This is the third week after the Epiphany—the season of revelation, of seeing the unexpected. The best way to get at what’s going on in the season of Epiphany is to contrast it with Christmas. At Christmas we get to look back, as it were, with 20/20 hindsight.

We worship that little baby wrapped up and lying there in a feeding trough as though he was God in the flesh.

We proclaim that this little baby is The Anointed one of Israel—the source of the world’s hope and peace and joy.

But in Epiphany it’s as though the Church directs us to forget everything we know about Jesus, to put ourselves in the shoes of those first witnesses to his life and to ask with them “Just who is this Nazarene, anyway?”

So in Epiphany we get little snapshots of the life of Jesus: his presentation and naming in the Temple, his baptism in the Jordan and this week we turn to Jesus’ teaching ministry. They are meant to be windows into who the gospel writers said Jesus was and is. Only in Epiphany—and this is so often the case in the gospels—the question gets turned around on us:

“Who do you say that Jesus is?”

So Jesus comes on the scene, in our gospel lesson this morning, proclaiming, “The time has been fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is here.”

Now it’s important to note that of our four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), biblical scholars tell us that Mark was the first to be written down (sometime in the early 70s ad). So this proclamation in Mark 1:14 is the first words of Jesus ever to be recorded. We have no context here. This Jewish Rabbi just comes from out of nowhere and says, “It’s time!”

Well, time for what, Jesus?  Tool time? Game time? Bed time? What time is it, exactly?

As it turns out, all of the first witnesses to Jesus would have understood exactly what he was talking about…well, sort of. They would have understood what Jesus was alluding to, but the claim he was making would have sounded very strange indeed.

Let me see if I can unpack that a bit. All of the first witnesses to Jesus, that is to say Jews in the first century, believed that the God of Israel was a good and just and merciful God. Just think of the Psalms: “For the Lord is good; his mercy endures forever, his faithfulness to all generations” (Ps 100:5). They also believed that this good and merciful God ruled the whole world. Again the Psalms: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all those who dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1). So that was their faith: Their God is a good God who ruled the whole world.

But their experience told them something different: not only, it seemed, was God not ruling the whole world, he didn’t even seem to be ruling his own people. Israel was subject to the pagan Roman emperor. But that was just the flavor of the week—before Rome it was the Macedonians. And before them it was the Persians, before them the Meads, then the Babylonians, then the Assyrians, and Egyptians. And it wasn’t just a matter of political rulership. The Romans were a violent and oppressive regime who defiled the holy Temple and put onerous tax burdens on the peasant class. (Some historians speculate that peasants in first century Palestine may have been paying 75% – 80% of their annual earnings to the Romans). And they squashed any hint of resistance with violence. The world seemed to be a place of sin, injustice, sickness, demon possession, death and violence.

Imagine how difficult it is two hold these two things together: the faith that your God is a good God who rules the world, and the experience that the world is full of sin, injustice, death and violence. Imagine the kind of tension they must have lived with.

We feel that same tension sometimes, don’t we? I mean even in our prayers later this morning we praise the holy, eternal, steadfast God of all creation.

…our stronghold

…our refuge

…and our deliverance.

And then we turn right around and acknowledge that ours is a world of endanger species and fragile ecosystems.

…That the cities of the world cry out for peace from the cycle of violence that perpetuates war.

…We pray for those who flee from war, poverty and famine. And for those who suffer from natural disaster.

…We pray for those who need healing from addiction, despair and illness. And for comfort for the dying.

Which is it? Are we caught in a cycle of violence that perpetuates war? Or is God our deliverance?

This tension we feel is what psychologists call cognitive dissonance—it results from try to hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. We can handle the pressure for a while, but eventually something’s got to give. We either have to give up one of the beliefs, or adopt a third belief that can make sense of the other two together.

That’s just what the Jews did. They say, “If God really is good and he really does rules the whole world, then he won’t let things go on like this forever. Eventually God will intervene in human history.  He’ll set things right.” This belief—that God will eventually come and clean up the mess that’s been made of the world—is what theologians call—You ready? Big fancy theological word here—eschatology. That’s a very important word if you want to understand the New Testament.

Say it with me, ready? Eschatology.

It comes from a little Greek word eschaton—it means “the end.” It’s a normal, everyday Greek word. If you go out for lunch after Church today, and there’s a long line up to the hostess’ desk, and if you were a Greek-speaking person, you would be looking for the eschaton. And it wouldn’t have anything to do with theology—you’d be looking for the end of the line. So when first century Jews talked about eschatology, they were talking about “When’s it going to end?”

When is it going to end?

Now let me be clear. They were not talking about the end of the world. Eschatology is not about people going up to heaven and the physical word coming to an end. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that it is. That’s not a biblical picture. The biblical picture is not one of people going up, but of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven and of God restoring the creation. Read Revelation 21 and 22. God doesn’t want to destroy the world—God created the word, and then he looked out at the whole thing and said it’s good, good, good, good, good, very good. It would be an embarrassment for God to destroy the world, like a manufacture having to recall a car back to the factory. Eschatology is not about the end of the world, it’s about the end of sin, injustice, oppression, sickness, demon possession, death, and violence. When will the good God who rules the world, step in and clean up this mess?

When is it going to end?

And so first century Jews thought that you could divide history is tow basic segments. There was the time in which they were currently living, called “This Present Evil Age.” This Present Evil Age was characterized by Israel being ruled over by some foreign regime, by evil, injustice, violence and death.

But there was a day coming—what the Old Testament calls “The Day of the Lord”—in which the Messiah, God’s Anointed One, would come and overthrow the Romans (or whatever regime was oppressing Israel at the time) and create a society characterized by righteous, justice and peace. And he would thereby usher in “The New Age,” or what the gospel writes often call “the kingdom of God.” Now again, don’t think of the kingdom of God as someplace else, where people go to get away from the world. The kingdom of God is about God’s ruling and reining right here among us. That’s why Jesus taught us to pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Those two lines say the same thing. God’s kingdom coming means his will being done right here on earth, the same as it is in heaven. So the kingdom of God is about God putting a stop to oppression and violence.

When is it going to end?

When will God finally rule a world of righteousness and peace and abundant life?

When will we see The Day of the Lord?

When will it be time?

So now we can see how the first witnesses to Jesus would have understood his teaching, and why it would have seemed so strange, so weird, so…almost…stupid. Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is here.”

You can almost hear someone speaking up. “Wait, Jesus, could you repeat that. I must have misheard you. I thought you said ‘the kingdom of God is here.’ But you couldn’t have meant that, Jesus, I mean look around: the Romans are still here, the Temple has been defiled, we are treated unjustly and oppressed, the world is filled with sickness and violence. What do you mean the kingdom of God is here?”

What a strange thing to say—the kingdom of God is here already.

This is what biblical scholars call realized eschatology, the belief that, somehow, in the person and work of Jesus, the end is already upon us—right here in the middle of history—that the kingdom of God has, in some sense, already come.

And this seems to be what Jesus is teaching: “I know, I know, the evidence looks mixed. But I’m telling you that the time has come. The kingdom is here…now…it’s among you…it is in you.”

In fact, this is what Jesus’ whole teaching and ministry seems to be about. Just look at the rest of Mark’s gospel: In 1:21 Jesus heals a man of demon possession.

In 1:29 he heals the sick.

In 1:40, Jesus encounters a leper. Now leprosy is a skin disorder. It’s not in any way contagious, but in the culture of first century Judaism, if you have it you are considered unclean. Therefore, you cannot worship in the Temple. You cannot shop in the market, use public restrooms or public fountains. If you’re thinking Jim Crow laws of the 1960’s, that’s probably about right. Except that, by the strictest interpretation of the law, a leper could be stoned to death even for just touching another human being. Lepers could not even eat at the table with their own families. Lepers were complete social outcasts.

