The Joy of the Lord is my Strength…but what is it exactly?

You’ve probably heard it said many times before. You may have even said it yourself. “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” And I think if we polled everyone, we would all agree that this was an absolutely true statement. But I think we might have differing opinions as to what exactly that means.

 

Grammatically, in English, it certainly looks like God’s Divine Joy is what gives us Divine Strength. Others may move the other direction (this is not to say anything about their grammatical skills or lack thereof, by the way), and deduce that their Joy around worshipping/being in relationship with/having felt the power of God is the source of their strength. Both of those are pretty good interpretations, and I think we could probably live with either. The problem is that neither one really captures what is meant by the phrase. And that’s probably because the original context is…well, most of us don’t know what the original context is. And I didn’t either, until I looked it up.

 

Nehemiah 8:10. That’s where it comes from. But the context is in the verses before and after it. Nehemiah is one of the rulers of Israel after it returns from exile in Babylon. For historians keeping score at home, we’re talking around 500 BC. In other words about halfway between King David and Jesus. Ezra has discovered the Law of the Lord (read: a copy of the Old Testament), and they are in the process of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem, and especially its Temple. In a grand ceremony, the people are gathered, and Ezra brings out this old copy of the Scripture, thought lost to the people of Israel. And he and the other leaders “read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.” (verse 8). Now if that sounds like a snoozer of a day – and yes, they went all day – you are wrong! Yes, I know, if I were to stand up and start reading Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, etc. (and went all day) you all would probably toss me from the pulpit. But the people of Israel are moved. They began openly weeping. They are back home, their home is being rebuilt, and now the sacred scriptures that they had thought lost to them have been revealed and recovered. They are overwhelmed by the experience.

 

So Nehemiah tells them, no, you have it all wrong! “This day is holy to the Lord, do not mourn or weep.” he says (verse 9). Instead, on the day that is holy, the Sabbath (when they are meeting) they should “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared.” (verse 10). Why? Because…”the joy of the Lord is your strength.” And they straighten up, and that is exactly what they do. They “go about rejoicing” and sharing their joy and their goods with those who did not have. And they did all this because “they had understood the words that were declared to them.” (verse 12).

 

The joy of the Lord is your strength indeed. And the joy of the Lord comes from the hearing and understanding of scripture. You see, the strength we have is based both on God’s joy for us, and his mighty works that we have seen and understood in our lives. But both of those things are possible only because he first gave us his Word, and because we took the time to hear it and understand it.

Money and Judgment – Preparing for Next Sunday’s Sermon

This is the error that makes us imagine, as we so often do, that God’s judgment is a weighing of good and of evil, of good works and of sins. How often we think that God’s judgment is based on a weighing (the scale is a symbol of justice) or a balance sheet! At the end of the big book where all our good and bad deeds are recorded, the Great Bookkeeper tallies up the balance.

But God is neither a bookkeeper nor a grocer weighing merchandise in order to set its price. To think of judgment this way is, once again, to make the law of money penetrate God’s truth. It is once again to obey the order of buying and selling, which God’s world does not obey. God’s judgment is a judgment of grace. Because God’s gift in his Son is free, the whole perspective changes, and we have no right to want an accounting system. This would be fatal for us. But mercy triumphs over judgment (Jas. 2:12-13), and we understand why God’s judgment on us and on our money (at the same time as on our works) ultimately introduces us into the world of grace.

~ Jacques Ellul, Money and Power

Here is the Church…Here is the Steeple!

Pope Talks Lutherans

The Pope is currently making his way through Germany on a tour.  In addition to addressing the legislature of the nation (can you imagine Congress letting the Pope talk to them?) he has also been doing some ecumenical dialogue with Lutherans.  Anyone who knows this Pope’s history is not surprised that he is indulging in a favorite past time while doing this.  It’s no secret that Benedict has long admire Luther.  At a speech given yesterday in a Lutheran church in Erfurt, where Luther studied theology.  The speech is not very long, so I am pasting it below for your enjoyment!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I begin to speak, I would like first of all to thank you for this opportunity to come together with you. I am particularly grateful to Pastor Schneider for greeting me and welcoming me into your midst with his kind words. At the same time I want to express my thanks for the particularly gracious gesture that our meeting can be held in this historic location.

