I wanted it to be true. . .

I will admit a love for books and stories and, when it happens, for movies that demonstrate the same almost mystic invitation into another world and another set of lives.  It is most engaging to read a book of fiction and at the end to regret the final words and period that bring it to a conclusion.  It is most encouraging to the author who has the ability to weave a story in words that we want to be true even if it is not.  Such is the power of imagination.  It leads us beyond ourselves and builds for us a new world in which we can be observers if not participants and it leaves us with a better sense of our selves because we got to know the characters borne of an author's creative skill.  

In the past I have enjoyed the great works of the mighty authors as well as the spy craft of Tom Clancy and the mystery of Agatha Christie along with the imagined world of a Dune planet.  Along with these I have loved the works of Shakespeare, the poetry of Auden, and the complexity of Dostoevsky.  But I can also say I have loved the romance and intricate portrayals of people and places in the Merchant and Ivory films and the great histories re-imagined in such movies as Operation Mincemeat.  We have so enjoyed the small releases such as The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society along with period pieces such as Cranford.  It is such a wonder to enter into a place and a plot with people you have never met until they become friends you cherish and fierce enemies you must battle.  Such is just a small part of my love for books, for words printed on a page.

While it is certainly not literature in the same sense as these works, Scripture is writing with a compelling story, great characters, and a plot whose resolution awaits an unnamed day when the Savior shall open the clouds and return in His glory.  There is something to be said about an appreciation of this.  No, it does not mean that you treat the Scriptures as any other book or that you discount its story as something less than real history but it does mean that the words are more than merely a set of facts recounted or doctrines unfolding for information.  The Bible is meant to engage the imagination.  There is something wrong with our reading if we do not build in our minds the face of a Moses or a Peter the way we would imagine how a character in fiction looks.  Movies can aid in this or they can disappoint us when they give faces to the people we have learned to know well that do not at all look like the images of our minds.  Perhaps that is why so many Biblical movies seem to fall short -- they make small what the Bible makes grand and so they disappoint us with something that is less than what the words on the page actually say.

In the old TV world of Dragnet, Sergeant Friday is said to have opined, "Just the facts, ma'am.  Just the facts."  I am told he never actually said it or did not say it in those words anyway.  Could it be that we are disappointed by Scripture because we want to distill the book down to quotes or because the stereotype lingers longer in our imagination than its reality?  Could it be that we have rendered the riches of the stories of the Bible into rather wooden accounts that not only lack in faithfulness to the Bible but make the authors and the Word whose words they are into something shallow and one dimensional?  One of the things I have loved doing over the years is to use the stories of the Bible in catechesis -- telling the stories of Scripture and letting the details and the whole landscape of the prose unfold to both engage and inform.  You cannot read the account of the Creation and Fall without being drawn into the story -- unless you are also dull and of single dimension.  You cannot read the stories of Abraham and Sarah or David and his kingly history and family and fail to be drawn into their stories as spectator and even participant.  Or, if you can, you have succeeded in turning God's divine drama into something pedestrian and bland.  If that is the case, it is a shame indeed.

Children's Bibles can sometimes rob the urgent and intricate stories of the Bible of their wit and elegance by presenting them not simply briefly but in the most spartan of prose.  Details matter. The details of the Bible stories matter.  Preaching involves unpacking these stories in such a way that it does not devolve into mere truths postulated so that someone gives ascent to these proof-texted propositions drawn out of context and out of sequence. What a shame when that happens.  A long time ago I got a Bible without verses or chapters and set in single column paragraph form.  It remains my favorite way to read God's Word.  It may not work for study but for the pure enjoyment of reading God's Word it cannot be matched.  This format allows my imagination to work, creating faces to the characters and building scenery for the words of the Lord that are His works as well.  I highly encourage it.  The Bible I use is also a King James version, with an elegance of prose and poetry that too often seems lacking in modern versions that seek to explain God as well as give testimony to His voice.  This has nothing to do with the downplaying of the truth of God's Word and everything to do with the engagement of the mind to assist that Word to make its home in our imagination as well as our hearts.

What Jesus did not say. . .

