Category Archives: Spiritual Encouragement

Sonnet of the day: Batter my heart, three-person’d God

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One of the great poems of the faith for those who have hit the spiritual wall…images

BY JOHN DONNE

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Be your own God (in one easy lesson)

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Or…What to do with a Bible that says hard things?

“Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people….” –Psalm 106:40

We hear a lot about  how “God loves the sinner, hates the sin.” Did you know that the Bible actually says (in 25 places no less) that God is angry with the people doing the sinning?[1] How many times does the Bible say, “Loves the sinner, hates the sin”? A quick search in Logos Bible software found…zero. None. Nada. Zip.

That’s right, according to the Bible, God is angry not just with “sin,” but with the people committing the sins.

So what do we do with a Bible that says hard things? Things that make us cringe when we read them. Or when someone else reads them and asks us about it.

My honest friends say, “I just ignore the stuff I don’t like.” But, unlike our teeth, ignoring Scripture does not make it go away.

We have two polarities: On one side are the uber-fundamentalists who use the Bible as a bat to bludgeon people with whom they disagree. This group tends to be fantastic at seeing past their own logs to other’s splinters. But I fear another extreme: One in which the Scriptures are dismissed outright. As a friend of mine said on facebook the other day, “When my idea of God and the Bible are in conflict, my concept of God wins…because I worship God not a book.”

Huh?

i-love-me-myself-i

The last time I checked I have a finite 5”x 7” head, whereas God, by definition, is infinite intelligence.  God, dwelling outside of time and space, can only be known by those of us within time and space if he chooses to reveal himself to us. Luckily God has, through a Son, Jesus. (Heb 1) How do we know this Jesus? Well, the New Testament is not just our primary, but virtually our only source of information on Jesus, God with skin on. The eyewitnesses wrote the Scriptures to reveal that God-in-flesh to us. The Holy Spirit quickens those words in our hearts as faith. When I only believe that which makes sense to me, I am not only cutting myself off from the power of transformation present, but putting my own mind in the role of the definer of reality…i.e. I just gave myself the “god job.” That seems to me to be a place of significant terror.

Not to say that the Bible isn’t nuanced or difficult or complex. It is all of those things. I am not saying that we do not need to interpret what we read, we do. But shouldn’t our method of interpretation be more faithful and consistent than “I only believe what I like.”

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) taught that the revelation of Jesus Christ unified and made coherent all Scripture:  “In that same vision (of Christ) I understood the writings of the prophets, the Gospels….”

God gets to determine our reality, and God is revealed in Scripture. Anything else leads to the idolatry of self.

Or, I could just decide to be my own God…to let my 5″x 7″ determine my reality…and when the Bible disagrees with what I want God to be like, I can just go with whatever it is that I like…because, hey, I worship the most holy trinity of me, myself and I.

“Get your head in the game!” Seeing our need for a Savior.

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Plains, trains and automobiles

A Sermon: Luke 3:7-18. 

John has quite the attention getter for his message. I wonder what it would do to Sunday church attendance if preachers today opened sermons the way John did: “You guys…You. (pointing around the room) Guys…are a bunch of poisonous snakes. What are you doing here? Who warned you that God is about to play whack-a-mole and you’re the mole?” As I recall, the first lesson in high school speech was “Don’t insult your audience.” John the baptizer apparently took a different elective.

Last week we learned that John was appointed a task even more difficult than his outfits and diet: Preparing the way for the messiah. How does one prepare the way for the Savior of humanity? What does one do and say to “make straight the paths of the Lord”? The answer was a one-word message: “Repent!” Repent is a word your Bible translators left un-translated. Literally it means: “Change your mind.” Today we might say, “Get your head together!”

When John was preaching this sermon Jesus was still under wraps… he has not yet began his 3-year public teaching ministry. Not yet come, in his words, “to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

How does “getting our head together” prepare us for Jesus’ coming? Receiving a savior presumes we realize that we need one. That, in a nutshell, is John’s task…

Story: Remember the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles? Steve Martin is stuck on a trip home for the holidays with a somewhat deranged shower ring salesman played by John Candy. In one scene they get turned around while driving at night. They end up on the wrong side of the freeway. A car on the other side of the guardrail realizes the error and the couple inside furiously motions for Martin and Candy to roll down the car window. The couple in the car shouts at our protagonists, “You’re going the wrong way!” “What?” “You’re going the wrong way!” Martin and Candy are oblivious. They think the couple frantically warning them wants to race…then, when they hear the warning, assume the couple is drunk. After all, they reason, “How would they know where we are going?” Finally, Steve Martin realizes that he is looking at the wrong color road stripe. He looks up and sees two sets of semi headlights bearing down on them. In shock Martin begins to breathlessly warn, “truck, truck!”

