Category: Faith

Preaching Baptism – Quote

From “Preaching the Sacraments” in The Preached God by Gerhard O. Forde. Edited by Mark C. Mattes and Steven D. Paulson (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007). For future reference (cuz that’s the problem with library books – I have to return them and I forget where the quote comes from!)

But how shall we do it? No doubt sacraments should find their way into a good many sermons if not all of them. When there is a baptism or a baptism Sunday there should be a specific baptismal sermon. Perhaps the best way to close out this essay is to offer again some concrete suggestions and experiments to exemplify what I have been talking about.
I begin with baptism. If baptism is to be preached in accord with what I have been saying, it should be preached as the unrelenting and unconditional divine yes that cuts off our inward flight at every point, lays the old to rest, and calls forth the new. It would probably go something as follows. Baptism regenerates, it works forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. But how can it do that? Simply by being what it is, a washing with water that cannot be erased together with the speaking of the promise, the creative word, the divine yes spoken over us, spoken to us from the outside, from the beginning, the first an the last word about us, the word calling us to life out of our death “in Adam.” “You are mine,” says the Lord God. “You always have been and always will be.” But that, of course, is incredible. Maybe even frightening. Thus all the questions come tumbling out, all of them attempts to take the gift and retreat inside, protests of the old Adam and Even who know themselves to be under radical attack in their inner bastions.
But in the preaching all the questions must be countered relentlessly by the divine yes. Is baptism enough? Yes! It works forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Live in that and hear it again each day. Believe that it is enough and that is certainly enough! Would it have all the significance even if I were only a baby and did not know what was going on? Yes, because it was God who spoke that yes over you. God is God. What about my response? Are you saying that I do not even have to respond? Now that, of course, is the trickiest question of all in the old Adam’s aresenal. It too can only be countered ultimately with what is perhaps an equally tricky yes. Yes, I am saying you do not have to respond. What is the matter, do you not want to? It is the old Adam who can only think in dreary terms of have to and ask stupid questions about it. The old is through, drowned in the water. If you think it is a matter of have to, forget it! Here we are calling forth the new who simply wants to. This is the divine yes calling to our yes in the Spirit. “Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead!” Come out of your stinking tomb! But, but, do you mean to say I am not free to reject? Yes, I should hope so! What in the world do you want to do that for? How could you call such rejection freedom? To reject must be only the most horrible form of bondage. It certainly is not “freedom”! Does that not mean that God is taking a great risk? Yes indeed. But he takes it nevertheless, even unto death. Are you saying, “Once saved, always saved”? Yes. What is wrong with that? I am counting on it, aren’t you? It is the divine yes, God’s Word. You do not mean that grace is irresistible, do you? Yes. I find it to be so, do you not? To be sure, grace is not force. Grace is just grace and as such it is by definition “irresistible,” I expect! Does that not mean it could be grossly misunderstood, misused, and abused? Yes, I expect it does. But God suffered all the abuse to bring it to light. Is that not what it’s all about? Should God, as Luther could put it, call off his goodness for the sake of the ungodly? If so, who at all would be saved?
The answer, you see, is yes, yes, yes. It is God’s yes, and he will go on saying it until finally you die of it and being to whisper, “Amen! So be it Lord!” Baptism does regenerate. Of course this is dangerous business! So-called evangelicals will howl about sacramentalism and object vociferously to the “magic” of such externalism. And they are quite right to do so if sacraments are only analogies of allegories of our inner life. If sacraments, that is, leave the old subject intact we could not speak like this or put such confidence in sacraments. Either we must preach them so they kill the old Adam and Eve or we’d better forget them. A sacrament that has all the objective validity we want to claim for it and still leaves the old subject intact is only an invitation to disaster.

Great Expectations: 3rd Sunday in Lent Sermon

My sermon from this morning, typos and all. I always forget how much of this I change on the fly – little additions here, different stresses, hand motions, etc. I think there was between 170-180 people today at church (between the two services).

