The breaking of bread and the road of life

Text: Luke 24:13-35

             This week a professor mine from Augustana shared an opinion piece on Facebook, which had been printed in the New York Times and was about the Catholic Church and modern apologetics. My professor pointed out a line where the author said, “Traditional apologetics has started with metaphysical arguments for God’s existence.” Now, that was a lot of big words—and I hated when my seminary professors would say things like that and not explain them—so I’m not going to do that to you. In layman’s terms the author was claiming that defenses of the faith (what we call “apologetics”) have traditionally started by first arguing for the existence of God. At first blush that makes a lot of sense; it’s very scientific; it doesn’t assume anything, least of all that there is a God of the universe. But what if I told you that the idea of starting by proving God is a completely modern notion that would have seemed absolutely strange to almost anybody not born in the last four hundred years?

Remembering our past: Easter-life

Text: Luke 24:1-16

The History Channel’s six-week mini series on the Bible is wrapping up tonight and, in spite of the fact that it’s gotten good reviews, I won’t be watching in large part because when Jesus rises from the dead there is no way the producers of that series are going to capture the look that I imagine on the disciples’ faces. Somebody in charge of production is going to be way too pious about this and direct the actors who play the disciples to look completely dopey in an attempt to convey awe. But I know how they really looked; it’s the way somebody looks when you tell them something and they think they know where you’re going with it. “Yes, yes, tomb, Jesus, gardener, yeah, yeah… resurrection… Wait, what?” That’s what the History channel isn’t going to get—that “wait, what?” moment. How could they? The actors know the script and, let’s face it, the History channel isn’t budgeting for A-list actors to play Jesus’ disciples. Anyway, none of us can put ourselves in the place of those disciples that first Easter morning.

Father, forgive us

In this life we all make the choices that seem prudent to us in our daily lives. Each of us is the product of innumerable decisions and influences, some forced upon us and others discovered for ourselves over the long and wavering course of our lives. We are all travelers in a long, trail-less wilderness, carving for ourselves a path based on instincts and hunches and following the ways laid before us by others. That is our life, and few, if any of us, know where we are heading or have any idea what we are doing.

            That is the truth wrapped up in Jesus’ words as they raised him on the cross at Golgotha. “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” If those were only words for a people long ago and completely unaware of the Savior of the world living in their midst it would be one thing, but a part of us knows better than that. They are timeless words whose edge cuts through the annals of history to this day. Father, forgive us, because we don’t know what we are doing. In the midst of a world debating complex issues of life and death, love and hate, freedom and temperance: Father, forgive us for we don’t know what we are doing. When faced with criticism; when we are no longer open to debate; when our faith is tired and waning, Father, forgive us.

The order of operations matter: The Last Supper and the betrayal

Luke 22:14-27

The order of operations are important.

            This is something we learned back in middle school math class. Maybe you remember getting a problem like 1 + 3 x 7 x (17 – 4) ^ 2. Maybe if you have a really good memory you might even recall something about “permdas”: Parentheses, exponents, roots, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction—the order of how you are to rightly do a problem. If you just do it from left to right it’s not going to turn out so well.

Apparently roots have disappeared since the days I was in school...

            The Last Supper is not a math problem, but the order of operations are still important. The stars of the show are Jesus and Judas, but the way the action plays out is very important for the moral that we take away from the story. We start with a simple assumption: anybody who betrayed Jesus is a person whose actions are beyond grace. After all, even when Judas Iscariot is first listed in the names of the disciples earlier in Luke’s Gospel he is given the epitaph, “traitor.” We know from the beginning of the story who the ultimate “bad guy” is. Judas Iscariot: the man who betrayed Jesus.

            But the order of operations matter.

Back to basics: A look at homosexuality and Christianity

This is tough thing to write, because I know people will care. There are so few subjects I write on that many people care about, which is strange when you think about it, because my primary areas of interest are salvation and Jesus and all things that are very close to the heart of Christianity. Yet, as much as I hear positive things in my day-to-day life from loving members of the churches I serve I know that this piece is much nearer to where peoples' emotions live. To be honest, that concerns me, but the locus of the culture wars are always somewhere. What's important to admit firstly is that these are matters secondary to the faith. I think that's sometimes hard to hear for those who see the stance toward gays in America as cruel and oppressive; and I think that's hard to hear for those who see the acceptance of gays as undermining the biblical principles on which their faith is founded. But I believe it nonetheless to be entirely secondary to the primary message of the Gospel, which is something like: you are saved by grace through faith apart from works of law (because of Christ dying on the cross and rising again).

With that said, I am cautious to add another opinion to this mess, though I do so because too few have brought us back to the basic presuppositions we bring to the gay marriage debate. One side wants to make it all about love and acceptance, which is unfair, because one can certainly love a person while believing their actions to be unhealthy or sinful. The other side wants to make it all about God's law, which is unfair, because scripture only gives us a partial--and hardly timeless--view of what the law demands.

Why trying to accommodate our youth is killing the church...and what to do about it

In the world of the internet the way to get something across is with snazzy enumeration. The simpler the better. It's hard to make a well-rounded argument when the average reader will click away by the end of this sentence if they're not already interested. In this environment it's impossible not to oversimplify incredibly complex issues by suggesting that entire movements can be fixed if only we realize these simple 3, 5 or 10 steps. It's hardly ever that simple.

Case and point: the decline of young people in the church. I just read a thoughtful blog post on the Top 10 Reasons our Kids Leave Church. I mean it when I say that this was well-written and I agree with just about all of it. Many churches try too hard to be relevant (#10), make church about entertainment (#9), dumb down the message and never allow kids to ask questions (#8 and #7 and #3), elevate feelings above faith (#6 and #4), water down the purpose of church to something like "community" (#5), suggest morality is our primary mission  (#2) and create a pragmatic, self-serving gospel (#1). All of this is good to point out, and I bet the casual Christian would never have realized that part of what makes church attractive in the short-term are things that also make it unappealing in the long run.

The Hero We Need, Not the Hero We Deserve: Jesus and the Dark Knight

Text: Luke 19:41-48

          One of the great things about reading the Bible in an orderly fashion, as we’ve been doing now for almost a year, is that you begin to see how stories connect in ways you may never have realized. For instance, you’re probably all pretty familiar with the Palm Sunday story. Jesus comes to Jerusalem, people wave palm branches and shout praises at him. That is the yearly ritual. It’s our intro-to-Holy-Week-Jesus-party. Everybody’s going to be there: Jesus, the donkey, some disciples, people waving Palm branches; it’s going to be a blast. However, I should warn you that since we’re reading more than just the Hosannas and the branches, this party might not turn out quite like you would want. You see, Jesus isn’t doing anything particularly royal in Jerusalem. He’s not making some nice gesture for his big supporters, and he’s not having a campaign fundraiser with $10,000 plates. Instead, Jesus is going to do what Jesus does. He foretells the destruction of Jerusalem (just wait about forty years) and then he heads over to the temple to throw some of the wealthy out. You can imagine, that was unexpected for the gathering throngs of supporters. His speech was heavy on the judgment and his actions didn’t seem to curry any favor with the wealthy elite. What kind of politician was this Jesus anyway?