I read the insightful and humorous tirade on a piece David French wrote regarding the politics and religion of the Texas senate race.  You should read it also.  The whole thing is a good read but the individual points of this critique are spot on.  They illustrate the problem that confronts the orthodox Christian in the face of the liberal or progressive distortion of Christianity as well as the secular complaint against the faith.  That is that if Jesus did not say it, it must not be wrong and should not be part of the theological or moral stance of any individual or church body that is intent upon being Christian.

In the piece, the liberal Christian in this race, defended by David French, complains that "the evangelical focus on abortion and homosexuality in politics” is a betrayal of the Christian doctrinal and moral position precisely because these are seen as “two issues that Jesus never talked about.”  There you have it in a nutshell.  If Jesus did not say anything against it, it must not be wrong.  Since Jesus did not explicitly mention abortion or any one of the letters of the LGBTQ+ plethora of sexual desires or condemn them, it must mean that Jesus intended to support and accept them as both legitimate for the Christian to hold and moral.  Now that is a joke.  Nevermind that Scripture does address the sacred character of life and may, actually, address abortion -- though not exactly recorded from the mouth of Jesus.  

Let me explain.  

The original meaning of the Greek word porneia is “to prostitute” or “to sell.” However by the time of the New Testament, porneia had a very broad meaning that included sexual behavior such as prostitution, extramarital sexual intercourse or adultery, paedophilia, promiscuity, homosexuality, lesbianism, incest, premarital sex and bestiality. The Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament states,

Πορνεία means “prostitution, unchastity, fornication,” and is used “of every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse” (BAGD s.v.). . . . Since in Rom. 1:26f. Paul clearly alludes to homosexuality as sexual immorality, πορνεία can also refer to homosexuality as sexual immorality, as does εκπορνεύω. in Jude 7 (cf. Genesis 19) ¹

The lexicon’s message is not that porneia occurs in Romans 1:26f, but that the sexual sin in Romans 1 is included in porneia. For more discussion about Jude 7, see below.

Kittel, Bromiley and Friedrich  provides a very complete meaning of porneia stating that its meaning includes “adultery, fornication, licentiousness, and homosexuality.”^2,3 Harper’s Bible Dictionary states that porneia also includes “bestiality.”⁴

Colin Brown states this about porneia,

porneia (Dem.  onwards, rare in cl. Gk) harlotry, unchastity (also of a homosexual nature).⁵

This highly acclaimed Greek-English dictionary points out that porneuo, pornos, and porneia are part of the same word group. Then it states,

The word group can describe various extra-marital sexual modes of behavior insofar as they deviate from accepted social and religious norms (e.g. homosexuality, promiscuity, paedophilia, and especially prostitution).⁶

Colin Brown also tell us that porneia occurs in the “Testament of Benjamin.” The word is used to refer to homosexual behavior. In the following quote from the “Testament of Benjamin,” porneia is translated as fornication. Yet, it is referring to homosexual activity since Jude 7 is about homosexuality.

And believe that there will be also evildoings among you, from the words of Enoch the righteous: that ye shall commit fornication with the fornication of Sodom . . . ⁷

Verein D. Verbrugge in the  New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology writes . . .

[Rabbinical Judaism] frowned on any kind of prostitution or extramarital sexual intercourse. Incest and all kinds of unnatural sexual intercourse were viewed as porneia. ⁸

^{Yes, it is true that Jesus did not say the word we use in an explicit reference to such behavior but it is also true that Jesus did not stand outside the Biblical world with its overt approval of marriage between a man and a woman as a life-long relationship of love and fidelity along with its disapproval of any sexual behavior that contradicted or violated this context.}

In the same way, though the Bible may not specifically mention the word abortion, but it does speak volumes about the value of human life and its source in God alone. Throughout Scripture, we see the sanctity of life upheld. Verses like Psalm 139:13–16 and Jeremiah 1:5 show that the source of life is from God alone and reveal God’s intimate care for the unborn from creation to life's end.  Jesus does not stand outside this tradition but stands within this doctrine and moral stand in all His words and actions. 