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3rd Sunday in Lent (Exodus 20:1-17;Psalm 19;1 Corinthians 1:18-25;John 2:13-22).
Advent Lutheran Church, New York City
March 11, 2012

Great Expectations: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

We’ve got some great lessons this week, don’t we?
There’s Jesus, in the temple, throwing out the money changers – Rambo style – and then there’s Moses coming down the mountain, and delivering the ten commandments – and then we have Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians talking about the cross being a stumbling block and foolishness. And it’s that line from Corinthians that I seem to see a lot.
Earlier this week, I visited Union Seminary’s library, digging around for some old magazines – and rather than getting a stack of old paper or a pdf or computer files – the librarian went ahead and handed me these weird little boxes containing…film? And I had to go thread the film into this giant noisy machine, with levers and knobs and pulleys. And with the article displayed on this giant screen in front of me , I would cycle through the pages and it would make that noise che-che-che-che-che-che as the pages zoomed by. And I stopped, and right there, on the cover of the magazine, below the title, in big bold letters, was First Corinthians, verse 23: “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”
In a way, that phrase is one of those rallying points for us I think. It’s a phrase we love to say, to hear, to call as our own. It’s a phrase that seems to say that God is bigger than our expectations, that God doesn’t work the way we sometimes imagine, and that God is bigger than who we imagine ourselves to be. And there’s a lot of hope in that.
And as I soaked in 1 Corinthians 23 as the sub-title for the magazine, I couldn’t help but notice the date. 1914. The same year that the hopes of the 19th century – of so much progress – the development of so many things that we take for granted now – modern medicine, the rise of the middle class, the birth of New York City, flight, industrialization, electric lights, movies, radio, and even the subway – that century where so much hope was put into the idea of progress – that magazine cover, with that verse of hope in big bold letters on it – came from the same year when all that progress – all that human ingenuity, strength, power – all those great expectations – they all came crashing down with the start of World War One.
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1850 years, or so, before that – Paul had an issue on his hands. He had just received word that there were issues in the Corinth community. Paul had moved on, gone off to spread the gospel in a new place. And when Chloe’s people told him what was going on in Corinth, how splits were developing within the community, he felt he had to step in. So, he wrote to them. In the beginning of our letter, he lays out some ground rules. He asserts his authority as founder of the community, he works on breaking down the sides that people had started to form – with one side saying I’m on Paul’s side, the other on Apollos, the other on Christ’s – and he lays into the power of the cross and he does that by burying our trust in wisdom, signs, and miracles, saying that God’s weakness is greater than any human strength.
So why does Paul only talk about miracles, signs, and wisdom?
I mean, I think those are things we can relate to. I think those are things our brothers and sisters 100 years ago could relate to. That…trust, that the more we learn, the more we discuss, the more we share, the more we discover, the better we’ll become; the stronger we will become. That, somehow, we can out think our way out of issues, and, sure it might take awhile – but we’ll get there. We’re always improving. Our science, our morality, our education, our politics, our economy, our…progress. There’s trust there. Or maybe it’s more of a trust in ourselves, of what we can do. And, if that doesn’t work, well, hey – we go to church, we pray – God will take care of it. That’s a kind of strength.
But…there’s something missing there. And I think the Corinthians would have noticed that too because how can you, when talking about those things that are powerful, wise, the epitome of human strength – how could Paul, and us, forget about who dominated both the Greeks and the scattered Jewish People throughout the Mediterranean world? Why doesn’t Paul mention Rome?
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I mean, in his day, and for the people of Corinth, Rome was strength – the sheer image of human might. The Greeks might have given the world philosophy, and the Chosen People brought God to the world – but both had been conquered by Rome. Both had to bend their knee to the Emperor. Both were just one of many peoples who had succumbed to the military, political, and economic might of Rome.
And Corinth itself, at this time, wasn’t a Grecian City. It had been recently destroyed by Rome and re-colonized, a few generations before, by veterans of the army. The Corinthians that Paul taught the gospel to were descendants of Rome’s military machine. And the city was built in the image of Rome and was covered in images of what it meant to be a part of Rome. It was in the air – that not only was the Roman Empire powerful, but that Rome was divinely blessed, led by a son of the gods, and Rom had the right to conquer everyone and everything. Paul’s Corinthian community, in their everyday lives, as they went to the market, or the temple, or out to the fields to work – they would’ve passed countless statues – and these statues would be of slaves, of conquered warriors, of prisoners of war, being powerless, insignificant, and weak. Some would have their bodies bent, arms behind their backs, holding up roofs and columns and towers – like this (DEMONSTRATE) – like gargoyles on some old building today but rather than monsters – they were people caught up in Rome’s might.
It’s not the Greek’s wisdom or the Jewish God that would have seem oh so powerful to the Corinthians – that’s not human strength – human strength, divine strength – that was Rome.
And this Rome was so powerful, that it took the land of Judah.
And when it met Jesus – the Son of God – who the Corinthian community claimed as divine – that Rome crucified him, like he was a common criminal, a slave. He was insignificant – a mosquito to be swatted and nothing more.
Because that was Rome’s expectation of what it meant to handle any one person who had the audacity to cause a scene in a religious center.
That person who had the audacity to bring good news to the poor, to cure the sick, to feed the hungry, to love.
That person who had the audacity to challenge the systems of expectations that we have – and Rome had – and Corinth had – about who is powerful, who is mighty, and who deserves dignity, and who deserves God’s grace and mercy.
I think the Corinthian community would have read that mention of human strength at the end of our reading – and they would have thought of Rome.
And how so very odd it is to proclaim, and teach, and talk, and believe – it that supposed insignificant man that Rome killed.
Rome’s power and belief in itself was all around them.
And, yet, that Corinthian community proclaimed the unrealistic.
As we go through Lent – we began remembering where we came – from insignificant dust – and as we walk together on the path towards Calvary –
Where we’ll see Jesus, like those statues of slaves in Corinth, his head down, his body broken –
But he won’t be bent.
Because Jesus’s arms that day weren’t bent behind his back.
They were open, nailed to the Cross, and spread as wide as they could possibly be.
For God has something else planned
Something that didn’t rest on our own powers
our own thoughts on what it means to be great, or strong, or smart, or wise
or whatever is in the air.
But, instead, Jesus’s arms are open wide
welcoming all of us –
and showing that God’s love does not depend on us.
And that its God’s expectations that have the final say
Because its through Jesus….. that Jesus Christ, crucified,
where we find exactly what it means
for us, for you……….. to be loved. Amen.