So Jesus is teaching one day, probably in the market, when this leper comes running up to him. Remember, this man risked his life—if he had even bumped into someone else, he could have been sentenced to death. But what does a man like this have to live for, anyway? So he runs through the crowd, falls down on his knees at Jesus’ feet and says “Master, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Now we know that Jesus can heal someone without having to touch them. Later in Mark’s gospel Jesus meets a Roman Centurion on the road and from there heals the man’s daughter who is at home. But to this leper Jesus says “I am willing,” and then he reaches out and touches the man.

Can you image?

This is probably the first meaningful touch from another human being that this man has felt in years. The healing must have seemed anti-climatic.

You see what Jesus is doing? He is beginning to deal with those things that we said characterize This Present Evil Age: demon possession, sickness and injustice.

And we’re still in chapter one.

There’s a wonderful story in chapter two about a quadriplegic. Not many opportunities in the ancient world for someone like that. Can’t get a job, can’t get around. His friends have to do everything for him. So when they hear that there’s a healer in town, they take their friend to meet Jesus.

But there’s a problem: The house Jesus is teaching in is packed…standing room only…they can’t even get in the door. That doesn’t stop these guys, though. They climb to the roof and start to dig a hole in it to lower their friend through.

Now we know that Jesus was homeless, so someone else must have invited him to teach in their home. And presumably if you’ve invited Jesus to speak at your home, you want to hear what he has to say. So we can probably guess that the owner of this home was standing in the living room beside Jesus when…

…little bits of his ceiling started to fall down one their heads.

Now image you’re the paraplegic, laying on your back, staring up at the man whose roof you friends just dug through. And you can’t go anywhere.

Then Jesus looks down at the guy and says something which seems to me a little insensitive. He says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Now if I’m this guy I’m thinkin’ “Jesus, I appreciate the gesture and I understand you’re into this whole religious thing, but right now I’d like for someone to deal with my leg situation so that I can get out of here before that guy realizes what my friends just did to his house.”

That, at least, would be a reaction I could understand.  But the text tells us that when the Sadducees hear this they got angry. Why would anyone get angry about forgiveness? Isn’t that a good thing?

Well, how do you receive forgiveness of sins if you are a Jew in first century? You go to the Temple, right? You have sacrifices made on your behalf. And by the first century this was big business. And the Sadducees run it. And get kick-backs on the Temple fees. So if someone can go around proclaiming forgiveness of sin outside the Temple, they’re Sadducees are out of a job! So they say “Listen here, buddy, nobody forgives sins but God alone,” (meaning nobody forgives sins except in our building…on our schedule…by our prescription…and with our price tag).

So Jesus asks the question: “Okay, which is easier, for me to tell this man his sins are forgiven?  Or for me to tell him”…“Get up! Take up you mat and go home.” And the paraplegic gets up and walks out of the room.

Demon possession…sickness…injustice…sin…

In chapter five Jesus is on a boat with his disciples when a great storm comes and threatens to capsize them. The disciples are terrified, but Jesus is asleep on the back of the boat. So the disciples go and wake him up: “Jesus, how could you be sleeping through this? You don’t care if we die out here? Why don’t you do something?” So Jesus gets up, looks out over the sea, and says what most English Bibles translate as “Peace, be still.”

Actually what he says is phimoō—shut up!

And suddenly the waves stop crashing over the ship and the winds die down.

The disciples are amazed. “Even the wind and the waves obey him.”

You see what they’re saying? Somehow, through this man, God’s will is being executed over the earth, just like it is in heaven. The kingdom has come.

Makes you want to ask though, doesn’t it, “Why don’t you calm the storms in my life?”

I think what Jesus is trying to get at is this: In some strange sense, there seems to be an overlap in the ages. The Day of the Lord was not the might fell swoop so many had expected. So it’s true that this Present Evil Age is still a reality that exists all around us. But it’s also true that in the person of and work of Jesus the kingdom of God has in some sense already come. More importantly, there is a day coming when This Present Evil Age will finally come to an end—when cowardice and fear and murder and sexually perversion and idolatry and lies will all be burned away like sulfur, as the book of Revelation says. And when the kingdom of God will fully realized at last. We will see the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.

…A city whose gates will never be shut, for they fear no evil.

…A city where God will reign forever and ever, and he will make his dwelling place among us.

…Where there will be no more death.

…Where there will be no more pain.

…or mourning.

…And God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. For those former things will have passed away.

…And, behold, he will make all things new.

But for now it seems that we are living in the time in between these times. Or what C. S. Lewis calls “the already and not yet.” For the kingdom of God has, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, in some sense, already come. But still This Present Evil Age has not yet passed away.

The already, and the not yet.

And the thing we must never forget for life in between the time is this: Don’t judge by appearances.

Yes, I know, the evidence looks mixed. Of course it does. This Present Evil Age still persists. But, friends, I’m here today to announce that the old regime of violence and oppression, of sickness and death, of sadness and loss—it is getting tired, and soon it will lie down to rest. But dawn is breaking upon the kingdom of God and soon we shall walk in the light of its new day.

So do not judge only by what you can see.

Yes, there are many who are sick and dying. But many are healed.

Yes, our world is full of injustice and oppression. But many find freedom.

Yes, we are plagued by sin. But there is forgiveness.

Yes, there are storms in our lives. But even the waves obey our Lord.

So don’t judge by appearances.

For the time has come.

The kingdom of God is here.

Aside from that talk, I’ve written a couple of other things that are not exactly about Luther but engage with his theology: including this essay on fasting which deals with Luther’s ethics and this blog post which tries to present Luther’s view of baptism.  I’m also working on a post on Luther’s Eucharistic theology, coming soon…

If you’re interested in the life of Martin Luther, sort of the standard biography is Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand. Some question whether Bainton really understood Luther’s theology, but the history is spot on. And he’s a delight to read—a real wordsmith. Also, PBS produced a really nice documentary on Luther a couple of years ago.

 If you’re more interested in Luther’s theology, the best introduction I know of is Phillip Cary’s lectures for the teaching company, but their pretty expensive. If you’re willing to buy it used, you can get a much cheaper copy here. And if you want just a little taste of what Cary will have to say, you can check out his interview on Homebrewed Christianity. Also, there is a series of books called Armchair Theologians which are supposed to be scholarly but easy-to-read introductions to various theologians written for lay people. I haven’t actually read Luther for Armchair Theologians, by Steven Paulson, but in general I’ve liked the series. 

Probably the best thing to do, though, is skip the introductory stuff and read Luther himself. Really that’s a good rule of thumb for most great thinkers. Usually their works have stood the test of time for a reason: because they’re a pleasure to read. And when you read the great thinkers themselves, you don’t have to worry about getting caught up in all the debates, which inevitably cloud the introductory works, about how to interpret them. So, start with Luther and use the introductory stuff only if you get in over your head.

 Most of what Luther wrote was short little essays or letters or sermons, so you usually find them in collections. The best anthology in English is Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy Lull. Go ahead and read anything in there that strikes your fancy, but here are the ones I would start with:   

 The Freedom of a Christian

You should start here. This is the probably the fullest and most concise statement of Luther’s theology.

Two Kinds of Righteousness

Luther distinguishes between what he calls “alien righteousness” (i.e. righteousness that is imposed on us from outside of us), and “proper righteousness” (i.e. righteous that we can truly call our own). Later Protestants tend to prefer the words “justification” (for what Luther calls “alien righteousness”), meaning that God imputes to us Christ’s righteousness giving us right standing before God, and “sanctification” (for what Luther calls “proper righteousness”), meaning that after we are justified, slowly but surely, we actually become better people—we have a righteousness that is our own.  Even though Luther basically invented this distinction, later Protestants took it much more seriously than he had intended. It turns out that Luther actually thought the two kinds of righteousness were really the same thing, because Christ’s “alien righteousness” is the thing that makes us properly righteous. So this essay is actually more famous for the way it has been used in history than for what it actually says, but it’s still a worthwhile read.

