The Scripture offer us a reality that appears rather stark to the modern world. Jesus insists that no man can serve two masters and, while the context says God and mammon, it is clear here that it is between Christ and the devil. In the Bible there are not seven kingdoms but only two. It is either the the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Satan. The images of light and darkness do not offer a middle ground of almost light or almost darkness. The paths are either the narrow way that leads to life or the broad boulevard that leads to destruction. There is only heaven and hell and nothing in between. There is life and death. It is shockingly binary to a non-binary world. It is even more stark in the fact that there are only the saved and the lost and you belong to one or the other no matter what you might imagine in your mind.
Living in a post-modern world in which everything is by degree and choice can never be as simple as yes or no, right or wrong, the Scriptures do not offer us another version of how this Christianity goes. The task before us is to preach this impossibly offensive binary shape to a world which refuses to know this kind of faith or this kind of God. The world has not yet abandoned the idea of God exactly but they have no interest in the real God spoken of the real Scriptures. Instead, they prefer an imagined God without any sharp or blunt edges and a faith that stands for everything and so it ends up standing for nothing at all. This Christian world loves to talk about talking about God but they cannot quite bring themselves to speaking creedally or confessionally the words God has said to us about Himself.
Lately I am realizing that this is less a worship war than it is a basic battle over the God of the Scriptures and the God we create for ourselves. It does not matter if the God we have imagined for ourselves is powerful or not or real or not. This God only has to be real enough for us to know in the moment. But He must be a God who learns what we want and how we think and is willing to meet us on those terms and not a God who lives by the Word that endures forever. This is the struggle before us. How do we battle an idea of God who is all so appealing to us because this God looks like us in the mirror? I suspect that it begins with renewal of a binary world and the binary shape to things. Adam had not realized this until he was sent out to name it all. Then all of a sudden he discovered that he was not simply alone but that there was no one and nothing like him. Only then would he be able to receive from God the gifts that God had always intended to give. In the same way, in order for us to receive real gifts we have to have a real God giving them and this real God is known through the voice of His Word.
This real God gives us real water that is so much more, real bread that tastes of Christ's flesh, and real wine that tastes of His blood. This real God is met not on the ground of what we would like to do for Him but on the real ground of what He has done for us. We speak back to Him what He has first said to us and this is our highest worship. We speak them not as ritual words or formula but as the efficacious words that actually bestow that which they speak and deliver what they talk about. The concrete that in our world had been replaced with feelings and whims which have a lifespan of a moment is met in the God who is yesterday, today, and forever the same. He is the merciful Father who sent His Son in flesh and blood of the Virgin by the Spirit and whose Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies us as His own. The goal is not to gain a friend but to live under Him in His kingdom now and forever. When the world meets this binary God they presume that it means giving up something but does not realize what is gained. The gifts God freely gives come not from our imagination or to our imagination so that they might live there. These gifts are as concrete as God's yes and no, His truth that endures forever, and the mercy that is the most real thing of all. Thanks be to God!
2 comments:
The foundation of the Word and Sacraments is the base of the building of Faith. Emotions, ideas and ideals are like sand. They shift with the moment. The Faith confessed and believed allows a building that cannot be shifted or destroyed.
Often, people are enamored of the form of religion, being drawn to something larger than themselves, needing to fill the void, to seek answers for the meaning of life. It is a painful cosmic struggle, for humanity wants badly to believe in something, from the most advanced cultures to the remote tribal peoples who have inhabited the world since the beginning. The word of the Lord tells us “our sufficiency is from God.” (2Cor3:5), but people often want more. They want God to fit smoothly into their own selfish ideas of how God ought to act on their behalf. Once the reality of the God of the Bible is laid out in real terms, they sometimes turn away. God demands we empty ourselves, dismiss false delusions about Him, and worship in truth, not according to our fleeting feelings and rich imagination. A preacher once lamented that even some Christians treat Jesus as “a sidekick to accompany them through life,” instead of God in the flesh. The Lord, in His mercy, knowing we are dust, saves His elect by His grace, in spite of sins against Him. But having no confidence in the flesh, sanctification acts on our wills as we read His word and commune with the Lord in sincerity, believing the things we read about Him in His word. And “the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (Rom8:16). Soli Deo Gloria
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