History Lesson

Well, I just finished the second draft of my sermon for Sunday. I’ll probably write one more before I print it out and start crossing out words and practicing my delivery (there are sound effects that I need to get just right). I’ll see if the dog and cat mind being my audience.

Part of my experimentation with this sermon is, besides preaching mostly on the Epistle and integrating my current school work into it, is to stretch myself a little bit. Rather than do what I usually do, grounding the lesson in its narrative context and then filtering through that context with contemporary images, I’m framing this sermon mostly as a history lesson. Of course, I like history, and I think any modern interpretation of history is, by its nature, filled with contemporary images. But I’m curious how it will go over with the congregation. I think some will like it but I’m not sure if enough will get the punch. And I wonder how appropriate for Lent it is.

One thing that I hope will help, however, is the Hymn of the Day. Rather than try to do what I usually do and pick a hymn that reinforces the message, I tried to use the sermon hymn as a continuation of my words. In a sense, the hymn isn’t (I hope) going to be merely a rehashing of the sermon but rather an integrated part to it. And with a replacement to the creed we’ve inserted into the bulletin this week, I’m hoping those three parts of the service will flow and reinforce each other. So, if someone took a step back, those sections would appear as a whole rather than just complementary sections. I have no idea if this will actually work, mind you, but I’m gonna give it a shot.

