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Radically Conservative and Liberal Without Fear.

9/30/2012

Lord give us your Spirit that we might believe and trust in you in the midst of the chaos and struggle of life and above all things.

When Martin Luther began the Reformation by nailing the 95 Theses to the door at the Wittenberg Castle church he was beginning what he conceived of as a conservative movement. It was a call to the church to return to its roots in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and salvation by grace. The results were anything but conservative and sparked a period of dynamic change resulting from war, turmoil and chaos. The Word of God, however, is always radical and transforming.

Times of chaos often result in tremendous periods of dynamic transition and progress. It is written in the opening verses of the book of Genesis that the “ruach,” the spirit of God, moved over the face of the waters. This word “waters” can, also, be translated as “the deep,” “the void,”or “the chaos.” If we understand the word as “chaos” then the creative force of God’s Spirit calls creation and order out of this “chaos.” The word of God changes everything.

Luther sought in the years following the start of the Reformation and in the resulting chaos of war, theological and physical, to bring order and direction to the chaos. He organized the German language and helped to establish a fixed grammar for it. He established economic principles for the function of the market and the community. He taught and established regular education for youth, including the creation of the Small Catechism for teaching theology, God talk, in the home. He prepared students to become pastors and put the Bible into the hands of the people in their own vernacular. Needless to say Luther was a busy man. But he understood that order was necessary in life and he saw that as the role of civil authority; to maintain order and suppress chaos so that people could hear the promise of the Gospel unfettered from fear and threat of destruction.

We are presently living in a country where chaos has once again been on the rise. Ever since 9/11 chaos has been present in our public and private consciousness in a way not known since WWII. This chaos can be used by some to promote fear. This chaos can be used by some as an excuse to diminish rights long secured to us as citizens of this great country by those who first drafted the Constitution and public order by which we direct ourselves as a nation. At the same time people can refuse to be accountable to any group or anyone except self leaving in their wake decay, confusion and, yes, more chaos.

What is from God does not lead to chaos except to bring judgment but always there is God’s grace and hope. The disorder of the Garden of Eden leads to judgment and expulsion but with the blessing of clothing. Cain receives the mark of God as protection after God’s judgment for the chaotic act of killing Abel. The flood of Noah gave way to new order and life with the promise of breeding pairs and a rainbow as a covenant sign of God’s promise. The chaos of the wandering in the wilderness gave way to the people of Israel ordering their lives under the law of God.

God’s will leads to order, not necessarily by force but by God’s will and our faithfulness. As a last resort it uses the force of law to restrain those who persist in destruction and the neglect and harm of neighbor. It treats all people equally before the law, all fall short of the glory of God. In the present confusion and chaos that now surrounds us, we have the opportunity to speak and act on God’s word of truth and reformation to the world.

Faithfulness to God means taking the risk to reach out and love one’s neighbor in a hope of creating a new order in life instead of accepting the belief that enmity can never be changed into friendship and enemies can never become friends and partners. Chaos always gives way to the kingdom of God in our life and death.

“And though this world, with devils filled,
        Should threaten to undo us;
We will not fear, for God hath willed
        His truth to triumph through us.”    M.Luther

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Lord Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word

9/24/2012

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Living Word of God grant us the eyes and the ears and the heart to understand the truth and power of your word among your prophets past and present.

    For the last year and more there has been an increasing unrest within our nation and dissatisfaction with the political condition of our nation. Globally, we have watched the events of the Arab Spring in places like Eqypt, Syria, Iran, Libya and more as the citizenry of numerous places in the Middle East rose up to demand justice and fairness and the removal of governments dominated by dictators and power regimes. Some were successful and some less  so. We now live in a period of uncertainty as to what comes next in places where newly emergent governments struggle to gain the confidence of the people.

    We, too, are a nation deeply divided across numerous issues, social barriers, and political positions. We have seen groups rise like the Tea Party and other new ones arise like Occupy Wall St. Suddenly, in our country the Occupy movement seemed be gathering real momentum under the theme of, “We Are the 99%,” but now has cooled. Why is all this ferment and political action happening. One explanation that makes sense to me is that people around the world and within our country are feeling disenfranchisement from the powers, political and economic, that impact our lives. We watch, continually, as the economy moves in fits and starts and the market up and down and recognize that we seemingly have little ability to impact anything of consequence. We feel cut off. I believe that many people watching the courage of the public in places without democracy led the people to ask why not here and why are we not making ourselves heard.

