?
I have loved the beauty of Thy House, the peace of Thy
sanctuary,
I have swept the floors and garnished the altars.
Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.
Though you have shelters and institutions,
Precarious lodgings while the rent is paid,
Subsiding basements where the rat breeds
Or sanitary dwellings with numbered doors
Or a house a little better than your neighbour's;
When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?"
What will you answer? "We all dwell together
To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?
And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.
О my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

О weariness of men who turn from God
To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,
To arts and inventions and daring enterprises.
To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited.
Binding the earth and the water to your service,
Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,
Dividing the stars into common and preferred.
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,
Engaged in working out a rational morality,
Engaged in printing as many books as possible,
Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,
Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm
For nation or race or what you call humanity;
Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

Sermon Notes for Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

2011-07-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

The Seed, the Soil, and the Harvest (Part Two)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
July 17, 2011

Review:
• The Primacy of the Parable
• The Power of the Seed/Word
• New Creation: from curse and thorn to fruitfulness
• The Problem of the Soil/Heart

Until only a couple of weeks ago, I’d never heard of David Bamberger. David grew up in Ohio during the great depression and WW2, moved to Texas, became a successful vacuum cleaner salesman, then the founder and CEO of Church’s Fried Chicken, and then, desiring to turn his wealth and attention to something that gripped his imagination since the day he first read a book that had been given to him by his mother, he founded Selah - Bamberger Ranch and Preserve. That book was published in the 1920s and was entitled “Pleasant Valley”, written by one Louis Bromfield. It was all about land restoration – taking misused and apparently useless soil and making it fruitful again, and doing so through 19th century methods.

In 1969 Bamberger went to the Texas Land Office and told them he wanted to buy the worst piece of land available in the Hill Country of Texas. “You’ll have a lot to choose from” was the reply he received. Bamberger settled on 3500 acres of dry, cedar choked, rocky land in Blanco County and went to work. Today that land is 5500 acres of paradise and known as ‘Selah’, the Bamberger Ranch and Preserve. When he started, Bamberger was ridiculed for looking to employ what people regarded as outdated methods on worthless land; today he’s regarded as conservation hero and pioneer.

• Facts from the Ranch

I. The Conditions of the Soil/Heart: Matthew 13:18-23; Proverbs 4:23
A. Hearing with Understanding (v. 14-15; again, from Isaiah 6)
• Yogi Berra – “99% of this game is half mental.”
• “Sure, and I suppose all we need to know about astronomy is ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’!” – RC Sproul
- Hosea 4:6
- Golgotha: the place of the skull
1. Hearing – Its relational: parents ‘hear’ the cry of their child
2. Accepting – Its an inclination rooted in trust: sheep and goats
- Isaiah 66:2; James 1:21

B. Three Problems
• He who peers beneath the veneer of the human soul, looks into the depths of hell.” – Sigmund Freud
• Genesis 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9

1. Hard Heart – Matthew 13:19
• Busyness – trampled down by traffic; everyone and everything, except the one thing truly necessary!
- Mary and Martha

2. Hidden Heart – Matthew 13:20-21
• Shallowness: The hardness is still there, but more cleverly hidden: 3-4 inches of top soil (what I wouldn’t give for 3-4 inches of top soil!); no possibility of roots going down deep when the heat is on; instead, the plant withers and dies.
- Moved by emotion and circumstance rather than principle
- “Friends firm; enemies alarmed; devil angry; sinners saved; Christ exalted; self, not well.” - CHS

3. Hazardous Heart – Matthew 13:22
• Crowded and over-run with all manner of destructiveness
- Merimna: “Cares”; 1 Peter 5:7
- “The anxiety of the age depresses us, while the delusion of wealth impresses us.” – Leiva-Merikakis

II. The Heart of the Healthy Harvest - Matthew 13:23
A. The Good Heart – Persevering (Luke 8:15; Galatians 6:9)

B. The Soil/Heart Can Change – Genesis 1-3; Isaiah 55
• The rocky, shallow, hard, cedar-choked land of our hearts can be transformed by the grace of God.
• God works by principle, not magic
• J David Bamberger has been amazingly successful – but there is a still greater husbandman of the land, the One who fashioned all things and made your heart to find its rest in him alone; the One who longs to root out of our hard, shallow, crowded hearts all those enemies which war against the harvest of his kingdom in our lives.
- Our Prayer: Psalm 139:23-24

Quotable: Life Purpose

2011-07-16T08:11:00.001-07:00

God did not put me on earth to be successful, he put me here to be faithful.
- Mother Teresa

CJ and Larry Reconciled

2011-07-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

In my mid to late teens I was, like many people involved in charismatic renewal movements, deeply appreciative of the many blessings so many of us received through the ministries of CJ Mahaney and Larry Tomczak. Indeed, CJ was one of the ministers officiating at my ordination in 1980. Sadly these two brothers, who were very close partners in Gospel proclamation, endured a painful and lengthy separation. In recent weeks they have reconciled, after a challenging and difficult path of confrontation, confession, and repentance. I rejoice in this and hope you will read this letter from Larry Tomczak describing how these events unfolded.

www.sovereigngraceministries.org/blogs/sgm/post/A-letter-from-Larry-Tomczak-on-his-reconciliation-with-CJ-Mahaney.aspx

Currently, CJ is taking a leave of absence from Sovereign Grace Ministries, and together with others, I pray that the issues surrounding that leave will find a gracious, principled, and lasting resolution to the further glory of God.

More Drought Humor

2011-07-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

I was visiting online with a buddy out at Elk City and she said she'd killed a mosquito that was carrying a canteen.

A friend in southwest Oklahoma told me the chicken farmers were giving the chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard-boiled eggs.

But just this week, in Seminole, Oklahoma, a man said he saw a fire hydrant bribing a dog. In Seminole Lake, another friend caught a 20 lb catfish that had ticks on it!
HT to Barry M

Joke of the Day

2011-07-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

How dry is it in Texas?

Well, it's so dry that the Baptists are sprinkling,
The Methodists are using wet wipes,
The Presbyterians are giving rain checks,
and The Catholics are praying for Jesus to turn the wine back into water!

HT to Paula McClain
(Thanks Paula!)

Quotable

2011-07-12T14:25:00.001-07:00

Like mint, doctrinal compromise is hard to contain; like poison ivy, it's hard to kill.

- Tim Bayly

Practical Christian Unity

2011-07-12T13:01:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed an interesting discussion earlier today with another Pastor on the limits and scope of working together with Christians from other traditions, including those with whom one might have substantial disagreements over doctrine and polity. This arose in response to join in an effort that is highly valued by a particular group but which could, if pursued, engage the other Pastor in work that would detract from his primary charge to care for the sheep entrusted to his care. "Is it wrong for me to refuse to get involved with this new initiative? After all, I do care about visible unity in the Church", he asked.

We worked through some levels of proper involvement with other groups, congregations, and individuals.

1. Pastors have a primary commission to shepherd the flock. Christians in general do not have that same charge and might be able to engage in a whole host of activities that transcend denominational, but none of these extra activities should keep them from their primary charge to care for their families. In the same way, even legitimate activities to which one is invited as a Pastor must not be pursued IF these take us from our chief task of feeding and tending the flock. Its the old proverb about keeping the main thing, the main thing. Refusing to participate does not mean that Pastors believe that the activity is wrong or will prove unfruitful - though that may well be the case. It simply means that its not something he can take up at that moment without violating his primary stewardship. Level One is no participation either because it takes one away from one's first work, or because the activity is so compromised from a theological standpoint that appearing as part of it would foster confusion in the church, and raise doubt about the veracity of the Church's teaching.

2. Vocational Partnership is helpful. Lets say that all the music ministers, or all the youth ministers, in a city want to meet and pray together - for the churches they serve, for the city, and for one another. That collaboration might well be very helpful to the participants in carrying out their primary task. Conferences to which one travels serve the same purpose; there's no reason to avoid the same kind of gathering when its meeting across town rather than across the country. That's Level Two - Regular Vocational Partnership for Mutual Edification.

3. Cultural Co-Belligerants: Churches, Pastors, and Christians can work together in a whole host of ways that promote the love of Jesus Christ for people where we live. Many Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians, together with many Evangelicals and Pentecostals, have found common cause and the capacity to work together to promote the well being and protection of the unborn. Still others have joined together to care for unwed moms, for the hungry and needy, and to promote Christian education. I'm sure many examples could be cited. This is a Level Three involvement - we are visibly together to promote in our neighborhoods, cities, and towns those issues which we believe are vital to social justice.

4. Common Grace Concerns: If there is a tornado or flood that strikes a community, or if a local playground has fallen into disrepair, or if a major medical expense by a neighbor is overwhelming that person and their family, people from all faiths and no faith, as well as people and churches from all kinds of denominational traditions, band together to help and serve, and bring relief, renewal, and hope. We do this because everyone is made in the image of God - we help one another as a response of love that arises from the fact (even unrecognized by many) that God made us all from one and so we are linked together in ways that call forth from us all our 'better angels'. All people join together to assist those who hurt or who have been injured, or to make a community safer for our children, and we do this because, while sinful and in need of redemption, we can and must work together when an emergency demands it. That's a Level Four involvement - our home towns and the call to be Good Samaritans, good neighbors. If anything, Christians should lead the way on this.

So lets understand the limits of shared work, rejoice in the places we can currently share, pray for the day of full visible sacramental unity, and join with our friends and neighbors to bear witness to the truth that all are made in God's image, and all are in need of the Savior.

Sermon Notes for Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

2011-07-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

The Seed, the Soil, and the Harvest (Part One)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
July 10, 2011

(10 January 1846)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Robert Browning
And now listen to me in turn.
You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me - my heart was full when you
came here today. Henceforward I am yours for everything…
…Do you know, when you have told me to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so much, of thinking of only you--which is too much, perhaps. Shall I tell you? It seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me--the fullness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy...and only I know what was behind--the long wilderness without the blossoming rose...and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve--not you--but my own fate?
Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And you love me more, you say? Shall I thank you or God? Both, indeed, and there is no possible return from me to either of you! I thank you as the unworthy may…and as we all thank God. How shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it as I feel it?…

Elizabeth’s father, famously tyrannical, locked her up and rebuffed Robert Browning’s advances; finally the couple were married in secret, and sailed away to live in Italy and escape the wrath of the elder Barrett. Yet Elizabeth never gave up on that relationship. She wrote them of her love for them every week. Ten long years later, a box arrived by post in Italy for Elizabeth from her parents. Inside the box were all the letters she’d written so lovingly and sent their way. They were unopened and unread. Her words refused by hard hearts meant that no reconciliation could occur. I know a still greater tragedy…
I. The Primacy of this Parable – Matthew 13:1-3; Mark 4:13
• The First of Seven Parables in the third sermon of Jesus that Matthew records for the Church.

A. The Movement of Jesus from Intimacy of Home to World Proclamation and Dominion over the Waters: He rules and speaks His life-giving word to the multitudes; “The voice of the Lord is on the waters; the God of glory thunders!” – Psalm 29

B. The Necessity of Revelation - We are a Revelation Dependent People – Isaiah 55:6-13
1. We can’t know God and his thoughts unless he makes himself known
2. Thankfully He does make Himself known, and He does this through his Word, both incarnate, written, read, proclaimed, and sung
- Sufficiency; Clarity, and Power for Life Deuteronomy 29:29; John 6:66; Hebrews 4:12; 1 Peter 1:23-24; James 1:21
- Incarnation: The Seed of the Son sown into the world – John 12:24
C. The Sovereignty of Grace and The Purpose of Parables – Revealing AND Concealing – Matthew 13:10-16
• All of grace – “the hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both” – Proverbs 20:12: Ephesians 1:18-20
• “Hear him ye deaf…”
- “Your sins are forgiven…rise and walk!”

