So what do you think? How many sins are there?
One. What would your reaction be to that number? Read the rest of this entry »
YOU HAVE GOT TO TAKE A MINUTE AND WATCH THIS VIDEO. THERE IS NOT A WORD SPOKEN,
BUT IT WILL SURE HOLD YOUR ATTENTION.
That’s the quote that grabbed my attention in a forward recently. And I did click on the link and then found this quote as the video loaded.
The Bear” is an unusually involving film about animals that will give you a fresh perspective on their world.
That’s a big claim, so I thought I’d watch. But I found something interesting in myself going on. I started watching and I found myself growing impatient as the seconds ticked by. The claim was that this would sure hold my attention and that it would be unusuallyinvolving. It should give me a fresh perspective on the world, but I’d watched for what seemed like plenty of time and nothing significant had yet happened. I was about ready to navigate away, when I thought, “oh whatever, give it a little longer.” The rest of the movie was kind of interesting. Especially the ending scene where the small bear growls and seemingly scares away the mountain lion only for us to discover it was a bigger bear in the background. You could definitley draw some Christian parallels there.
But what was more interesting to me than all that was my reaction to the video. Read the rest of this entry »
In the latest chapter of Martin Luther’s Theology I discoverd that Luther was playing with a question that can seem ridiculously simple but also incredibly complex. What is a human being?
I’m sure if you talked to scientists you would get a certain answer. If you talk to a sociologist you’d probably get another one. Teachers, historians, the list goes on, all probably with different answers. So what happens when you ask a thelogian?
Well, Luther goes back to the Scriptures and lets God do the defining. A human being is one who has been created by God. A human is God’s workmanship. This is integral. Humans are not in and of themselves, but they are a creation, and the creation of God himself. Of course, Luther continues to push this. That’s what humanity was, but after Genesis 3, soemthing else entered humanity, namely sin. Humans were perverted and corrupted. Now the question becomes, is that still a human? Luther says yes. After all, they were still the creation of God, even though corrupted.
But then he goes one more level as he often does. Humans are those who have been brought out of sin by Jesus Christ, those who are new creations through his grace. This is what God intends for humans, so it starts to become integral to our understanding of humanity. Indeed, as Luther continues to unpack humanity he speaks of the image of God as given in Genesis and defines it as the ability to respond to God in faith, something that is gifted by God. The human in the image of God is then one who carries out God’s works on earth. So clearly, even though sin still corrupts our flesh, we are humans. God has sanctified all that we are, and in his new creation he is making more fully into humans as he intended again.
But what about nonChristians then? Read the rest of this entry »
Who is this man?
This is an image of the famous story of Jesus calming the storm (Mt. 8:23-27). I talked about this story a couple of weeks ago in a sermon and this was the question I focused on as we discussed the issue of fear. I love this image. Here you see Jesus, cast in light, as the disciples man a boat and look at him in awe. They knew Jesus, they’d seen him do miracles, but in the midst of a storm, all that is cast aside as fear sets in. So when Jesus calms the storm, when nature itself obeys his command, they’re left with the question, “What kind of man is this?”
As I mentioned in the sermon, this story is not a simple allegory meant to talk about Jesus calming the storms of your life, but it does point to a truth which remains. “What kind of man is this?”
Well, the truth is that he’s more than a man. He is the Lord of creation and God himself. And while we’re not always fearing storms, and while Jesus isn’t in a boat with us, we do still have the Lord of creation for our God. And so I want you to look at this image a few times. Reflect on it. Pull it into your memory. Then, when your fears arise, when doubts set in, see this picture in your mind. God may not cast your fears aside as quickly as he did the storm, but he is still Lord of creation. He is still in control. And he is still the one who is working things about toward our salvation in the end.
What kind of man is this?
He is your God. The one who loves you and who will be with you through it all.
As I mentioned last week, Martin Luther spent some significant time writing about what he referred to as the “three stands” or “estates” in which all people lived.
