Sowing Among Weeds and Thorns

This past Sunday, we heard the parable of the sower from Matthew 13. My sermon touched upon the strangeness of the sower, who doesn’t seem to care where the seed is cast. It is extravagant and wasteful to our eyes. Why not focus efforts to where they will receive a higher rate of return. I used the image of a picture I took on a hike, of a tree growing out of a granite boulder. God sows the seed of the gospel in ways that seem foolish. Most importantly God sows the seed of the gospel in the life and death of Jesus. Couldn’t a more effective method have been devised? Evidently not… at least not to God. God loves the world so deeply and passionately, that he used the greatest and fullest expression he could find so that we might know that love, even if it causes us to ponder greatly this mystery.

Now having preached this message about God’s love for all, after the service I was approached by two people who needed assistance. Well, I had been approached by one of the people, Pete, a local homeless man, before the service, but after a brief conversation I asked him to wait until after so I could attend to the things that needed to be cared for. The other person was a woman, Mary with her young daughter Jasmine. (Note: I have changed their names here.) Two further pictures could not have been painted. Pete looked every part of a person living homeless. Unshaven, dirty pants, poor speech, couldn’t sit still. Mary on the other hand sat there with her daughter through the whole service. Brought Jasmine up for the children’s sermon, and came forward for Communion. I merely thought she was a visitor. She was but she needed help.

I was thoroughly impressed by the way the congregation responded to both of them. People welcomed and greeted both. They reached out and engaged them in conversation. I had numerous people tell me about these folks who needed help. One of our teenagers had even approached Pete, although she didn’t know what to do when he told her to stay away. Nonetheless I was pleased that the reaction from many was one of welcome and hospitality.

I talked with each one in turn. I had to spend a little more time with Mary first, since I knew part of Pete’s story already from our brief encounter prior to worship. Mary had come to town from out west about a week before, following a man. When she realized things weren’t going to be any better here than they were out there she knew she had to go home, but she lacked resources. Pete was looking to get to North Carolina because his uncle had died. Of course, he had no way to get there.

Pete told me of people he knew in town, one other pastor, Pastor Mike, in particular, and he gave me the name and number of his brother in North Carolina so I could call them. I called them both. I knew the other pastor and I figured I knew who this guy was since Pastor Mike and I had spent a good deal of time talking as we waited for our kids to be dismissed from the same primary school. I was right. Pastor Mike had reached the end of his rope in dealing with Pete. Pete’s family, when I got through to them, wanted nothing to do with him due to drugs, theft and violence. Pete was no saint. And yet here he was… a patch of rocky ground. How would I sow the seed of the gospel there?

Mary seemed more like a plant being choked by weeds and thorns. After telling me her needs, when I was ready to move on helping her, providing her with gas money to get back home, she abruptly blurted out, “How do I find happiness?” If Mary was putting on a con, it was the most convincing con job ever. Never in all of my time here have I had any person who needed help wonder about this. She spoke of her bad decisions, and the way she kept making them. Her unhappiness was compounded by the poor relationship with her pastor since he had excluded her from the sacrament, telling her she was not forgiven for having a child out of wedlock. That she asked about happiness is no surprise. All of her relationships were ruptured and falling apart. Her question might seem like a dream for some pastors, seeing themselves as gurus with the opportunity to impart some gem of wisdom and pull her from despair. It terrified me. I had nothing. Nothing, except of course, Jesus. I replied, “I have no easy solution Mary. The best I can tell you is that happiness has to do with life with Jesus.” Upon further reflection, I realize part of my fear. I did not have, and would never have since she was leaving, any long-term relationship where we could discuss and discern where happiness was coming from in her life. Happiness comes from relationship with God and neighbor.

Pete was more difficult. He was demanding and ruffled my feathers. Nevertheless my own words from my own sermon echoed in my ears. It was Sunday and I could not help him get a bus ticket right then. He asked about a hotel room for the night. I told him I could not do both. He wanted a room. Of course the first hotel we stopped at was booked. The second had one. I gave him a gift card for a local restaurant so he could get some food before he was allowed to get into his room. Throughout the night he called the church about a dozen times. At eleven o’clock at night he called me on my cell phone from a nearby drug store where he wanted to get some food. He had the cashier call me to vouch for him, to say I would pay. I did not and I was none too pleased. On Monday the saga with Pete continued and culminated in the police being called to warn him about trespassing and harassment. Very rocky ground indeed.