And, as an aside, I can see that I’m copying a certain preacher I know by starting with something funny and then moving on to seriousness. I hope that’s not copyrighted!

Why does Paul say Greeks rather than Romans?

You would think, with me being on Spring Break, I would have started working on my sermon for Sunday before now. Sure, the hymns are picked, and the service is organized, and all that, but when it comes to words on the page, I’ve got nothing. I did, however, decide to focus on the Corinthians text for the day rather than the Gospel or the OT reading. All are great texts and all are, in some way, rah-rah-Christianity/God/Jesus texts. We have the ten commandments (which are great), and then we have Paul saying the cross is foolish (which is also great) and then we end with Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple, Rambo style. So, halfway through Lent, the readings seem, to be very “go-get-em!” or “yay team” in nature. Maybe they were specifically chosen because we are halfway through Lent and the crafters of the lectionary thought we might need some pats on the back as we go into the home stretch with our Lenten disciplines.

I’ve decided to focus on the Corinthians text (1 Cor 1:18-25) mostly because of what I’m doing in school right now. With two courses covering Corinthians through historical-critical, queer, feminist, post-colonial, liberation, and other lenses, I’ve been wondering how to take what I’m learning and actually proclaim something. How can I utilize those frameworks to actually strengthen my proclamation of the gospel? It’s possible that I’m going to fall flat on my face trying to do this on Sunday (and if I do, I’ll have 30 minutes between services to re-write it) but I’m gonna give it a shot and see what comes out. And right now, I seem stuck on why Paul juxtaposes Greeks and Jews rather than Romans and Jews, Romans and Greeks, etc.

I mean, Paul was writing to a small community located in the town of Corinth (a little ol’ town near the sea shore). Although it is a Grecian city, it was a city that was destroyed and only recently re-populated by Roman soldiers around 40 B.C.E. It was developed, designed, and built as a colony of Rome, filled with images that perpetuated Imperial Rome’s power, authority, and domination over others. Mixed into this imagery of Roman Imperial power was also the fact that Corinth was a diverse city of traders and merchants. Large numbers of temples from all over the known world were there. Ships would drop off their wares, merchants from a million different places would buy them, and all of this would have taken place under the watchful eyes of Rome. Although Corinth was in Greece, it wasn’t necessarily a Grecian city.

And if that’s the case, then who would Paul’s community recognize as “the Jews” and “the Greeks?” There’s no evidence that there was a Jewish community located in Corinth and, based on the rest of the letter, I’m not sure that Corinth was a mixed community in terms of Jewish and Gentile. Would Paul, then, be their only image of what a Jewish person was like? Or would there be a stereotype that the community would have understood (just like Greek was a stereotype as well)?

I get that Paul is downplaying wisdom here, a rhetoric ploy to actually help reign in some of the groups that he protests against later in the letter. Yet, in this one little bit of text, Paul is busy talking about strength, power, and might. But he does not seem to lay into the image of power that was all around him – the power of Rome. And, from the perspective of Imperial Rome, both the Jews and the Greeks are, to some degree, the same: they are both conquered people. Both groups will have rebellions, both groups will have people sent off into slavery, and both will be saturated by Roman Imperialism. The Greeks might be full of wisdom but they were not Rome. They weren’t THAT powerful. There wisdom might have developed philosophies that covered the known world but, in the nuts and bolts of life, it was Rome that won. They embraced Grecian thought but the wisdom of the world rested in their military, economic, and technological might. If the Jews want signs and the Greeks desire wisdom, what does Rome want? What do all the peoples conquered by Rome want? Why this dichotomy and not something else? Why not talk about the real, visible power that the Corinthians would have lived in? In a Roman colony, why point out the Greeks?

