Competing aims. . .

It remains a curious thing that we are always trying to get God to come down to us and He is working to turn our attention to Him and the things above.  They are competing aims.  Even more so, they are conflicting.  There is certainly no surprise that we are always trying to get God to be concerned with the things here and now.  That is our focus since the Fall and sin's gift of death.  Our great temptation is to frame our lives solely in terms of the present and to define Christian faith and service solely in the context of the here and now.  We are so busy with the things of the day and the needs of the moment that there is little energy or desire left in us to think beyond the moment.  If that is true of us as individual Christians, it is also true of us as a Church.

Christian people are caught between the shape of this mortal life so much in the present that we think it wise to eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow we shall die.  We cling to the Scriptures which can be used to support our fixation with the moment until we no longer hear the voice of God calling us to seek the things that are above, with Him, and in His kingdom without end.  As churches we are sure that unless we offer the poor money and power, the hungry food and drink, and naked clothing and housing, and the afflicted healing, we really cannot help them at all.  Long ago we gave up on the promise of eternal life and the heavenly things of God.  We do not think them fitting substitutes for getting what you want and what you think you deserve in this mortal life.  In fact, we have probably come to the great but silent conclusion that unless we get most of what we want today, we are not willing to live for eternity.

For this reason, the ministry of the Church has become so political.  We find it nearly impossible not to endorse or encourage voters to those we endorse for political office.  We have national governmental offices not simply to keep us informed of what happens in the halls of earthly power but also to influence those halls and make sure it ends up working for us.  If someone were to suggest that we ought to be more concerned with the salvation of people, we would laugh them out of our sight with the absurdity of our Lord's willingness to endure the bad things of the present because of the promise of the eternal good.  

In contrast to this, we are reminded in God's House that we are already members of the Kingdom of God, adopted into the eternal family of our Savior, and rescued from death to belong to eternal life.  Indeed, nearly all the content of our prayers attend to the things of the moment and hardly any of the words we lift to the Father in Jesus' name even acknowledged that we have already passed with Him to the eternal life He has prepared.  Jesus says He has gone before to prepare a place for us but we caution Him "Not so fast, Jesus.  We have things we need/want to do here and now."  Indeed, so few of God's people want Christ to return soon that He would be in danger of us booing if He robbed us of the things we want to accomplish or experience before the day comes to end it all.  And that is how we view it.  The end of the party.  Heaven is really not the longing in us that awaits fulfilling but a consolation prize for not getting what we really want -- a good, long, healthy, happy, rich, and successful life now.  Surely it is for this reason that we find liturgical worship so boring or strange.  It is clearly focused not on the present but on the eternal, not upon bringing God down to us but raising us up in Christ to focus on the Father and the things eternal.

I am ashamed to admit this and I suspect I am not alone.  Perhaps the most difficult thing for us to hear is the call to "seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness."  For that implies not simply that the world is not our banana but that the only value of this world lies in its relationship to the Kingdom of God.  Nobody needs a sermon on how to focus your life on the things of the moment but we all need to hear over and over again to set our hearts on the things above, the eternal things of God's Kingdom.  I remember John Stephenson saying how, when asked to write a volume on eschatology, he did not know anything about it.  Of course, he was exaggerating.  Indeed, some of his most prescient teaching has been how the only thing in Christian life that is real is eschatology.  Jesus says He will not drink of the fruit of the vine until He comes into His Kingdom.  In contrast, we would rather drink the fruit of the vine than look with joy to the day when His Kingdom comes in its fullness.

In remembrance. . .

As my wife was putting up the Christmas tree and decorations on the day the Lord appointed (Black Friday), she held a simple white Nativity set that we had been given by members of my first parish well over 35 years ago.  Our Christmas decorations are filled with such gifts.  Opening up the bins and unwrapping them is a walk down memory lane.  I expect we are not alone.

The problem is that over time, moving, and so many other things, we lose track of these people and families.  Now, so long after this gift was given, we both wondered aloud what had happened to this family, to the children now adults in their mid-30s, and to a thousand other folks whose lives have crossed our own.  If there is a good to social media, it is that often old relationships can be rekindled as we find those whom we have lost.  It does not always work but sometimes it does.  In the meantime, we are left with our memories and the warmth in our hearts as we remember and give thanks.

As much as we do this with friends, the cherished treasures of our family which we bring out for the various holy days and family celebrations are the same.  As we moved things around to set up the tree, my wife held a golden glass candy dish that was my mothers.  As she prepared the Thanksgiving feast, her heart and voice recalled the years she watched and helped her mother and the lessons learned.  All of these memories are both tearful and joyful as we awaken in us the lives of those whom we love.