II. The Power of the Seed – Matthew 13:23; Romans 1:16-17
• Anyone can count the seeds in an apple; no one but God knows the number of apples in a seed.
A. The Seed is Alive with Power
• God works by Principle, not Magic: Genesis 1:11-12; 8:22

B. The Seed Sown Will Not be Denied its Harvest
• Sowing and Reaping are Permanently Connected - Galatians 6:7-10; Isaiah 55:11-13
1. The Christian must sow God’s word in his heart
• Joshua 1:8; Psalm 119:11; Colossians 3:16

2. The Church must sow God’s word in the world
• Both are our commission because Christ the Seed has come to be sown as the Incarnate Son, sown into the ground/grave, and raised in new life that has produced a crop of many sons.
• This is why Satan hates the seed! Matthew 13:18
- “By annihilating the seed, Satan hopes to annihilate the Savior.” – Leiva-Merikakis

The Seed of God’s Word sown in the Soil of a Good heart will produce a Great Harvest.

Exactly. What’s the problem with that formula? The Problem is not with the Seed! The problem is with the Soil. Our hearts – and the hearts of all – have a variety of conditions which systemically resist the ‘implanted word’ which salvages the human soul. “The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.” – Blaise Pascal

Is the sick, hard, drough-stricken soil of our hearts curable? Is there any hope for a harvest in these hearts? God’s word says, “Yes!” Ezekiel 36:26

Solomon wisely wrote that we must ‘watch over the heart with all diligence for from it flows the springs of life’ (Proverbs 4:23). Next Sunday, come ready for the plough to open the soil of the heart, expose its maladies – and rejoice in ‘The Gardner’ who heals our hearts that we might bring forth a harvest that glorifies God.

Quotable: Peace in the Journey

2011-07-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations, and say continually; "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart has trusted in Him and I am helped. He is not only with me but in me and I in Him."

Francis De Sales

Choruses From the Rock - Part Four

2011-07-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Thus your fathers were made
Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of God, being built
upon the foundation
Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief corner stone.
But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a
ruined house?
Where many are born to idleness, to frittered lives and squalid
deaths, embittered scorn in honey-hives,
And those who would build and restore turn out the palms of
their hands, or look in vain towards foreign lands for alms to
be more or the urn to be filled.
Your building not fitly framed together, you sit ashamed and
wonder whether and how you may be builded together for a
habitation of God in the Spirit, the Spirit which moved on
the face of the waters like a lantern set on the back of a
tortoise.
And some say: "How can we love our neighbour? For love must
be made real in act, as desire unites with desired; we have only
our labour to give and our labour is not required.
We wait on corners, with nothing to bring but the songs we can
sing which nobody wants to hear sung;
Waiting to be flung in the end, on a heap less useful than dung."

You, have you built well, have you forgotten the cornerstone?
Talking of right relations of men, but not of relations of men
to God.
"Our citizenship is in Heaven"; yes, but that is the model and
type for your citizenship upon earth.

When your fathers fixed the place of God,
And settled all the inconvenient saints,
Apostles, martyrs, in a kind of Whipsnade,
Then they could set about imperial expansion
Accompanied by industrial development.
Exporting iron, coal and cotton goods
And intellectual enlightenment
And everything, including capital
And several versions of the Word of God:
The British race assured of a mission
Performed it, but left much at home unsure.

Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten
or ripe.
And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying.
and always being restored.
For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:
For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of God.
For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.
And of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance.
For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands
alone on the other side of death,
But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that
was done by those who have gone before you.
And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble
repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;
And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as
devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.
The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying
within and attacked from without;
For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while
there is time of prosperity
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity
they will decry it.

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.
Even the anchorite who meditates alone,
For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of God,
Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads.
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
Nor does the family even move about together.
But every son would have his motor cycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions.

Sermon Notes for Third Sunday after Pentecost:

2011-07-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

The Soul’s True Rest
Matthew 11:25-30
Third Sunday after Pentecost
July 3, 2011

John Steinbeck wrote, ‘A sad soul can kill you faster, far faster, than any germ.” If he’s right, our civilization may be in very bad shape indeed. Despite the greatest levels of affluence and technological achievement leading to a lifestyle of convenience that existed only in the wildest of dreams just a few generations ago, there can be no question that we are also a culture dominated by restlessness, anxiety, depression, and despair.

A survey published in USA Today noted that half of the HR managers for over 400 companies in the US noted that depression had had an incredibly negative impact on their workforce and consequently on their company’s productivity. Lethargy, anxiety, panic attacks, loss of concentration, and extended absences due to these symptoms were on the increase at an alarming rate.

Christians can suffer from these afflictions as well – in fact, they are quite common among ministers especially – Calvin, Knox, Spurgeon, Luther, all suffered. Mother Teresa’s journal reveals a soul deeply conscious of her soul’s vulnerability to despair apart from the love of Christ.

Still for the godless there is simply no hope of any comfort at all. The infamous atheist Bertrand Russell wrote, “We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night and the emptiness; sometimes a voice answers out of the darkness. But it is the voice of one drowning, and in a moment the silence returns.”

Now before you think that I am here to offer some words to cheer you up, let me state right up front that while there is a lot of anxiety around, and depression and despair as well, its mostly misdirected, and if It were rightly employed, we’d have to conclude that there wasn’t nearly enough of it in manifestation.

• Tommy Berra to Mickey Mantle after a three strike out game: “You stink.”

There is little internal disquiet about how our souls might be at rest with God.

There is little anxiety about whether we live in a way that furthers God’s kingdom.

Until death’s shadows begin to actually darken the door, there is little thought taken for the soul’s eternal rest.

Yet it is exactly these things which should seize our attention, and it is these matters to which Jesus addresses himself in the words we’ve just read together.

Augustine most famously captured the essence of the supreme issue before us when he wrote, “Our hearts were made for Thee, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

I. Come to Me! The Rest of Justification – Matthew 11:28-29

A. The Weary and Heavy Laden – False Yoke of Legalism
• The way of the Pharisee and his observance in hopes of being right with God
• Acts 15:10-11 – away with this yoke.
B. Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. (WCF XI.I)

II. Come to Me! The Rest of Discipleship – Matthew 11:29-30
• “Under the Yoke” – sub yugum: subjugate. This is what Christ seeks to do in us; his desire is to make us his own that we may share with him in his work.
A. It is ‘in Christ’ that we have been given these abundant graces – all in union with him. By offering us his Yoke, Christ is offering us himself.
B. In this school, the Teacher is the Doctrine. We are called to be like him, and that this might be so, he brings us close to his heart, in his field.
• We share his space, his heart, his activity
• We learn of him and in him
C. Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. (WCF XI.II)
• Not the Law, but the Cross – this is the way of Christ and the way of his followers.
• This is the yoke he carried and to which he invites us, and with this he ploughs the earth to receive the word of his truth.
- Psalm 131
- The cross pays the penalties for my sins but it also strips away my self-made virtues that deceive me just as terribly, if not more.
• The seamless move from communion with the Father to invitation for mankind.
- This is the pattern of all fruitful life and ministry: we can only be as effective in public ministry as we are fruitful in personal communion with the Trinity.
- “To the extent that we are far from Jesus we are the source of our own greatest burdens: without him as Lord, we are in thrall to the tyranny of our passions and…susceptible to the world’s manipulation and the influence of the Evil One. Without the all-consuming love of Jesus burning in our hearts as transforming fire, the passions roam the landscape of the soul like ravenous orphans.” – Leiva Merikakis
D. Yoke – Conjunction: Con-junx: “Spouse” – Jesus is calling us to be his bride.

III. Come to Me! The Rest of Eternity – Matthew 11:29

A. There is a rest that remains for the people of God, writes the author of Hebrews, and he exhorts us to live diligently so that we may enter that rest.
B. Ultimately, we will feel a certain restlessness and anxiety – it is not until we are finally at home in eternity that ultimate rest is realized. Revelation 14:13

Jesus offer himself as the Oasis in the wilderness our tired soul’s need so badly. We need not succumb to Steinbeck’s diagnosis or Russell’s despair. In Christ alone is eyernal life, now and forever.

Cambridge Summer School - Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies

2011-07-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the generosity of a very dear friend I will be able to attend the Summer School of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Cambridge University, England. I was in attendance two summers ago as well, looking at the subject of Love, and this year's theme on The Church Facing a Secular Age and Culture looks equally compelling and informative. If you'd like to learn more about the lectures and the school, note the following link: /www.iocs.cam.ac.uk/resources/texts/Summer_School_2011.pdf

I'll be leaving July 21 and returning July 31. I'd appreciate your prayers for my time there.

Choruses From the Rock - Part Three

2011-07-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

The lights fade; in the semi-darkness the voices of Workmen are
heard chanting.

In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks
There are hands and machines
And clay for new brick
And lime for new mortar
Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.

Now а group of Workmen is silhouetted against the dim sky. From
farther away, they are answered by voices of the Unemployed.

No man has hired us
With pocketed hands
And lowered faces
We stand about in open places
And shiver in unlit rooms.
Only the wind moves
Over empty fields, untilled
Where the plough rests, at an angle
To the furrow. In this land
There shall be one cigarette to two men,
To two women one half pint of bitter
Ale. In this land
No man has hired us.
Our life is unwelcome, our death
Unmentioned in "The Times."
Chant of Workmen again.
The river flows, the seasons turn,
The sparrow and starling have no time to waste.
If men do not build
How shall they live?
When the field is tilled
And the wheat is bread
They shall not die in a shortened bed
And a narrow sheet. In this street
There is no beginning, no movement, no peace and no end
But noise without speech, food without taste.
Without delay, without haste
We would build the beginning and the end of this street.
We build the meaning:
A Church for all
And a job for each
Each man to his work.

Choruses from the Rock - Part Two

2011-06-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

I journeyed to London, to the timekept City,
Where the River flows, with foreign flotations.
There I was told: we have too many churches,
And too few chop-houses. There I was told:
Let the vicars retire. Men do not need the Church
In the place where they work, but where they spend their
Sundays.

In the City, we need no bells:
Let them waken the suburbs.
I journeyed to the suburbs, and there I was told:
We toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor
To Hindhead, or Maidenhead.
If the weather is foul we stay at home and read the papers.
In industrial districts, there I was told
Of economic laws.
In the pleasant countryside, there it seemed
That the country now is only fit for picnics.
And the Church does not seem to be wanted
In country or in suburbs; and in the town
Only for important weddings.

CHORUS LEADER: Silence! and preserve respectful distance.
For I perceive approaching
The Rock. Who will perhaps answer our doubtings.
The Rock. The Watcher. The Stranger.
He who has seen what has happened.
And who sees what is to happen.
The Witness. The Critic. The Stranger.
The God-shaken, in whom is the truth inborn.

Enter the ROCK, led by a BOY:

THE ROCK: The lot of man is ceaseless labour,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.

The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change.
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
Forgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches;
The men you are in these times deride
What has been done of good, you find explanations
To satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.
Second, you neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics,
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you.
The desert is in the heart of your brother.
The good man is the builder, if he build what is good.
I will show you the things that are now being done,
And some of the things that were long ago done,
That you may take heart. Make perfect your will.
Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

Politics 101 - Part One

2011-06-27T06:29:00.000-07:00

The political season is a bit like the golf season - it never ends.

Which leads to the issue of how we conduct ourselves in God's House when it comes to political life and discourse. I'm going to outline a few suggestions for wise behavior in the Church before the water really gets boiling with the dawn of January 2012.

Our cultural obsession with the political realm is just one more manifestation of our equally incessant idolatry: we are still looking for a Savior and often invest in candidates and movements Messianic expectations; not surprisingly the recipients of this worship fail to deliver. Of course candidates and governments are more than happy to oblige as possible Messiah, promising deliverance from whatever oppression of the month ails the populace - or at least the voting populace. Sadly many elected officials seem to have forgotten that they serve people as God permits (Pontius Pilate please call you office), and in the American Republic at least the electorate holds authority over the office holders they permit to serve them in ways prescribed and limited by a written Constitution. It goes without saying that the increase in our belief in salvation by government - and it is an idolatry espoused as much by the so-called left as by the so-called right - has marched hand in hand with our cultural abandonment of God alone as Savior and our juridical excommunication of the Most-High from what is commonly referred to as the Public Square. Of course, 'he who sits in the heavens laughs' (Psalm 2), for only a 'god' could be truly expunged from any realm of life; God, on the other hand, can't be, for in him we live and move and have our being. Without him, the Square ceases to exist at all.