 A Brief Introduction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels

This is Luther’s introduction to the Gospels from his German translation of the Bible. It’s where he makes his famous distinction between gospel and law.

 The Bondage of the Will

Luther is firmly planted in the Augustinian tradition that God elects some for salvation.  This doctrine scares Luther, so he really doesn’t like to talk about it much, but he can’t get away from it because he is convinced that apart from God’s grace our free will isn’t good for anything except sinning—it’s “bound” by it’s falleness, and need to be healed by grace.  Toward the end of his life Luther once said that he wished that people would burn all of his books and just read the Word of God, then he said “Well, maybe they would keep The Bondage of the Will.” He really liked this one.

 Sermon on the Afternoon of Christmas Day

If you’re like Luther and your tendency is to be terrified of God, then a swaddled baby is the best place to look for a sweet and tender and merciful God. Luther loved Christmas, and it’s when he did his best preaching. 

 The Babylonian Captivity of the Church

This is a pretty strongly worded critique of the Roman Catholic Church. (It’s one of Luther’s earlier writings. Once the Reformation picks up a little steam, he stops worrying so much about the pope). But it leads into Luther’s early theology of the sacraments. Remember, Luther became reformed by turning to the Catholic sacraments.

 Concerning Rebaptism

This one and the next two were written a little later than The Babylonian Captivity. They represent Luther’s more mature theology of the sacraments. Interestingly, by this time (1528-1529), Luther is no longer debating Catholics about this stuff, but other Protestants. This essay is a critique of the Anabaptists (groups like the Amish, Mennonites, Brethren, etc.) who, like modern Baptists, do not count infant baptism as valid.

Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper

Luther’s mature Eucharistic theology.

The Marburg Colloquy

In 1529 Protestants from all over Europe got together at what was called the Marburg Colloquy to try to codify 6the movement. They ended up agreeing on most things, but Luther got into a famous argument with Ulrich Zwingli over the nature of the Eucharist.

Lectures on Galatians

Luther’s ethics are a particularly interesting aspect of his theology. His Lectures on Galatians, along with The Freedom of a Christian, and the best places to start for that.

That should get you started.  Happy reading!

Medieval Catholic spirituality owed much to what we could call “the Augustinian paradigm.” St. Augustine taught that life was a journey toward God. What moves you along in this journey is love.  Augustine says “my love is my weight.”  In ancient physics weight could pull you up as well as down. Things that are made of earth are pulled down by their weight to where they belong, on the earth. But fire’s weight pulls it up toward the heavenly bodies where it belongs. So, “my love is my weight” means that we are naturally drawn to God by our love, because it is in him that our true happiness is found. But there are lots of other things that seem to make us happy, at least temporarily: money, sex, food, alcohol, friends, all the pleasures of this life. It’s easy for our loves to get skewed so that we being to desire these pleasures more than God. So what we need is for grace to come along side us and straighten out our loves so that above all other things we can love God.  And God is happy to offer us this grace. This is what Augustine calls being in “a state of grace.” Of course, if you really perverse, you can choose to get off the path for which you were created, decide that what you truly want is money or sex or alcohol, even more than God. And God will let us have what we truly want. This is called being in a state of “mortal sin.”   

Well, by the time you get to the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries there was a trend toward a kind of “hell-fire and damnation” preaching. There was lots of anxiety about whether you were living in a state of mortal sin, and there was really no way to tell. But if you die in a state of mortal sin you would go directly to hell to be tormented for all eternity. And people are terrified. In the modern world when we talk about sin, we usually associate it with feelings of guilt.  But in the middle ages when people talked about the consciousness of sin, the world they most commonly used was terror. Purportedly, doing good works–works of love, as they’re called–were supposed to help straighten out your loves and keep you from mortal sin. And there are all these spiritual practices–pilgrimages to holy sites, fasts, vigils–all of which were supposed to help, but no one knows if they really even work.  

As if that wasn’t enough to deal with, medieval preaching focused on not only the fear of hell but also of purgatory. Purgatory, in Roman Catholic theology, is part of heaven, not hell. It’s a place of purgation, cleansing.  The idea is: if you receive an invitation from a Prince or King to a banquet he is throwing, you don’t want to show up right after work in your sweaty old clothes and with dirt under your finger nails, right? No, you want to go home first and get cleaned up. How much more, then, if you are invited by The King to the heavenly banquet? So purgatory is a place to get cleaned up. The technical language is that in purgatory one earns merit, so that when you get to the heavenly kingdom, you fit in, you deserve to be there. So in the early centuries of the Church purgatory is seen as a good place. Dante’s purgatory is joyful, there’s music, everybody helps each other. But by the time you get to the centuries before Luther, purgatory has become in popular opinion a place of punishment and torment–it’s like a temporary hell to be suffered before you make it to heaven. So one of the purposes for these spiritual practices I mentioned was to get indulgences.  It was believe that the pope possessed a “treasury” from which he could dispense merit for doing good works. The more merit one had, the less she had to earn in purgatory, the shorter her time there would be. Well, by 1517,  Pope Leo X had gotten in over his head on a building project–the basilica of St. Peter, in Rome, which was supposed to be one of the largest and most beautiful churches the world had ever seen. So Leo had the idea that he could offer a service by selling indulgences–selling merit–to the faithful who desired to shorten their stays in purgatory–or even to shorten they stay of their loved ones who had already passed–and he could raise money for money for his building project at the same time. So the pope commissioned an army of preachers to go around Europe selling indulgences on his behalf. One in particular, John Tetzel, whom Luther had interactions with in Germany, came up with a cute little slogan: “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the souls from purgatory flings.”  As you can imagine, many fearful people were taken by this opportunity, especially widows and mothers of deceased children. How could they not do anything in their power to keep their lost loved ones from suffering torment any longer than they had to? The modern parallel would be the kind of televangelist who promise healing or financial blessing, all you have to do is make your check out this address. Well this all mortified Martin Luther, who was himself terrified of both hell and purgatory and wanted no part of anything that would offer a false sense of security. So with his Ninety Five Theses, Luther was attempting, not to start a new Church–in 1517 Luther would have been appalled at the thought of that.  But he did want to argue against the sale of indulgences. 

The Ninety-Five Theses 

Now, if you know anything about Martin Luther you know that he was a blusterous and strong-headed personality. He pulled no punches with his theses. It wouldn’t have been in his nature to do so. 

• He argues in thesis #5 that the pope cannot remit any penalties for sin, except those that he himself has imposed by canon law. 
• And then goes on to say in thesis #13 that the jurisdiction of Church over an individual ends at death, so even the pope’s limited power to remit penalties for sin does not apply to people in purgatory. 
• Further, in thesis #6 he argues that the pope can’t remit any guilt of sin at all. All he can do is declare and confirm that one’s guilt has already been remitted by God. 
• In thesis #56 he argues that there’s really not sufficient evidence that the pope even has a treasury of merit from which to grant indulgences. 
• And if the pope does have such a treasury of merit, he asks in Thesis #88, then why is he selling it? Wouldn’t it be a greater good if the pope would give remissions away, a hundred times a day, to any believer whatsoever? 
• I think he gets to the real heart of the issue in thesis #67: These indulgences which the pope and his salesmen tout as such great favors to frightened believers, are really just a favorite way of making money. 
• So, if indulgences are going to be sold, he argues in thesis #46, at the very least Christians should be taught that, unless they have more than they need, it is their Christian duty to secure enough money to care for their homes and families before they squander one penny on indulgences. 
• Thesis #43: What’s more, Christians should be taught that the one who gives to the poor, does a better action than the one who purchases indulgences. 
• Come to think of it, he says in thesis #86, since the pope’s income is so much more than the wealthiest men in Germany, why doesn’t he build the church of St. Peter with his own money, instead on with the money of penitent believers? 
• I have no doubt, Luther says in thesis #51 with more than a hint of sarcasm, that the pope himself would be willing, if the necessity should arise, to sell the church of St. Peter, and give, too, of his own fortune to many of those from whom the pardon-sellers conjure money. 