Yet one thing that I told Mary holds true in both cases. Mary felt terrible that she had to ask for help and wondered how she might be able to pay us back. Pete thought if he did some tiny odd jobs around the church or for parishioners he could earn the help we might provide. I told Mary that it was not necessary for her to repay us. I said, “We help others so that they might have a concrete grasp of the way God loves them.” For Mary, this brought her to tears. I don’t know if Pete would ever understand. Before Mary left, she gave me a hug as we stood beside the gas pump. Pete left the following day by cursing at us.

Yet as I said in my sermon, we sow the seed of the gospel as an act of faith. We trust that God will not let it come back empty, that our labor will not be in vain. As such it means we must take the long view. When we share the gospel with others, we should not expect grand conversion stories to spring out of them. We plant seeds and it might take a while to germinate… and maybe it never does, but we continue on, sometimes appearing wasteful and foolish using resources on the likes of Pete and Mary. Oftentimes we might think we are being hustled and conned and we should have some sort of guard in place to protect the resources we have. But we share with others not because they look like good investments, but because God loves them no less than he loves us. And our actions help make that love known… hopefully, sooner or later. I pray we all might sow God’s love so extravagantly as the sower.

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This post also served as my newsletter columm for my congregation's August newsletter. We have been focusing on the spreading of the gospel. We do so in many ways.

4th Sunday after Pentecost -- A Tree Grows in Granite

The parable of the sower takes a common image of farming and gives a strange twist. The sower casts seed about seemingly wastefully. The sower gives an image of God's abundance when it comes to spreading the gospel and our act of faith when doing so, trusting that the seed will not return empty.

Speaking of a photo I took on a hike, of a tree growing out of the middle of a granite boulder, I wrote:

Imagine if trees were a little more discriminating at where they dumped their seeds… it would keep us from having to deal with the unnatural sight. Trees aren’t supposed to grow out of rocks. The parent tree should know that. After all, we don’t see farmers scattering their seed all over the place with no thought as to where the seed might fall. No, they take great care to plant only in well-prepared places. Well, most farmers do… not the one Jesus was talking about today though. Jesus opens his “day of parables” in the 13th chapter of Matthew with the parable of the sower. The picture Jesus paints with his parable is of a sower who casts about his seed even more inefficiently than the parent tree in New Hampshire did. This sower makes no distinction about where he casts his seed. The path. Rocky ground. Among thorns… and finally on good soil. It doesn’t matter to him. This sower is just casting it all around.

Or read the whole sermon here.

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3rd Sunday after Pentecost Sermon -- True Freedom

On the eve of our nation's celebration of independence, the lectionary appoints a reading that can be heard as bondage, but taking on Christ's yoke is our true freedom.

An excerpt:

Perhaps then it seems ironic that today, the day before our Independence Day, that we hear Jesus words, “Take my yoke upon you....” The yoke is of course an implement that shackles two beasts together for labor. Hardly a vision of independence. This image seems to play right into the hands of all of the critics of Christianity (or any religion for that matter), that it exists to control and oppress people, that it refuses to allow people to think for themselves. The word “religion” doesn’t help us here. That word comes from the Latin root “ligare” which means “to bind.” Religion might bind us to a deity but at the same time it binds us from our true desires. From obtaining what we really want. Our pursuits of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are thwarted by the presence of this yoke. After all, religious adherents are not all that likely to live and let live. There are numerous examples of religion being used to advance various agendas, demonizing others, and even instilling horrendous violence. Is Jesus’ statement here then the smoking gun that critics of Christianity are looking for?

Read the whole sermon here.

Or listen to it below.

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ELCA video contest entry over at Living Lutheran

Since May, the video contest over at Living Lutheran has been working away in my mind. I finally finished it last night. I talked with some folks here in the congregation who gave some good advice for putting together a video. The hardest part was getting everything into ninety seconds.

Here is our video.


If you would like, you can view and vote for it here.


I think this video will be important on a number of levels even if we do not win any prize money (which is highly likely since there are a number of good videos there). After all, this format is easily viewed by people and it should help them see and understand a portion of our ministry here. Plus we can also feature it on our website so others can see what we are doing.

