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Static or Dynamic

7/31/2012

Broken Saints and Healing Sinners. The title of this blog is intentionally vague and linguistically awkward. It is at once intended to evoke the static and dynamic.

When I attended college sometime near the end of the first millennium the wonderful Lutheran pastor and preacher, John Vannorsdall, or “JV” as we knew him, was my college chaplain. After my freshman year I changed colleges as I was invited to do since I had not taken seriously my academic responsibilities. I returned home to attend school in CT and improve my academic record and I found JV at Yale University having replaced William Sloane Coffin there. During that time had some additional contact with JV through a group that worked across the various colleges in New Haven.

Finally, after having made my way through college and during seminary in Gettysburg JV came to Gettysburg to speak about preaching and the task or art of preaching. One of the things he talked about that day was using images in preaching and how important it was to make sure that when speaking about the Gospel our images were dynamic and not static. The Gospel JV insisted was not like a house, it was like a bridge or better yet Robert Frost’s “The Road not Taken” or “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening,” speaking of roads we traveled and "promises to keep."

The Gospel is leading somewhere, it changes us and everything we are and do. It is fine to use static images, but rarely if ever for the Gospel because the good news about Jesus of Nazareth is always doing something, changing us, being busy in our lives.

The Gospel is like a river flowing from the head waters in Jesus Christ, the source of living water, and it flows through life, rushing downstream. Sometimes it overflows its banks and threatens to engulf us and drown us sins and all, but as Paul proclaims Christ himself raises us up from the waters to new life and we continue on our way ever carried forward and beyond in a new life that is different even while we still struggle and wrestle with our sinfulness.

"Broken Saints" is meant to be a static image; something dead and unmoving. Like the images of Saints hanging on the wall in iconography or frozen in stained glass they don’t move. They are like a broken car; they just sit, immovable. In contrast, "Healing Sinners" is dynamic and implies two possibilities; a sinner in the process of being healed by God’s grace and the possibility of passing on of God’s healing to others. As the disciples learned from God’s grace in Jesus they were sent out into the world 12, 70, and then the whole of the Pentecost community. They moved out and communities were changed, first the Decapolis, then the Roman Empire, and then the world. Today the Gospel still changes things, it changes you and me.

Let these images of "Broken Saints and Healing Sinners" evoke in you contemplation of all the ways in which you and the saints around you have been broken and captive to the old Adam and the constant battle against self-centeredness. unmoving, frozen in place, and dead in its tracks. And let it inspire in you the Spirit of God and God’s grace in Jesus; setting you free, healing and restoring your relationship to God and neighbor. The truth is before they were frozen images on our walls those saints were all sinners. Sinners animated by God’s grace and who breathing in the Spirit traveled amazing journeys.

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Just an Average Joe.

7/31/2012

3 Comments

Welcome again to Broken Saints and Healing Sinners…

One of the great dangers in life is being declared a saint by everyone around you. The greatest danger is that you will begin to believe in your own press. When that happens you can become entrapped, worrying more about protecting the image than, well, whatever. Image becomes transcendent; it becomes everything.

Here in the central valleys of Pennsylvania we are struggling with what to make of the legacy of Joseph Vincent Paterno or JoePA as we lovingly refer to him. Yes, despite all that has been laid at his feet many of us still love Joe. The problem is that, many or most of us were captive to the image we had of JoePA and forgot that he was a real man, flesh and blood, and feet of clay.

We were probably more captive to the image than Joe was. He was, after all, a guy, if a legendary guy, but none the less a guy who still had his phone number in the local phone book. He walked to his campus office everyday encountering students and members of the community. Sometimes he was deep in thought but often he was greeting and saying, “Hi,” to those who crossed his path. He is said to have frequently talked to students encouraging them in their studies. To those who lived in State College he was truly an average Joe. He was, also, however, JoePA and that image was bigger than life and it was built to benefit the sports media, the marketing of the athletic department and the bottom line of the financial statement of the university. Just an image of rolled up chinos dangling over black coaching shoes or a pair thick black rimmed glasses was enough to evoke JoePA.

It must be dreadful to be so enshrouded and enshrined; I am blessed to know that it will never happen to me. I always have folks willing to point out my faults but I like it that way even if sometimes it ticks me off for a bit. I, usually, can see their point and admit it to myself, although rarely do I admit it to my wife. Hmm, I wonder if Joe took out the garbage. I bet he did.

The problem with casting human beings as saints, even human beings like JoePA, is that they are all "cracked pots," saint and sinner. BTW, that’s crack”ed” pots, although my friends might slightly shorten that description for me. Still when we see the flaws in saints in real life we can become enraged and outraged. We get "pissed off" because somehow someone has let us down. We rant and we rage, on and on, because we expected better, after all, they were our saint. Our hope.