As you can imagine, the pope wasn’t too thrilled about these claims. And his ire was fueled by the fact that this event coincided with the invention on the printing press about 70 years earlier, and so controversial theses were quickly translated into German and disseminated to the common people. They became an instant best seller.   But how did what Luther intended as a mere academic debate, turn into what we now call the Great Reformation?  To understand that, we’ll have to ask how Luther found himself here at the University of Wittenberg in the first place. 

Luther’s Early Life and Theology 

Martin Luther wasn’t supposed to be a Bible professor, he wasn’t even supposed to be a monk. Luther was born in 1483 to Hans and Margaretha Luther in Eisleben, Germany.  Hans was the owner of a copper mine, who has worked his way out of peasantry.  Determined that his son would have a better life than he, Hans sent Martin to university and then to law school. But that all ended in the Summer of 1505, when Martin was caught in a thunder storm on his way back to school after Summer vacation.  A bolt of lightning struck a tree right next to him.  This is a terrifying experience for a medieval person: not knowing if in the next minute you are going to die, possible in a state of mortal sin, and spend the rest of eternity in hellish torment.  So what does a medieval person do in this circumstance?  Well, he prays to the saints.  Luther cries out “Help me, St. Anne! I’ll become a monk!”  And get this: when his life is spared from the storm, Luther does it! We’ve all made bargains with God in desperate situations, but Luther actually followed through. 

So Luther drops out of law school and joins an Augustinian monetary. And Luther is a very devoted monk, he dives right in to the religious life. Most of all, he spends his days praying for grace to straighten out his loves so that he will desire God above all else. Because that’s what your suppose to do, right, to love God more than anything else? But Luther can’t seem to shake the sneaking suspicion that he really only loves God for the sake of being saved, not God’s own sake. And think kind of intense introspection launches Luther into an awful downward spiral. Because if he love’s God, not for his own sake, but for the sake of being saved, then what he really desires most is not God himself, but salvation. But that would mean that he has an anterior motive for his love for God, a hidden agenda of the worst kind, a love turned in on itself. It would mean that he loved himself more than God. But that’s mortal sin. And now God hates me and is going to damn me to hell for being in a state of mortal sin. And the only way not to be damned to hell for all eternity is to love God truly. So now I have to try to love a God who hates me and wants to damn me. But Luther doesn’t love God, he secretly hates God for hating him and wanting to damn him. So now God’s really going to get him for hating him. 

Luther really did think this way as a monk in the early 1500s.  He would have awful bouts of fear and depression—anfectung, he called it—because he really believed that God hated him wanted to damn him because he was living in a state of mortal sin. Luther describes these periods of anfectung being 

so great and so much like hell that no tongue could adequately express them, no pen could describe them, and one who had not himself experienced them could not believe them. And so great were they that, if they had been sustained or had lasted for half an hour, even for one tenth of an hour, I would have perished completely and all of my bones would have been reduced to ashes. At such a time, God seems so terribly angry, and with him the whole creation. At such a time, there is no flight, no comfort, within or without, but all things accuse . . . In this moment, it is strange to say, the soul cannot believe that it can ever be redeemed. 

It got so bad that Luther came to believe that if he sincerely desired to be damned to hell, maybe then God would justify him. Luther actually makes this argument in his 1515 Commentary on The Letter to the Romans, he says, if you sincerely desire to be damned, then you are agreeing with God’s judgment, and then God has to justify you. Just image the perverse psychological torment this must be, trying to make yourself sincerely desire to be damned to hell so that God will justify you. 

So Luther countless hours every day in the confessional rehearsing  and analyzing all the inner thoughts of his heart trying to identify and route out any anterior motives or hidden agendas in his love for God, and trying to sincerely desire his own damnation. It went on like this until Luther’s confessor–the priest who listened to his confessions–Johann von Staupitz, got so fed up that he said, “Martin, you’ve got to get a job!”  And that’s how Luther found himself a Bible professor at the University of Wittenberg, nailing theses for academic debate to the church door. And the debate he tried to start on indulgences became so sensationalized that Luther found himself, in the months and years following October 31, 1517, having to dive into the Bible like he never had before in order to make a solid public defense of his position.  And this turn to the Bible was the best thing that ever happened to Luther, because it saved him from his wearisome cycle of fear and depression. 

The Turn to Protestantism 

Think of young Luther. He’s terrified of hell and purgatory, and so he wants more than anything to be saved…but that means that he desires salvation more than he desires God…but that’s mortal sin…because he’s in a state of moral sin God must hate him and want to damn him….so now he has to try to love a God who hates him, but he secretly hates God for hating him…so now God really going to get him…which makes him even more terrified…and down and down he goes. So how do you get out of this cycle? 

Well you get out of it by meditating on Scripture, like Luther had to do to defend his Ninety-Five Theses. Famously, one day in 1519 Luther was meditating on Paul’s letter to the Romans. He said “I had a burning desire to understand what Paul meant in that letter, but what stood in my way was that one phrase in chapter one: ‘the righteousness of God.’”  Luther said “I hated that phrase: ‘the righteousness of God,’ which I had been taught to understand as that righteousness by which God is righteous and by which he punishes sinner and the unjust.”  He said, “I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners…Isn’t it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments?  Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel by threatening us with his righteousness and wrath?”  He said “I constantly badgered St. Paul about this spot in Romans 1.” Isn’t that a great line? He says “I meditated night and day on those words until at lat, by the mercy of God, I paid attention to their context: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written: ‘The just person lives by faith.’” “Then I began to understand,” he said, that St. Paul was talking about “a passive righteousness…by which the merciful God makes us righteous by faith.”  Luther says, “that phrase of Paul became for me the very gate of Paradise.” But how is it that God gives us his own righteousness in faith?

Luther learned this by turning to the sacraments. Interestingly, after he had relearned to read the Bible, Luther discovered that he could receive God’s righteousness right there in the confessional booth with Johann von Staupitz, because he finally allowed himself to hear the words of absolution at the end of the sacrament. When von Staupitz said “I absolve you of your sin, in the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” he spoke on behalf of Christ himself. (This is Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers: that any Christian, when he administers the sacraments, speaks on Christ’s behalf). So what right do Luther have to disagree? If Luther wanted to believe that his sins weren’t forgiven and that he was damned, he would be calling God a liar. As a young monk, Luther thought that he had no right to believe he was in the state of grace. Now he understood that he had no right not to believe that he was in the state of grace. If God promises to absolve your sins, or promises you no less than himself—“this is my body given for you”—who are you to disagree? Luther realized that all you have to do is believe God’s promise, and you receive it. That’s Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone: believe Christ’s word when he says he is giving you God’s righteousness, and you have it. You have to believe the gospel—you have no right not to. Luther’s favorite pastoral aphorism, when his congregants suffered the kind of fear and guilt that he once had, became: “stop calling God a liar! Believe the gospel!” 