     Scripture points us towards a belief that in the fall in the Garden of Eden and with disobedience and the emergence of sin we became similarly cut off from God. Sin resulted in a separation between us and God who in divine perfection would not or could not tolerate the presence of sin. A humanity that had been created to be in constant relationship with God, as creature and creator, turned towards self-worship. The whole story of the Bible is the relationship of God and humanity across this separation. Ultimately, the separation is only bridged when God takes the action to become “God with us” in the person of Jesus.

    Knowing the story of scripture we know and confess the followings things.

           1) God created all things to be good and in relationship to God as creator.

           2) Humanity turned toward self and self interests in disobedience and away from God.

           3) God sought numerous ways to turn people away from their sin and back towards God and God’s will including the law and the prophets.

           4)  God showed the world the path away from sin and self interest in the person of Jesus who saw even his own life as something to be given for others.

           5) Jesus taught us that there are two great commandments and that all of the law and the preaching (of the prophets) are based on these commandments.

           6) These commandments are: Love the Lord your God with all your being and love your neighbor like yourself.

           7) God’s answer to the experience of human disenfranchisement is to turn us away from self interest and back towards God in and through Christ’s Spirit and towards our neighbor overcoming disenfranchisement and separation.

     The Christian prophetic voice of proclamation has a great deal to say to the present unrest in our country. What is has to say speaks of community and coming together instead of dividing and separating. The prophets called the community of faith away from self interest to insure impartial justice and care for the poor and the outsider. We proclaim that God calls us to turn each from his or her own path and towards God’s ways. God calls us to love God above everything including power, control, money, and more and to love our neighbor as our self. The calling means turning away from of self interests to love our neighbor and economic justice for all; to speak out for equitable opportunity and a fair share in the market place and justice and hope for the 99 and to bring the 1 and the 99 back into community with each other.

        The Roman Catholic Pastoral letter "Economic Justice for All" from 1986 says the following:

28. The basis for all that the Church believes about the moral dimensions of economic life is its vision of the transcendent worth—the sacredness—of human beings.

"The dignity of the human person, realized in community with others, is the criterion against which all aspects of economic life must be measured. All human beings, therefore, are ends to be served by the institutions that make up the economy, not means to be exploited for more narrowly defined goals. Human personhood must be respected with a reverence that is religious. When we deal with each other, we should do so with the sense of awe that arises in the presence of something holy and sacred. For that is what human beings are: we are created in the image of God (Gn 1:27). Similarly, all economic institutions must support the bonds of community and solidarity that are essential to the dignity of persons. Wherever our economic arrangements fail to conform to the demands of human dignity lived in community, they must be questioned and transformed. These convictions have a biblical basis."

        Faithfulness to God's Word is not just about what is good for me and my family. It transforms our vision of how we use our time, talents and treasure and how we use them to minister in our daily lives andbuild our relationships and our community.

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A Gift by Any Other Name

9/22/2012

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Gracious Father, teach us the joy of true grattitude for every gift we receive from your hand and grant us the joy of sharing our whole being with others.

      As we approach the harvest season in rural Pennsylvania I would like us to pause for a moment to think about the concepts of gratitude versus indebtedness. When someone offers us a gift our response can be one of gratitude or one of indebtedness. Consider for a moment the difference between those two.

      Gratitude moves us with a sense of joy into real thanksgiving for the gift or favor we have received. On the contrary it is, also, possible to react negatively with a sense of indebtedness. Feeling burdened to return the favor. Rather than thanksgiving this leaves us with a sense of uneasiness or maybe even suspicion of "What does this person want in return, “quid pro quo?” This is the difference between hearing God's gracious love in Jesus Christ as either "Law or Gospel."

      Spiritually, this suspicion deprives us the true joy of and for the gift and the real blessing that it is meant to be. Instead of real passionate and exuberant thanksgiving we settle for a sense of obligation to God and a new burden, a new law. It is an expression of our sinfulness in the flesh that focuses on, "What will it cost ME to respond appropriately?"

      The Gospel, the Good News, that we have been delivered from our sin and the sentence of death under the law of God through the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection is the type of promise that transforms everything in our life. We who once were dead are now alive graced by God with a new life which can never be taken away from us again. What amazing news! What hope in the midst of the struggles of life! Even if we die in this life that is not the last word because God has raised from the dead Jesus of Nazareth so that we may have abundant life, so abundant not even death can separate from this loving act of God. What joy we must celebrate!

      And yet, how many find no reason for joy in their lives. They find no reason to come to church filled with thanksgiving for what they have already received. In fact, the good news of the Gospel becomes just one more burden for them. Why? Often because they are suspicious of the gift. They want to know what the “quid pro quo” is. In fact, some Christians only come to church because they believe that is now their "obligation" for the great gift God has given. They treat the Gospel as some new obligation to the law as if it is some type of prepaid indenture. Christ died for us now we must REALLY work to keep the law. They ignore the logic that if we couldn’t keep the law before then it is unlikely we can keep it now. The law drove us to Christ but now we live in the liberty of the Gospel.