The absurdity of the liberal and progressive stand is obvious: that Jesus wants you to have a lot of gay sex and abortions because he never mentioned these explicitly or condemns them clearing.  Jesus very clearly acts in violation of the accepted moral and theological stand of the day with respect to the treatment of women (in speaking with unclean women and in His refusal to take up the accepted side against the woman found in adultery while leaving the man off the hook) and does so in ways that arouse His opponents.  Jesus does this with respect to the laws of the Sabbath as well.  But somehow, it is presumed that by silence Jesus infers that either the sins of abortion or homosexuality are not so bad or that they might even be good means that Jesus apparently was unwilling or unable to own His approval of these in the same way He owned the rules concerning the Sabbath or violated the norms for His relationship with the women of the day.  How odd!  You might then infer, as the original piece suggests, that Jesus by His clear teaching condemns adultery unless, of course, you are having extramarital sex with some of the same sex or that you can abort all the babies you want as long as you treat those who actually survived to birth with dignity.  It would be a hoot and a funny joke indeed except that there are actually Christians and people who think they know Jesus who are saying exactly that.

________________________________

1. Balz and Schneider. Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament. Eerdmans Publishing Com. 1993. vol. 3., pp. 137-139.
2. Kittel. Theological Dictionary of the new Testament. Eerdmans. 1968. vol. vi., p. 581-595.
3. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Eerdmans Publishing Com. 1985. VI, pp. 918-921.
4. Achtemeier, Paul J. “Fornication.” Harper’s Bible Dictionary. Harper & Row & Society of Biblical Literature. 1985, p. 319.
5. Colin Brown. Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Regency Publishers. 1975. vol. 1., p. 497.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid. p. 499.
8. Verlyn D. Verbrugge.  New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Zondervan. 2000. pp 486. 

Too quickly. . .

When I was full-time, I will admit that Sundays were exhausting.  I typically got to the church by 5 am on Sunday so that I had some quiet time for sermon prep, teaching prep, and private devotions.  It was usual for me to get done with Sunday morning about 1-1:30 pm -- unless, of course, meetings and other activities were scheduled when that would extend to 4-6 pm!  I was tired.  In my foolishness I feared that my schedule was seen as exhausting by those in the pews.  For a few that was certainly true.  The cantor was there early and left at least as late as I did.  Others were also there for many hours on Sunday mornings and afternoons.  But I have discovered something in retirement.  I was wrong.  Nearly everyone in the congregation is there for a few brief hours and the worship service lasts at its longest 75-90 minutes.  Sitting in the pews and assisting in the distribution has taught me that the time spent together around the Word and Table of the Lord is not long at all but passes too quickly.  It is over in the blink of an eye.

It seems like I am just getting settled in the pew and the liturgy is already to the readings from God's Word.  It seems like I have just found my comfortable spot and the sermon is winding down to its Amen.  It seems like I am just beginning to say I believe and we are already confessing the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.  It seems like I am just starting to pray and already the petitions are done and we are in the Offertory.  The Eucharistic Prayer that seemed wordy at one point is too short to give me a real opportunity to meditate on the riches of God's grace soon to be placed upon my lips.  The distribution that once seem too long is over so fast and almost seems rushed.  I am just back in the pew and already we are being encouraged to bless the Lord, be blessed by the Lord's benediction, and being the final hymn.  Where did the time go?  It is all over too quickly.

I am not saying that 75 minutes or 90 minutes is too short but that when one enters into the presence of God around His Word and table, it is over far too fast.  Churchill said that they had barely begun to fight.  God has barely begun to deliver His gifts to my mouth and to address my mind with His wisdom and truth and to take from me the heavy weight of my sin and it is done.  I suspect I am speaking more here of the attitude of the heart than clock watching or the actually time spent in the pews.  I have rediscovered awe.  That is perhaps the biggest change for me on Sunday morning.

This is not about how wonderful the preaching is or the choir or the music.  They are fine.  It is about the renewed sense of awe at the simple privilege of being in the presence of the most high God who comes not to condemn sin but to bequeath grace upon grace.  It is the renewal that comes from listening again to every word of the liturgy, to hearing God's Word spoken into my ear, and to kneeling to receive the flesh of Christ upon my tongue and the blood of Christ upon my lips.  Amazing grace!  It is awesome.  It is too quickly over, the sacred vessels cleansed and put away, the echos of the hymn fading in the ear.  Wow.  It is the rediscovery of awe.  I always had some of it but the labor of Sunday, repeating everything twice, looking forward to the inevitable meetings or congregational activities always set for Sundays worked against this sense of awe and made me labor against this simple appreciation and joy of being in the presence of our gracious Lord.