…Is there any doubt today that we as a culture are going the wrong way? And what is a culture but a collection of individuals. The conclusion is inescapable: If the culture is going the wrong way, it is all of us. To quote the Blues Brothers: “You, me, them. Everybody. Everybody.”

We are going the wrong way.

In the shadow of the events at the Sandy Hook school 3 days ago, we cannot deny the effects of evil and sin and societal breakdown and failed solutions. One would have to have their heads deep in the sand to not be painfully aware that the world is going the wrong way. Sandy Hook wasn’t even our first mass-murder this week. That happened in Portland. In seven previous mass-murders this year alone, 41 other people have died in 7 other mass shootings.

Our world is broken. We are broken. If we are honest we will admit that most of us are but a few missed paychecks, a few bad months, a few broken relationships, a few bad decisions, and a little bit of self-medication away from unraveling our lives. There but for the grace of God go we.

And it is no longer enough to play the rugged individualist card. We live interconnected lives. What I do with my life matters to you. What you do matters to me. What we do matters to our neighborhood. We cannot say, “Stop worrying about me…take your hands and your laws off of my life.” Every freedom I have involves a corresponding responsibility upon each of you. And, in a time of social breakdown, we must all pull together, lay aside our rights and step up our responsibility for the common good. We must, “Get our heads together.”

In verse 8 John is saying, in effect: “Are you God’s child? Then live like it! Don’t live off of yesterday’s spiritual accomplishments…don’t claim some spiritual pedigree.” John points out the obvious: “trees that don’t bear fruit get cut down and burned so that other trees might bear fruit.” This isn’t necessarily anger. It is just reality. In every realm of life, if we don’t get the job done, someone else will.

How did the crowd respond to John’s “Get your head in the game!” Message? They ask the obvious question: “How?”

3 times 3 groups ask “How?” The crowd. The tax collectors. The soldiers. “How do I live like a person with my head in the game?”

It is the right question. For them. And for us.

John gives them obvious advice that makes sense in their context: Share. Don’t cheat. Be satisfied with your pay…obvious for them, and still pretty obvious for us today.

I see three implications in this passage. Two are overt. One we learn later when Saint Paul comments on the meaning of the Christ event:

First: Come humbly. Humility is the hallmark of a life ready to receive God. Live in a way that is open-hearted to God. Let God continually change your mind. Humility is the mark of one who walks with God. So come humbly.

Second: Live Selflessly. As a result of our humility before God, live a life that lays down our wants for other’s needs. The world really needs us to…but more than that, because turning from our self-centered sinfulness always has the effect of proving to us how unable we are to actually pull it off. Living selflessly leads to the third implication:

Third: See your need for a savior.

John is reminding the crowds of God’s law: the Old Testament standard. The law functions like that measuring stick at Disneyland. The one where if you aren’t big enough you don’t get on the good rides. The Law is the measuring rod to reveal to God’s children that we don’t measure up. Paul said it like this: “…if it had not been for the law I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” (Romans 7:7-12) The law is God’s yardstick to make us realize how much we need a savior!

How does the message “Get your head in the game…”and bear the fruits of repentance” pave the way for the One who is to come? The more God increases the more our pride decreases. That is why Paul says, “O wretched man that I am.” (Rom. 7:24) It isn’t self-loathing. It is glory-of-God-awareness. More than a few old saints have told me that the closer they get to the God, the more aware they become of their fallen-ness and God’s great goodness.

What is the result? “The people were filled with expectation.” They ask John if he is the one they are waiting for.  We all cling to hope. Like Jamie Foxx, who at the BET awards in November referred to “Our Lord and Savior, Barack Obama,” we are always looking for a Savior. But like the President who rolled his eyes at the comment, John is very clear, “Another is coming after me whose shoes I am not worthy to untie.” And the one who comes will also have his own baptism: “the Holy Spirit and fire.”

What does being immersed in the Holy Spirit bring? Jesus said in John, “He will bring to mind all Jesus taught us.” (John 14:28) And,  “He will convict of sin, righteousness and judgment.” (16:8)

Conviction is a divine invitation to allow God to work. God is love, but loving us involves helping us to become most fully the person we were made to be, and when we allow trees not bearing good fruit to grow up in our lives, well, the Holy Spirit helps with that.

In verse 17, John uses a final word picture, that of “His threshing floor.” A threshing floor was a flat spot in a breezy area. A farmer would throw his harvest in the air so that the heavier grain would fall at their feet while the breeze could blow away the dead chaff. The harvest was collected. The chaff? It is burned. That was what you did with garbage before landfills.

We all have chaff in our lives. John’s message is that the time is right to expose the chaff in our lives to the wind of the Spirit. The time is right to let God blow that which hides the harvest away.