Luther’s Legacy

Of course, by the time Luther had figured all this out, he had been deposed as a heretic and the Reformation had broke out almost right under his nose. Luther has this great quote in Some Book, he says, “I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip…the Word [did all the work of the Reformation]…I did nothing, the Word did everything.”

And this Reformation, to which Luther says he contributed so little, changed not only the Church, but the entire course of Western history. For instance, since all medieval schools were housed in monasteries, the Lutheran Reformation bankrupt the school system in Germany, and Luther had to deal with it. He wrote an open letter to noblemen asking them to find schools in their regions. So without Luther there would be no public school system. Luther was also a great lover of music and he encouraged congregations to sing together rather only listening to choirs. The Reformation revolutionized the music is the West—it got simpler, more catchy. Had there been no Martin Luther, there would have been no Beatles. Luther taught us to subject everything to the Word of God, and to question every other claim to authority. Had there been no Martin Luther, there would have been no European Enlightenment. But in order to do this people had to know the Word, so Luther recovered the practice of preaching and teaching in the Church. He also set about the major task of translating the Bible into common German. With Luther’s translation, for the first time in centuries, common people could read and hear the Bible in their own language. Luther brought Pentecost to Germany. That was the Pentecostal experience in Acts chapter 2, right? Not speaking in other tongues, but hearing the Word of God in their own language. Luther also wanted people to hear the gospel in the sacraments, so we revived the practice of receiving communion. In the middle ages, Holy Communion was a sacrifice that the priest made on behalf of the congregation, standing in front of the alter with the congregation watching. The average person in the pew would probably receive the elements only once or twice a year, on Easter and possible Christmas. In the Reformation, the priest came around to the other side of the table and offered the body and blood to the people.

Our calling as Lutherans

This is the story that we live into as Lutherans. And it is our unique vocation to preach the good news to all who are plagued by fear and guilt. To tell the world that they have no right to believe that they are unworthy of God’s love and grace, for Christ makes them righteous. And to invite them to the table where Christ offers himself to us.

Do you remember Roy Moore?  A long forgotten icon of the Religious Right.  On November 12, 2003 Moore was deposed from office as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for defying a Federal Court mandate to remove a two-and-a-half-ton, granite statue of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse lawn.  At the hearing, Moore stood council in his own defense, arguing that, by refusing to remove the statue, he was simply upholding his constitutional and judicial duties, by recognizing the sovereignty of God, which is—I’m quoting—“the source from which all morality springs.”  Moreover, Moore argued that the Ten Commandments are the moral foundation of the United States legal system.   

I’d like to begin our reflection on the Ten Commandments this morning by making a claim that conflicts with popular religious sentiment, so I’ll have to make a case for it. But just stick with me for just a moment. I want to suggest that Chief Justice Moore was wrong, not for defying the federal court—Christians have a long and noble history of civil disobedience, going all the way back to Jesus himself.—No, Moore was wrong in his theology. The Ten Commandments are not the moral foundation of the United States legal system.  Neither are the Ten Commandments a guideline for, or the source of, a universal morality which is applicable to all people at all times.  Perhaps more to the point, I want to suggest that what Moore and others were defending on that day in the Fall of 2003 was not the Ten Commandments at all, but a cheap parody of them.

Why do I say that?  Well, to place the Ten Commandments on the lawn of a United States court house or a public school is to suggest that they can be followed outside of the context of Christian worship. But what I want to suggest is that outside of this context of the worship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Ten Commandments make absolutely no sense. Because before the commandment are ever about us, they are about God.

Notice that the first few verses of Exodus chapter twenty are not commandments at all. Rather they are an introduction of the speaker: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…” (v. 2). So the first thing we notice right off the bat is that the One who give the commandments is not some vague, unidentified divinity—the giver of a universal morality—like the “Higher Power” of Alcoholics Anonymous or the Unmoved Mover of the Ancient Greeks—this is “the Lord” God. Okay, maybe that doesn’t sound much different, but perhaps some basic biblical Hebrew would be helpful. When “the Lord” appears in the Bible in all capitals like that, it doesn’t just mean ruler or master, like some middle-manager who strutting around constantly reminding everyone that he’s the boss.  No, the Lord is God’s name.

The name is revealed to Moses at a brush fire when he is minding his own business in the desert. First Moses receives his vocation: he will lead his people, the Israelites, to freedom by the power of the God of their ancestors. But how could Moses possibly convince anyone to uproot their families and walk away from the only life they’ve ever known? Who would follow this unknown God of the desert? So the voice comes from the bush: “Tell them that I am who I am has sent you.”  God’s name is related to the Hebrew verb to be: I am who I am, or perhaps its better translated I will be who I will be. The name is very difficult to pronounce.  The English transliteration is just four consonants—no vowels: Y-H-W-H.  In fact Jews will not pronounce this Name. (Christians shouldn’t try to pronounce it either, by the way. I will not pronounce it, because it is disrespectful to Jews). So, because they would not say The Name, when Jews would read the Bible aloud in the synagogue they had to come up with a word to use as a replacement. So when they were reading a passage of the Bible and came across The Name they would say instead Adoni, which means Lord.  So in English translations of the Bible when you see the world Lord in lower case, what’s there in the original is the word Adoni, or Lord.  And when you see the word Lord in all capitals, what’s there in the original is God’s name. You see, this is the whole point: the Lord resists being spoken about, figured out, tied down or universally applied. The Lord is the Hebrew un-name for God.

But the Lord does not stop with his name, he says: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Now we have not only a name, but a history to connect this God with. God reveals himself to us the way we reveal ourselves to others, through story.

You know the story.  Moses goes to confront the most powerful man in the world insisting that the Lord—I am who I am—demands that Pharaoh let his people go.  Why?  Because God opposes slavery?  No.  (Surely God does oppose slavery, but that is not the point of this story).  No, the Lord insists that his people be set free to go and worship him.  Pharaoh resists—he is a hard-hearted man. There are negations, then gnat, plagues, frogs and lots of blood.  Finally the Israelites are freed. But by the time they actually make it to the desert it has been so long since anyone has worshiped the Lord, they don’t remember how.  So Moses is summoned to the top of Mount Sinai, and there come the list of commandments: “Don’t have idols.”  “Don’t steal.”  “Don’t have sex with other people’s spouses.”  Moses must be thinking, “this doesn’t sound like any worship service I’ve ever been to!”  So it turns out that God is less concerned with the kind of music we sing, with whether our liturgy is low-church or high, with whether we wear vestments or use incense, than he is with the way we live our lives.  To worship the Lord, the story seems to suggest, is to be the people redeemed by God—rescued from slavery in Egypt—in order to live in faithfulness to his commandments.

So the Ten Commandments are not principles for the moral society in general. Rather they constitute a way of life for the people who know who they are and whose they are—people who are freed from the Pharaohs of this world for the worship of the Lord. If you and I are to learn to live the commandments, we will do so first by learning to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—by identifying ourselves with the people of Israel. Not least, this will mean identifying with the one true and faithful Israelite, Jesus Christ, as members of his body, the Church. We simply cannot understand what it means to live the Ten Commandments outside of the communal worship practices of the Church.  Our Church Mothers and Fathers teach us that the one who has more than enough and does not give to those in need, commits theft.  So we cannot understand what it means to steal outside of the Church that teaches us what it means to have property.  Likewise, we cannot understand what it means to commit adultery outside of the Church that teaches us what marriage is.  And we cannot understand what it means to bear false witness outside of the Church that teaches us what it means to bear witness to the truth.

So what does it mean to live the Ten Commandments not as general principles of a universal morality, but as the worship practices of the Church of Jesus Christ?  Martin Luther makes three suggestions at this point—what he calls the “three uses of the Law.”