The first estate established by God was the Church. Now when you look at Scripture that might seem incorrect. After all, there is no church as we know it when we read the first couple of chapters. And we don’t have to go far to see God giving Adam a wife, and thus establishing the household and family. But Luther defines Church a little differently. He says that already in Gen. 2:16-17 when God addresses man and man responds, this is the establishment of the Church. This interaction and relationship between the two is what is truly defining- makes sense.
The next realm established then of course is the household. And we see that operate in a healthy way for a little bit. Man and woman are together. And we even see them given responsibility to work in the Garden. This would be an early establishment of economy and work which Luther mixed in with household. That made pretty good sense in an agrarian economy. After all, the family generally worked together. Today, things are a little different. Work is much more separated from household. How do you think this changes our perception of family and work, that they are almost separate “estates” today? How do you see them still connected? Read the rest of this entry »
Here are two images of Jesus in tears. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of reasons lately.
One, I recently finished a novel called, Silence. It’s by Shusaku Endo of Japan, and is an interesting read. It’s about missionaries and their experience with persecution in Japan. The question, will they give up the faith? Would Jesus want them to renounce the faith to save themselves? Or others? Why is Jesus silent in such times. It’s a powerful and though provoking book. Here’s a quote.
“Yet the face [of Jesus] was different from that on which the priest had gazed so often in Portugal, in Rome, in Goa and in Macau. It was not Christ whose face was filled with majesty and glory; neither was it a face made beautiful by endurance to pain; nor was it a face with strength of a will that has repelled temptation. The face of the man who then lay at his feet [in the fumie] was sunken and utterly exhausted…The sorrow it had gazed up at him [Rodrigues] as the eyes spoke appealingly: “Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here”
So I was thinking as I read- what makes Jesus weep? It calls to mind the character of Jesus as one who is tired, who suffers, etc.
And what does that look like. Above, the image on the bottom is that of Jesus weeping over Jerusaelm. We know he also wept at Lazarus’ tomb. What does it take to make Jesus weep? And the question then becomes- does he weep yet today?
That’s the top image. Him crying as he also hold a woman who is in tears.
It started making me think about this image of Jesus. How do we appropriately think about Jesus and tears. How do we hold this together with the other elements of Jesus? When do we need this image?
So I start by posting a somewhat provocative title out there- is a Christian closer to an atheist or a Hindu? What I mean by this is when you look at religion, and when you look at faith, can we better be compared to a person who espouses no faith in the eternal or “god”, or someone who espouses belief in such things, but that belief is centered in a “god” concept that is very different from our own.
This question came to the forefront as I was reading an interesting chapter in Martin Luther’s Theology, one that talks about the three estates of Luther. Luther spoke of three estates into which people are placed, the church, the household (into which he also inserted work), and finally the state/civic realm. I don’t want to delve too deeply into those relationships right now, as I want to focus on the above question.
It’s interesting to think of the idea that all people are part of the estate of the church as Luther develops it. Basically, this means all people deal with religion. To him, this estate isn’t just about the Christian Church, but all faith and beliefs, including natural theology. Everyone has a relationship with God, whether they like it or not, whether it’s broken or healed. Everyone is dependent on God, everyone is given life by him, etc. Even the atheist.
This is all good and could bring up some interesting questions, but what really got my wheels turnings is this question of faith and the relationship between a Christian’s faith and the “faith” of nonbelievers. Read the rest of this entry »
This was a chapter that seemed to move in a lot of different directions, most of them interesting, but a little less closely connected than others. One of the themes in the chapter on creation, however, did really stand out. That was the fact that in every doctrine for Luther justification must be a lens through which it’s understood. Luther finds justification all over the place, and this is helpful, because I think sometimes we treat it as one or even the chief element of theology, but then we move on.
Think about creation. There’s a fancy Latin phrase that talks about how God creates, ex nihilo, which leterally means out of nothing. God creates out of nothing. Now you can take that as a simple scientific statement, that God didn’t create out of stuff, but it’s much more than that. There’s also something very personal involved, something that goes towards our own worth. God created us out of nothing, which means we were nothing beforehand. There was nothing in us, no spirit, or something sitting around asking God to create. There was nothing that made us deserving of being created. Creation was God’s first gift. He gave us life without anything worthy in us. He did it out of his love for us that predated our actual existence.