As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting representatives of Council of the Lutheran Church of Germany here in the ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt. This is where Luther studied theology. This is where he was ordained a priest in 1507. Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine. On this path, he was not simply concerned with this or that. What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey. “How do I receive the grace of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle. For him theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God.

“How do I receive the grace of God?” The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make an impression on me. For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians? What does the question of God mean in our lives? In our preaching? Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues. He knows that we are all mere flesh. Insofar as people today believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings. But are they really so small, our failings? Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage? Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted? Is the world not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious motivation? Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbour – of his creatures, of men and women – were more alive in us? I could go on. No, evil is no small matter. Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful. The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – this burning question of Martin Luther must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too. In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther.

Another important point: God, the one God, creator of heaven and earth, is no mere philosophical hypothesis regarding the origins of the universe. This God has a face, and he has spoken to us. He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ – who is both true God and true man. Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture. This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our life.

Now perhaps you will say: all well and good, but what has this to do with our ecumenical situation? Could this just be an attempt to talk our way past the urgent problems that are still waiting for practical progress, for concrete results? I would respond by saying that the first and most important thing for ecumenism is that we keep in view just how much we have in common, not losing sight of it amid the pressure towards secularization – everything that makes us Christian in the first place and continues to be our gift and our task. It was the error of the Reformation period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds. The great ecumenical step forward of recent decades is that we have become aware of all this common ground and that we acknowledge it as we pray and sing together, as we make our joint commitment to the Christian ethos in our dealings with the world, as we bear common witness to the God of Jesus Christ in this world as our undying foundation.

The risk of losing this, sadly, is not unreal. I would like to make two points here. The geography of Christianity has changed dramatically in recent times, and is in the process of changing further. Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seem at a loss. This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability. This worldwide phenomenon poses a question to us all: what is this new form of Christianity saying to us, for better and for worse? In any event, it raises afresh the question about what has enduring validity and what can or must be changed – the question of our fundamental faith choice.

The second challenge to worldwide Christianity of which I wish to speak is more profound and in our country more controversial: the secularized context of the world in which we Christians today have to live and bear witness to our faith. God is increasingly being driven out of our society, and the history of revelation that Scripture recounts to us seems locked into an ever more remote past. Are we to yield to the pressure of secularization, and become modern by watering down the faith? Naturally faith today has to be thought out afresh, and above all lived afresh, so that it is suited to the present day. Yet it is not by watering the faith down, but by living it today in its fullness that we achieve this. This is a key ecumenical task. Moreover, we should help one another to develop a deeper and more lively faith. It is not strategy that saves us and saves Christianity, but faith – thought out and lived afresh; through such faith, Christ enters this world of ours, and with him, the living God. As the martyrs of the Nazi era brought us together and prompted the first great ecumenical opening, so today, faith that is lived from deep within amid a secularized world is the most powerful ecumenical force that brings us together, guiding us towards unity in the one Lord.

Provocative Quote of the Day

“In the minds of most of our contemporaries, Christianity primarily means morality…We have to recognize that Christians themselves have done all they can to create this confusion.  God’s revelation has nothing whatever to do with morality.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing…There are no moral precepts that can exist independently in some way, that can have universal validity, and that can serve the elaboration of a moral system.  Not only is is impossible to derive a moral system from the Gospels and Epistles, but further, the main keys in the gospel – the proclamation of grace, the declaration of pardon, and the opening up of life to freedom – are the direct opposite of morality.”

 

Now, before you completely freak out and lose your cool (or not your head emphatically and shout “yes!”)…let me tell you why I love this.  I love it because its a great reminder that today we struggle with consequences.  We are quick to talk about what we believe, or what we think, and yet we have a weakness in that we often do not realize the consequences of our believes.  Or we deny them wholeheartedly.