Memories are not always attached to things or to the things we do but they often are.  When we make our way through flea markets and antique places (now virtually the same), our memories are triggered by seeing things that remind us of people and events in our past.  It is not strictly the memory of an event that lives in us but relationships and love and affection and hope.  This is most certainly true for the Christian.  We do not grieve as others who have no hope but grieve in the hope and expectation of eternal life with those whom we love.  The memories are not simply voyages into our past but the acknowledgement that who we are is shaped by those who touched our lives with faith and love in Christ.  Oh, how we long for the grand reunion with those who have passed into the nearer presence of God.  We are all waiting for the same day -- the day when the old is made new and heart is full to the brim of all the things for which we give thanks.  Though now in part and then in full, it is a joyful thing to remember and give thanks.

It is surely some of these things that the Lord knew in setting up a blessed meal in which He not only bestows upon us His body and blood but also invites us to remember and give thanks.  We are participating in something grand which is wonderful and yet it too is but a shadow of the fullness to come, the foretaste of the eternal.  Our Lord gives us a meal, food, His Word, the fruits of His redeeming work, and memory -- together they work to help us more than recall but to give thanks.  Sermons are great, mind you I have preached thousands of them.  But it is in the eating, drinking, and giving thanks that the Lord engages us as a whole and not merely the mind.  I have never understood those Christians whose hunger for the Holy Sacrament has faded.  If anything, God grows this hunger even by the eating just as the memory grows by the telling.  If we enjoy in some small way the appreciation of tokens given us by friends and family along the way, how much more are we drawn to remember and give thanks to the Lord by His gift of the Holy Eucharist.

Guess who is coming to dinner?

Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent (C), preached on Sunday, December 1, 2024.

A million years ago a movie plot asked the question “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”  It was a story of prejudice and racism – a black man coming to dinner to meet the white parents of his white girlfriend.  In 1963, that dinner table was a shock and surprise. Looking out on the world today it is hard to imagine how controversial that movie was in its time.  Our age is not perfectly free of bigotry but it has moved the playing field of our humanity more than we often realize.

Every year we begin the Church Year with the question again, “Guess who is coming?”  Our general attention is not to the ills of a corrupt world or society or ourselves and how to improve them.  It is to a man in a red suit who comes as the all knowing judge to decide if we have been good or bad and if we will get what we want or something we don’t.  He comes with gifts for those who have followed the rules and with a lump of coal for those who have not. He is probably fooled even by a token repentance so that there will be plenty of presents under the tree even for the naughty ones.  Santa may keep score but not grandma and grandpa.  

Here we are on the First Sunday in Advent, the first season of a new Church Year, and we are asking the same question.  Guess who’s coming to dinner?  The answer is no surprise.  You can be the worst delinquent member or raised in a family of wolves that never went to church and you ought to be able to answer that question.  Of course you know – everyone knows.  The dynamic duo – a man in a red suit and Jesus in a manger.  You may not invest much into this child born of Mary but at least you know who He is.  Why He is coming – well, that is another question.

We have invested in all the wrong answers for why there is Advent and Christmas.  We think He is coming to right the wrongs of our culture and society, to make the world better and to make our lives better.  No wonder so many do not come back after Christmas.  Our hopes are set so high and when the worship service is over, we go back home to the same old problems, the same old world, and the same old lives.  We think He is coming to give us what we want.  We have lists prepared just in case He does not know us or what we want.  The next month of so is invested with so many impossible hopes and dreams that we are bound to be disappointed by the red suited man who is supposed to make us happy.  It is no wonder that we are sad when what we want from the baby in the manger seems too much to hope for – even if He might be the Son of God.  We know who is coming to dinner but we are not sure why He is coming or what He has come to do or give.

This is why the Church makes it unmistakable on the First Sunday in Advent.  The readings appointed for the day make it hard to miss – who He is who is coming and why He has come.  He comes not in a shiny new car to feed your dreams for a sweet ride but in a donkey, the colt the foal of the donkey.  He comes not to hand out coats to those who need one but so that they we might shed our coats of sin and lay them down before Him.  He is come not to figure out what we think we need but to give us what we really need but do not know to ask.  He is come as the Savior, the Son of God in flesh and blood, born of the Virgin by the power of the Spirit.  And in this same liturgy, the Church also teaches us what to say to Him who is coming.  “Amen, come, Lord Jesus!  Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord.”  