1. Elections and Governments will not Save. Don't buy into the overheated rhetoric of the election cycle and the dark screaming voices demanding we pledge our souls to someone other than the One to whom we already belong, or who promise to answer every problem, or who demonize anyone who disagrees. These 'enemies' will be playing golf together weeks after the election, so keep things in perspective.

2. Pastors and Politics:I'm an Independent with no party affiliation, and don't I wish to have one. Occasionally political and legislative agendas intersect with Biblical imperatives; some people imagine then that when someone who's supposed to speak on Scriptural truths and uphold them addresses one of those intersecting issues then he or she is speaking politically, or endorsing/condemning a particular candidate or party. This is not the case. The culture is in rebellion against God and this is manifest in a whole host of ways; but my task is not culture saving or even culture building - I am way too busy with the job of sheep tending. That also means I'm watching for dangers to the sheep, and these can come from all quarters - including the political, governmental, and ideological realm: institutional persecution of the Church, whether passive or aggressive in nature, isn't exactly new. In addition to persecution, the political apparatus can also seek to dominate through ideology that is contrary to the Church's teaching. Again, addressing false and misleading ideologies isn't political - except in the eyes of the political class who view all of life through the lens of political agendas, losses, and gains; on the contrary, it is theological and it has to be done. Yes, theology may well have political implications, but that's a different issue altogether.

3. Leave the Bumper Stickers in the Parking Lot: A person may be deeply convinced that his or her candidate (for whatever office is at stake) is THE only legitimate option to consider. Do we realize that people may see things a little differently - maybe a LOT differently? Suppose there really was only one legitimate candidate for a certain office a Christian should rightly consider voting for (hard to imagine, but I'm just saying). A group of Church members are standing around the welcome area talking excitedly about their chosen one (back to Messianic politics again) and denigrating the opposition, when in walks a person who isn't a Christian at all, or is perhaps rather new to the Faith. Neither has much of an idea about what Paul calls 'renewing the mind' and so doesn't exactly think like all the Christians (why would a non-Christian think like a Christian anyway?). What do they hear? They hear politics, not Gospel; they hear people denigrated rather than respected. They get a good dose of either left or right talking heads - more like shouting heads these days - instead of a warm greeting that is going to direct them to Christ and his word. Support the candidates you believe are going to do the job they are seeking to be elected to do, but don't bring the electioneering into the Church.

4. Debate the issues: Christians must engage the process like everyone else - we are citizens too, including the clergy. So have the debates; get together with friends and colleagues and examine the issues. Just remember that political affiliation is no basis for fellowship in Christ, and disagreements over political policies must not be allowed to become sources of bitterness and unresolved anger between brothers and sisters. Remember how often one has been wrong before, and in that knowledge walk humbly. Living and working in countries other than the US has meant I have cared for, worked with, and been helped by lefty and righty Christians (in terms of economic policy, as that is popularly considered); we cannot let tax policy determine the shape of the Church. I've also served with Christians laboring under horrendous persecution from Marxist-Stalinist style tyrants. They were especially bemused to hear Americans moan about the horrid anti-Christian government Americans had to suffer under - until the next election! I'm not saying it can't be bad here - even really bad - but if you think its bad here, you need to get out a little more.

5. Vote.

TS Eliot: Choruses from the Rock

2011-06-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

Every summer I spend some time with TS Eliot's remarkable poem 'Choruses from the Rock' as one element of my reading for personal reflection and renewal. I will offer a selection from that poem here each day this week, and hope that some readers might likewise profit from a fresh consideration of the poet's challenging words.

Choruses from the Rock

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

Some Notes on 'The Sum of Thy Word is Truth' - Psalm 119:160

2011-06-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

There's only so much one can cover and uncover in a single message, so I wanted to make just a couple of additional points here that I won't be able to touch on with the sermon on this text - though one could preach countless sermons on these lovely and powerful words of praise for God's word.

1. The word for 'sum' can be translated as 'head', but the idea the word conveys is 'head number', or 'sum-total'. In other words, if the Psalmist 'reckons up the word of God in its separate parts, and as a whole, truth is the denominator of the whole, truth is the sum total' (Keil-Delitzsch; Psalms; Eerdmans).

- This underscores the significance both a narrative-Biblical theology and Systematic theology (the latter often downplayed in favor of the former). Scripture must be taken as a whole, with 'truth' arising from the sum of the parts and revealed as a whole. This is true from a narrative standpoint, seen in something as simple as the commands regarding sacrifice for sin and in worship culminating in their fulfillment in Christ; it is seen from a Systematic Theology perspective, the meaning of a particular doctrine (say the Trinity or the Two Natures of Christ) being derived from all that is said rather than from one or two verses separated from their context and/or from other texts which speak to the same doctrine. In both cases, the 'sum' is true, and the part - while true in itself - would left to itself lead to confusion or falsehood.

- Cults and sects of every kind are notorious for ignoring the sum in favor of the part, building bizarre teachings and doctrines out of texts isolated from their literary and historical context, with the interpreters uninformed by the theology in the text, under the text, and arising from the text. It is also true that many individual Christians sometimes disdain theology as unimportant - as though the Scriptures cannot and do not offer us a sum of truth - not realizing that such an approach is itself a theological statement.

2. I have just started reading John Frame's new book "The Doctrine of the Word of God", and wish I'd finished it long before I started preparing for this sermon! if you don't have that volume I commend it to you and your study. There are of course numerous books on the subject, as well as on the history of the text itself. Next week I will try to publish a brief list for interested readers.

3. Finally, while I won't be quoting directly from the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith, that section of the Confession certainly is at the root of all I will be saying. In fact, I commend that single section of the Confession to your study more than any other particular work as a starting place. The Westminster Confession has many wonderful summaries of the truth of Scripture, but the chapter of the Doctrine of Scripture is, in my opinion at least, the single finest chapter of the entire confession. Before you spend a lot of money on other books related to the subject, simply work with the WCF, commit it to memory, and make it the foundation for your further study.

Sermon Notes for Second Sunday after Pentecost

2011-06-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

Can I Still Trust the Bible?
Psalm 119:160; 1 Corinthians 9:8-10
Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 26, 2011

When Christians seek to share the Gospel with others we often face an objection with regard to the reliability and authority of the Scriptures. Pop culture antagonism and degradation of the Bible on the one hand, coupled with a disrespectful and tone deaf approach to unbelievers by some Christians on the other hand, has led to our current situation in which the withering attack on the Bible as God’s Word has shaken the faith of some and muted the boldness of others.

Very obviously, the Bible does not have the place in American public life that it once held, and I have no doubt this is due in large part to the fact that it ceased to have the right place in many Christian churches. Disregard for the Scriptures was a lesson the Church taught a society very eager to have a reason to disregard the command to follow Jesus. The culture has since turned around and through various academic, judicial, and media ventures largely eradicated from the landscape the idea of Authoritative Revealed Truth from the Infinite-Personal God, replacing it with the infinitely more attractive and seductive faith of Personally Autonomous Spirituality and Authority. As a result, North Americans are not less spiritual today than they were forty years ago – they are just as religious as ever; what’s happened is that they have exchanged the religion of the Bible for the gods of this age and ages past. Central to this exchange is what Paul called the ‘suppression of the truth’, and this is seen today especially when it comes to the Bible itself. This is so much the case, in fact, that I regularly meet many Christians who wonder whether or not they can still trust the Bible to be the word of God.

• The Intellectual Issue and the Volitional Issue – “If I could persuade you beyond a reasonable doubt that Jesus Christ is exactly who the Scriptures say that he is, would you turn to him as Savior and follow him right now?
• “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me; it’s the parts that I do understand.” – Mark Twain

I. Three Popular Objections to the Bible
A. Language – Language is a purely human construct evolving with mankind; the Bible is a language document and thus, as a human product, cannot be a vehicle for something beyond what is human. This is a closed system, and ‘god’, if she, he, it, or they exist, is beyond us and our comprehension. The Bible may be interesting as a cultural artifact for study by anthropologists, but it is not a revelation from beyond that is eternal or binding upon every generation of humankind. This really isn’t an objection to the Bible but rather an assertion about reality as self-existent and God as non-existent or irrelevant.

B. Authority – Because the Biblical text is riddled with contradictions, and because the Church is rife with divisions arising from its failure to agree on what the Bible teaches, it is clear that the Bible possesses no real lasting authority, being historically unreliable, and therefore at best a collection of myths which help us understand better the human situation, or an aid to personal spiritual enhancement (not unlike a good course on meditation or any other so-called holy book), but cannot be received as authoritative by persons, communities, or society. In fact, people who ascribe that kind of authority to a book are dangerous. This is usually a claim arising from an incorrect understanding of the text and the claims it makes for itself, as well as a failure to grasp the huge differences between the so-called holy books.

C. History – The Bible is a collection of works chosen by the Church to control groups that threatened its power base, eliminating heretics while securing its structures. The Bible is especially a tool of misogynists who view women as the primary threat to a paternalistic societal model. This is the Dan Brown approach to Church history, where a small grain of truth is mutated in his lab into a mustard tree of laughable lies. Trusting Dan Brown’s stuff on Church history is like getting your view of aquamarine life from Sponge Bob Square Pants: points of convergence do not an accurate portrayal make!

II. Three Proposed Responses for the Bible: Psalm 119:160
A. God is the Word – “The sum of Thy word…”
1. The God of the Bible is a Speaking God
- John 1:1; Genesis 1:1-3
2. The Speech of God is Powerful
- Hebrews 4:12; Matthew 8:8; Mark 4:41
3. The Speech of God is Comprehensible
- Acts 28:25; 1 Corinthians 9:8-10 – “Does not the Law say these things? It is written in the Law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while he is threshing.’ God is not concerned about an ox is he? Or is He speaking for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written…”
4. The Speech of God when Written is Infallible and Authoritative because it is His Word, flowing from the Perfections of God’s Being
- Psalm 19:7-14; Matthew 22:31

B. God’s Word is a Covenant for His People – “The sum of Thy word is Truth.”
1. The Covenant Document is Given to a People not an individual
 Scriptures are understood in a community not an academy or in isolation: 2 Peter 1:19-20

2. Inspiration and Infallibility for the Whole
 Read and Hear Scripture as it was Given not according to modern assumptions (CSBI, Article XII); 2 Timothy 3:16
3. Sectarians choose an isolated text, but Truth demands the sum of the parts
 Most Christian disagreements are not about the substance of the revelation but about the implementation of the revelation

C. God’s Written Revelation Follows God’s Redeeming Acts – “The sum of Thy word is Truth”
1. The Church Does Not Create the Bible’s Authenticity or Give to the Bible its Authority
2. The Church Does Recognize the Bible’s Authenticity and Authority - and Submits to it.
a. John 10:5-6; 17:17
b. Of course, certain texts were rejected as inauthentic – that’s not political, but truthful and prudent.
 History text book evaluation

3. The Word Acting both by Speech and Power Creates the Church, and then by His Written Word Nourishes the Church, Cleanses the Church, and Adds to the Church.
a. The Savior Promised he would send us writers to communicate his word: Matthew 23:34
b. The Apostles were conscious that they were writing Scripture and recognized the writings of other Apostolic authors as Scripture: 1 Corinthians 14:37; 2 Peter 3:15; 1 Timothy 5:18 (Luke 10:7)

III. Why We Must Trust the Bible
A. Because Jesus Christ Trusted in and Proclaimed the Scriptures: Matthew 22:31; Luke 4:16-21
o Do we claim a higher wisdom and intelligence than Jesus Christ?