So first up, decide now if you agree with the premise above.  Got it?

Now…

Are you ready to have the world turned upside down?  You’ve read the premise, now read the consequences that follow naturally from it.  Because if you believe that, then you also must believe this:

 

“For they imply that all conduct, including that of the devout, or the most moral, is wholly engulfed in sin.  As Genesis shows us, the origin of sin in the world…is the knowledge of good and evil.  In this context, knowledge means decision.  What is not acceptable to God is that we should decide on our own what is good  and what is evil.  Biblically, the good is in fact the will of God.  That is all.  What God decides, whatever it may be, is the good…We construct a morality when we say (and do) what is good, and it is then that we are radically sinners.”

 

I’ll leave further conclusions (and consequences) to your own personal exposition.  (-:

If you are wondering who this is from, you could ponder which of my theological favorites is the most radical, and combine that with which of those theological favorites is most likely to have fun yanking your chain this hard.   And if the answer you came up with was Jacques Ellul, you win a cookie!

Pondering Forgiveness

I have two articles for you today.  The first is from Huffington Post, or more specifically, a divinity graduate from Vanderbilt University, Maria Mayo, author of the article.  The title is simple enough – “5 Myths about Forgiveness in the Bible.”  It might turn your head (or your cheek) a little.

Now that you are reeling from that a bit, take a moment to read this rebuttal from Mockingbird, a site offering commentary on theology and culture, part Anglican/part Lutheran in form.  The title of it?  ”Forgetting Forgiveness (and Forgiving the Huffington Post).”

Done?  How do you feel about those articles?  Is there one you give more credence than another?

 

Now, I would just like to point out a few things.  One is that I read the Mockingbird article first, so I had no idea of the content of the first article when I read it.  But by the time I had finished, I was a little concerned with the tone and the accusations.  Those solidified in my mind after reading Mayo’s article.  And here they are:

 

Mockingbird:  ”Exhibit A: The Huffington Post’s ludicrous article “5 Myths about Forgiveness in the Bible,” in which Maria Mayo, m.div in hand, makes the claim that traditional Christian teaching on forgiveness is neither morally advisable nor grounded in the New Testament. “

Me:  Well…far be it from me to make any claims.  After all, I have only an M.Div. myself.  What could I possible know or teach about theology?  Or Jesus?  Or forgiveness?  And since I’m not qualified, what do I need to do to be qualified?  Have a doctorate, my Ph.D in Theology?  If I started now, I would be done in somewhere between 5-8 years, if I was able to finish at all (many people are not, and not because they aren’t smart enough either).  To my mind, Maria is welcome to make claims about Christian teaching.  That is what pastors are for.  We forget that pastors primary mission is discipleship; that is, teaching.  Agree or disagree with her findings, but laugh not at her credentials.

 

Mockingbird: “(That the Huffington Post would allow her to throw out such claims without referring to even one source for back-up is flat-out irresponsible).“

Me:  This is perhaps the most jaw-dropping accusation in the article.  Maria builds her argument on pointing out problems with the English to Greek translation and offering citations from Scripture.  The former needs no specific reference since it is something widely available to everyone and not the intellectual property of a particular theologian.  The latter is a generally accepted way of talking about Christian theology.  And she is not just throwing a verse out there to have a leg to stand on – her 16 paragraph article includes 12 citations of specific Scripture references.   But the Mockingbird article does put her to shame by having excellent backing for their counter argument, right?  They do cite Scripture once..kind of  (“the bulk of the Pauline witness (Romans, for example)”).  And they do list three sources:  1) Another article on – yep, Huffington Post, from an author who is an agnostic, but does have a Ph.D…in philosophy. 2) Another article on Mockingbird…or the entire book of Les Miserable.  They same the same thing?  3) And last but not least, that great theologian Jack Kerouac.  No he didn’t have a degree either.  And he was sort of Buddhist to boot.