The Dilemma of Ethics

In the July/August 2011 issue of Discover, Kristin Ohlson writes about some research being done about ethics through neuroscience ("The End of Morality"). At the heart of the research, cognititve scientists Joshua Greene and Fiery Cushman took scans of subjects' brains while they were working through true ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas were the sort anyone who has ever taken an undergraduate philosophical ethics course would be familiar with. Each dilemma offers only two options, neither of which is an easy choice. For example, they used the trolley dilemma, where the subject is asked to imagine an out of control trolley hurtling down the track toward five people. But then the subject sees a switch that will divert the trolley to another track where it will miss the five, but will kill another person on that track. Or a variation where the subject is standing on a ledge above the track. Beside him or her, there is a person large enough that if he is pushed onto the track he will stop the trolley but will be killed in the process. The study asks if it is justifiable to kill one for the sake of more? Do you push one to his death to save five? Do you let the five die because of the one?

Joshua Greene sees our moral choices not based on anything other than the machinations of the brain. He talks about our brains being at war between the two options presented. One option is always a utilitarian option, that is, the greatest good for the greatest number. This option is best represented by John Stuart Mill's philosophy. The other option is best represented by Immanuel Kant who believed that moral laws were untouchable. As such there were lines that cannot be crossed, like "It is always wrong to kill" meant the five would die in the trolley scenario.

The research is fascinating. There are literally two different portions of the brain at war with one another when working through these decisions. The older portion of the brain seems to be the one that holds to the hardline of the moral truth. It takes significantly more time and energy to utilize the portion of the brain that is making the decision to kill one instead of five. Reason was trumping instinctual, emotional behavior it seemed. For Greene this was telling. He said, "You have these gut reactions and they feel authoritative, like the voice of God or your conscience." But they are not, Ohlson writes. "These powerful instincts are not commands from a higher power, they are just emotions hardwired into the brain. Our first reaction under pressure--the default response--is to go with our gut. It takes more time and far more brain power to reason the situation out."

Whether in academic situations or even in casual conversation among philosophically-minded friends, these dilemmas are common. They can provide great consternation and heated debate. This consternation and debate is precisely why philosophers want to reduce situations to do-this-or-do-that scenarios. Never is there any freedom to think about any other possibilities. They create an inherently strained situation where we are damned no matter which option we choose.

And this is precisely the dilemma of ethics. Not the dilemma of the situation, mind you, but the dilemma of ethics itself. Is ethics about discovering which is the right choice and which is the wrong choice? If so, then ethics is doomed. For if nothing else, these manufactured situations show the brokenness of our existence. Neither choice is right nor wrong. But both are sinful since they show the broken relationships that we must endure in this fallen world. In every scenario we are pitted against competing goods, goods that would not be a problem if the power of sin would not be present to divide and separate us and even our thought processes.

Do we treat ethics as a series of manufactured scenarios where we pretend to choose right from wrong? Or do we treat ethics as something else? If we try to reduce everything to the unsolvable, we give sway to the power of sin and place ourselves under its sway. After all, the fruit that Adam and Eve eat is from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When we use these scenarios to make decisions we are playing God. Perhaps that is their draw. We feel like we are in control and the only entity that can make something happen.

But what if ethics were something else entirely? What if ethics were about the character of an individual, or more precisely, an individual within a particular community? The philosophers talk as if humans come to these situations untutored, blank slates that have yet to be written upon. This of course is not the case. We all come having been shaped in one way or another by, at the very least, the world around us. In reality, our actions are shaped by many things. Fire fighters don't simply react to their situations. They train and drill so that rather than reacting to a scenario, they respond with the training given to them.

Our lives can be shaped by the communities that we belong to. For Christians, the primary shaping and forming should be done by the Church (I will not go into here if that is actually happening). The Church should form its people to respond in ways that are faithful to the life of the Trinity, into which we are brought and which is testified to in scripture. And maybe instead of wondering whether we should push another person off the ledge, we would lay down our lives instead?

Holy Trinity Sunday -- Individuals and Fellowship

Despite living in a hyper-individualized society, the Triune God lives in a compete and perfect community and opens up this life to us fallen human beings.