I hope and pray that if you are leading worship from altar or organ bench, you still enjoy this wonderful awe.  I hope and pray that if you are sitting in the pew you think with me the wonder of where the time went and how you barely had a moment to consider the miracle of it all in the God whose voice lilts into the ear and whose heavenly food is tasted on the tongue.  Awaken to the awe of being in the presence of God.  Worship is not drudgery but awe.  The preacher or organist or choir do not make it so but God who comes to us, down to us, with heavenly grace and favor to bestow upon us His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation week after week after week.  In the blink of an eye He is there before we realize it and in the blink of an eye it is done before we appreciate its majesty.  We need to awaken to the awe of what happens on Sunday morning because that is the foundation of everything that flows out of it through the rest of the week and the rest of our lives. 

 

An oddly missing hunger. . .

Orthodoxy in doctrine is supposed to lead to orthodoxy in practice.  That is the lex of ancient wisdom -- not simply a tie between the two but a causal connection in which right praying leads to right believing and right believing leads to right praying.  There are those who say there is no causal connection and, while both are good, either alone can exist for at least a while without the other.  Though I wish it were not so, I suspect there is truth in this.  I have no formula for estimating how long either can exist apart from the other but I know for a fact that it happens.

There are those who rightly worship in doctrinally stalwart sermons but in worship that is painfully cerebral and lacking in the earthy concreteness of the Sacraments.  We see it in seemingly orthodox Protestant bodies where the sanctuary is largely a lecture hall and the table holds money more than the bread of heaven or the cup of salvation.  There are also those whose worship is evidently Sacramental but whose homilies are barely moral encouragements without a hint of teaching or doctrine.  We see it in Rome with liturgy done competently if not well but without much time spent or expectation of teaching in the sermon.

We really do not need to look all that far away.  I grew up in an orthodox Lutheran congregation which was conservative in every way and proudly Lutheran but there was a mere tolerance of things liturgical and an absence of the Sacrament from Sunday mornings as well as from the piety of the people.  This was not the worst that could be but there was definitely something missing.  The orthodox preaching and teaching should have manifested itself in a hunger for the things of God in the Holy Eucharist.  They did not.  Many folks left after the offering on the rare (quarterly) Morning Service with Holy Communion.  There was no hint of discussion about much less interest in private confession.  There was certainly moralism but it was accompanied by an appreciation for orthodoxy of doctrine, especially in the realm of justification by grace through faith.

That era is gone.  Nearly every Lutheran congregation celebrates the Sacrament more often today than they did in the 1950s.  Weekly has become normal.  I am happy about that and am not complaining.  But it is worth noting that the more frequent Eucharists and the more sacramental preaching and teaching that is also typical of a confessional Lutheran congregation that this has not exactly been accompanied by a hunger and thirst for even more frequent communion or confession.  Why not?  The lex of ancient wisdom suggests that it should lead us to more rather than to less -- more frequent Communion, more frequent confession, more and deeper devotional piety, etc.  Has it?

My own history was to add the Eucharist so that at least three or four times a week the Sacrament was offered and a sermon preached on the texts -- independent services and not copies of a Sunday service and sermon merely repeated at a different time.  Yet as often as I tried to offer the Eucharist more frequently, I did not find a groundswell of people to welcome such.  I preached about the Sacrament in the hopes that such hunger would arise and it did not.  Honestly, I would have thought that a daily Eucharist would have been the norm in my parish a long time ago.  It would have been a taxing demand upon my time and energy but I would have welcomed it.  It did not happen.  I could have gone ahead and scheduled them but I know from attempts that the attendance would have been very small indeed.  I regret that I talked myself out of this discipline and piety.  I should have tried harder.