There is no God to know except the God we know in Christ and there is no Christ except the Christ who comes to be crucified.  Bethlehem is not far from Golgotha.  The wood of the manger will be used to make a cross.  The swelling sound of the crowd’s welcome will deteriorate into a cry to crucify Him.  Still He comes.  He comes to wear the job description of a Messiah even it that leads Him to the suffering of the cross and to a cold, dead body laid in a fresh tomb.  You might be thinking that this does not sound much like Advent or Christmas but I am here to tell you that this is exactly what Advent and Christmas sound like.

Christ is coming.  The omniscient one who is strong enough to know His future will lead through the cross to death and still He comes.  The omnipotent one who is strong enough to carry the load of your sin and mine even while His arms are stretched out in suffering and still He comes.  Guess who is coming to dinner?  The Savior who embodies the promise of God’s mercy from a stable and the first breath of His incarnate life to the final sigh before the last breath of His suffering is over.  
What fools we are to think that we need to keep Christ in Christmas.  There is no Christmas without Him.  This world will not improve and we are but a gazillion little Dutch boys and girls with their fingers in the dyke trying to hold back our own self-destruction.  The answer to all our ills is not and never was a ballot box away.  The most even the best leaders can do is to quarantine our will to self-destruct a little while longer.  White bearded men in red suits are great distractions but terrible Saviors.  There are here and gone before even scratching the surface of whether we are naughty or nice or what can be done about it.  A seasonal figure of kindness makes for a good story but a terrible Messiah.  Guess who is coming to dinner?  It had better be the only One who can deliver hope to a hopeless people.

This Messiah is come not to add more rules we cannot keep to the burden of our own failure.  He has not come to sit on the sidelines of our lives and tell us what we should have said or done or who we should have been.  This Messiah is mercy embodied, the God who comes to lay aside His righteousness for our misery and His right to be worshiped in order to serve us with salvation.  Guess who is coming to dinner, who prepares the food, who sets the table so that vagabonds and sinners may have place and absolution.  Guess why He is coming to dinner, the Savior who leaves the halls of glory on high to become sin’s offering down here and then to make Himself the food no one deserves but everyone may receive with faith.

The hope of the world is not for political problems and political solutions.  The desire of our hearts is for more than a moment of distraction provided by a deity who knows were naughty but will never give us coal.  Christ the Lord is here and in Him a people who have nothing to say of themselves but they are sinners hear the most glorious voice forgive away the sins of thought, word, and deed.  Those whose voices cry “hosanna” will hear “it is finished,” those who take offer their coats will wear the righteousness He alone can give, and those whose do not know what they want to eat will be fed upon the bread of heaven and cup of salvation.

Christ is coming to finish what He began and that includes you and me.  He will bring to completion what He has begun even though we are not sure it is what we want.  He will come not as a solitary Savior on the back of a beast of burden but upon the clouds, riding the clouds like a horse, while angels sing and we repeat the song with them.  Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord!

Only. . .

Catching up on a few things, I ran across this statement by an ELCA pastor:

Do you really, actually believe that the Holy Spirit speaks only through the words of scripture? Our Bible, which we didn't have for a couple of centuries. And those words interpreted your way?  What a small, limited God you have! 

It is a statement that perfectly contrasts the difference between the Missouri Synod and the ELCA.  It is not about sex or gender or women's ordination or ecumenical relationships or communion fellowship or climate change as a category of the Gospel or any one issue.  It is about the Word of God.  Oddly enough, it is a statement that accords quite well with the Roman Catholic understanding of the Church that forms the Scriptures and therefore is above them -- free, it would seem, to change its mind about what that Word says.  Furthermore, it vitiates against the idea of a catholic and apostolic tradition.  Nothing, it would seem, is forever.  Not even the Word of God (despite what it says!).

Of course, the LCMS would say that the Holy Spirit speaks through other means but none of these has the authority of Scripture.  What the commenter fails to appreciate is that the Spirit speaking through the Word of God norms all of those other means.  It norms, for example, the creeds and not the other way around.  What the Holy Spirit says does not contradict what the Holy Spirit has said.  Scripture interprets Scripture is another way of saying the Holy Spirit defines what He says.  It norms what the Church has said and taught in church council or doctrinal statements.  These do not have authority over the Word but apply the Word to the issue at hand.  Of course, this develops over time as iron sharpens iron and the Church is forced by conflict or controversy to sharpen its understanding and confession of what it is that Scripture says.  In no way, however, does the position of the Church inform the Scriptures.  Without this, there would be no catholic tradition at all but merely a snapshot in time of what the Church thought then -- as if that has no meaning or bearing on what the Church thinks today.