The First Use of the Law

The first thing the Law does, Luther says, is terrify us, because it reminds us that God has a standard that we have no hope of living up to. When you and I consider our sinfulness—that we have not lived up to God’s standard—we associate it with a mild sense of guilt.  Luther was terrified. I doubt Luther every had anything like the modern sense of guilt—that’s our experience. When Luther read the Law, he was scared to death that God would damn him to hell. But his terror was ultimately good news for Luther, because it drove him to the gospel. This is the first use of the Law: it teaches us to see ourselves as sinners so we can learn that our only hope is in the good news of Jesus Christ.  This is one of the reasons—maybe the most important reason—that the Ten Commandments do not work as general principles of morality, because we come to the Law of God, not primarily to learn how to be moral, but to learn how to be sinners. That’s good news, of course, because it’s sinners for whom Christ died.  And that’s why it’s important that we learn to follow the Law in the context of Christian worship in which there is regular opportunity for confession of sin, reconciliation and words of forgiveness.

The Second Use of the Law

The second use of the Law in Luther’s theology is that, in the end, God’s Law is good news for the whole world. So even though we cannot understand the Ten Commandments, from the outset, as principles of universal morality applicable to everyone in the world, they are, in the end good news for the whole world. This is, in fact, the way the structure of the Bible generally goes: from the particular to the universal.  A particular little, nomadic, near-eastern tribe, called Israel, is chosen for the blessing of the whole world. From the particular to the universal.  The life and death of one particular Jewish peasant from a town no larger than Beckley turns out to be the key to the history of the whole world.  The particular to the universal.  So the Ten Commandments are good news for the whole world, not because they are, from the start, the universal pattern of morality, but because through them a small group of people—the Church—are enabled to live in faithfulness to Jesus, as an alternative to the world, so that the whole world may be wooed into a life of faithfulness. 

The second use of the law is an affirmation that God has not done everything that needs to be done in the world. That he graciously invites us to be a part of his project of redemption.  The back ground to this use of the Law is the notion that Israel—and by identification with Israel—we are called to be an alternative society, a royal priesthood who intercede for, and who mediate God’s presence to the world.  To live into our calling to as a royal priesthood means to live in faithfulness to the commandments for the sake of the world.

The Third Use of the Law

So what you and I do—and the kind of people we are becoming—is of universal importance.  The Ten Commandments are a sign of this, too. That this thing between us and God matters. That God cares how we make our schedules, how we treat out parents, how we deal with our property, how we have sex, and that we tell the truth. The Ten commandments were given to Israel as a community of the redeemed. They had just been freed from slavery in Egypt to worship God and to be a blessing for the world, but the commandments were a sign that Israel, too, was still in the process of being redeemed. This is what Luther calls the third use of the law.  Learning to follow it—to delight in it—we are shaped into the image of Christ for the sake of the world.

For Luther, the good news about this third use of the law is that it frees us from spirituality.  There’s a wonderful passage in Luther’s commentary on the commandments where he says that when a maid in a house obeys the master of the house’s command to sweep the floor she is obeying the commandment to honor father and mother (since the master is the father of the house).  So a maid sweeping the floor is more spiritual than monks in any monastery with all their prayers and liturgies and fasts.  All of those spiritual practices you are told we have to do to have a relationship with God—all of those things you feel guilty when we don’t have the time or the gumption to do them—forget about them! God has given us Ten Commandments.  We can spend the rest of our lives working on those and that’s enough.  For instance, we don’t have to worry about the practice listening in our hearts for God’s will in our lives, because we already know what God’s will is: to follow the commandments.

I remember one time talking to one of my college professors. I was all tangled up in knots about what I should do with my life.  I knew what I wanted to do—what I was good at—but I was afraid that I might not be choosing what was most pleasing to God.  My professor was trying to explain to me how to make wise decisions about my career.  “Yeah, I know all that,” I said, “but how do I know what God wants me to do?”  My professor paused for a second and then said “O’ that’s easy! Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.  When you’ve mastered that,” he said, “come back and I have ten more for you.”  The good news of the third use of the Law is that we don’t have to guess at what is pleasing to God. We know exactly what pleases God.  There’s plenty enough in the Ten Commandments to keep us busy today.  Let’s focus on that and let tomorrow worry about itself.

So, what does God’s law do?  It terrifies us by keeping before us God’s standards which we cannot meet, teaching us to be sinners, and causing us to flee to the gospel.  It invites us into God’s redeeming project as royal priests bearing witness to an alternative way of life for the sake of the world.  And it reminds us that we too are in need of redemption, and forms us into the image of Christ for the sake of others.  Did you know that the Law did all that?  We Protestants, and we Lutherans in particular, have a rather troubled relationship to the God’s Law.  We tend to think of it as a burdensome list of rules and regulation, that at best is obsolete and can be discarded now that we have the gospel of Jesus Christ.  But like the gospel, the Law is God’s word.  It cannot save us, but it is good for us.  So take delight in the law.  Meditate on it day and night—or at least sometimes.  You will find that it begins to refresh you like a quite stream, that you will bear the fruit of transformation in its season, and you faithfulness will not wither. 

Amen.

To begin with Olson defines heresy as “any theological error as determined by some authoritative religious group.” Just like the traditional Catholic definition but with a broader sense of the magisterium—that’s fair enough. The problem is that the broader the authoritative body the more room there is for disunity and disagreement within it. That’s the problem of heresy not just for Protestants; even the Roman Catholic church has to perform some sleight-of-hand to get you not to notice disparity within the magisterium, or so goes Gary Wills’ argument in Papal Sin. At any rate, this definition doesn’t work. By it, both Calvinism and Arminianism are heresy—both are considered theological error by some authoritative religious group, unless what we mean by ‘authoritative religious group’ is either quite narrow (e.g. the Roman Catholic Magisterium) or quite relative (e.g. ‘my Presybertian church is authoritative, but your Methodist church isn’t). The same goes for paedobaptism and believer’s baptism, and a whole host of other doctrines which different authoritative religious groups determine to be theological error.

Dr. Olson is keen to detect this problem, of course, and so quickly changes his definition so that any doctrine determined to be theological error by an authoritative religious group is heresy for that group.  As he puts it, “what counts as heresy…in one form of Christian life may not count as that in another one.” Already this is quite a bit softer, but even this definition gives way to contradiction.  It’s easy to see why if we look at the examples Olson gives from his own tradition to support this definition: “A person who denies the importance of believer baptism may be a Christian but is certainly not a Baptist!” That seems axiomatically true, and it’s enlightening for at least two reasons. First, it tells us why Olson insists on hanging on to the concept of heresy even in a post-Reformation context in which such a concept becomes rather slippery: Heresy is a boundary marker. It tells us who is in a community like Baptist (or Arminian or evangelical or whatever), and who is out. I should say that I think Dr. Olson is right to want this. Without some boundary makers a group would lose all sense of identity. Hasn’t that always been the point of heresy after all? Bishops and theologians have the responsibility of ensuring that the gospel is handed down undefiled. Surely we want to say of some doctrines that they are not Christian. But at issue here is not what we are right to want to say, but what we rightly can say. I’ll come back to this point later. But first let’s notice a second thing about this example of infant baptism.

Even though he is giving an example of his definition of the word heresy, Olson does not use the word heresy in this particular formulation. I suspect this is because he has the intuition (conscious or unconscious) that heresy must mean something more serious (or perhaps just more concretely wrong) than what can be determined theological error by this individual community. I think he’s right to recoil a bit from the notion of heresy in this example. Sure a denial of the validity of infant baptism is an important boundary marker for Baptists, but is it heresy? Do Baptists really want to say that Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin were all heretics? (Okay maybe some Baptists would want to say this, but I doubt that Olson is among them). You see the problem: To give the power of the heresy card to individual authoritative religious groups, which intrinsically are in disagreement with one another as a good many of them grew up out of those disagreements, is either to give those groups a level of power that many of us would be uncomfortable with some groups having. (Imagine this power in the hands of neo-fundamentalists, Dr. Olson!) Or it is to dilute the concept of heresy to the point that it means nothing more than “not Baptist” (or Arminian or evangelical or whatever). Many of us would then regard the charge of heresy a compliment! This brings us to a third point which is not apparent in Olson’s example, but we can reconstruct it by looking at an example from my life.