An excerpt:
God continues to bring us into this fellowship. In the waters of baptism, we are washed in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God’s grace flows like abundant streams of water washing all of us unclean and self-centered humans. The Trinity refuses to ask what is in it for him. The Trinity worries not about what it gets but what it gives. The Trinity abounds in gracious love and true community and it welcomes us into that community.

You can read the whole sermon here.

Or listen to it.

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Pentecost Sermon -- Rivers of Living Water

This Pentecost Sunday, I chose the alternate gospel reading. Rather than hearing of the traditional flames of the Holy Spirit, we heard instead Jesus speak of the Holy Spirit bringing forth rivers of living water.

An excerpt:
In the midst of daily life, as we look around, we can see that sin, like a drought, or pollution, or the twisting of the proper order of things abounds, creating the scarcity out of the abundance that God gives. And we are set at war with one another. We want what is ours. We fight, nation against nation, state against state. Communities and individuals are pitted against one another. All because of what is perceived as a zero-sum game. Scarcity does that to us. If someone else has a resource it means we don’t. If they have one, they we have a lack of it. This vision drives much of our thinking, our public policy, and our interactions with others. The resource could be actual natural resources, like water, coal, oil, wind, trees and so on. Or it can be other good gifts that God gives us: family, sex, occupations, education, the political governances we have and more. But often we camouflage the gifts and create conflicts, twisting these signs of beneficent providence, of good gifts God means for us to use and share as a sign of what God desires for the whole world.

Read the whole sermon here.

You can listen to it as well:

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The Revelation of Jesus -- Apocalypse Now But Not Yet

The 6th Sunday of Easter's text in John 14, as well as in 1 Peter, led to some further reflection of the failed prediction of the rapture on May 21. Nonetheless, Jesus promises to return and reveal himself to us. We live in the tension of Jesus being present to us now though mediated in Word and Sacrament until the time he reveals himself once and for all.

An excerpt from my sermon:

Of course the temptation for Christians throughout the ages is to be so focused on the eternal life somewhere far away in heaven that this life gets ignored. We lose sight of the reality that God cares deeply for this world and so these messages point us to the work for us to do here and now. But we must always walk in the midst of the tension that the way Jesus is revealed to us now, mediated through the Word and sacraments, is less than the fullness that we are promised. Yes, Jesus stands alongside the poor and helpless, among the suffering, and that should compel us to act for them. But our actions should always be seen as signs that point to the great day when Christ comes again to usher in his kingdom when all of those ways that sin is made known are wiped away. Hunger will be no more. Poverty will be no more. Suffering will be no more. Death will be no more.

The full sermon can be read here.

It can be listened to here:

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Kids listen... even to the gospel

Yesterday, my five-year old and I were playing the rhyming. I pick a word, and he says a word that rhymes with it. Then he picks a word and I rhyme. I am thankful that when he threw out the word "bucket" my censor kicked and I didn't blurt out the first thing that came to mind, AND that my wife shortly thereafter rescued me with "Nantucket."

But then we were cruising along.

"door" -- "floor"
"power" -- "sour"
"why" -- "fly"
Then I said "pen" and he replied with "sen."

"That's not a word, buddy. It needs to be a word."
"Yes it is."
"No it's not."
"Uh-huh!" And then he threw out a quickly rambled sentence in which the only word I really recognized was "bath-tized." (For some reason baptized comes out bath-tized, which is ok for me right now)
"What was that?"
"Sen. you know, like when people are bath-tized."
"Ummm..... no, I still don't know what you mean."
"Oh yeah," he said, "I guess you have to die because of it."
THEN it hit me... Sen was really SIN.
"OH! You mean sin!"
"Yeah, that's what I said! When you are bath-tized, your sen is washed away."
"Sin, buddy, sin [emphasizing the "i" sound]
"Oh, ok..." and then we were off to something else.

A brief encounter with the gospel because kids listen and will repeat at the most unexpected moment. Thanks be to God.

Rapture or Resurrection? Enjoy May 22

Back in Advent, for our mid-week service I spent two evenings on a discussion of the rapture and some scriptural reflection. In the midst of all of this hub-bub with Pastor Camping, I felt it was appropriate to pull this out again. You can listen to both sessions and more at my podcast.

Here is the second session that discusses the meaning of passages that are often lifted up by proponents of the rapture.

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Post edited because of broken link... all is fixed and working now. audio is now working.

