The Spirit doing a new thing. . .

Among some it is avant garde to suggest that anything and everything old (read that Old Testament) is being replaced by something new by the Holy Spirit.  It is, after all, the Spirit who teaches old men to dream new dreams and young men to see visions of what might be.  Or so you might be led to believe.  In reality, the old things that some point to as being the nasty patriarchal stuff of the Old Testament are in reality not what they claim and the new things of the Spirit are not quite what they think as well.

Your interpretation of the pages of Holy Writ is wrong, narrow-minded, bound by patriarchal culture from the 1st through 19th centuries. If the early church had been so closed to the Spirit's work, we wouldn't have had Samaritan believers or a eunuch believing or Gentile believers. The OT tradition spoke against all those. The Spirit did not. 

Really?  The whole promise of the Old Testament was not to Jews only but to the nations, tribes, and clans and families outside Israel.  Indeed, there is nothing new about  the Samaritans or the Ethiopian eunuch believing or Gentiles being received into the company of the faithful.  This was not something new but God's age-old plan corrupted by a Jewish exclusivism and restored in Christ.  

The Spirit doing a new things is really doing something not so new at all but currently not in vogue.  For example, the Spirit brings to mind all that Jesus taught (which itself was all that the Father had made known to Him).  The Spirit does not really complete or contradict the Old Testament or the New.  The Spirit is the one who opens the Scriptures so that we may know and see and believe.  The wider net of the Gospel was never exclusive to Jews but from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.  

Quite honestly, I am sick and tired of aging folk from my generation trying to insist that the Church has suffered under the weight of nineteen centuries of patriarchalism, misogyny, homophobia, etc...  The Church has suffered more the weight of liberals who insist upon boring us with their imagined ideas that have no support in Scripture or tradition but which are paraded out as testament to what the Spirit is doing among us -- the new stuff.  There is nothing so stuffy as a liberal who has sucked all the air out of the room with words that mean nothing and opinions that contradict Scripture.  The Church must suffer the boring epithets of those outside the kingdom who presume to tell us what we ought to believe and those who have co-opted the kingdom from God and His Word and the living tradition of the faithful but we dare not allow them to go unchallenged.  The new thing the Spirit is sent to do is plant faith into the dead earth of our sinful hearts through the means of grace.  If He does that, He has done enough for us all.

How important is it?

Well, the Methodists have gone and done it.  The United Methodists in the US have decided that it is worth dividing their church and for the sake of giving approval to homosexuality and homosexual clergy.  This issue was the hill on which a church died.  Imagine that.  Not for the sake of the divinity of Christ or His humanity or for the sake of justification or for the cause of Scripture -- they were willing to kill a church for the sake of the alphabet soup of sexual desire and gender identity.  So they effectively eliminated the opposition -- diluting the votes of the conservatives by denying the Africans the right to vote on what happened in America and turning their backs on conservatives in their own denomination.  

Of course, it began with the ordination of women.  No, I am not saying we should blame the ordination of women for all this craziness.  What is to blame is this.  Once a church body has learned to ignore or silence Scripture and ignore or overrule the catholic tradition, everything is possible.  It will not be long before in the name of the Gospel they disengage sex from marriage and insist that Jesus died so that everyone can do what is right in their own eyes.  By the way, that little Biblical phrase was never a positive one to describe virtue but the mark of sure apostasy and sin.  

The cause was a “radically inclusive” church for everyone – especially its LGBTQIA+ members -- but with no room for those who disagree with them on these issues -- including other Methodists.  Think how far they have come.  In 1972, the UMC declared homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching” and later banned “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from becoming ordained.  In did not take long before the United Methodist Church began a civil war over sex issues that has lasted decades. When the United Methodist Church’s governing body opened a temporary window for congregations to petition to leave over the issue in 2019, who could have predicted that four years later, according to church records, more than 7,600 churches voted to disaffiliate.  The divorce proceedings were ON. The once United Methodists are, like many progressive and liberal Christian churches, bleeding off members and congregations while unhesitatingly pursuing the cause of LGBTQIA+ inclusivity.  So, even if Jesus decided it was wrong, the UMC is not sure it matters.  They have forged their path and redefined the faith to fit what they insist have to be the positions of their church body on these issues.  They are sad for the pain and suffering caused the LGBTQIA+ folks but not for the damage done to their church body.  The nation’s largest Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal and Lutheran denominations have all now removed barriers to LGBTQIA+ participation in the pulpit, at the altar, and in the pews but all of this has come amid long-term declines in membership and influence.  How important are the sex issues to liberal Christianity?  Ask your local Methodist....