The second element of creation that’s often overlooked also has to do with justification. Perhaps because of the way we’ve formed ourselves scientifically today, we tend to remove God from the present creation. Even if you think of God as the Creator, even if you don’t believe in Evolution, people still tend to forget about God’s continued role in the creation. We see things and assume they all work fine on their own. But that’s not the case. At some level God is still preserving all creation, still supporting existence, and he does so in a twofold way. First, there is a gift he gives to all creation, whether it has a relationship with him or not. He is still the creator and perserver of all. Second, he does so in a special way for those of us who have faith. For us, God is not just there, he is there for us. This is important. He is not just keeping us kind of going, he is taking an active hand in leading our days, actions, and moving them on a path toward our eternal salvation and new creation.
I hope these elements help you reflect on God’s very active role in your daily life and how his justification is woven into every element of that life.
I love the image of someone having ashes applied to their forehead. This is a nice one, but really it’s more the idea than anything else. Every time I see people coming up to receive ashes, I love just watching their faces. Depnding on their age, background, time in the church, etc, you can see that there are a lot of different things going on in their minds. This is the beginning of the Lenten season and we all come with a whole life behind us, but also our expectations for this season and year.
So I have two questions for you:
As you receive ashes, what do you like to hear from the pastor?
As you receive ashes, what are you thinking?
Has there ever been a time where you just didn’t want to open your Bible or do your devotions?
I know this can happen to us for a lot of reasons. Maybe you’re just tired. Maybe you’re so busy you just don’t feel like the time is there. But there’s another reason that comes up sometimes. I know I’ve experienced it. . .
You’re scared. What’s God going to say to me today? Maybe you’re scared of the way God might bring the law to bear on your actions. You know you’re doing something you shouldn’t and you just have a sense that if you open the Bible or do devotions God’s going to say something about it. Maybe there’s something you know you should be doing that you’re avoiding. And you just know that if you open the Bible you’re going to hear God encouraging you to just do it. Maybe you can’t even put your finger on what it is, but you know the Bible has prescriptions for your life and you just aren’t in the mood. I’ve definitely had those days.
I’ve been thinking some about the Scripture lately and I found this image when I was looking for something to put on a bulletin for a devotion I was leading for a group of pastors. We were talking about the text in Ezekiel 2-3 where God commissions Ezekiel. He tells him he has to go to the people of Israel and let them know that they’ve been rebelling against God. God tells Ezekiel straight up that the Israelites are rebellious and they’re not going to want to listen. And God gives Ezekiel this vision of a scroll coming out and when he looks at it, both front and back are covered with words of mourning and woe. “Who wants to go confront a rebellious hard hearted and vindictive people with the fact that God’s mad and they need to listen up?”
“Ooh me! Me! Me!”
Yeah right. More like, “Not me!” And yet God continues the vision and tells Ezekiel that he is to eat the scroll and when he does it tastes “sweet like honey”. Wow. How does speaking words of woe to a rebellious people taste like honey?
Well, when I was talking with the pastors I said there were two pieces to it. One, sometimes when you speak a hard word like that, you get to see the effect. People change, they repent, they listen up. And that is the sweetest thing in the world. And in the other times, and there are a lot of them, even when people don’t listen, you trust that God is doing something in his word that’s supernatural. You may not get to see the effect, but all of God’s words are honey, whether you can sense it or not. It becomes a matter of faith.
It;s the same for us on those days we don’t want to open our Bibles. When we don’t want to eat the words because we’re scared, we need to remind ourselves that all of God’s words are like honey. Whether God is going to tell us to do or not do something, whether we’ll feel like it’s honey that day or not, we need to trust that there’s nothing in the Bible that’s not good for us. And so we take up our fork and knife and we dig in.
Eat the Bible . Eat the scroll!
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