Do you have something against another? We are going to be reconciled in the Passing of the Peace. Use that time to make it right.

Is there something between you and God? We are coming to the Lord’s table. We will come as we ought: on bent knee, with open hands. Offer to God whatever it is the Holy Spirit is convicting you is in the way.

If you have not yet, placed your life in God’s hands. Put your trust in God and receive God’s gift of life in Christ. Come forward and ask one of the ministers to explain a relationship with God.

John’s final sentence this morning: “with many exhortations John proclaimed the Good News.” We don’t think of exhortation as a part of Good News. But if we do not have a diagnosis we do not want to drink the medicine.

Here is the exhortation: Let God blow away the chaff.

Here is the Good News:

-We are forgiven by God as a gift purchased by God’s son on the cross.

-We are adopted as God’s own children as a gift.

-We have growth in faith and knowledge and wisdom as a gift.

-We have a calling to participate with God in extending his Kingdom A.

*All is gift.

And the way to receive any gift is with thanksgiving…hands open and a smile on our face. That is what “Eucharist” means: Thanksgiving.

It is almost Christmas: the celebration of God sending the gift of his Son. Christmas is not OUR birthday. And yet, the world received a gift. That is why it is so important that we Come Humbly, Serve Selflessly, and See your need for a savior.

As we await Jesus’ coming at Christmas, to walk among his creation, and to purchase victory through his passion, let us, as the old Eucharistic prayer says, “offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”

Amen.

They Didn’t Call Him “Golden-Mouthed” for Nothing…

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They didn’t know what they were doing when they made John Archbishop of Constantinople. They learned not to give a captivating speaker a microphone if you don’t know what he is going to say. John Chrysostom or “golden-mouthed” had a promising career in Greek rhetoric that he dashed by becoming a Christian, then a hermit to memorize the Bible. When his health forced him back to civilization, he became a preacher of great fame. He taught the scriptures practical everyday application, including preaching against the hoarding of wealth (angering some of the wealthy), and that priests should serve where assigned rather than touring for honorariums (angering the priests). He was the first (that I am aware of anyway) since the biblical authors to treat intimate marital relations as a good thing.

Image

Here is a sermon excerpt from the late 300’s.  Homeboy could preach!

On the burial place and the Cross 2: Adam and Christ, Eve and Mary

Have you seen the wonderful victory? Have you seen the splendid deeds of the Cross? Shall I tell you something still more marvelous? Learn in what way the victory was gained, and you will be even more astonished. For by the very means by which the devil had conquered, by these Christ conquered him; and taking up the weapons with which he had fought, he defeated him. Listen to how it was done:

A virgin, a tree and a death were the symbols of our defeat. The virgin was Eve: She had not yet known man; the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the death was Adam’s penalty. But behold again a Virgin and a tree and a death, those symbols of defeat, become the symbols of his victory. For in place of Eve there is Mary; in place of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of the Cross; in place of the death of Adam, the death of Christ.

Do you see him defeated by the very things through which he had conquered? At the foot of the tree the devil overcame Adam; at the foot of the tree Christ vanquished the devil. And that first tree sent men to Hades; this second one calls back even those who had already gone down there. Again, the former tree concealed man already despoiled and stripped; the second tree shows a naked victor on high for all to see. And that earlier death condemned those who were born after it; this second death

gives life again to those who were born before it. Who can tell the Lord’s mighty deeds? By death we were made immortal: these are the glorious deeds of the Cross.

Have you understood the victory? Have you grasped how it was wrought? Learn now, how this victory was gained without any sweat or toil of ours. No weapons of ours were stained with blood; our feet did not stand in the front line of battle; we suffered no wounds; witnessed no tumults; and yet we obtained the victory. The battle was the Lord’s, the crown is ours. Since then victory is ours, let us imitate the soldiers, and with joyful voices sing the songs of victory. Let us praise the Lord and say, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”

The Cross did all these wonderful things for us: the Cross is a war memorial erected against the demons, a sword against sin, the sword with which Christ slew the serpent. The Cross is the Father’s will, the glory of the Only-begotten, the Spirit’s exultation, the beauty of the angels, the guardian of the Church. Paul glories in the Cross; it is the rampart of the saints, it is the light of the whole world.

Augustine: Big Man Meets Bigger God. 354-430 C.E.

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Yesterday was the feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, Great Doctor of the Western church. Long considered the greatest ancient mind in the Western world, Augustine is out of favor right now in Christian circles.

Being asked to sum up Augustine’s life, teaching, theology and ministry in 5 minutes is a bit like being told that I need to drive a semi through my cat door…it won’t fit and the attempt is liable to make a mess of things.