B. Because Jesus Christ Promised to send us Writers who would be led by the Spirit to perfectly recall and record his words, his Apostles who are the foundation of the Church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth: Ephesians 2:20; 1 Timothy 3:15
o Do we claim to be wiser than the Apostles sent by Jesus Christ, possessed of a new and greater insight than theirs, so that we may dismiss what they have given to us as the Faith ‘once and for all delivered to the saints’?

C. Because the Scriptures Proclaim Jesus Christ and Trust in Him: John 5:39; Luke 24:44; John 20:30-31
o Where is the salvation of mankind spoken of? Where is the Savior revealed? In the Book! Why do people want the Savior of the Book but not the Book of the Savior?

No, this book has the revelation of the Man God sent to save us, his Son, Jesus Christ who is ‘the Word made flesh’. He is the Word of the Father, but we could never have known him were it not for the gift of this written revelation. To love Him is to love His Word; to despise His Word – His very voice! – is to despise Him. Let us come to Him as He is revealed and hear His voice speaking in what He has caused to be written and delivered to us, being as the Thessalonians who ‘received the word of God…and accepted it, not as the word of men, but for what it really is – the word of God, which performs its work in you who believe’ (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

Quotable: Safety and Danger

2011-06-24T05:23:00.000-07:00

"When the mission of the Church is safe, the Church is a dangerous place to be; when the mission of the Church is dangerous, the Church is a safe place to be."

- Josh Eby

A Church it is; a Cathedral it isn't.

2011-06-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes someone will ask me why Redeemer is planning to build a 'Cathedral' and the only response I can sanely offer is, "We are planning no such thing."

We most certainly are planning to construct a sanctuary, when God permits and as God provides. But a Cathedral? Seriously? I've seen Cathedrals and what is planned here is certainly no Cathedral. It will be a large parish church, and in fact what is envisioned is much smaller by comparison than many churches built for the same purpose all over the country in previous decades. But a Cathedral? A Cathedral is Washington National Cathedral. A cathedral is Ely, or Winchester, or - at least by name - the crystal structure built in California by Robert Schuller. Hey, we're no mega church either, looking for a massive warehouse, or a an arena to convert. We're a largish congregation, serving Christ, one another, and our neighbors, personally and together. We will build a sanctuary that furthers that work, and one that will have the capacity to bless generations to come.

"But won't the money for that take away from the vision to plant churches?"

Um, no. One could make the same argument for ANY building proposed. In fact, correctly done, new church buildings strengthen congregations and expand their capacity to serve in a whole variety of ways - just like the one we're in right now. Its a false dichotomy, or at least a badly informed one, that pits one against the other, presupposing that money spent on facilities takes away from money that serves the mission. It is especially sinister when ministry in mercy to man is juxtaposed against ministry to God in worship. I remember exactly which apostle raised that false comparison when Jesus' was anointed with costly perfume. Pouring on Christ in worship what is costly in the eyes of man does not take away from our capacity to pour on needy people the sweetness of the Gospel. It makes it even more possible. Just as our current structure can be home not only for this congregation but numerous community meetings, educational endeavors, and even the seminary, so also future buildings will only add to that capacity.

Oh sure, one can be foolish and needlessly luxurious in defining what is beautiful; but minimalist visions of church where what is 'needed' (as defined by whom?) is set over against what is beautiful (again, defined by whom?) will never serve the church's internal mission to show forth the glories of heaven on earth, and strengthen its soul for her external mission of proclaiming the saving Gospel of Christ which alone can save and take men from earth to heaven.

I don't know where and when all this chattering about 'Cathedral' got started. Maybe someone in their zeal used that word to describe the glory of what they hoped to see. However it started, it needs to stop, because its not only inaccurate, its also a lie. Its even become a pejorative expression used to denigrate a legitimate vision, an exaggerated slander meant to prejudice the discussion.

I don't want to build a Cathedral either. I do want to see us build a glorious church SANCTUARY where God is worshipped, the Church is edified, and from where we go into the world God loves with his kindness and mercy for all.

* By the way, the picture at the top of this article is a Parish Church - in South Leith, and not too far off the size envisioned here; the picture at the top of this web page is a Cathedral - Westminster Abbey. Please note the difference. By the way, technically, what makes a cathedral a cathedral is not its size but the presence of the 'cathedra' - the Bishop's Chair/Throne, from where he preaches. Since we're Presbyterians (!) you can be pretty sure there won't be a cathedra in any church we construct. Even a HUGE Presbyterian Church can't be a Cathedral.

The Great Co-Mission for Austin

2011-06-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Just to reiterate the words from this morning - the days of our area PCA congregations acting as if we are competitors for members rather than co-laborors in the harvest fields is long past. The time has come for a new approach because the need for workers in the harvest is so acute. We have been summoned by Christ to his Great Co-Mission:

* Imagine the Austin City Presbyterian Partnership -

- We give up the right to plant 'our' churches and work together to plant HIS!

- We share our resources of leadership, wisdom, and finance to strengthen existing congregations

- We devote ourselves to developing the seminary and other leadership equipping initiatives to raise the next generation of pioneer pastors and servants for the House of the Lord.

What could happen:

- 10 new area congregations in the next 10 years (and maybe sooner than that, should God choose to grant his blessing).

- Raising up in the House of Faith right here, and Recruiting from around the country, gifted and called men and women to serve in the Gospel

- A Consortium of Blessed Business Leaders purchasing ten five acre plots around Austin, or existing buildings, for use by new congregations over the next 10 years.

Think about planting not only geographically but ethnically; think about Gospel work at UT and among the massive student population here from all over the world; think about the need for coordinated mercy ministry all over the city. Ladies this means you too have to re-think your labors - yes there must be fellowship, study, discipleship and instruction along the lines of Titus 2, and prayer; but you are also summoned to take the Gospel beyond the walls of the Church through a whole range of possible ministries, and serve alongside Deacons as their assistants (just as the PCA's Book of Church Order says!) to help the broken and distressed.

Our congregations can be multiplied as disciple making communities all over this area. As I said, it will be messy at times; but lets get in the kitchen and get to work so that in the end, no matter how messy it may be, the loaves are baked and the hungry are fed.

This approach is suffused with the Gospel Spirit of Jesus Christ, who humbled himself and made himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a servant and being willing to die, in order to win the world he'd been sent to save. Is our heart to preserve our status and protect our boundaries or is it to promote the Kingdom and equip the saints? Are we here to polish a monument or pursue the cause of the Kingdom?

The mission of discipleship IN our homes must continue.

The mission of making disciples FROM our homes must be taken up with fresh zeal.

Is There a Father in the House?

2011-06-19T13:53:00.001-07:00

"You have many teachers; you do not have many fathers..."

- Paul, 1 Corinthians 4

Instruction is certainly one important dimension of being father, but as Paul notes in his letter to the Corinthians being a father is a whole lot more than being a teacher. Teachers abound; fathers are few.

That comment does not denigrate teaching or teachers, especially in the Household of Faith. It does however elevate fatherhood. It is essential that church members are catechized - instructed - but it is even more vital that this takes place in the context of spiritual fathering (and mothering too). Fathers sacrifice themselves for their children, admonish their unruly behavior, direct their steps towards godliness, and enlarge the scope of their world to see beyond self. Fathers in the Faith set down paths in which future generations can walk, but also apply truth wisely to real-life situations. A teacher may well be able to explain the intricacies of a Christological debate, but a father, while affirming all the teacher says, grounds the teaching in terms of its implication for wise and loving relationships shaped by mercy and grace. Fathers are then both tough as truth tellers and tender as truth appliers. The truth can hurt and so it needs to be spoken in love. Supremely fathers proclaim and live the Gospel.

In the end, a man is a spiritual father because God gives him spiritual sons - Paul became the father of the Corinthians through the Gospel, and he was a father to young Timothy as well. He was acquainted with Timothy's weaknesses, temptations, and suffering; he refused to allow Timothy the luxury of self-pity, placing squarely on Timothy's shoulders the responsibility for how he conducted himself before others and the treatment he received as a result. Paul knew well the sins of the Corinthians but he did not shrink from expressing his pride in them, his love for them, and his devotion to them; in fact, he calls them the seal of his apostleship.

Just as we need older women to teach younger women (titus 2), so also we desperately need ecclesiastical fathers who will shape whole communities in grace and shape the next generation of godly servants in the Gospel. Yes, we need church planters and pioneers; yes, we need teachers; looking around, however, we must have fathers as well to the end that new communities can be shaped by grace, new leaders raised up, and the nations discipled. We need Elijahs for our Elishas; we need Pauls for our Timothys; we need Davids for our Solomons.

This is true of every generation, but I should mention one last matter about our ecclesiastical fathers in closing. After the Apostles came the age of the Fathers - the Patristics - and their astonishing contribution to the life of the Church. That generation of men, from Justin Martyr to John of Damascus, from Athanaisus to Ambrose to Augustine, from Basil and the two Gregorys to Cyril and Cyprian, are fathers to us as well. We would do well to cease our endless prattling about how this new generation can discover new methods for an ancient message, and realize afresh that these men knew not only what they were talking about, but also what they were doing; I'd be fine with John Chrysostom as my father in the House!

Is there a father in the House? Historically speaking, yes, without doubt, and we do well to repent of our youthful pride and go sit down at their feet for a season. Speaking about the contemporary context, however, the answer may appear far less certain; may God grant us more fathers in his House through the Gospel for a generation of orphaned sons desperate for more than any classroom can offer.

Sermon Notes for Sixth Sunday of Easter

2011-06-18T19:19:00.000-07:00

These notes are from a few weeks back; my apologies for failing to post them until now.

Facing Temptation
1 Corinthians 9:24- 10:13
Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 29, 2011

Read 9:24 – 10:5, 12-13

As we come to the reading this morning, lets recall some of the issues Paul is addressing in his letter to the Corinthian Christians –

• Boastful Arrogance
• Spiritual Negligence
• Rampant Immorality
• Religious Compromise

Nothing new there! It was true for them and it’s true for us – just as it was true for Israel long before Christ came. Every one of these issues are temptations we face that can make us stumble, lose our way, and suffer injury, hurt others, and cast a shadow across the bright light of the Gospel.

• Now that I’m a foodie, I get to be Tempter rather than merely tempted!

Yet before Paul turns his attention to the congregation and their battle with temptation, he does something every Pastor had better do: he preachers to himself! He does this using two athletic metaphors that would be very familiar to the Corinthians. He envisions our battle here as a competition for the highest and greatest prize of all, one worthy of our full attention, dedication, and every necessary sacrifice.

I. The Champion’s Crown – 9:24-27
A. The Isthmian Games
• A Wreath of Withered Celery!
• An Imperishable Crown of Glory!
B. Two Athletes
1. Boxer
2. Runner
- Facing the Fight from within – the Runner
- Facing the Fight from another – The Boxer
- Love this – Chariots of Fire and Rocky
- “When I run, I feel his pleasure”; “You’re going to be a very dangerous poisen (person).”
• Both are great Christian movies!
- Victory in the test arises from the position of the heart

II. The Champion’s Challenges
• Israel’s Story is Our Story – 1 Corinthians 10:1-4 (our fathers)
• This was a period of testing for them – they turned an eleven day journey into a forty year disaster
- Between the Promise and the Provision is the Problem
- Temptation arises to bring us to maturity and cast us on God’s mercy and grace – on Christ alone – as our life.

A. Idolatry – 10:6-7
• Whatever we treat as the source of our life, that to which we dedicate our life, and for which we would sacrifice all.
• They sat down to eat and drink before their idol and rose up to play; we too sit down to eat and drink, but before the Living God! What will we rise up to do? Rise and Serve!

B. Immorality – 10:8
• Out of their Idol worship came their immorality: Moabites
- Danger was compromise; same today – just go along
- Being against the abuse of the thing is not the same thing as being against the thing itself; on the contrary, saying no to its abuse is recovering that thing for its true purpose and glory.

C. Ingratitude – 10:9
• “Why did you bring us out here to die? All we have is this miserable food. Lets go back!”

III. The Champion’s Confession – 10:12-13
A. I’m a sinful person and I’m in the fight of my life.
• “Is it I?”

B. By the grace of Christ – his life in me – I will finish the race and gain the crown.
• 9:27 – “I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ who loved me and gave himself for me…”

The moment when the Champion is crowned: “How’s it feel? How’d you do it?”