I too was reared in the Baptist tradition, but I left the Baptist church in part because I became convinced of the arguments in support of infant baptism. (You can read my post summarizing the case for infant baptism here). So I espoused a belief that that, by Olson’s definition, could have been deemed heresy, but instead of becoming a heretic I became a Lutheran. Once heresy becomes a boundary marker for individual authoritative religious communities, then one can avoid the charge by aligning herself with a different authoritative religious community rather than changing her beliefs. And thus heresy has lost the whole purpose which gave it meaning. Heresy was once was punishable by excommunication (and later by worse) because the goal was for heretic to recant the false teaching and return to the orthodox faith, and thus to purify the church and protect the transmission of the gospel. But if the new way to deal with what we call heresy (call it “the post-Reformation telos of heresy”) is for the heretic to get out of my group and join another authoritative religious group, then heresy is nothing more than an individualistic statement of belief that, rather than being made in the affirmative, is directed against my neighbor.

Once again, Olson perceives that this is the inevasible next step so by the end of the essay he is willing to admit “when I say something is heresy, at the very least I mean I would not affiliate with a church or denomination that tolerated it among its leaders.” In other words, heresy is ‘something I disagree with quite strongly.’ So notice the sliding scale of meaning applied to the term heresy in Olson’s essay: He moves from heresy as “any theological error as determined by some authoritative religious group” (not unlike the Roman Catholic magisterium), through the idea that theological error as determined by an authoritative religious group is heresy for that group, to the admission that heresy is simply a theological opinion that I disagree with quite strongly. It’s almost as if he was discovering what he meant by the term as he wrote (a practice that is typical in blogging but uncharacteristic of Olson’s manicured style). I don’t fault Dr. Olson for this line of reasoning; I think this is where you will inevitably end up if you think through the possibility of heresy in a post-Reformation context. I just wish that he had taken the difficult final step down the ladder and granted that heresy is now an empty concept, (with perhaps the exception of those decisions made by the whole Church in the first few centuries after Christ).

I suspect I know why Dr. Olson doesn’t want to take that step. The end to which heresy once served as a means—to ensure that there is something like a core of the gospel which is handed down in it’s pure form and to give shape to the identity of the Christian community—these things are very important! Those of us Protestants who are serious about theology and the identity of the Church, I think we feel a deep yearning for something like the Roman Catholic magisterium, someone who can tell us what the true faith is. But many Catholics I imagine feel a similar yearning for a sense of the Church as semper reformanda—the idea that probably more than any other laid to rest the possibility of heresy. We need each other, Catholics and Protestants. And I think we are only beginning to discover the depths of this need in the ecumenical theology movement that has emerged in the wake of Vatican II. Perhaps what we need is a much deeper ecumenical movement, one where Roman Catholics and Protestants and Eastern Orthodox set down together and define what it is that we all believe. But, of course, that would take a movement of the Holy Spirit. Yes, perhaps it would take miracle to make a heresy.

“Good,” I said.

“I hope you’re going to tell a joke,” was his next comment.

I don’t know if he asked for a joke because I’m such a sorry joke teller, or if he just wanted some relief during the sermon hour. Maybe he just likes jokes. So, here goes.

Did you hear about the boy who was wandering around the narthex of a large downtown church one Sunday morning? As he stopped and examined a large bronze plaque that was hung on the wall, he wondered aloud “What are all those names up there?” The pastor just happened to hear the boy so he replied, “Son, those are the names of people who died in the service.” After a long pause, the boy looked up and asked, was it the 9:30 or the 11 o’clock service?”

I am happy to report today that we are celebrating a birth—not a death—this morning, the birth of the church—the birth of Christ in you and me, and in all who call on his name. Let us pray.

Lord, life is far too deep for us to fathom, too large for us to grasp. We believe we are just ordinary people, seeking to make each day something special, and hoping that in some way our lives might have meaning, might count. We need wisdom and strength. We need compassion and courage. And we turn to You as the source of what we need. Open our hearts and our minds to the power you’ve given us through your Holy Spirit. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing unto you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

The annual celebration of the paschal mystery, which began on Ash Wednesday, culminates at Pentecost. Today is Pentecost.

Has anyone here ever heard of Holy Spirit Holes? Get a mental picture of this scene. In the middle ages holes were punched in the ceiling & roofs of churches to symbolize an openness to God. Well, on Pentecost they released doves through these holes and bundles of rose petals were dropped from them onto the people gathered inside. Then the Choir (which was all boys at that time) moved through the congregation making whooshing sounds to remind everyone of the rush of the Spirit. I bet some of our boys would have liked that job!

Another question.

When you think of the Holy Spirit, what bird comes to mind?

Anybody know? Right…the dove.

But instead of the dove, Celtic Christians chose the wild goose as a symbol representing the Holy Spirit. Can you imagine what church would have been like if they had released wild geese through those holes in the ceiling!

And here thousands of years later, what do we do on Pentecost Sunday? Look around & you tell me.

Oh yeah, we wear RED.

Doesn’t hold a candle to the middle ages, does it?

Our gospel lesson tells of Jesus appearing to his confused and grieving friends, offering them peace and the gift of the Spirit. “Receive the Holy Spirit” he says, as he breathed on the disciples the power of a spiritual life.

Jesus continues to greet us in this way.

God’s Spirit comes and moves people to repentance and conversion.

This breath, this Spirit gives birth to us as the people of God.

What God gives us when he gives us his Spirit is more than strength and support and teaching and comfort, those things we normally identify with God’s presence, he gives us more too than joy, and peace, patience, and kindness, those things which we call the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

He gives us as well a set of gifts designed for the building up of the body of the church, and for the individual ministries to which we are called, and for our spiritual life.

The prophet Joel, in his prophecy of the last days, mentions some of the gifts of God through his Spirit: gifts of vision and gifts of dreams, gifts of prophecy.

Peter, in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, speaks of the gift of tongues.

And Paul lists some of the gifts that God gives and explores with the Corinthian congregation how those gifts can be used and abused: the gift of teaching, the gift of discernment, the gift of exhortation, the gift of hospitality, the gift of intercession, the gift of the word of wisdom, the gift of prophecy, the gift of faith, the gift of administration, the gift of helping and the gift of mercy. These gifts are spiritual gifts—they are gifts of our second birth—that give us the ability to minister to others.

Over the few years, I have attended several conferences for Missional Leaders. Inevitably, there will be stories of ministers who have birthed large churches out of nothing in just a few years, or who have turned dying congregations into mega churches. These are spectacular stories that I assume are meant to inspire us. Truly, there is nothing wrong with that. I am always impressed.

The Pentecost story is even more astounding. It contains elements that are stunning, incredible, ecstatic: the sound of a violent wind, fire appearing over their heads and 3,000 new members as the result of one sermon. Wow! It was an amazingly dramatic beginning.  But I’m even more intrigued by what happened after the drama subsided.

The very next verse says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

Not much drama here.

Worshiping together, eating together, learning together.

We know from the rest of Acts that there would be more excitement in the form of healings, unexpected conversions, visions. There would also be other events, far more of them and far less sensational: conversations, travels, meetings, more sermons.