I will start the way Mark starts his Gospel-by skipping the first 30 years. We pick up Augustine’s story mid-stream: Augustine is 30 years of age and already has the most prestigious academic job in the Roman world: Professor of rhetoric for the imperial court in Milan. It was a position that brought with it a sure career of prominence in Roman politics.

Being a prominent up-and-comer has never been good for one’s sense of spiritual need, and as such, Augustine came resistantly to faith. He was having too much fame and fortune and enjoying all of the “fun” that comes with. However, he had a praying mother and a friend of faith, Ambrose, who was a challenge to his intellect. They were God’s tools to break his defenses. Who is God using to break yours?

So eventually the Big man met He-who-will-not-be-avoided.

Augustine had his familiar conversion experience alone in his backyard at 33, after much influence by St. Ambrose (another rhetorician and Archbishop of Milan). At 37 Augustine was ordained to the priesthood. At 41 he was made bishop of Hippo, an African backwater and a diocese considered far beneath a person of his aptitude and potential. Far from being buried in obscurity, however, over the next 29 years Augustine would become the most towering Latin writer, extraordinary in both scope and depth. Brilliant preachers and teachers are always asked to write their stuff down. He did. We have 350 of his authentic sermons and around 100 books/booklets. They include apologetic works to debunk various heresies, commentaries on books of the Bible, texts on Christian doctrine, one of which was called “On Christian Doctrine.” His work, “On the Trinity,” is considered by many theologians to be the masterpiece that forever defined “Great theological writing.” Augustine is best known for his (Confessions), the personal account of his early life and conversion, and the City of God which he wrote to explain to Christians, badly shaken by the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 that “our citizenship is not on earth.” The Confession, addressed to God as prayers is the first autobiography. Augustine introduced the concept of the “self” in the Confessions and of “history” in the City of God. He was held in such high regard that years after his death, when Hippo was sacked by the Vandals, who held to the Arian heresy that Augustine had so powerfully written against, they burned every building in Hippo except his cathedral and library.

And yet, he is held in wide contempt in the church today. Augustine is blamed for “oppressive doctrines” such as original sin, the sovereignty of God, just war, and abortion as a sin. The current movement in the Episcopal Church to “restore” the heretic Pelagius is a direct repudiation of Augustine. And yet…

Several weeks ago I was taking summer courses at our seminary in Berkeley. The seminary president hosted a dialogue, in the fancy historic mansion on the grounds. This dialogue was between former presiding bishop Frank Griswold and Mark Jordan, a professor who has left Harvard for the Danforth Center on Politics. I didn’t know Jordan, but quickly came to realize that this guy, in a room full of super-bright people, was super, super-bright. Jordan was the Reinhold Niebuhr Divinity professor and a professor of women, gender and sexuality. He was originally an expert on medieval philosophy…especially Aquinas and is published dozens and dozens of times-mostly on Aquinas and human sexuality issues. By the middle of the conversation everyone in the room  was waiting to hear how Jordan would respond to whatever question was being fielded. In a room full of heavyweights, he was the weightiest. At one point he made a comment about St. Augustine, and added the throw away line, “I cannot get enough of Augustine. I have spent 30 years immersed in him. To this day I can not come to his writings without feeling like the proverbial man drinking from the fire hose.”

A good place to start with Augustine is The Confessions: they are Augustine on Augustine…or more accurately, Augustine on the experience of being chased by God. What comes out when reading the words of this “greatest intellect of the western world” is his humility-his sense of gratitude toward God…his sense that God pursued and chased and wooed and won his heart when he was in love with the pursuits of his own flesh- as Paul says, “While we were yet sinners Christ died for you.” While the early fathers focused on the mind and the body as the seat of God’s saving action, Augustine was the first writer to articulate the heart as the seat of God’s saving work the human soul. Here is how Augustine describes God’s pursuit of him, while he was lost in hedonistic pursuits:

“Thou didst cast away (my sins), and in their place thou didst enter in thyself–sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, but more veiled than all mystery; more exalted than all honor, though not to them that are exalted in their own eyes. Now was my soul free from the gnawing cares of seeking and getting, of wallowing in the mire and scratching the itch of lust. And I prattled like a child to thee, O Lord my God–my light, my riches, and my salvation…

Late have I loved Thee, O Lord; and behold, you were within and I without, and there I sought you. 
You were with me when I was not with Thee. 
You did call, and cry, and burst my deafness. 
You did gleam, and glow, and dispel my blindness. 
You did touch me, and I burned for Thy peace. 
You have formed us for yourself, 
and our hearts are restless until in they find their rest in you. 
Late have I loved Thee, Your Beauty ever old and ever new. 
You have burst my bonds asunder; 
unto Thee will I offer up an offering of praise.

Hear the wisdom of this wise man: “O Lord, You have formed us for yourself, 
and our hearts are restless until in they find their rest in Thee.”

Amen.