      In contrast when one really hears the Gospel and its proclamation of grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ the only heartfelt response is real, true, abiding thanksgiving; thanksgiving in deep and true gratitude that we who have deserved nothing but death and damnation have received instead life. Life not just for today but for every day, new life in exchange for our old one of rags and shame falling short of the very glory for which God created us in the beginning. When we are filled with such gratitude we cannot wait to hear the story told again, we cannot wait to tell others of God’s love, we cannot wait to help at the local food pantry, give drink to the thirsty workman on the street, and bring a meal for the family of the neighbor battling cancer. When we understand the truth of the Gospel “quid pro quo” is the last thing on our minds because we have already received that which can never be repaid and we have received it freely from the hand of God.

      Thanks be to God for all his good gifts, for creation and Spirit, for body and soul, for Law and for Gospel each in its right place and for God’s grace sine qua non. Thanks be to God for real “JOY and Thanksgiving!”

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Weary of Waiting for the Kingdom

9/15/2012

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Lord, teach me to pray, "Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

      This has been one of those incredible weeks of news in the world, one filled with events that leave me as a Christian struggling to decide what to make of it all. Muslim mobs are incited by a film produced by “Christians” here in the United States, a film created to embarrass and incite hate among faithful Muslims, angry mobs resulting from the film turning on the very American diplomats who had worked long and hard at great personal risk to help those Libyans gain the freedom of their nascent democracy, those same angry mobs used as cover to kill those American diplomats by people filled with even more hate, and still others using the tragedy of these lost lives to personal ends without regard to the pain of family, friends and coworkers of those who have died. That chain of events only scratches the surface of this week.

       Every day I pray the words, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” and I still wonder if it will ever come. I wonder not in a way like those obsessed with the Apocalypse and whether God is expecting to draw closed the curtain on all of this at any moment but rather in the way that looks around and sees and hears the real divisions that exist in the world. Often divisions based in religions that acknowledge a belief in a common God if not the same belief in that God.

       I suspect Luther had some of those days, too. Days when he found himself wondering just how to make sense of it all because nothing around him, nothing around me, looks anything like the Kingdom of God coming to our lives and to this world. It all looks like hate and chaos and a will to destroy rather than a will to build up.

       In his Small Catechism Luther reminded us that the will of God and the coming of the Kingdom of God does not need my prayer but that what I engage in is to pray that God’s Kingdom might come to me and that the Kingdom does this in God’s grace given to us, you and me, in God’s Word, Jesus, and in our living Godly lives NOW and in eternity. There is nothing either you or I can do to hasten or delay the Kingdom of God. It comes in its own way and at its own pace but it becomes ours in our living it in the Spirit, continually, even when the rest of the world rails against it. In speaking to the how this is done Luther writes, “Whenever God breaks and hinders every evil scheme and will of the devil, the world, and our flesh which would not allow us to hallow God name and would prevent the coming of His Kingdom. And God’s will comes about whenever God strengthens and keeps us steadfast in His Word and in faith until the end of our lives. This is God’s gracious and good will.”

       Living this will of God IS the evidence of our salvation. It is not something we do to gain the Kingdom and salvation. Salvation is God’s inexplicable gift. That is what makes me a saint, God’s grace, nothing else, sola gratia. By faith, belief and trust, in God’s grace I find myself drawn into God’s life not because it gains me anything. I’m drawn because to it because of the words of Peter from John’s gospel that we frequently sing in the liturgy, “Lord to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life.”

       Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” David Thoreau said, “Live the life you imagined,” and, also, “The world does not change, we change.” As we receive the Word of God we receive the change we are called to imagine in our lives and the one we are called to be. It is costly change, because it calls us to give up our lives for God’s life, our ways for God’s ways. In that imagination and vision we are called not to worry about the world and the chaos around us so much, and to go about living faithful lives a bit more. This is not to neglect responsibility for the world but to understand the best thing we can do for it is to live faithfully in God’s Kingdom which is already present, already given to us, already ours in Jesus Christ.

       So today let me walk a little closer to Jesus, let his will be my will, and let me forgive all those who perpetrate hate and suspicion and a belief that I, as a Christian, believe myself better than them or different than them. Let me show them I am not, “the other," but rather I am as Christ, servant to all.

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Be Pro Living in Every Choice!

9/4/2012

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May God bless us in every decision and choice with the divine wisdom of creation that leans forward into life.

