One More Baby: The Presentation, Year A, February 2, 2014, Luke 2.22-40

            On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the United States Constitution guarantees the right to abort babies. Since then, fifty-six million unborn infants have been offered to abortion centers around the country.

            On the first Sunday of February, Christian churches traditionally celebrate the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem. In fulfillment of Malachi 3.1, the Lord suddenly appeared in his temple, but it took a good eye to see it. The merchants may have seen one more set of marks, rubes from the sticks as ripe for the plucking as the very pigeons they purchased at a steep markup. The officiating priest may have seen a cut-rate ceremony with a poor payoff.

            Simeon and Anna saw the Son of God.

            They did not ignore the darkness. The rest of Malachi's prophecy, the part about the intolerable presence of God's purity, would come in time. They did not ignore the darkness, but they saw the light more clearly because of it.         

            Fifty-six million aborted infants: Some see a problem solved; some see a right defended; some see money made; some see the Son of God. Some see the cost and sacrifice the child; some see the child and make the sacrifice.  Some see the darkness and snuff out the light; some see the light and dare the darkness.

            Though Jesus becomes the God-Man, he never ceases to be the Infant Christ. Can we who have sided with Herod abide his appearing?

            Some traditions call this Sunday "Candlemas," a reminder that the light of Jesus shines, but only for those with eyes to see. Poet Malcolm Guite has written a powerful sonnet that challenges us to stop long enough to see by divine light what the world around us seems determined to miss:

They came, as called, according to the Law.

Though they were poor and had to keep things simple,

They moved in grace, in quietness, in awe,

For God was coming with them to His temple.

Amidst the outer court’s commercial bustle

They’d waited hours, enduring shouts and shoves,

Buyers and sellers, sensing one more hustle,

Had made a killing on the two young doves.

They come at last with us to Candlemas

And keep the day the prophecies came true

We glimpse with them, amidst our busyness,

The peace that Simeon and Anna knew.

For Candlemas still keeps His kindled light,

Against the dark our Saviour’s face is bright.

Nunc Dimitis,

Doug

The Greatest Church That Never Was: Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year A, January 26, 2014 - 1 Corinthians 1:10-18

            When I was a pastor, I regularly received flyers from various "consultants" who offered me a scheme to "fix" my church. I threw them all away.

            These patent nostrums purveyed various forms of organization that would transmogrify my congregation from a candidate for "The Biggest Loser" to a suitable starlet for next season's episode of "The Bachelorette." I can still recall some of the biggies: elder rule, house churches, the pointiest of pentagram Calvinisms, along with various forms of "blessings" which I could imbibe at various locations. Each one promised an end of carnality and bickering, full offering baskets, jam-packed pews and a worry-free parsonage.

            As I say, I dust-binned the lot of 'em. Not that my church never needed "fixing." It usually did; after all, it had me for its pastor! No, I threw them away because I know quackery when I see it. The give-away was that these mountebanks all promised to take my church back to the pristine condition of "the New Testament Church."

            Well, I didn't feel obligated to read their advertisements if they hadn't read the New Testament.

            Paul has barely launched into his letter to the church at Corinth - an outfit he formed his own apostolic self as founding pastor - before he tears into them for their divisions. They had asked a bunch of important and intricate theological questions but Paul defers all of that to take up the more important issue of the four-way free-for-all going on in the fellowship. This leads me to a few conclusions.

            First, nobody's flow-chart is going to produce a conflict-free church. I once heard Dallas Willard say, "The problem isn't the church; it's the people." Now Willard was too good a Baptist to be serious about that distinction but I got what he meant: any organizational method run by sinners will go awry soon and often. I stopped arguing much about church polity when I realized that fellow-pastors from Rome to Wittenberg to Geneva to Canterbury and straight on to Nashville faced pretty much the same issues.

            Second, nobody gets a pass on the local church. I remember a man who left our congregation once and declared that he and his wife were going to be a church unto themselves. He admitted some vague preference in the New Testament for assembling together but explained that the church today is such a pig's breakfast that, well, those passages are past their sell-by date. I responded that nobody in our church (at least as far as I knew!) was sleeping with his step-mother  (1 Cor 5) so the Scripture was probably still in effect.

            Finally, the only cure is crucifixion. Paul wraps up this section by pointing to the cross. That jars us less than it should because we read it as modern Americans, not ancient Romans. "The very word 'cross,'" Cicero once wrote, "should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but form his thoughts, his eyes and his ears." Paul, by contrast, says we should hear, see, and bear nothing else. And many times, the cross that cures the church is the church herself! Stay in the church to stay on the cross; stay on the cross to become the Church.

            The real problem with the miracle cure medicines those pill-peddlers pushed on me as a pastor was not that they wouldn't work (indeed, had all been tried more than once in church history and hadn't worked), but that their real selling-point was a chance to let my cup pass from me.