The Summer of Superheroes

My post over at The Other Journal's Mediation Blog: Apocalypse and Messiahs.

An excerpt:

Many of these superhero films contain hallmarks of the apocalyptic genre: fantastical creatures, the natural world gone awry, messiahs and anti-messiahs, ultimate battles between good and evil. Thanks to CGI animations, the evil can come to life and produce the breath-taking moments of suspense when the hero is brought to the dark edge of existence, only to break through in triumph and victory. The apocalyptic finds its way into our consciousness through a medium that seems custom made for it.

2nd Sunday of Easter sermon

Beginning a new thing this week... sharing my sermons here rather than just keep them on my podcast.

I will include an excerpt, and a link to the whole text, plus embed the mp3 file to listen.

Our inheritance is that we are given a share in God’s very life. And this life is not something that is inaccessible to us now. We are given a share of it even now. This new life has begun to take root in us, as it has in Naomi.

The new life is the constant and eternal love of God made known in Jesus. The resurrection signals that this new life is the life God has desired to give us from all eternity. So we don’t see anything “new” but something unchanging which can only seem entirely new as our lives are so corrupted by the power of death around us.

Here is our living hope that God’s love for us has not changed, has not wavered, despite our seeking after other new and innovative gods which we believe might serve us better. The new life given us in the resurrection is the life that lasts and does not change. So God changes us that we might enjoy it eternally with him.

Read the whole sermon here.

Listen to it now.

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Fear Itself, Early Reflections

Having read the first issue of the limited series "Fear Itself" and the one-shot "Fear Itself: Sin's Past" I posted an early reflection on the series over at The Other Journal's blog, Mediation, titled "Gods, Sin, and Fear Itself."

Unvirtuous Abbey and Unicorn Theology

Here is a great guest post by Unvirtuous Abbey (on Twitter @UnvirtuousAbbey ) over at Two Friars and a Fool, "Unicorn Theology and Unplugging Your Head" They deal with the problems the Church deals with on both the left and the right ends of the spectrum.

As I prepare a sermon series on 1 Peter, I appreciated greatly the author's response to folks who would ask what he did for a job. "Advance scout to the alien fleet."

Them bones, them bones, them dry bones...

Preparing for the sermon on Sunday, and preaching on the Ezekiel 37 text, and I read Jenson's commentary on the passage.

For it has come to this: Israel as a whole and as such (37:11) is--as Ezekiel so often threatened--well and truly dead, a strewing of remains no longer even skeletal, so definitely of the past that the bones have separated and preserve no personal identities--no one can even point and say, "Alas, poor... I knew him well." The word of Gen. 2:17 has finally been fulfilled: the clash between God's will and human will for his human creatures, by which alone they live, and their refusal to follow that will, has been worked out in the history of Israel and has come to its inevitable conclusion.
Is then what the Lord here shows Ezekiel what it appears to be, the irreversible end of Israel's history with the Lord? And that is, of the bearer of the Lord's history with all humanity? Can Israel rise again? Indeed, can humanity, dependent for its specific being on the Lord's presence in history, live as what it was created to be? The Lord puts the question to Ezekiel: "Son of a man, what do you think? Can the dead live again?"
Ezekiel has no answer; this knowledge is beyond a son of man. But Ezekiel does know that the Lord is the giver of life; our passage is pervaded by a reminiscence of the Lord's first vivification of humankind (Gen. 2:7). And he knows that therefore the Lord can answer the question yes or no as he chooses. So he throws the question back.
For answer he receives an implicit yes: a command to prophesy life to the dead. Even in the nonbeing of death bones can hear him, because the word given the prophet is the same word that gives being and life in the first place, that addresses precisely "things that are not" (1Cor. 1:28). Thus Ezekiel is to do nothing less that speak the dead back to life (Exek. 37:4-6): we arrive at the extreme possibility of the prophets' general assignment "to pluck up and to pull down... to build and to plant" (Jer. 1:9-10). In this vision, Ezekiel speaks as commanded and the dead are raised (Ezek. 37:7-10).

Ezekiel, Robert Jenson, Brazos Press, pp. 281-282, 2009

The question for us preachers is the same addressed to Ezekiel, I think. As we address our congregations the question resonates, "Can these bones lives?" Can the people tired out and worn down by competing messages that seek to divide our loyalty and drive us from the source of life, can they find the true life promised by God, even if it is a penulitmate life now, but to be ultimately fulfilled in Jesus "I am the resurrection and the life" for the resurrection on the last day.