Truth is there is only one real hope and it is in the person of Jesus Christ. If I may spin a little heresy I have a vision right now of God and JoePA talking a little football and wondering how to bring real healing to the sport and community that Joe loved so deeply and where his wife, Sue, and family still live.

The image most of us carry about JoePA is about as lifelike and real as the stand up cardboard figures that people used to buy of JoePA or stand next to for a photograph. They are clay pot images all and those pots have flaws and are fragile and get broken and have cracks and get frayed around the edges. Sadly, when they do we are often quick to toss them aside.

Healing saints, however, are dynamic. They are filled with life. They make errors and hurt others often with the best of intentions. Sometimes they have great sins and sometimes those sins are magnified by us in the same way "we made" those folks into saints in the first place. Yet all at once those same sinners are so filled with God’s grace and a life and Spirit that they cannot stop and so they keep moving forward carrying that God given grace with them.

And so the real question becomes then who is the real crack”ed” pot, JoePA or us. I’m pretty darn sure the guy who lived in the same house for 40+ years, had one of the lowest salaries in a major university football program and who walked to work every day didn’t ask for that pedestal we put him on. So we must turn our vision inward to where we know intimately all of the flaws of broken saints far, far too well. In doing that we recognize why we looked for heroes elsewhere, even if we needed to build those golden calves ourselves.

The good news is that just as I am sure that JoePA rests secure in Christ so, too, do broken saints like you and me. In truth, it is Jesus Christ himself who shatters our rigidity as saints and the hard cast images of others and instead animates us forward as sinners. He is freeing us to do the good thing and even sometimes the wrong thing hoping and trusting in his grace.

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First Post

7/31/2012

2 Comments

Welcome to Broken Saints and Healing Sinners a blog dedicated to manifesting Luther’s concept of “simul justus et peccator” in our lives today.

Martin Luther and the Lutheran reformers defined the reality of sin as a constant part of the believer’s life. This was in contrast to the Roman Catholic theology of Luther's day which confessed the truth of Original Sin BUT then stated that it was washed away in baptism and only remained evident in concupiscent sin, a "tendency" to sin but that is not real sin unless it is acted upon. In other words, you were still clean until you got down and dirty, physically sinning again. Instead of helping one in the daily struggle against sin this idea of concupiscent will only keep you up at night obsessing over dictionaries or the object of your sin.

Wait, that is one of the first things you will need to get used to here. I’m a typical northeasterner and can be given to the broad sarcasm of the northeast corridor from Philly to Boston. You may need to double check that the sarcasm early warning system on your computer is properly functioning and calibrated.

Anyway, Luther never bought into the whole "it is but it isn’t" argument. In his good German obsessiveness in detail it was either sin or it wasn’t, no room for the mamby pampy. Luther believed that thought and action were combined in a single reality called sin. Remember President Jimmy Carter, he understood this when noting he had committed adultery by lusting in his heart. The Gospel ofMatthew in chapter 5, verses 21ff expresses this belief which is where Luther got it, too. "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” To Luther sin was sin and it was real and he had the doubts and nightmares to prove it.

Luther found comfort and richness in Paul’s expressions of sin’s reality in believers' struggles in Romans chapter 7. Therefore if baptism was the very power of justification then it justified real sinners with real sins, not imaginary nor “kind of” sins. Real sins by real sinners like politicians, union members, hedge fund bankers, drug addicts, alcoholics, pastors and parishioners, everyone including the little old blue haired woman sitting in the next to the last pew, broken saints all, Jew and Gentile, Roman Catholic and Protestant, Islamacist and Buddhist all sinners justified by God’s grace. All healed by God’s grace in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, God healing sinners, “Broken saints and healing sinners.”

Christ justified broken saints, real sinners, in the very midst of the constant struggle to let go of Original Sin and our self-centeredness for God’s sweet embrace and vision of the possibilities of life and all of creation. Therefore one, that would be you and me and everyone as individuals, was constantly and irrevocably simultaneously both saint and sinner all in one not so neatly wrapped package. Being a sinner was to be the very person and reason that God had sent the Son, Jesus of Nazareth, into the world.

It is for Broken Saints and Healing Sinners that I start this blog. It is to tell our stories of brokenness and healing and to celebrate Jesus Christ who loves us simultaneously as saint and sinner. Feel free to share your stories or to ask questions in the comments.

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Static or Dynamic

Just an Average Joe.

First Post

Pastor Bill Esborn

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