Perhaps we have hit a plateau.  Perhaps the demands of work and home and leisure are too great to find time for a daily Eucharist.  Probably most folks in the parish would not have thought it was a good use of my time as their pastor to hold such daily Eucharists.  Or, I am afraid, perhaps we did not encourage such a hunger as we might, as I might.  It could have been that this was a step too far -- the awkward move from orthodoxy to enthusiasm?  Zealots are not exactly welcome in our churches -- especially zealous pastors!  Could it be that this is what is lacking among us confessional Lutherans today?  Have we come up against a wall, so to speak, going so far with our orthodoxy of doctrine and our catholic practice but not so far that it would actually suggest that our lives needed to reordered toward such a hunger and expectation to hear more sermons and receive the Sacrament more often than weekly?  I leave it out there for your to ruminate upon and to help me find an answer to my question.  Have we quenched the Spirit but stopping at one point where we should have gone further?

When sin is merely weakness. . .

The Bible is filled with strong words for sin but our modern mind does not hear them.  What passes for sin in private confession and public litany is an apology for our weakness more than it is an admission of our complicity with evil, our complete failure to do good, and our refusal to stop doing what is wrong.  It is tiresome to listen to but it is more of a problem than its sound in our ears.  When sin is merely weakness, our need for God is lessened and God is made smaller in the process.  When sin is merely weakness, we are no longer utterly dependent upon God but He is made a small nicety in a world with other niceties.  When sin is merely weakness, forgiveness is rendered even weaker and grace is made politeness rather than power.  When sin is merely weakness, mercy is impotent and the God of mercy is equally impotent.

In times gone by when I was hearing confession more regularly, a penitent once confessed a litany of things that could have or should have been done better.  These failings rightfully troubled the conscience of the penitent but were they really sins?  I prodded.  What did you do wrong?  The failing was never enlarged beyond what could have or should have been done more or better or differently.  These were sins of weakness and fragility.  They were the small mistakes of someone who knew better and who had succumbed in a moment to what that person now regretted.  It passed as sin in the mind and heart of the penitent but was it really sin in the way the Scriptures speak of sin?

The absolution being sought was more akin to understanding than mercy.  Of course, you could have and should have done better but we are all guilty of these inadequacies (and, therefore, if we are all guilty, none of us are really guilty!).  They were seeking not the powerful absolution that flows from the blood of Christ but the affirmation that they were merely human, like everyone else, and to be sent away with the dutiful expectation to try harder next time.  Is that what sin has become?  If so, it is certainly what absolution has become.  Not the strong Go and sin no more but the more reasonable Go but try harder next time to do better.  

I realized at the time what was happening and how I was also victim to the same minimization of what sin was and therefore the weakening of what grace was but I could have and should have handled it better.  When it did happen again, I stopped the person and turned them to the Ten Commandments to read them aloud and to frame their sin in the context of this Law and not the limited guilt or complicity of what might have been done better.  Perhaps the reader will suggest that this is the familiar path of those on the liberal or progressive side of Christianity but I think it is more likely the temptation of us all.  We want to minimize what sin is because then we do not need God or His grace so desperately but we want to make sin into weakness largely because it puts the ball back in our court instead of His.  It comes right back to us what we could and should do next time as opposed to what we actually did and how only the profound and powerful mercy of a crucified Savior can rescue us from what our sins have done.

Worse, when sin is merely weakness, we are largely victims instead of the perpetrators of evil.  The strong popularity of victimization in politics and culture has eroded the power of confession.  I am a sinner.  I have done the evil God condemns and have not done the good God requires.  I have loved myself above all, lived as if I mattered most, and failed to love God above all or my neighbor as myself.  It is not by weakness or fragility or accident but by will and deed I have sinned in thought, word, and act.  I am fully incapable of finding a way out of this mess of death or atoning for the evils in my mind, on my heart, or by my hand.  When we make a strong confession of real sin, God is not only enlarged in this act of confession but His mercy and grace are made great indeed.  Our appreciation for the cross is magnified.  Sin required a Savior and required a Savior to die.  Forgiveness is not some inconsequential word that understands our human frailty but the powerful blood that cleanses us from all our sin.  When we lose the idea that sin is more than weakness and fragility, we lose the idea that grace is powerful and mercy is a gift bigger than any other.