When we prophesy or preach, do we bring God's Word, the word that vivifies ( I love that word), or just hot air that dries us out even more?

Can we help people see God's Word as life giving in a dry and desert land? Can we see Lent as the oasis that brings God's life-giving will to us that we are raised to new life now and ultimately at the end of time?

A Church for All People

I love the liturgy. I love that it has been the primary locus not just of our worship but our theology as well. Lex Orandi Lex Credendi after all. The form of our worship has been around long enough that I am not a fan of muddling around with it. Innovation is not a positive term in my vocabulary when it comes to the liturgy. If someone feels the need to alter the form of the liturgy, I think there better be a very good reason. All too often, it has been my experience that when pastors and lay leaders want to change up the liturgy they have no guiding vision except that they want to try something new. To me simply being "new" is not good enough. Chasing "new" leads us down the rabbit hole always chasing the newest white rabbit that crosses our path.

In addition, there are far too many times when it seems that those who want to change the liturgy have agendas, are weak in preaching, and prefer style over substance. This statement is not meant to be overly general. It is not true in all cases, but I have seen few instances to the contrary.

But I continue to seek out what others are doing. I do think there are ways and models of worship that don't fit my vision. So when my wife and I were in Milwaukee recently, I looked around for a church that was fairly close. When I looked over my options, I decided that we would go and worship with the folks at All Peoples' Church. Their website simply promoted their Hip Hop Easter Vigil. But their worship tab also talked about what their worship was like. Now THIS was intriguing, even though it departed from the traditional liturgy (sort of). All Peoples' was clearly defined and I loved that they let folks who might come visit what to expect.

The service did look fairly typical in many respects. We gathered with some singing, and fantastic singing it was. There was praying. People freely shared joys and concerns which were all then lifted up by worship leader in extemporaneous prayer at its best. The prayer leader managed to lift up what people had shared (he had been LISTENING!) and his prayer included appropriate imagery and avoided the downfall of many who pray off the cuff. There was not any numerous repetitions of "Lord" nor the dreaded word "just." Unless we are describing God the word "just" just doesn't belong. I cringe when I hear "Lord, we just want to thank you Lord for just being with us Lord through all things Lord..." I know we are given the Lord's name to call upon at all times, but quantity of invocation does not make our prayers any stronger.

Nonetheless that was NOT at all an issue here. The leader did a phenomenal job even though I would not have classified him as a great speaker. He did however do a great job in praying. Praying is not about eloquence. I believe when we are praying corporately the one who wraps the prayers up should have first and foremost been listening. It was clear the leader had done that.

The service then moved into a testimonial. Being an urban congregation there was a wonderful mix of African Americans and whites gathered together. The African American tradition was strong in this congregation and the testimonial spoke to that. A large man stood up and spoke about a transforming event, namely the sermon of the previous week. And he talked about how he experienced God moving in his life to raise him up to new life (my take on his words, I do not want to put words in his mouth). But I was also intrigued then to hear the sermon since he referenced the previous sermon being a piercing word to him.

So then we did move to the reading and the sermon. The pastor had deviated from the lectionary and instead of hearing the woman at the well text appointed for the day, we heard 1 Kings 24, a dry passage to be sure. But Pastor Steve brought it to life as he unpacked the theme of exile and the cross. It was a rousing and energetic sermon that was full of the gospel. There was no choice here of style over substance. Clearly everything here was rooted in the substance of the gospel.

Then after a sermon whose length many congregations would have balked at, the whole church broke for education. The kids went to Sunday School and the adults all moved to a section of the sanctuary for bible study. Well that day they were hearing of their fruits of their partnership with a mission congregation in El Salvador. That congregation was celebrating its fifteenth anniversary that very day and All Peoples' was celebrating with it. What was interesting was that not one adult left the church. No one sneaked away. They all stayed. The presenter was seemingly more concerned with the time she was taking than the congregation was. When we had finished up with the study, everyone came together again to celebrate Communion.

All in all we were there over two hours. And despite the non-traditional flavor of the service, it all felt right in that place. It all felt genuine. It felt faithful to the gospel as it reflected the people gathered there. It lived up to its name. It was a church for All People.