 

Mockingbird:  ”There is no good news for those of us who might consider ourselves unworthy and incapable of forgiveness…suffice it to say, assurance is out the window.“

Me:  The above represents what Mockingbird saw as the conclusion of Maria’s arcticle.  I thought her conclusion was pretty plain: “Again, it may well be true that “Forgiveness sets you free.” However, the idea of forgiveness as a psychological or emotional condition traces to 18th-century moral philosophy, not first-century Christian writings. Forgiveness in the time of Jesus was an action verb, and Jesus’ instructions served as checks for the health of the community, both on earth and in the world to come. There is nothing in the Bible that says that forgiveness is good for the physical or mental health of the forgiver.”  In other words, forgiveness is something we need, and something that God gives us – but it may not be something we like, enjoy, or want.  To receive or to give either one.  And perhaps more notably in the grand scheme of faith – nothing in Maria’s article caused me to doubt the assurance of my salvation.  Perhaps because I know that salvation came through the action verbs of crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.  The pericope that Maria cites in Matthew 18 is part of a series of blunders where Jesus illustrates the impossibility of salvation through human actions (including human forgiveness, as Maria notes).  That series comes to an end with a simple proclamation, whereupon  my assurance rests:

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Quote of the Day:

Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant:

 

Jonah entered the religious Ninevah and became a pastor in this place – not to improve their religion and not to serve their religious needs but to subvert their religion, insinuate doubts into its validity, and then help them to deal in faith with a living God…He didn’t accuse them of being evil.  He didn’t denounce their sin and wickedness.  He call into question their future.

 

Emphasis Peterson’s.

Prisoners of Hope

Zechariah 9.12:

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.

 

I have come to think that this label, a prisoner of hope, may be a nice indicator and reminder of who we are as Christians.  I feel strongly enough about it that I almost jettisoned my sermon this week and went with what you are about to read instead.  I think its a key phrase for us, a phrase grounded in our concrete reality as Christians, and not just as some symbol or metaphor.  I say that based on my understanding of what that phrase means.   And to explain that, let me tell you a little something about my life right now.

Some of you know I keep another blog, one not linked to the church website, that reviews and gives commentary on certain computer games.  Its been a fun exercise and diversion that I’ve been doing for nearly three years now.  I’ve had a moderate amount of success with it.  By that I mean I’ve had a couple of invitations to write place other than my blog (not paying gigs, which is perhaps for the better), and, perhaps most fun for me, is that I regularly get invited to participate in Beta testing.  That is to say, many of the games that come out, I get to play a month or more in advance of their release.  And last year I got to participate in my first Alpha testing – this is the cream of the crop.  Alpha testing can be restricted to less than a thousand individuals, a tiny number compared to the millions that will often buy and play these games.   And it goes without saying that every year, I have my eye on one particular game above others, one that I really want to be a part of, to see and review, to play for myself.   And every year I’ve been able to do that.  Except this year.

The one game I really want to play this year, I can’t get into.  For whatever reason, the company developing it is not playing by the normal rules.   They are gathering testers based purely on what kinds of computers they own – a break from the time honored methods of choosing testers based on merit (who will actively participate and give feedback), quid pro quo (those who will return the investment of time by being mavens who introduce others to the game in a positive manner), and just plain networking (“I know that guy, get him in here”).   Instead I, like everyone else, check my inbox every Friday morning, hoping that said invite will magically appear.

I have been doing that for 48 weeks, including today.  For the last 48 Friday mornings,  I have woken up hoping that “today will be the day.”  And for the last 47 Friday nights (and probably tonight too) I will go to bed disappointed.  And yet next Friday, I will do the same thing again.

Some have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.  But in this case, what else can I do?  I suppose I could give up on that hope, but that would not stop the possibility of that invitation arriving one glorious Friday morning, now would it?  And beyond that I’m not entirely sure its possible for me to give up on that hope.  About the best I could do would be to distract myself sufficiently to make me forget it was Friday.  In a great irony, I can’t even berate myself or convince myself that I won’t get the invite for any particular reason, because its outside my control and has nothing to do with *me.*  (I could assuredly, buy a new computer, but then I’ve just changed the parameters of my possible invitation, not doubled my chances).  I am, without a doubt, a prisoner of hope.