 

I touched you, Lord.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8B, preached on Sunday, June 30, 2024.

What could the two stories in the Gospel for today have in common?  On the one hand we have a synagogue ruler with some stature and authority who comes to Jesus to plead for his daughter who is sick unto death.  On the other hand, there is the woman who has suffered a twelve year menstrual flow that has rendered her an outcast from the life of God’s people and left her weak and in despair.  Jairus at least could go to Jesus and plead his case but this woman was left with a chance to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment.  Both were praying for healing, for an end to their burden, and for life to be restored.  But beyond this, their was something distinct and profound about their faith and this is what binds them together.

I suspect we have more instinctive sympathy for Jairus.  After all, he was not pleading for himself but for his daughter.  She was twelve and had her whole life ahead of her.  She is the picture of innocence and we feel for her cause more than the woman.  The woman was suffering but she was not dying.  She had lost much but she was still able to get around.  Her cause was not for another but for herself.  I suspect we would look at her the way we look at a bag lady on the street – yes, it is sad but she just needs to try harder.

We are hard people.  We judge people harshly.  We have in our own minds the great difference between real needs and false ones, between the true needy and those who just need to work a little harder to deal with their problems.  Oddly enough, Jesus does not distinguish them nor does He rank one need higher than another.  In one respect, since the woman with the flow of blood interrupted Jesus conversation with Jairus it might seem like He is more sympathetic to the woman.  The reality is this.  Mercy does not look at the worthiness of the person who asks for mercy.  No, indeed, the mercy of Jesus is rich, extravagant, lavish, and generous to a fault.  It is a mercy that is almost scandalous in its kindness.

What Jesus was looking for in both Jairus and the woman with the flow of blood is faith.  What mercy looks for is not worthiness but faith – faith that trusts in the power of that mercy.  In fact, Jesus commends the faith of both and uses this moment to encourage not only His disciples but you and me to such a faith.  Both of these are taking the biggest risk of all – trusting in Jesus.  Jairus was a synagogue leader who had to risk his stature in the synagogue to trust in Jesus to deliver for his daughter what only the Messiah can deliver – perfect healing!

Now curiously, the woman with the flow of blood does not appear to have faith. She might appear to us to be rather superstitious – after all she reached out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment.  Did she believe His clothing was magical?  Did she believe that the Lord was so filled with power that merely sneaking a touch would deliver her from all that the physicians of the day could not?

There is a teaching moment here.  Jesus might appear to be surprised by the power that seems to have escaped His garment and His body but Jesus is not a victim here.  Jesus has come for this woman, for the sick and afflicted and those marked with the death of sin.  He has come to restore the lost and seat again the estranged at His table.  So Jesus calls out the woman in order to call out her faith, both for her sake and for the sake of the disciples and even for you and me.  Jesus makes a big deal of this so that this woman will own her faith.  When she does, Jesus sends her forth telling her that her faith has made her whole again.  Yes, she was cleansed of the affliction that had troubled her for twelve years but also she was restored to be part of the fellowship of God’s house again.  Her fractured life was made whole.

There was another teaching moment.  Jairus’ cause had been post-poned long enough so that his daughter had died.  In fact, the servants from his house not only gave him the worst news of all, “Your daughter is dead,” but also told him to give it up, go home, and leave Jesus alone.  I suspect we would have said the same.  “Hey, fellow, yeah, I know it is bad, but nothing more can be done so give it up and leave Jesus alone.”  We are always saying the same thing.  What can the Church do about broken marriages or kids who turn out bad or people who lose their goods to storm or bankruptcy, or any of the thousand other terrible things people suffer?  What can we do?  What can faith do?  What can God do?

Jesus hears them and interrupts them.  Do NOT fear.  Only believe!  Then Jesus left behind all those who thought nothing more could be done, took with Him Peter, James, and John, and entered Jairus’ house.  The place was filled with tears and cries of sorrow – a commotion too loud and crazy for anyone to calm. Then Jesus did the unthinkable.  He banished the mourners and took the grieving mother and father to the body of the daughter and raised her from the dead.  To the voices of those who said to leave it alone and get on with their lives and the laughter of those who insisted Jesus could not do anything, our Lord tested their faith.  They followed Him to the body and saw their daughter raised from death to life.

Twelve years of life wasted away by disease and twelve years of life lost to the power of death.  My friends, to the world faith is foolishness.  Even your own sinful flesh is often telling you to give up, God either cannot or will not do anything, and simply to get on with your life.  These are the tests of faith.  The power of God is not in magical garments or in worthy causes but in faith.  Those who believe in the Lord are counted righteous, raised from sin’s death to everlasting life, and kept to the day of Christ’s coming.