            As I say, I threw them all away.

Step Right Up!

Doug

Turning the Tables: Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year A, January 19, 2014 - John 1.29-42

            Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them. . .

            In his spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy the converted atheist C. S. Lewis talks about the moment when he could no longer deny God's existence. "People who are naturally religious may find difficulty understanding the horror of such a revelation. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about 'man's search for God.' To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat."

            These two disciples of John the Baptist have been playing cat-and-mouse with Jesus. Their rabbi has twice pointed to this man as the Promised One. They catch the scent and take up the trail. But they exercise a certain stealth as they pursue the scent. They stalk the spoor from upwind. Perhaps this is merely the respect of the student for the teacher, but something more may be at work.

            Both times he identifies Jesus, John refers to him as "the Lamb of God." The first time he adds the modifier, "who taketh away the sin of the world."

            As good Jews, these guys knew how lambs took away sin: by the sacrifice of their own lives. John (the Evangelist, not the Baptist), like any good storyteller, foreshadows the end of his tale right here at the beginning: The priests in the temple will condemn this Lamb to death and his pure blood will redeem sinful humanity.

            Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them. . .

            In a blinding moment the hunted turns hunter; the mouse finally locates the cat only to discover that the cat has been waiting. While they're trying to figure out what to say, he speaks to them. They come with questions but he turns interrogator. Then Andrew finds Peter and Jesus finds Philip and Philip finds Nathaniel: This cross-devoted Christ refuses to remain the object of anyone's search and becomes instead the subject of his own safari. He whips by and baptizes them in a blustering breeze that sucks them ineluctably into its slipstream as it churns toward Calvary.

            Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them. . .

            We don't need to worry that we will fail to find God because God will not fail to find us. Maybe, however, we need to ponder all that this means and worry about that. And then we need to follow.

Meow!

Doug

Musing on Museums: First Sunday after Epiphany, Year A, January 12, 2014 - Acts 10.34-42

            Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)

            August 19, 2014 marks the two-millennia anniversary of the death of Caesar Augustus. In honor of the anniversary, Rome's Scuderie del Quirinale museum has launched a display of over 170 artifacts from the great man's reign. The adopted son of Julius Caesar, this emperor defeated his rival Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and changed his name from Octavian to the Latin equivalent of "The Sublime One," then set about declaring himself the "savior" of Rome who ushered in lasting "peace." He then set about releasing propaganda in the form of statues, busts, cameos and coins that depicted him in the guise of gods such as Jove or Apollo. "I found Rome a city of bricks," he once boasted, "and left it a city of marble." Within a month of his death the Roman senate officially deified him.

            Mostly, however, we remember Augustus because he called for the world-wide tax that moved a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where his espoused wife had a baby. That baby, grown to manhood, declared himself the Savior of the world and the true Prince of Peace. He ordered his followers to give Augustus' self-portrait back to him by way of paying Roman taxes with Roman money. He found the kingdoms of this world and left them the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. Within three days of his death his followers claimed he had risen, and followed him as God.

            Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)

            These two worlds collide when Peter edges nervously into the home of a Roman military officer. Peter discovers, much to his surprise, just how big the gospel is: Not the provincial property of a single people but the worldwide savior of all humanity. But a universal salvation does not amount to universalism.

            Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)

            Pan back for a moment: Cornelius lives in "Emperorville" and serves in a cohort named for the master race (v.1). The centerpiece of Roman unity is the cult of the emperor, a loose but ubiquitous set of practices built around worship of any current occupant of the throne. Loyal citizens acknowledged the Kaiser as the kurios (the Greek word for Lord) and failure to do so amounted to both blasphemy and treason.

            Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)

            Our translations miss the mark here. Peter does not say, in a parenthetical, throw-away line, "He is Lord of all," but uses an emphatic demonstrative pronoun: "Jesus Christ - THIS ONE is Lord of all." As in, "this one to the exclusion of all others." The apostle goes on to tell the whole story with all of its upside-down subversion of empire: Jesus did not wreak great slaughter but did great good; Jesus did not defeat human rivals but drove out the devil; Jesus did not kill rival claimants to lordship but died at their hands; Jesus did not stay dead but rose again.

            Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)

           This is heavy stuff: Philosophers such as Epictetus and Suetonius used language like "Lord of all" and "our ruler and god" to describe various Caesars. Peter demands a clear shift in loyalties: Eat whatever you want, Peter tells his Gentile host; skip circumcision and the Sabbath - but acknowledge that only Jesus is God, the Savior, the One who makes peace.

            Two thousand years ago a Roman emperor died and stayed dead. He left behind an occupied tomb and a mass of marble monuments. Two thousand years ago a Jewish carpenter died. He left behind an empty tomb and a Church of living stones. Ultimately, each person must choose between the two.

Kurios Christos,

Doug