One of the most divisive issues within the Body of Christ is that of politics, and within politics, the issues surrounding abortion and the care and treatment of the poor and needy. Religious conservatives and liberals often seem to establish a dividing line between these two issues.

Religious conservatives are often adamantly, and sometimes tragically, campaigning and protesting on behalf of the Pro Life movement even to the point of irrationally taking life themselves. Simultaneously, religious liberals often being among the biggest advocates for programs to support the poor and needy can seem dismissive of any responsibility to help a pregnant teen with the resources to give birth to her child.

What is most frustrating is that all of this is such an arbitrary division of religious ethic that we must deem it more about politics than faith. It is a division with more than enough sin evident on all sides and that is exactly what we would expect of a people who are saints and sinners.

Often to be Pro Life seems to be more Pro Birth than Pro Life. Far too often those who are Pro Life seem identified with a politic that makes few provisions to secure the health and welfare of a child once it is born. It is, frequently, a politic that embraces a sense of moral satisfaction in eliminating all legal forms of abortion, increasingly by including no exceptions, not even for rape or the health of the mother. I have regularly heard this view often excuse itself from the responsibility of providing for the child once born by promoting statements demanding personal accountability. To the opposite extreme there are liberal factions within the church that appear to give little or no expression of concern for the unborn but insist on a maximal amount of aid to the child living in poverty (Proverbs 22, James 2 and many, many others). They fervently defend the right of individual choice seemingly believing there are no consequences in choosing to terminate a pregnancy. Each side seems to wash its hands of a portion of being Christ to the least of these (Matt 25).

How can either group believe that they are fully embracing a Christ like attitude towards life and towards their neighbor?

In other words, there is plenty of sin within the saints, left and right, as they politicize themselves around this issue. What each and all must recognize and embrace is that there are consequences all along the way with every human action. Consequences in the choice of personal relationships, consequences with the decision to engage in sex and in unprotected sex, consequences related to the use and choice of birth control, consequences with being pregnant, with choosing to carry a child to term or to terminate a pregnancy, consequences with denying safe, legal abortions and forcing those struggling with terminating a pregnancy to resort to back alley conditions with or without medical professionals, consequences in placing a child up for adoption or in raising it oneself in less than ideal financial conditions, consequences in cutting budgets for health care for children in poverty, cutting funds to W.I.C. and cutting support programs for women and children with inadequate resources, consequences in closing school meal programs, consequences in eliminating educational options and increasing the likelihood of another life trapped in poverty, consequences EVERYWHERE, and EVERY step of the way; consequences not just for mother and child and father, and grandparents and communities, consequences in crime and other social ills. There are consequences for everyone. There are consequences for you and for me. Those consequences can produce death at any step or any decision along the way, not just in the purging of a womb and not just in whether a child in poverty makes it to the emergency room or lives in conditions inadequate for abundant life.

I, myself, am pro choice with fear and trembling. I am only Pro Choice because I cannot imagine dictating to another person of conscience what they will or must do when faced with the scope of those life choices and the consequences of every additional choice along the journey of their life nor can I imagine imprisoning them for what to me is already an unimaginable choice when it is made in the honest struggle of conscience.

In being Pro Choice, however, I am not excused as a Christian from doing everything I can to help that pregnant young woman or that mother of four already living in poverty have as many resources, financial and personal, as needed to bring a pregnancy to full term and the successful birth of a child. A child who I am, also, obligated, personally, to personally help support with the resources for becoming a thriving fellow saint who, also, embraces the consequences of each decision that affects every other decision made in Christ. I embrace the decision that costs me everything, the decision that costs me my life and gives me the life Christ has purchased for me. I embrace the decision to follow Christ. At the same time, unlike Christ I am a finite human being with finite resources and that makes it all horribly complicated and difficult and tied up in my struggle against sin. I am saint and sinner.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that grace was costly because it takes away all our sinful ways of seeing and living and calls us to living as Christ. And so, I become an enigma like the pacifist Bonhoeffer plotting the assassination of Hitler and I go forward working to make sure every child is wanted, and that every child has the best opportunity to be born AND live AND grow in health and abundance and yet still believe so firmly in God's grace that I can leave to others the consequences of their decisions knowing God's grace is sufficient even for the unborn because God has known me and them even before we were formed in the womb. God's grace is not an excuse for sloppiness in our decisions and choices but it is sufficient in all things.

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Radically Conservative and Liberal Without Fear.

Lord Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word

A Gift by Any Other Name

Weary of Waiting for the Kingdom

Be Pro Living in Every Choice!

Pastor Bill Esborn

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