Sermon Notes for Trinity Sunday 2011

2011-06-18T18:03:00.001-07:00

Creating a Great Commission Culture
1 Corinthians 10:1-5; Matthew 28:18-20
Trinity Sunday
June 19, 2011

The basic question confronting the Church today is whether we are available to Christ and his cause or committed to Christ and his cause. He defined this cause for us by his life and death, provided for us to pursue his cause through his resurrection and ascension, and guarantees the fulfillment of his cause through us by his promise to return. That cause is called ‘making disciples of all nations’.

Too often the Church today seems by its strategy to hold to the strange belief that Jesus knew what he was talking about, but didn’t know what he was doing - that we have better methods than he had, that we are wiser now and can take some shortcuts to the fruitful pursuit of his cause. Jesus didn’t offer a very compelling glitzy strategy for us to pursue: he said to make disciples; that his own disciples needed to go and do for others what he had just spent three years doing with them. He did not say ‘Go and get decisions’, but rather ‘Go and make disciples’. To do this we need to obey one huge imperative that is defined by two key activities. The imperative, the command, is “Go”; that’s the mission perspective of the Church. The goal is making disciples of Jesus. How? Here are the two activities - baptizing and teaching. The first is the act of initiation into Christ and the life of being a disciple and the second is the act of transferring to others spiritual formation to the end that they become as the Master.

Disciple - mathetes
Nations - not lines on a map, but peoples not yet united to the Savior

People Sent Together - Matthew 28
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic
Delivered Deliverers and Wounded Physicians
Nations also means Generations
Catechizing is Evangelizing
Worshipping is Instructing
Babies, Children, and Adults - all baptized, all joined, all moving together

People Joined Together - 1 Corinthians 10
Personally born Anew, Communally Made Whole
Evangelism MUST be Church Planting
It is baptizing
It is teaching
Both presuppose and create community
MUST have churches as outcome of evangelism and method of evangelism because disciple making isn’t just personal but congregational.

People Working Together
The Austin Mission
Our current situation and embarrassment
“Any plan for cultivation should recognize that the church has shrunk dramatically in the US in the past century, relative to growth. In 1900 there were 28 churches per 10,000 people. In 2000, there were 12. In Austin there are 4.75 (This is based on 2000 census reports and includes Evangelical Protestant, Mainline, Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. In the PCA, there are 4 churches within the city limits. By comparison, Chattanooga TN a city of 167,000 has 9 PCA churches. This number does not include PCA churches on Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain or other surrounding suburbs).
If Austin were to stop growing tomorrow it would take years if not decades for all the churches in Austin, all aggressively planting new churches, to reach the national average.
But Austin isn’t going to stop growing tomorrow. The latest census report shows that the metro area grew by about 500,000 to 1.7 million, an increase of 35% in the last decade. The city grew to just under 800,000, up from 656,000. Demographers estimate that the metro area will grow to about 2.7 million by 2025. This makes Austin the 5th fastest growing region in the nation and the fastest growing one in Texas. Latinos and Asians accounted for 71% of the growth in the last decade in Austin and demographers predict that they are the two ethnic groups that will continue to experience the greatest growth.”

Our current need to repent and believe

The Trinitarian Way in Mission - Self-Giving Humility and Love
The Father’s Desire
The Son’s Love
The Spirit’s Presence

The Needed Response: A New Network that sees the Mission as Greater than our Congregational Turf
We cannot do this alone and We have to do it together
That has to start with those with whom we share the most
A City Church for a World Mission

Obeying the Great Commission and Being a Great Church are not mutually exclusive ends but rather mutually dependent realities. Lets get on with it.

Quotable: Famous Last Words

2011-06-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.
I have tried prudent planning long enough.
From now on, I'll be mad.
~ Rumi

Yes, well, as has been noted, talk is cheap. Those words sound brave, but when the heat is on, experience suggests people head the direction of prudent safety rather than courageous madness.

Quotable: Poe

2011-05-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

Sermon Notes for Fifth Sunday of Easter

2011-05-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Ploughing in Hope
1 Corinthians 9
Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 22, 2011

Hope is an oft-neglected but rich virtue. Hope sustains us day to day, delivering us from despair and motivating us to sacrifice in the present for the sake of a future which we can only see from a distance. The ploughman and thresher do their work in hope, as does the Apostle as he labors in the Gospel for the sake of those he loves and as a servant of the One who called him. This is the essence of Easter, just as Job reminds us: "I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and those worms destroy this body, yet from my flesh shall I see God."

* Hopeful about the Church: Messy Churches are True Churches - 9:1-2
(And so are Messy Christians): The Perfectionist, Sectarian Spirit Can't Be Allowed to Prevail
* Hopeful about our Work: Proper Support of the Ministry - 9:3-11

I. Hope, Renouncing Power - 9:19, 23

* Once Again, All Things for the Sake of the Gospel
We need to recall now the essential core of Paul's approach to everything in life - all things for the sake of the Gospel. That's a Copernican revolution for the soul. That's never more true than right here in an American culture where we typically demand our rights, our 'powers' (exousia) Paul calls them, fighting any suggestion that one of our rights be infringed upon. Remember what we learned last Sunday - Paul is embodying the humility and self-giving sacrificial love of Jesus Christ so that Christ might be seen and proclaimed in his life.

II. Hope, Embracing Sacrifice - 9:7, 10

A. The Soldier - Hoping for Victory

B. The Vintner - Hoping for Beauty

C. The Shepherd - Hoping for Redemption

III. Hope, Revealing the Savior

A. Who is the Warrior who fights for us against our foe and wins the day on Golgotha?

B. Who is the Vine, whose blood is the wine of our forgiveness and eternal life?

C. Who is the Shepherd who lays down his life, and the Lamb who becomes our Passover?

Against the prognosticators of despair, Christ arises to remind us that our work with our children, our labor in the culture, our service in the Church, our mission with the Gospel into all the world is a long-term venture that summons us to Faith, Hope, and Love. Faith in Christ; Hope in his Future; Love for All.

O Taste and See

2011-05-19T05:23:00.000-07:00

Among the many graces bestowed upon us is the capacity to embrace, measure, and savor the aromas that surround us, making of these memories filled with pleasant associations. Couples in love, or those people who work in vineyards or kitchens or sanctuaries - together with those who savor the fruits of that labor - know this joy.The bouquet offered to our senses by the irresistible subtly perfumed scent of a lover, of incense burning in worship, fine wine resting in a perfectly formed glass, a glorious garden exploding in color and beauty, rosemary dancing with a wonderfully seasoned ribeye, or fresh, hot, handmade biscuits emerging from the oven are all a reminder of the joy of Eden. There, surrounded by the perfection of creation man was created and sustained by God's mercy, formed to take hold of the beautiful world and 'plough in hope'.

God has given us the capacity to 'taste and see', and this is yet another reason to pause and offer thanks to the One who made us in his image, the One who by his grace restores in us the very same, undoing the vandalism of sin we have inflicted upon ourselves and others. Perhaps this is one reason why food and drink stand at the central place of memory in our worship - the aromas of life offered by bread and wine lift and transport us back to the Cross and the Resurrection where once again we see the living and true God, the dying, suffering God who is love, there offered for us once for all and in the Supper offered to us continually. Perhaps this is why the love of our neighbor and the care of our friend must more often than not be characterized by food we bring to them, lovingly prepared, joyously offered, and thankfully received. In such gifts our hearts are united, reflecting the daring love of the Savior who offers himself as the true food of our souls, not only by this grace giving us life in knitting our souls to God, but in the same act strengthening our eternal friendship with the greatest of all Neighbors.

The moment the lid is removed from the tray with the cups of wine and the trapped aroma of the vintage explosively escapes to surround us at the Table is one of my favorite moments of every Lord's Day Eucharist. The same is true of taking the bread and tearing it asunder - how glad I am we use real bread prepared in the kitchens of our congregation's members, with each us receiving, breaking, and offering the bread. The texture and aroma of life are in that simple but profound movement and moment in worship. I 'receive' the bread - grace; I break the bread - remembrance; I offer the bread - love; herein is the Faith, the sacrament of the Table proclaiming Christ's death until he comes. The power of scent and taste claiming our memory is unmistakable; just so, Christ by bread and wine claims our hearts, our imagination, our memory, and our future. O Taste and See that the Lord is Good.

Hymn for the Day: I Was Glad

2011-05-15T04:58:00.000-07:00

Sermon Notes for Fourth Sunday of Easter

2011-05-14T21:29:00.001-07:00

All Things for the Sake of the Gospel
1 Corinthians 9:19-23
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 15, 2011

• The Issue of Difficult Questions: Is it Jeopardy when I’m at a fuel pump? All I want to do is fill up, not pass a final!

We often think of the Bible as a book with the answers, and of course in many ways this is true enough. Yet it is also a book of questions; sometimes these are questions we have for God, but more often than not the questions are those God poses to us.

• Job; Hagar
• The BIG Questions –
- “Who do you say that I am?”
- “Who are you? What do you say about yourself?”

One of the most intriguing questions in the Bible is one asked by a youthful David, the man who would years later become Israel’s King and Shepherd. He had come to a battlefield where Israel was being challenged by Goliath. He was showing some signs that he might want to get into the fight but his older brothers began to mock him and his youthful zeal. In return, David asks them a question:

”Is there not a cause?” – 1 Samuel 17:29 (AV)

Down through the centuries that question is asked of us today. “Is there not a cause?”

It’s the question we have for the men ordained today.

“What is your cause?”

It’s the question before every heart today.

“What is your cause?”

This past week marked the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Bob Marley. He once famously said, “The people trying to make this world a worse place aren’t taking a day off, so neither can I.”

The Apostle Paul knew his cause; he knew the reason for his sacrifices. Listen to his testimony: “I do all things for the sake of the Gospel.”

I. All Things for the Sake of the Gospel Means This is the Question that Must be Asked of All We Seek to Do Personally.

II. All Things for the Sake of the Gospel Means This is the Question that Must be Asked of All We Seek to Do Congregationally.

III. All Things for the Sake of the Gospel Means This is the Question that Most Reveals Jesus Christ Missionally.

A. Who supremely gave up his rights and made himself a servant of all? 1 Corinthians 9:19
- Jesus Christ

B. Who supremely became a Jew under the Law to win his People? 1 Corinthians 9:20
- Jesus Christ

C. Who supremely came as a Jew to save to non-Jews of the whole world as well? 1 Corinthians 9:21
- Jesus Christ

D. Who supremely became weak that those who were dead in sin might be raised to life by the power of God? 1 Corinthians 9:22
- Jesus Christ

* All of Paul's mission is a reflection of what he writes of Christ in Philippians 2

Here we find Paul following his Savior and urging upon us the same self-giving, the same love that lays down one’s privileges for those who are weak and poor and who have not yet heard of the Lord Jesus and his great love, his grace that recovers what the thief stole from us and restores to us abundant life.

* The Good Shepherd - John 10

Its been said that the world at its worst needs to see the Church at its best. Well, yes. But what does this mean? The world does not need to see a strong church, if by strong we mean merely powerful or perfect, but a weak church, one which knows its strength and hope and life is in Christ alone; the Church that, like her Savior, lays down its 'rights' in order to serve rather than demands service.

* Philippians 3:10 and life's great purpose

We do not need to go find a vision or define our mission. Our task is clear – to know Christ and make him known.

And tomorrow morning when we rise the answer to the nagging question that rolls around in our heads as we go about our activities - Why am I doing this? - can also be the same as the answer Paul would give: “I do all things for the sake of the Gospel.”

So let me come back to the question before us –

“Is there not a cause?” There is. Is the cause of Christ your cause as well? Now that’s a good question.