Second is the continuation of the old fallacy that there was no New Testament until the time of Constantine.  It is a fascination of the liberal and progressive movement which delights in promoting the myth that the Bible did not exist until the Church (under Constantine's prodding) decided it existed.  The Old Testament was present for centuries upon centuries and had a long and credible history which the New Testament and the voice of Jesus Himself affirms.  The New Testament was begun within a generation or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It speaks dogmatically.  It does not ask for someone's agreement but insists that this is the truth once delivered to the saints by the voice of Christ Himself.  Before the end of the first century, the Scriptures existed in total even though the actual collections of those books may have varied from place to place.  There was no conflict over the Gospels but there was over one or two book not universally known.  The early church fathers speak of Scripture in referring to the New Testament long before the time of Constantine and the so-called third century appearing of the Bible.  Of course things changed when Christianity was legal and when the Emperor also was baptized but the Word of God did not change.

Third is the presumption that even if the words are the same their meaning changes.  So what meant one thing to one generation or moment in history meant something completely different to another.  By the way, this comment was made in reference to the ordination of women.  So the Church is free to change what had been the order and practice and theology of the Church from the beginning once culture changes.  This effectively makes the Scriptures subject to the times and the interpretation of the times and the will of the people at one point in time.  There is no yesterday, today, and forever the same nor can there be -- except in very limited way to the particulars of the act of Christ for our salvation (and even here there is disagreement as to what applies to this salvation history).  Again, there can be no catholic and apostolic tradition whatsoever when this filter is applied to the Word of God.  Who knows what will be taught and what will be believed in the future if the words of the Word of God can mean different things to different people or different ages.

Finally, far from making God limited or smaller, this is God acting to bind unto Himself to His Word that endures forever because of the changes and chances of this mortal life, of culture and society, of taste, whim, and preference.  We do not bind Him but He has bound Himself to His Word for us and for our benefit and so that we would know and count upon His mercy and grace without doubt or uncertainty in every age and time.  We are not putting God in a box but He has graciously bound Himself to His Word for our sake and for the sake of those who went before us and those who come after us.

This is what the difference between the Missouri Synod and the ELCA is all about.  From this difference flow the differences over sex or gender or women's ordination or ecumenical relationships or communion fellowship or climate change as a category of the Gospel or any one issue.  It was and has always been about the Word of God.  Thankfully, here is a comment that admits just that!

Without strong preaching. . .

Listed as a complaint by a Roman Catholic priest though without directly mentioning Roman parishes: Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Of course, he is correct.  That applies also to Lutherans and just about any and every Christian tradition.  Strong preaching has gone by the wayside a long time ago.  What too many people hear today is weak preaching -- 

• preaching which avoids difficult texts, preaching which does not speak the whole counsel of God's Word, 
• preaching which dismisses the Biblical warrant when it conflicts with culture or feelings, 
• preaching which speaks more about happiness than holiness, 
• preaching which is designed to make the hearer feel better but fails to apply God's Word to their need, 
• preaching which is generic instead of specific, 
• preaching which spends too much time on pleasantries instead of truth, preaching  
• . . . need I go on?
  

Before we rush to blame the preacher, we must admit that we have no stomach for the truth or at least for the truth bluntly spoken.  We have learned to hear through the lens of culture, through the lens of our own preferences and opinions, and through the lens of our own hurts.  We are way too sensitive.  We are so easily offended.  We walk with our feet or we protest with our wallets when we don't like what we hear.

Many years ago a lay led Bible study was reading through the Gospels and one who attended was offended.  The person came to see me.  They were angry.  "so and so said that if a man divorces his wife and marries another he makes her an adulterer just as he is."  I played it coy.  I told the person I was pretty sure that this lay teacher did not say those words.  The person protested, "I was there!  I heard them from his own mouth!"  "No," I said, "You misunderstand.  I am pretty sure that Jesus said those words."  The conversation was not over.  Jesus saying something is never ever enough.  The protest was personal.  The son of this person had divorced two wives, was living with a woman who the parent hoped would eventually be his wife.  It was a hot mess and I am not simply talking about the situation with the son.  The desires of the parent and the love for the son had made them turn a deaf ear to the words of Christ and, worse, caused them to be so offended by the Word of the Lord that they insisted it could not be as it says.  Surely this is what we have done on a thousand subjects and not just sex.  We do not hear because we do not want to hear and if we hear we are offended and reject what is said.  That is what vitiates against strong preaching.

There is too much weak preaching in Christian churches today.  We do not need to add to it.  There is plenty enough for everyone.  Instead let us be strong preachers.  I do NOT mean we should offend or be rude but winsome in speaking the whole truth of God's Word but strongly preaching that Word.  You don't have to be a jerk to preach strongly.  The world is not suffering for a lack of nice preaching but for a lack of strong, Biblical, clear, and bold preaching that applies God's Word to the people for their edification and sanctification as well as their salvation.