A Static Flavored Kind of Kool Aid Love

During Lent, I’m leading a small study of the Augsburg Confession. It takes place at a lovely apartment on Monday nights in a fantastic apartment looking down on Harlem (making me, inside, not-so-secretly jealous) and we’ve had a great group of participants. In our first week, I set out the historical context for the document and then we dived straight into Article II and IV. Yesterday, we continued with Article III and V. The great thing about this group is how open they are. Groups have personalities above and beyond just the individuals inside it and this group has a great personalities. Opinions, thoughts, concerns, questions, all can be shared in this little safe space. We have lifelong Lutherans, Missouri Synod confirmation kids, pastors, theologians, and even the-about-to-be-baptized, enjoying popcorn together and digging into a 500 year old piece document. It’s really great.

All day, I’ve been thinking about some of the things that were said last night – specifically about the idea of God meeting us/loving us where we are at. It was raised specifically in regard to the concept of Christ as satisfaction for our sins – i.e. Article III and IV to some degree – and I’ve been a tad stuck on it all day. I think what bugs me about that phrase is, at least to me, it just sounds so…static; time-sensititve; historical, momentary. I think, in a lot of ways, I project into that statement a time boundary. My next question is, always, what about next week? Or tomorrow? Or next month? If I’m a dynamic individual, who changes, then what does that phrase “God loving us where we are at” mean? I think an easy way is to merely expand what “at” means – God loves me at this point, and at this point, and at this point. But, in a lot of ways, that makes God a static character. Or, at least, God becomes a static character in God’s relationship to me. I think what really bothers me about that phrase (a phrase I’ll admit that I’ve used all the time) is that it loses the “for you” aspect of Lutheran Christian theology. Without the “for you” being explicit, laid out in concrete terms, I can easily not include myself in that theological phrase of what God does. Maybe, as Luther would say, that’s the old creature in me, trying to figure out how I can, through my own mad skillz, include myself in the sphere of God’s love. But when that phrase is changed, when Christ is made explicit, when the “for you” gets said and done to the point where I can’t even exclude myself out of that relationship…where it’s all a gift? That does it. It’s something I can’t fight even though I do all the time. And, in my mind, it lets God be dynamic, expansive, bigger than me, and I actually feel like, oh hey, God actually cares about me. It’s less “it’s not all up to me” and more “God made it not up to me.” That, that I can get behind. At that point, the phrase actually does something to me. Something happens; an action takes place; things move. Otherwise, I feel like I’m allowed to draw my own boundaries and, if that’s true, why do I get up so early every Sunday?

Well, at least the Sunday School kids think I’m tall

Today, my field education experience was a little…uh..full. With two pastoral associates out of town and the CYF director enjoying the beach, it was just little ol’me and the senior pastor manning the battlements. It was kind of wild. Altar guild, Sunday School, CYF management, Children’s Church, Tech Support, Chalice Bearing, Manager, Safe-breaker – I did it all (or tried to at least). I basically didn’t stop for a few moments and, well, I’m not sure I actually worshiped today. Luckily, the sacraments came to me anyways.

During Sunday School, I corralled my posse around a kid-sized (i.e. Marc-sized) table. Our agenda consisted of five different action items and, well, we got through two. Today we shared the story of building a house on a rock (Spark Bible Style) and played that game where you draw lines to form squares. We split into two teams, three girls on one and two boys on the other. The girls chose the color purple for their team which allowed the guys to be pink. And I must give them credit, those boys OWNED that color. They didn’t bat an eye! I’m proud of those two. However, one of the girls didn’t think that it was fair that there were more girls than boys. She announced, loudly and with authority, that I should play on the boys side because “You’re just a kid anyways – just taller and older looking.”

I’ll take it.