First Things Tackles Wright Tackling American Exceptionalism

2011-05-10T23:29:00.001-07:00

I rather upset some folks with my piece on the execution of Osama bin Laden. I also upset some people by pointing out that while NT Wright was asking a good question about the action, his proposed answer just wouldn't pass muster. The good people over at First Things have also weighed in on this issue:

www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/05/09/american-cowboys-and-the-hapless-international-sheriffs/

Lets Get Cookin! Mothers Day Edition

2011-05-08T16:22:00.000-07:00

Toni asked for some old southern style fare: deep fried chicken, corn on the cob, cheddar cheese biscuits, followed by carrot cake with Blue Bell ice cream for dessert. It was all delicious. I had to soup up the recipe for the fried chicken breading with some extra spices, but it turned out reasonably well enough: great crunch on the exterior and a moist interior. The carrot cake was terrific, though I added fresh pineapple to the original Paula recipe. The cheddar cheese biscuit recipe was straight from the Barefoot Contessa. All in all, an excellent day cooking and feasting.

Remembering Mom

2011-05-08T05:03:00.001-07:00

Today is Mother's Day. I love to see children honor their mother, though the Scriptural injunction intends far more than Hallmark would endorse or flower shops promote. Its a good start, but that commandment is one for every day not for one in three hundred and sixty five. That said, I especially enjoy seeing my children honor their mother with some thoughtfully prepared cards and gifts, making a general fuss over her, just as she deserves, and perhaps as atonement for the angst they layer on her heart between the joys they just as equally offer.

While it will be fun to celebrate the moms we see daily hugging, tending, feeding, comforting, confronting, instructing, taking to, picking up, and cracking on the head the often ungrateful louts we call our offspring, the day also reminds us of the moms who did all of that - and more of course - but who are no longer with us on this side of the great divide. I received word yesterday that a good friend and great lady we know had gone to be with the Lord after a brief battle with cancer; one can't blame her daughters if they aren't all that excited about celebrating Mother's Day when they are making arrangements to bury theirs. Just a few weeks ago, another dear friend also buried her mother, likewise after a painful but mercifully short battle with cancer. Is today sweet? Maybe bittersweet; joy in the remembrance, sorrow in the absence. Mother's Day can be tough. I'm glad its not part of the Liturgical Calendar because frankly, I'd skip it. It would be too painful.

Moms really aren't around forever. Intellectually we know this is true and experience teaches us this hard fact as well. Yet emotionally we keep that reality at bay, telling it go lay down if it rears its head, sending it into a time out or threatening it with the loss of dessert if it won't be quiet. But one day, sure enough, it stomps right through the living room of our hearts and plunks down rudely, smashing vases, interrupting everything, and wrecking the moment, like a lightning bolt blowing out the television right in the middle of the Super Bowl. Death - especially the death of a mother -is horrid and altering and damaging. Especially if it is premature, at least in so far as we can label such things.

My mom taught me to read and to love sports; she taught me about civil rights and to love politics; she taught me what it meant to celebrate gifts and make the most of what little abilities God has given to most of us - making me take piano lessons (torture!), but equally taking me to art lessons, and sending me to basketball camp. She taught me to pray, and to pray for the people I didn't like very much, like my Little League coach. He benched me when I was ten, and I felt quite aggrieved by this slight. He was no doubt right to bench me - I am baseball fan in part because I couldn't play the game very well, and understand from terrible experience how exceptionally talented even the most unsung minor leaguers must be - but at ten I was certain the man was secretly a warlock, working a dark conspiracy of spells against me in an effort to make me look bad before my peers. I did what all other ten year olds do when they get mad - I huffed and stormed and then lay down on my bed and cried. Mom came in and sat with me. I expected some comfort after telling her about the great injustice inflicted upon me by 'the man'. After all, my mom, strident Republican to the core, was nonetheless a big Bobby Kennedy and MLK fan, and knew injustice when she saw it. No luck though. She had a deeper magic. "Lets pray for your coach", she gently said. "YOU pray for him", I half-shouted and half-sobbed. And she did, out loud, one of those kinda long prayers that were unusual for her and signaled to me she really meant it.

I didn't see a dove descend or anything like that while she prayed, but that terrible anger did lift, her prayer sucking it out of me like some medieval poltace applied to a festering wound. Mom had the goods.

My mom's name is Dolores Anne Cassidy, and she is the daughter of William and Reta Saunders. My maternal grandparents are buried on a hill overlooking what used to be the fifty yard line of what used to be a high school football field. Things change. My mom died unexpectedly of of a massive coronary on Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006. She had an appointment with a cardiologist scheduled for the next day. Too late. She was a wonderful mom, a good nurse, and terrific friend. She possessed little fashion sense and did not care. She loved literature and she thought I was an artist. Hey, everyone's entitled to at least one major misjudgment. She is buried in a Veterans Cemetery outside Nashville, Tennessee, not because she is a vet but because my dad served.

My sister lives in Nolensville, Tennessee and so visits her grave regularly. I love my sister - and she looks just like my mom, which startles me every time I see her. Whenever she goes to the grave she takes my mom a cup of Starbucks coffee, with cream and sugar; my sister drinks half of the coffee, pours the rest on the grave and then sets the cup on top of the marker. Then she cries. Last week we drove out there together, bringing some flowers freshly picked from my sister's pretty incredible garden. We stopped for the Starbucks. We stood there arm in arm on a bright Tennessee Saturday morning, fabulous green hills and lush trees all around us and remembered her; we thanked her; we cried; and for me at least, that was Mother's Day.

Sure, I don't cry every day about her death - that stopped some years ago. But at any moment, spurred on by some distant echo of a very present memory, I still cry about her and all her absence means to me and my family. I still want to call her.

Not that she's utterly gone. One Sunday morning a couple years ago I was standing in the chancel behind the Table as I always do during the Lord's Supper, singing 'At the Lamb's High Feast' with the rest of the congregation, feeling nothing but great joy, and not thinking about my mother at all - nor had I been doing so that day or the day before. And then suddenly, just to my right, she was there. Or I was there. Not sure really - one of those unexpected moments when the veil of seeing through a glass darkly gets pulled back slightly and the audience sees the stagehands moving the pieces around for the next scene. She was singing along with the congregation quite happily. Then that moment passed; as quickly as that awareness came, it left, but not without leaving a mark.

Was it real? I think so. We serve the God of the living, not the dead. And mom liked to sing in Church and take communion. Fine, the psychoanalysts and cynics can make of it what they will, and the anti-supernaturalists can register my experience as mere projection; or maybe a kind of madness brought on by postponed grief; I get it. Yet nothing like that has ever happened again - I peek out of the corner of my eye at times during communion to check for such things! Its no use doing so during sermons; she'd just be sitting there telling me to wrap it up, that 'the brain can only absorb what the butt can stand', as she liked to say.

I'm pretty sure that one day she will welcome me to the service that doesn't have a benediction and we'll get to sing together again. Until then, well, Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I still miss you. We all do.

NT Wright on the Osama Operation and American Exceptionalism

2011-05-06T05:40:00.000-07:00

NT Wright has a VERY different view of the operation against Osama than my own. That said, he asks some good questions. Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts and responses.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/may/05/america-lone-ranger

A Mom's Wisdom

2011-05-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

The following words were written by A Mom, one of my readers. Her wise and passionate words here deserve their own blog post. Thank you A Mom for putting so well the painful challenge we have faced in the decade since 9-11. I appreciate your passion and wisdom.

I think we should all celebrate that there is discussion, and so many of us taking pause, whether to celebrate that there is no further plotting and execution of such plots from Bin Laden and how that brings inner peace, or that murder, even when used for justice, should not be celebrated in the streets. I most definitely do not think this is just a debate amongst Christians.

No matter the rational, or interpretation of scripture, may we all think about the journey that has lead us to this thinking spot. I hope in this time of celebration or quiet moment, we remember and hold those effected by this war in our prayers.

Somewhere there is a relative of Bin laden that sits head in hands, he or she is ashamed, heartbroken, and questioning why God did not hear their prayers, and give light to a very dark path that their brother, Uncle, or Father Osama Bin Laden took.

Somewhere there is a mother in Iraq, still mourning the loss of her child after the bombings left them without clean water and she had to watch her child die slowly, a child seen as collateral damage, she is so confused, because while there are plenty of evil men in her town, Iraq was not hiding this particular evil man.

Somewhere in just about every town in America there is a Father so very proud of his baby, who at the ripe old age of 19 went to Iraq as a soldier, and without bullets helped Iraqi or Afghanistan schools continue teaching and carried burned and limbless children to medical attention. A soldier, and someones baby, so courageously gave his/her life without question.

While there are always so many reasons to Thank God, I do believe Evil breathed in deep all the way on this very thought provoking Journey to the justified death of Bin Laden.

Quotable: Rough Men and Safe Sleep

2011-05-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

- Sir Winston Churchill

Celebrating Justice

2011-05-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

My colleague and friend Greg Ward wrote this in an email about the celebration of justice, especially with reference to the commission/ministry of the civil magistrate; he was responding to those who hold that we cannot celebrate the just execution of Osama bin Laden:

Actually Rom 13 is the crux of the argument. The question isn't whether or not the people of God (in either the OT or now) should celebrate the meting out of justice. The question is whether or not the event in question is just. Romans 13 doesn't have to mention celebrating justice, it needs only clarify how God meets out justice in the period between Christ's coming and his return.

God has given the sword to the governments of the world. When those governments properly wield the sword for justice, it is cause for celebration, clearly what the OT passages have in mind. When the government wields the sword for injustice, it is not. The OT is replete with examples of the King of Judah/Israel, the chosen mediator of God's justice wielding the sword for all the wrong reasons, and it was unjust, and prophets were sent to address the issue. The issues really weren't any plainer then than they are now.

So, when an event takes place, the question is, was justice properly meted out by a proper authority. For example there have been "Christians" that have bombed abortion clinics, or killed abortion doctors. This is not just, and it is no cause for celebration. On the flip side, our government has made abortion legal, which is also not just. Again no cause for celebration.

However, when our government pursues a terrorist that has acknowledged and even celebrated his part in heinous crimes, and brings him to justice . . this is proper justice, properly meted out, by a proper authority. It is the way God intends it to work, and unfortunately it seems a fairly rare event these days. It is an appropriate time to celebrate that God has meted out his justice through the government. Further, this is actually the celebration of life you mention. If there is no joy in justice, how will there be joy in heaven?

Greg

Lets Get Cookin!

2011-05-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

Had a wild and crazy cooking day on Sunday, a major Carb Loading Fest. A particular success were the Pearl Onions in Port Sauce.

Biscuits were from a Bobby Flay recipe.

Made up the Strawberry Cheese Danish dessert.

Ribeye steaks as I usually prepare them.

The Garlic Potato Puree was delicious as well.

You Bet I'm Rejoicing in the Death of Osama bin Laden

2011-05-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

Stop the Hand-wringing and Start the Bell Ringing!

When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting. (Proverbs 11:10)

The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. (Psalm 58:10)

Since I first heard the news reports last night of the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of US Navy Seals conducting a special forces operation under the nose of the Pakistani government, I've been rejoicing in the news and bewildered by the bizarre response of many Christians to this development. My Face Book page lit up with predictable joy, but also with comments condemning those celebrating the death of the Terrorist leader and architect of the 9-11 attacks (as well as others), together with other comments ranging from exhortations not to rejoice in the death of the wicked to instructions about loving our enemies and not pursuing a path marked by vengeance. It seems to me that such comments often arise only from theological confusion, often inflicted on congregations by hand-wringing, guilt-tripping preachers, or from being more informed by a bizarre sentimentality than Scripture.

"What? How can you say such a thing when we Christians are supposed to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, just as Jesus said?"

I'll come to that matter. But lets begin with a look at the big picture, and make sure we consider the whole range of Scripture rather than isolated verses here and there - something one might accuse me of doing if all I offered were the texts quoted at the beginning of this article.

First of all, whatever motives may be in the hearts of fallen people, the act of killing Osama bin Laden was an act of justice and mercy not revenge. It is crucial to recall the proper place of the civil magistrate in the execution of God's justice in a fallen world.