Nowhere is your faith more tested than in worship.  Pastors are not supermen.  They have not magical answers or magical cloths to hold onto.  They have no crystal balls to divine what God has hidden.  Their power is their words, preaching God’s Word.  Their power is in water administered with the promise of God in baptism.  Their power is in the voice of absolution that makes happen in heaven what now happens on earth.  Their power is in bread offered to you as Christ’s flesh for the life of the world and His blood that cleanses you from all your sin.  It is all received with laughter and disdain as if this were mere foolishness or superstition.  This is YOUR test of faith.  Will you reach out to these means of grace to touch Jesus?  Will you let the world tell you your cause is too late or your need too great or will you trust Jesus?

Every crisis of our lives is a crisis of faith.  Whom will we trust?  Jesus offers us the only Word that can deliver what it promises, the only water that gives new and everlasting life, the only voice that speaks and sins fall away, and the only bread and wine that feed us with heavenly food.  Here is Jesus every Sunday, calling you to faith, and inviting you to reach out from the comfort of your disappointment, cynicism, and doubt.  “Who touched Me?”  And every Sunday we approach His throne of grace in fear and trembling and say, “Lord, it is I.  I am the one who touched You.  Give me salvation.”  In the holy Name of Jesus.  Amen

A rite of passage. . .

At some point in the life of a youth, the typical pattern of rebellion requires you to disown your father.  He who was once your everything is not suspect, hopelessly outdated, and perhaps even irrelevant.  For the youth this happens just long enough until you find yourself echoing what your father said -- sadly, sometime after he has passed away.  It is the wisdom of youth that your father once knew everything until he knew somethings until he new a few things until he knew nothing.  Then, at some point, you awaken to a renewed appreciation for your father and may even come to believe he did know almost everything.

This is not without its pattern in faith as well as life.  It seems that those of a certain generation grew up with great confidence in the faith of their fathers until they didn't.  They began to be suspect of the great minds and voices of the generations who went before -- even of Scripture.  It got to the point where the heroes of their youth became the boogeymen of their middle age.  Tragically, some have not progressed beyond their childhood rebellion against the faith and the house of their fathers.  That seems to be a common affliction for boomers and perhaps we are not alone.  I will admit, however, that the older I get the more appreciative I am of the great fathers of the faith -- both the Lutheran ones and those who were long before Luther.

The obligatory rite of passage which casts suspicion and rejects those who went before has given rise to all sorts of rebellions that have become normal in the minds of many.  The rejection of marriage and its Biblical order gave birth to a feminism in which male and female meant little as labels and the only measure of equality was the freedom to be the other.  The rejection of sex as a gift to the married and for procreation gave birth to intimacy which was more or less only for personal pleasure with even love being optional.  The rejection of the shape of creation as male and female gave birth to a fluid gender as secure as the feeling of the moment and without a real definition to know what either of those genders actually means.  The rejection of the true diversity of the God who became flesh in order to make one people from many nations, tribes, races, and ethnicities became the fake diversity in which only the rejection of the traditional is allowed and which seems to be still all about sex.  I could go on.  You get my drift.

What is most distressing, however, is that our growing familiarity with Scripture has led this youthful rebellion to reject the voice of God's Word or qualify it through the reason and/or experience of the interpreter.  We are not merely rejecting something but God Himself.  As soon as we treat the Scriptures as less than God's Word, we render mute the voice of God to address us with His timeless Word.  As soon as we take a position hostile to the claims of the faithful of the past about that Word, we build a wall between those who went before and ourselves.  As soon as we approach the Scriptures with a skepticism we would not dare to use against science or the prevailing fake science of the day, we turn God's Word into a battlefield in which His voice is lost in the clamor for control of the landscape.

How odd it is that some come to the faith with the enthusiasm of a true believer because they have been lied to or disappointed by the relevant truth that anchors no one only to end up sitting in the pews with a people who have long ago gotten over the faith and tamed the mighty God!  I find myself at odds with my own feel good generation so full of itself when it comes to truth.  It is not that I did not go through the rebellious period as a rite of passage, I did go through it and left it behind me.  Once I spoken and acted and thought like a child.  No more.  Those whose youthful rebellion against tradition and Scripture continues are caught in the loop of their own ignorance, presuming that their childhood and youthful fancy is the truest thing of all.  Hopefully, they will realize at some point that they have foolishly extended a youthful rite of passage and turned it into the cardinal virtue of their identity.