And that is true of my faith as well.

Christ’s return depends not on my faith, my fruit, my actions.  I have no leverage in this situation.  I could be decidedly evil from now until then and it still would mean nothing.  I could fool myself, I could change religions, I could even renounce all faith altogether…and it would have no impact on the possibility of Christ’s return.  I am a prisoner of hope in this way.

And so too are we all as Christians.  In fact, this may be a better way to think of ourselves than many that are marketed to us today.  We are not kingdom builders.  We are not kingdom keepers.  Hell, we aren’t even particularly good/morally upright much of the time.  If Paul struggles with doing the right thing, can there be any doubt that we will too?

And as Lutherans in particular, we rest on grace, not on merits.  We of all denominations are the most imprisoned, the most enchained.  Simply because we cannot delude ourselves any more into thinking that we make a difference.  ”Into Your hands, we commend ourselves and those for whom we pray…”

So how do I avoid puling my hair out in frustration every week?  I fill the times in between with whatever information I can get my hands on.  And if nothing new is there, I go back over what is old, looking to appreciate it again for the first time.   So too it is with our faith.  We return to our Scripture and to our traditions.  It is mainly from them that we will find some consolation and understanding.   And from them will also renew the hope that we have.  We will bind ourselves anew in enthusiasm, find a new well of strength (this too is the benefit of things not being dependent on us – the sources of our hope are external).

I can’t help but note here the obvious downer as well.  It is clear that our culture, and perhaps our church as well, have a diminishing value of history in general and Scripture in specific.   So it should not be any wonder that large numbers of fellow faithful would have a hard time seeing themselves as prisoners of hope.   But I, for one, do.

Recommended Article

Many of you may recognize the name Kenneth C. Davis from his “Don’t Know Much…” book series – including the ones “about History” and “about the Bible.”  These easy reading books often set the record straight on those things that we were taught with a slant, as well as bringing in a good framework of basic knowledge on the topic.

Well Davis put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard perhaps) and wrote an article for CNN this holiday weekend.  Say what you want about CNN and whatever reasons they may have had for highlighting it, but it still stands out.

I would suspect that many of you have differing opinions on the topic of the article – specifically, Davis writes on whether or not the US is a Christian Nation.  You can read it here.

I could write a whole lot more, but I’d love to hear from you.  Just to be on the up and up – there is nothing that Davis wrote in that article that I haven’t known for a long time now.  (-:

Large Catechism

Greetings all,

 

We are studying the Large Catechism right now for Adult Sunday school.  Several people have asked where they can find copies of it on the cheap.  Here’s a few options:

 

Free

Penn. State’s Free PDF Version.   I suggest printing out just the parts we are currently studying, but if you want to print the whole kit n kaboodle, you may need to invest in a new cartridge afterwards!  Also, no paragraph markings will make it a little more difficult to find where we are at.

The Book of Concord Website.  This is an online resource, but text can be copied and pasted (mmm…copypasta!) into your word processor for printing.  Has paragraph markings!

ICL website.  Already formatted into a .txt file that could be placed on a Kindle or printed out cheaply.  No paragraph markers.  Broken up into sections which makes it easier to bring just what you need every week.

ManyBooks.  Multiple formats for all E-readers + ipods and pads.  No markups again it looks like, but may be a good option given the multitude of file types.

 

Cheap

CCEL.  Our favorite recommended website for church classics.  Some free and some cheap options, but again, no paragraph notations.  Also loads of other good reads on the site.

Amazon.com  Large catechism translations from $6 printed and from $1 for Kindle editions.

 

Full Book of Concord Options

For those that want the full treatment, including notes on the text and so on, you will need a full version of the book of concord.  The Kolb/Wingert translation is the one I currently use, but the Tappert one is fine as well.  Amazon has them listed here.

 

What if I want to buy local?

Copy the ISBN number from the Amazon website below, call up your favorite bookseller and have them order it for you!