Here's what Scripture says about the necessary place for the sword-bearing civil authority in our fallen world:

"For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also (F)for conscience' sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: (H)tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor." - Romans 13:3-7

The civil authority 'bears the sword' as a servant of God to protect the innocent and punish evil doers. Private vengeance is thus criminal and not allowed to the Christian, while civil magistrates may - and indeed must - discharge the duty of 'avenging' when such action is called for.

Many Christians take Jesus words with regard to turning to the other cheek in a civil way rather than in a private way. Jesus was speaking of a personal persecution ethic - how we respond to the state or individual persecution for what we believe - rather than the duty of the state to punish wickedness and protect the innocent. The confusion over the civil and the private runs right through large sections of the Christian community. I may not as a private citizen take vengeance; I may not as an individual Christian respond to persecution for my Faith with violence or hatred, but rather with mercy, prayer, and a willingness to continue to embrace suffering - the way of the Cross in order that the sacrificial and merciful love of God may be seen by his enemies. On the other hand, I cannot as a private Christian citizen refuse to acknowledge our need for the state's proper place under God - bearing the sword to mete out just punishments on wrong-doers and serving to protect the citizenry from evil.

This can be clearly seen in the work of contemporary police officers and our system of courts. If a man violently assaults another man, woman, or child, the civil authority has a responsibility to apprehend him and bring him to justice, inflicting an appropriate punishment, and rescuing from attack others who might have suffered were such an assailant allowed to wander about freely. The person so attacked may well forgive the assailant, but the state must punish and restrain him to protect the innocent from further suffering. Thus an act of justice is also an act of mercy; justice for the offender, and mercy far and wide for those rescued from his hand. I have some personal experience in the need to forgive an assailant while praying for his arrest and detention so that others would not suffer as well.

In the realm of international relations and the actions of state or state sponsored terrorist organizations, civil authorities are still responsible to protect their citizens from the violent and punish those who wrongfully and criminally inflict on citizens suffering and death. They do not always do so with wisdom or restraint, and the same could be said for local law enforcement as well! Yet this does not diminish the demand that such actions be taken, however imperfectly in this sad, fallen world.

The capture and killing of Osama bin Laden was the correct response of a civil authority to a man and movement bent on destroying people around the world, and who had already murdered thousands. We should rejoice that the President had the willingness to give this order and the military the sword to carry it out. This is simply one more example of a Christian worldview informing the way we think of state actions, even when that state has forgotten the theology that is at the foundation of its very existence and the form it has taken.

No civil authority can execute eternal justice however. The wrath of the Lamb awaits the nations and all who refuse his rule. That is an eternal matter, and it is why even the executed are at death committed to the mercy of God. I cannot pronounce Osama bin Laden's eternal sentence of divine justice, nor can any state. All that can be said here and now is that because he carried out murders he was subject to the death penalty, rightly administered by the properly constituted authority. The rest we can leave with the wisdom of the Almighty.

It is in this sense that the Scriptures say that God does not delight in the death of the wicked - another verse often quoted by those who would temper or condemn the celebration of Osama's execution by Navy Seals. God doesn't rejoice in his death, so how can we? On the contrary, we must rejoice in his death because that is the will of God being carried out. We must also acknowledge that the everlasting judgement of the wicked is in God's hands alone; he does not rejoice in carrying it out, as he has already been 'pleased' to crush his Son as the sacrifice for all sins that secures eternal life. God does not wish for any to perish, just as the Apostle taught. This however is not the same thing as saying that God does not desire justice, whether now, as can be only partially and always imperfectly carried out, or in eternity when it will be wisely, perfectly, and fully brought to bear upon all.

Finally note the need for paying taxes, mentioned in Romans as well. The next time you pay your Federal Taxes, pause and give thanks for the privilege of writing that check, and offer thanks to God for the legitimate use of those funds. You think some of the uses are illegitimate? OK, and you might be correct. But while you have that debate, pay them with joy and pray for the soldiers who are putting themselves on the line so you and your family don't have to live in a war zone. The sword is being carried forward, and I for one am celebrating the fact that it was terrible and swift in its onslaught last night against Osama bin Laden. You're damn right I'm happy about it. Thanks be to God.

The Death of Osama bin Laden

2011-05-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

I'm working on an additional column to address the Christian hand-wringing 'we shouldn't be celebrating Osama's death' goofiness some people are expressing, but...

First things first.

I am incredibly grateful today for the brilliant execution of this operation carried out by the US military. I am also incredibly grateful for the sacrificial service of every member of our armed forces and their families since the horrifying events of September 11, 2001. Navy Seals! Let the world and every enemy of freedom fear those two words.

I am also incredibly grateful for the decisive leadership shown by President Obama in this matter. He deserves great credit for showing the world and this country that he has what it takes to take down the bad guys and won't hesitate to make the tough calls when the situation demands it. Congratulations Mr. President, both to you and to your entire administration on a job well done, one from which every American can take heart and in which we can all take proper pride.

This is a day to celebrate. This is a day we have had to wait far too long to mark. Thank God it has finally arrived.

Notes for Nashville on The Reading Life of the Pastor

2011-04-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

The Reading Life of the Pastor

Finding the Book - Josiah the King

* The author in purgatory

A Background Working Assumption: We already read within our Theological Tradition, know our vocabulary, affirm our confessions, and it is this theology that we seek to see shape the piety and practice of those we serve. We continue to read and study here,

The Vocational Communicator: What you hear whispered in the dark, shout from the housetops; Isaiah - awakened to listen and only then able to bring a sustaining word to the weary. Where is our dark, quiet place where we hear, where we comprehend?

Reading Aptitudes - What’s our Level? Do we even know how to read?
James Boice’s first Graduate Degree

Reading as Joy and Reading as Work

The Word Heard - What people hear in your Public Reading/Speaking and its relationship to Private Reading.

Briefly on Books

Bacon: There are books to be chewed, swallowed, and digested; others to be tasted. After an overview of contents, take two test chapters. Look for summaries. Read from the center, to the front or the back.

Three Kinds of Literature - Current, Curious Antiques, and Timeless; it is the latter to which I draw your chief attention. Here is found what is completely relevant precisely because it does not seek to be so. It echoes the eternal and the universal.

Look for the universal experiences: food and hunger; sex; power; guilt and shame; heroic conquest; vindication; hypocrisy and justice. Here we find that elusive but immediately apparent quality we call ‘beauty’; this is transformational.

When it comes to reading it may be increasingly anachronistic to even employ the word ‘books’ in the discussion. Technology has shifted so dramatically that our sons and daughters may view actual books with the same amazed curiosity with which we gaze upon 45 records or model T autos: we still possess something of the same genre but but its so completely transformed as to make what preceded it next to worthless, except perhaps as furnishings for a period movie set. Whatever the future holds for books however I am convinced that reading will continue. The real question for us is what kind of reading will continue. Will it be effective or ineffective reading, and what criteria can be used to make such a judgment? This is an especially compelling issue for those who find themselves in or aspire to be in Pastoral ministry, a vocation of prayer and ‘ministry of the word’. If we are ‘servants of the word’ we have to ask ourselves whether we have truly been shaped by words, whether written or spoken, and how we might grow more effective in our use of words by our encounter with excellent words.

Masters of the Collections - Ecclesiastes 12.

I. Literary Reading: T David Gordon in Why Johnny Can’t Preach

The Need to Read Texts

The Gift of Poetry as Means of Grace
From Donne, Herbert, Eliot, and Frost
Choose your poet; Dante had Virgil; who is yours? The same might be said of the theologians! Choose a chief guide.

The Christian Imagination
- From Lewis and Tolkien to Wendell Berry and Walker Percy; from Spenser and Milton to Anne Lamott and Marilynn Robinson

II. Theological Reading: Francis Schaeffer on Stacking Wood

The Narrow Straits of Deep Reading (Necessary! Choose one a year)

Between Tel Aviv and Budapest: The Cross Current Rivers of Wide Reading
Lessons from a Great Methodist
The Gentile Contributions
Receiving Good Gifts
Select the best and take them as representative rather than the worst.

III. Historical Reading: Metropolitan Kallistos on Memory and Mystery

Overcoming Ecclesiastical Amesia: Pelikan

CS Lewis on Old Books

Surveying Surveys

Biographies and the Need for Heroes and Contextualization

History beyond the Church
- Choosing a Period, Person, or Event

Liturgical Reading: Ambrose, Chrysostom, Gregory, Cranmer, and the Shape of Public Praying and Sacramental Observance
* The forgotten ordinary means of grace

Liturgy as Theological ‘Source’

Reading Prayers
- Writing Prayers

The Rhythm/Cadence of Leadership
Liturgical Pace
Liturgical Language

Memorizing Hymns (Why 150 is a workable goal)
Hymns, not Choruses
Great Hymnody

The Daily Psalter and the Cure of the Soul (vast array of human experience)

Contemporary Societal Reading

Ken Myers at Mars Hill Audio as Editor
Specializing and Summarizing
Read within key spheres of influence: arts, technology, business, and politics (think of the array of ‘sources’ used by Tim Keller in any of his sermons/books).
Read Controversially (but think Church and Culture, not just intra-ecclesiastical conflicts): contemporary atheism, Islam, etc.

So long as you have your Quote Book with you, here’s some recommended reading:

Journals

- First Things

- Touchstone

Why? Ecumenical and Contemporary, as well as offering excellent book reviews!

Literature: Virgil could not enter Paradise but he was an effective guide for Dante to other realms!

- The Christian Imagination - Leland Ryken

- Poetry as a Means of Grace

- Oxford Book of English Verse (Quiller-Couch)

- Greatest Poems of the English Language (Bloom editor)

- Pocket Book of Verse

- Works of George Herbert

- Works of John Donne

- Works of TS Eliot

- Complete Poems of Robert Frost

Fidelity: Short Stories by Wendell Berry

History and Biography

Surveys (own a few for quick reference and big picture; then buy specialized studies; same for major periods, like ‘Reformation’).

Church History in Plain Language - Shelley

Church History - Justo Gonzales

History of Christian Thought - Gonzales

Credo - Pelikan

Christian Theology Reader - McGrath

Sets:

The Christian Tradition - Pelikan

Series from St Vlad’s (see Andrew Louth)

Ante Nicene Fathers in translation

Faith of the Early Fathers (3 vols) - Jurgens

Do not ignore Nazianzus; Nyssa; Basil; Cyril of Jerusalem

History in Roman Catholic Perspective: Paul Johnson; Fr John Laux;

US Christian history: Mark Noll; Daryl Hart; Hatch; Marsden

Read biographies to read more deeply the periods of great significance or persons of lasting influence - Constantine, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Cranmer, Tudors, Calvin, Knox, Bucer, Spurgeon; Lewis; lloyd-Jones, Nevin; Van Til; Bach, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Edwards, Newman, Vatican 2, Bonhoeffer, Bavinck, John Paul 2; Do not forget the lives of the great influencers and history shapers: Churchill, etc.

Scripture Reading

McCheyne’s Plan

Daily Office

Book of Common Prayer Psalter

Liturgy and Hymnody

Redeemer Book of Hymns

Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal (1958)

Divine Liturgy - Chrysostom

Pastoral Vocation

Eugene Peterson (all)

Alistair Begg

William Willimon

On Preaching

Between Two Worlds - John Stott

The Preachers Portrait - John Stott

Sermon excerpts in Office of Readings (Liturgy of the Hours)

Why Johnny Can’t Preach - Gordon

Exegetical Preaching - Haddon Robinson

Chappell

Doriani

Proclaim - me (ha!)

A book on liturgical preaching with the lectionary in view is begging to be written*
Listen to great preachers!!

Non-Reformed Theology

The Orthodox Way - Kallistos Ware

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

Catholic Christianity - Peter Kreeft

Note Biblical-Exegetical works of Leiva-Merikakis, Bruner, Witherington, Bock, Wright, Sacra Pagina series of NT commentaries, as well as Anchor

The Great Silence: An Ancient and Anonymous Homily for Holy Saturday

2011-04-23T20:47:00.000-07:00

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.
For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Hymn for the Day: This Joyful Eastertide - King's College Cambridge.