"I arise today..." the Lorica of St. Patrick

I will admit it... the commonly sung St. Patrick's Breastplate has always made me a little nervous. The opening line "I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity" always seemed inappropriate as a baptismal hymn. The action in baptism is exactly the opposite, God in Jesus Christ binds himself to us. I see a large number of people quoting snippets from this hymn all over Facebook and I figured I would quote the actual source material.

Patrick's Lorica (the Latin word meaning "breastplate") is one of three surviving writings of his: Patrick's Confession, this Lorica, and The Letter to Coroticus. The last of these is a denunciation of the British king who raided the Irish coast and slaughtered a number of Christian converts as they were being baptized. Patrick lived and served in dangerous times. Numerous times he was jailed. He faced opposition from druids as well as Pelagian heretics. His Lorica is then an invocation seeking God's protection in his work. This invocation seems much more appropriate for a baptism than the hymn version. I will grant however, that the invocation of God, seeking his protection is in fact a "binding" of God as one would bind a breastplate upon one's body.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In preachings of the apostles,
In faiths of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a mulitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and evil,
Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation

From Lives of Saints, ed. Joseph Vann, 1954, John J. Crawley & Co. pp 119-121

McLaren addressing Bell on Hell: An insight into Dogma

I have been confused and amused at the maelstrom swirling around Rob Bell's new book Love Wins (even before it has been released!). The extremely violent reaction against Bell by a number of conservative pastors and theologians arises because Bell considers that the place of Hell in theology might not be as important as once thought.

I have wondered why glancing at numerous books on my shelves by Lutherans (and Roman Catholics, and United Methodist, and Anglicans, and ... well you get the picture) no one seems to deal with hell. It just isn't that important. There are plenty of folks that I have heard in Lutheran circles who simply believe that hell does not exist. I don't want to go there, but hell is not a cornerstone of my preaching to be sure.

I ran across Brian McLaren's post on his blog about Rob and the "kerfuffle" (McLaren's word, not mine). There McLaren writes:

What's quite pathetic, as I see it, is that many critics won't even begin to get Rob's real point. (I've read the book, so I'm not just going by conjecture....) It's not that he's being given a multiple-choice test between a) traditional exclusivism and b) traditional universalism, and he's choosing b) instead of a). Rather, it's that Rob has come to see that the biblical story is bigger and better than a narrative about how souls get sorted out into two bins at the end of time.

I think McLaren uses theology very well here. Theology is not about promulgating a clear line in the sand about beliefs, but instead theology (or dogma to be more specific) is about helping to elucidate the good news.

The Danish Lutheran Regin Prenter in his book Creation and Redemption points out that our word dogma comes mainly out of two matrices, one legal the other philosophical. In the philosophical usage, dogma points to a "well-founded and certain knowledge of truth". In the legal usage, dogma is an "authoritative command." The legal sense of dogmatic theology certainly seems to have won the day in the history of Christianity and certainly here in the response against Bell. But Prenter points to the philosophical use of dogma. Prenter writes,

We may with equal justification take the philosophical connotation as our point of departure. Instead of dogmas, understood as the authoritatively established doctrinal statements, we may prefer to speak of the dogma, meaning the basic insight into the essential content of the Christian message, an insight which is immediately given in and with faith in the truth of the message, but which cannot be directly equated with faith, inasmuch as the faith which contains the insight is itself more than the insight. ...

Stricly speaking, there is but one dogma, because there is only one divine revelation. The dogma is therefore always christological or--what is really the same thing--trinitarian. Through the dogma light from God's revelation is thrown upon the sinner's way from death to life, from condemnation to salvation. This light comes from God the Father, who is the source of revelation. It is mediated by the Holy Spirit, who is the power of revelation among sinners. And it shines upon Jesus Christ, who is the content of revelation. Most concisely stated, the dogma is: Jesus is Lord, Kurios Iesous (1Cor. 12:3)

Creation and Redemption, pp. 4-5

Dogma then is about spinning out the core of the Christian faith, most notably Jesus. Hell is not so important unless we begin to see that the power of God in Christ Jesus lays waste to the power of hell. Bell seems to be heading down this path, that Jesus and God's desire in him is stronger than the power of Hell, both in reality and in our preaching.

I look forward to reading Bell's book.