Howard S. Anders, MD – You Are On Notice (1900s style)

On Friday, I wandered down to the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary to do some research on the individual communion cup issue at the turn of the last century. I hoped to discover a massive display of minutes from the conventions of various Lutheran synods but I found their pickings to be very small. I flipped through probably a dozen, spanning the years from 1866 to 1924, and found very little pertaining to the controversy. The library was missing many of the critical pieces that I was hoping to find and look through. The only tidbits I noticed involved a couple of fights pertaining to the adoption of the Common Service for Worship (though whether how communion was done mattered in that, I don’t know), a 20 point theological agreement between the a couple of synods written in 1902 by the guy who wrote an article against the individual communion glasses in 1903, and the fact that the PA ministerium in 1923 had a committee called “Advisory to Congregations Contemplating Change in Method of Administering the Lord’s Supper” (which gave no report that year) and, in 1924, that said committee no longer existed (nor was there reference to why it went away). After those little “discoveries,” I felt like I had wasted a lot of my time. I left the tomb of books, sat down at a computer terminal, and went through some of the electronic databases that Union has access to. I pulled about a dozen articles, most of them from the Journal of the American Medical Association and the British Lancet. This afternoon, I sat down to read and digest them and, it was then, that I met Mr. Howard S. Anders, M.D.

Dr. Anders really enjoyed the individual cup. He gathered research, spoke at medical conferences, and did all he could to propagate the concept of the individual communion cup. And his language was fightin’ words for those of us influenced by the later liturgical renewal movements. He was one of the first to do a before and after study of the common cup, found some bacteria, and claimed that you could get cancer from sharing the common cup. Even though he admitted that no one would probably be able to show that a disease was passed via the common cup, he argued from silence that IT COULD HAPPEN and, thus, the churches should stop using them. He also argued, quite often, about how gross the common cup could be because of mustaches, cigarette smells, and people with bad teeth. He did what he could to make it sound like even looking at the common cup might give you an STD. Yet, even though he was a doctor and tried to claim objectivity, I noticed that his theology heavily influenced his view of how the Lord’s Supper should be administered. He spoke, quite often, about it’s symbolic nature and, well, stuck by his baptist background, and he adamantly pish poshed any idea of unity or oneness from using the common cup. He also said that churches who do this will have an increased number of communicants because of the appearance of cleanliness and that the church services would go faster! For some overworked clergy, I bet that sounded like a good idea.

If Dr. Anders’ data is to be believed, the first church to use individual glasses was in Maine in late 1893. But the most serious scientific and systematic attempt took place in early 1894 in Rochester NY (a trial run at a congregation with 260 members followed by the main event – Central Presbyterian with 1600). Six months later, the shenanigans moved to NYC at Bedford Avenue Baptist Church in Brooklyn. At the American Medical Association conference in Philadelphia in 1897, Dr. Anders claimed that 224 congregations (including 5 Lutheran!) were using individual communion cups. In a letter to the editors of the The Lancet in late 1900, Dr. Anders claimed nearly 800 congregations were using the shot glasses. By 1902, the number was now 1500, with approx 7% being Lutheran. Dr. Anders, in that last report, ended his letter with the following:

It is extremely rare that any antagonistic official action is taken by ostensibly representative ecclesiastic bodies, the matter usually being left to each local church to investigate and decide. The only opposition that has come to my notice for many years was lately that of the Lutheran ministerium meeting at Easton, Pa., at which its action of 1895 was reaffirmed, condemning the use of individual cups, apparently for dogmatic and ritualistic, certainly not for cleanly or sanitary reasons.
“The Prevalence of the Individual Communion Cup,” J. Am. Med. Assoc. Vol 38 (24), 1586.

So there’s the Lutheran connection! And, according to Dr. Anders, its action was rather abnormal. I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere now.

I’m feel pretty, o so pretty

Last night, K and I, after watching a riveting junior olympics gymnastic championship at Madison Square Garden, met up with seminary friends at Marie’s Crisis. My favorite part of the evening was, right before we left, I noticed two young women moving in to have a conversation with us. I don’t know exactly what was said but I did happen to see the look on their faces when they discovered they were talking to a group of soon-to-be priests. (Look 1 was a polite huh?). Gay soon-to-be priests. (Look 2 was a tad more confused). And Episcopalians. (Look 3 was priceless as I think, I THINK, that’s what threw them off the most).

I have a feeling that if they discovered there was a married Lutheran right next to them, their minds would have been completely blown.