2011-04-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

Lets Get Cookin!

2011-04-23T20:18:00.001-07:00

Lots of work in the kitchen today - swiss chard dip, avocado hummus, curry shortbread crackers, a massive English Trifle, and then wrapped it up with an old Romanian Easter favorite: plecinte - a braided bread stuffed with a super sweet mixture of cream cheese, cottage cheese, raisins, and sugar. The resident Romanian here says its pretty good.

Sermon Notes for Easter Sunday 2011

2011-04-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

Man Alive!
1 Corinthians 15:1-6, 12-22
Feast of the Resurrection
April 24, 2011

This whole message of resurrection has always been a hard pill for people to swallow. The Jefferson Bible has Matthew’s Gospel end with the burial of Jesus. Many people today are ‘practical Jeffersonians’ - people who want a very non-dramatic, perfectly rational, almost algebraic faith: no mysteries, no mess; no inexplicable or embarrassing miracle stories for which to account. But of course this is exactly what authentic Christian Faith isn’t. We’re all about a Virgin Birth, and walking on water, and water into wine, and dead people rising in new life. Its always been that way.

Before I get ahead of myself though, let me pause for just a moment, to go back over what the last few days have meant in terms of our Faith. In short, Jesus was dead. He was a dead as my mother was when I saw her in her coffin. His body limply fell from the cross when they pulled out the spikes and untied the ropes that had held him to it, and his dead weight would’ve been hard for the mourners to carry. His body was cold, blood covered him, bruising marked him, his back was shredded, his tongue was swollen and protruding from dying thirst, and his eyes were lifeless, staring out emptily at those who came to care for his body. The Pieta has it right – Mary his Mother in agony, and Jesus dead.

See, this whole resurrection story makes no difference if he didn’t really die, if he wasn’t really dead. But he was. Historians differ on the resurrection but they never differ on the death: the Romans were expert executioners, and Jesus was dead.

That’s why the words in Matthew and Acts and here in Corinthians are so crucial. The dead man Jesus had come back to life. Not only was he alive, but alive now in such a way as to never die again. And that makes all the difference. On Friday, hope died. On Sunday, hope showed up victorious and split time in two, starting creation all over again, only this time with a new Adam – this One rising from the dead in a Garden whereas the first Adam had dragged us all down to death in a Garden. And for Paul, that meant everything. Literally.

I. The Resurrection Priority – 1 Corinthians 15:1-6, 12-15
The Value of Repetition when it comes to the Main Thing
Not saved by believing in the events or the results, but by believing in the Person.
Paul’s Preaching was Christ Crucified and Raised
The Reign of Death Overthrown
The Reign of Death Secured
The choice is stark
Big Picture Living – Dealing with the Biggest Issues: Sin and Death

II. The Resurrection Promise – 1 Corinthians 15:16-22
Release the Bound: New People
What it means to be forgiven and accepted

Raise the Departed: New Life
- What is means to face death now

Reverse the Curse: New Creation
- What it means to embrace the future in hope

We come to this day with a three-fold prophetic declaration about God’s great loving plan, easy to say, easy to recall, easy to pass along:

Christ has died
Christ has risen
Christ will come again

Because he has died our past is forgiven; because he has been raised, our present has purpose and power; because he will come again, our future is bright.

Man alive! Let’s rejoice!

Quotable: Corrie Ten Boom on Memory and Providence in Personal History

2011-04-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.
- Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place

Preparing for Resurrection Day

2011-04-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

The First Duty of Intelligent Men

The Anglican Bishop of Durham from 1984 to 1994 was a fellow by the name of David Jenkins. The Rt. Rev. Jenkins was a highly regarded academic, but he was no Christian apologist. In fact, quotations from his writings and sermons turned up in Muslim tracts in various parts of the world as evidence for the movement of Christian leaders to the Islamic position on Jesus. How so? Jenkins denied the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, and the bodily resurrection. Let’s not even go into what he thought of Scripture. In other words, Jenkins was just a little shy of orthodoxy on what most of us would count as the basics of Christian Faith.

Things came to a head in the public media over his selection as a Bishop at the third most senior see in the Anglican world when, three days after his consecration at York Minster Cathedral (The Bishops of Durham are consecrated there rather than in Durham), lightning struck the Cathedral directly above where the new Bishop was enthroned and set fire to the great Church. Anglican officials sought to play down this event, but the Times and the Telegraph and all the other London media would have none of it. In an odd twist, the secular media had more faith in the apparent displeasure of the Almighty than did the Bishops of the Church! The Cathedral had been around a while, after all, and had never been struck by lightning until the powers that be had the temerity to promote a complete apostate to the position of Bishop. Jenkins gave up the position, he continued to make waves, briefly banned from preaching in 2006 after swearing during a sermon, and then, later, blessing a same-sex union between two men, one of whom was an Anglican Priest. He may wish to steer clear of cloudy skies!

Jenkins once referred to the resurrection story as ‘a conjuring trick with bones’, refuting the idea and suggesting instead that what the early Christians experienced was merely visionary and mystical. Jenkins claimed he was misquoted, and maybe he was. But there is no denying that he denied the bodily resurrection, the atonement, or eternal judgment for that matter. John Dominic Crossan is a former Roman Catholic Priest who holds to similar views. In fact, Crossan thinks that the body of Jesus was discarded after death and, like most other victims of crucifixion, eaten by the dogs that feasted on the remains of prisoners executed by the Romans.

Some years ago, George Orwell wrote, “We have now sunk to the place where stating the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” Charles Colson takes up that quotation in a recent column in Christianity Today and reminds us that in our own time Orwell’s words ring true for us in regard to the most basic of truths we treasure as the Faith once and for all delivered to the saints. “Our doctrines are truth claims”, writes Colson, and “they cannot be mere symbolism. This is important to remember as we celebrate the Resurrection.” I’d love to see Colson and Jenkins in a steel-cage, no holds barred debate to the death; Jenkins might win, but Colson would rise from the dead and smack him with a bolt of lightning.

Actually we are in a constant debate with our world, and if not with David Jenkins, then at least with his ideas and mis-belief. I regularly meet Christians who wrongly imagine that the resurrection was mystical and not historical and physical. These folks just haven’t been told the truth or weren’t listening closely. Our belief in the resurrection does not mean we simply hold to continuing existence after death – that was hardly news in the ancient world. No, what we hold is that the dead body of Jesus was made alive again through the power of the Holy Spirit, and transformed, or ‘glorified’. It is this belief that lies at the foundation of our hope of resurrection, not only for ourselves, but for the whole creation. We need Easter – and Christmas and Good Friday and Ascension and Pentecost – to go on stating the obvious. God has acted decisively in history through Jesus Christ and this powerful intervention is the basis of hope for all.

We live in hope, laboring beyond ourselves for generations to come and a world not yet seen. Jesus did not come simply to give us a better life now, but eternal life forever. The commercial Jesus, the Jesus that simply offers you a new product to consume to make your life better, is not the Savior of the Scriptures. Paul wrote that ‘if we have hoped in Christ for this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.’ Faith is for this life, but it extends far beyond this life into the eternal, making the coming kingdom a current reality, but also fixing our eyes on a prize that transcends this world, and thus redeems this world. Hope is not the opiate of the people, it is the energy of the people.

This is why Isaiah tells us that this message of hope really is for all people. Today’s feast is as universal as the enemy whose defeat we celebrate today. Many today, whether ‘religious’ or secular, don’t believe Christ died on the cross and rose again from dead, but that event is their hope for deliverance from death. Telling them the truth about this momentous event is our first duty. Its why Paul wrote the Corinthians, “I delivered to you of first importance… that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose from the dead on the third day according to the Scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15:3). Through death Christ defeated death. The greatest calamity and horror we know is overcome by the powerful love and loving power of Christ’s tomb-emptying victory.

So then, in the face of contradiction, heresy, and unbelief, in the face of cynicism, doubt, and fear, let us heartily with one heart and voice acclaim with the boldness and joy only heaven can supply, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”

Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Return – these are not doctrines for mere debate, but the dogmas that are our life. We live because the One who is Life has come and ever lives to give us his life eternal.

What is the Cross?

2011-04-22T04:58:00.000-07:00

Here is a very fine article from First Things: www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/04/christ-and-him-crucified

When I Survey The Wondrous Cross : Choir Of Kings College, Cambridge

2011-04-22T04:44:00.000-07:00

Happy San Jacinto Day!

2011-04-21T15:10:00.001-07:00

Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!

Happy San Jacinto Day fellow Texans!

"I wasn't born here, but I got here as fast as I could."

- Davey Cassidy

"You can all go to hell, but I will go to Texas!"

- Davey Crockett

Behold I Will Make a New Covenant

2011-04-21T08:28:00.001-07:00

Palestrina-Music for Maundy Thursday -6-

2011-04-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

Hymn for the Day: Choir of New College - Victimae Paschali

2011-04-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Quod Est Veritas?

2011-04-20T05:51:00.001-07:00

Christ before Pilate. The Judge of the Living and Dead is subjected to judgment and condemned to the death of the cross. All this and more to bear the judgment due to us and grant us by grace the righteousness which is his alone.

What hath Jerusalem to do with Hollywood? - Reformation21 Blog

2011-04-19T06:16:00.000-07:00

Trueman nails it.

What hath Jerusalem to do with Hollywood? - Reformation21 Blog

My Song Is Love Unknown - King's College, Cambridge

2011-04-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

Hymn for the Day

Tuesday Morning Prayers

2011-04-19T05:09:00.001-07:00

Father of Mercies and God of all Comfort, our land is thirsty and dying, ablaze with killing flames rather than vibrant color. Apart from thy mercy our hearts are drier still: brittle, barren, and burning. As thy mercies are new every morning, send upon us the life-givng showers of thy Word and Spirit that we may embrace the Passion of Jesus and live for him who suffered in our place, our Savior and Redeemer. Amen.

Midday Worship Throughout Holy Week

2011-04-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

Behold the Lamb!

Preachers this Week at Redeemer's midday services -

Monday - Rev Danny Shuffield

Tuesday - Rev Dr. Kenneth Campbell

Wednesday - Rev John Ratliff

Thursday - Rev Tim Frickenschmidt

Friday - Rev. Jack Smith

Services begin at 12 and are about 35 minutes in duration. Rev Dr George Dupere will lead in worship.

Maundy Thursday Feasting and Eucharist at 6:30

Good Friday services at 6:30 and 8:00.

Costa Coffee TV Advert - Monkeys and typewriters

2011-04-17T20:38:00.000-07:00

Love this.HT Kris Lundgaard.

Daily Scripture Reading for Holy Week

2011-04-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

Some Suggested Readings for Holy Week

Palm Sunday: John 12:12-19; Psalm 24, 29; Isaiah 42:1-9; Zechariah 9

Monday - Cleansing the Temple: John 12:20-36; Psalm 51, 69; Isaiah 49:1-12

Tuesday - Facing his Enemies: John 12:37-41; Psalm 6, 12, 94

Spy Wednesday - Judas Seeks to Betray Christ: John 12:42-50; Psalm 55; 74

Maundy Thursday - Last Supper and Gethsemane: John 13:1-38; Matthew 26:17-56; Psalm 102, 118; Isaiah 50-53; if time allows - John 14-17

Good Friday - Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus: John 18-19; Matthew 26:57 - 27:61; Philippians 2:1-11; Psalm 22; Isaiah 53; Colossians 1:1-14; Genesis 22:1-14; Exodus 12:1-14

Holy Saturday - The Great Sabbath as the Savior Rests from his Redeeming Work of New Creation: Matthew 27:62-66; Psalm 16-17; Ezekiel 37:1-14

Easter Day - The Son of God is Risen from the Dead: Mark 16:1-8; John 20-21; 1 Corinthians 15:1-22; Psalm 148-150; 118

Quotable

2011-04-17T04:23:00.000-07:00

"Getting the Gospel right is just as important as getting the Gospel out."
- Michael Horton