Our lives together are somewhat the same, a couple of thousand years later. Occasionally we hear of some remarkable situation: amazing church growth, surprising personal turnarounds or healings, breathtaking testimonials.

More often, though, are the stories that never get told because they are not stories of wild action, but of simply living life with God:

A nurse who has been working with Alzheimer’s patients for ten years, and whose patients never get well or give testimonials…

A woman who cares for her children with humor, love and kindness even though her husband has left…

A teen who lead her community in starting a recycling project…

A man who somehow finds peace in his soul after he’s lived through a brutal war in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq or Afghanistan…

When a gay couple have the courage and faith to come to church, knowing that they might receive condemnation, judgment or worse…

Or when a parent stops what seems urgent to do something more important, like spending some time with their kids…

When a husband or a wife chooses to remain faithful to a spouse when the temptation to drift creeps into married life…

Or when a kid finds the courage to stand up to friends or foes and say no to drugs or sex or bullying.

When a person is willing to sacrifice wealth, prestige, and power, to serve in jobs that don’t pay well, but serves others.

Or when a person bears the pains of sickness and age without becoming bitter.

When a 76 year old man remarries and then takes on the task of raising a 2 year old whose mother is into drugs.

Where is the Spirit at work?

The Spirit is at work in human hearts and minds, and souls. The Spirit is at work in the places where the Spirit chooses to take up residence. Maybe you’ll write your own sermon this week and tell me where the Spirit is at work. I would love to hear!

The Spirit’s people measure success, not by the number of converts or new members or programs, but by whether or not we are doing what the Spirit is urging us to do. That is a vastly more difficult calculation. We can easily count the number of people in the pews, but how do we measure the long-lasting effect we are having on our friends, family and community? The effect of the Spirit’s work through the Spirit’s people is indeed beyond measure. It is incalculable.

And yet…

Go ahead, admit it. You’re wondering about the future, maybe worrying—do we even have a future? Will our church survive? Will our children have faith? Will our faith have children? There are so many challenges. Money. Divisions. Arguments. We’re getting older. How are we going to pay the bills. We don’t know the people next door anymore. Why would they want to come to our church? People pass by. We don’t know them. No one comes in. They are outside. We are inside. And so we wait and watch and worry. But we don’t know what to do. Won’t someone come and help us?  These are big questions. But we are not the first to ask them, did you know? There’s a story in the bible exactly like this. Do you remember?  There are only a few left. People pass by outside. They are inside waiting, watching and they don’t know what to do. And then it happens—wind, fire, noise and then silence. What just happened? No one came and took away their problems. Instead the spirit comes and creates a new one. That’s right. The Holy Spirit shows up and creates a problem. They can’t stay inside. They have to go out and preach and teach and pray and teach and care and love and preach and witness and…It was Pentecost.

So I’ve got bad news and good news. The bad news is, there is no one to fix our problems. The good news is, the solutions we seek are all around us. You have strength and courage and compassion and a story to tell. Our problem isn’t money or divisions or arguments. Our problem is, we’ve got a story to tell and we can’t help but tell it.

Now imagine one person reaching out to another and then another to listen to tell to share to hold to preach to feed to care to love. Why? Because we can’t help it. It’s Pentecost.

Most Christians baptize infants because they think that, like other covenants in the Bible, baptism is about what God does. You’ll recall the story in Genesis 15 of God’s covenant with Abram. Once the animals had been ritually cut in half and their pieces laid on the ground opposite one another, Abram fell asleep. While he rested under a tree—unconscious, unable to make a decision, sleeping like a baby—the smoking firepot (a “theophony,” or physical representation of God on earth) passed between the animals. God had made the covenant with Abram, independent of Abram. Of course, as Paul points out in Romans 4, Abraham responded to the covenant in faith so that the covenant promise is realized through faith. (Actually some have argued that this would be better translated “faithfulness,” as in God’s faithfulness to the covenant promise he made and Abraham’s. So when we use the word “faith” try to keep in mind all three meanings at once: trust that God speaks truly when he makes his covenant promise, God’s faithfulness to the covenant promise, and our faithfulness to the covenant.)  But this does not nullify the fact that God first made the convent independent of Abram’s ability to commit to be faithful to it, and even if Abraham had not had faith, “[God] remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself”  (2 Timothy 2:13).

The later theological way of getting at this is to talk about the three parts of a sacrament: the sign, the thing signified, and that which ties the sign to the thing signified. The sign in the sacrament of baptism is twofold, including both the baptismal water and a word of promise—“I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” I declare you, in other words, marked with the Trinitarian name and thus a member of the covenant people with God. It is God’s promise to you! But that brings us, of course, to the question, “Who is this ‘I’?” Who does this preacher think he is making promises on behalf of God? It is this question to which the Roman Catholic doctrine of priesthood is an answer. When the Apostle Peter receives Christ’s “Power of the Keys”—whatever he binds on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven (Mt 16:19)—the entire line of Popes and priests in Peter’s succession receive with him the power to bind man to God eternally.  Martin Luther, of course, reads this as a promise made to all believers—the priesthood of all believers—so that when any believer offers the sacramental word of promise she speaks on behalf of Christ himself. That’s why Luther’s favorite pastoral aphorism is “Stop calling Christ a liar!” In baptism, Christ has promised to mark you with God’s name to make you a member of the covenant family—believe him! And that belief—that faith—ties the word of promise to the thing it signifies (but we’ll get to that in a bit). So, that’s the sign: as we go through the waters of baptism, Christ promises to mark us with God’s name and make us members of the covenant family.

The thing signified is the truth of that promise: union with Christ, membership in the covenant family. The sign is the words of the promise; the thing signified is the promise itself. That’s what a sacrament is—a promise that gives what it promises.  Think about how this works in the sacrament of marriage. Again there’s a twofold sign: a ring and a word of promise. A wedding vow is not a marriage, but it is a sign that give what it promises. Two single people walk into a room, stand before God and make promises to one another and they walk out united together as one flesh. Indeed, the couple’s continued faithfulness to one another ties the sign to the thing signified, but the promises are made and the covenant sealed before faithfulness comes into the picture. No doubt you see the parallels with infant baptism. A promise is made but, more like the covenant with Abram than like a marriage, baptism is a promise made by Christ while the other party sleeps like a baby. And this promise gives what it promises—it’s unites the believer to Christ, makes her a member of the covenant family.

Finally, it is faith that ties the sign to the thing signified. So, no one believes that we are saved through baptism. We are saved, as Paul says, by God’s grace activated through faith (Eph 2:8). But faith is not, as it has so often been mistaken for, right belief about Christ (i.e. that he is fully God and fully man, that he died for sins and was raised from the dead). Faith is belief in Christ—trusting that he died for my sins. But that’s something I can only know through the word of promise. Of course, Holy Scripture is a word of promise, too, but it is about God’s intent and plan to save the world. The sacramental promise uses my own name. It’s what Luther calls “the pro me of the gospel”—it’s God’s promise to me. That’s why for Luther faith is literally faith in your baptism—faith in Christ’s word of promise. Believing in someone always means believing their word. And just like a couple’s faithfulness to one another ties the promises they made on their wedding day to the marital union which was promised, so what ties Christ’s baptismal word of promise to our union with Christ and membership in the covenant family is Christ’s faithfulness to that promise and ours. Again the threefold meaning of faith: trust that Christ keeps his promise, Christ’s faithfulness to the promise, and our faithful response to Christ promise.

1. The Triune God is an unfathomable, bottomless mystery.
2. Because of this, a lot Christians tend to think that the doctrine of the Trinity is really complicated; many avoid it all together.  But it is a doctrine, which means it’s meant to be taught.  Actually, the doctrine of the Trinity is quite simple for Christians because we have already been baptized into a community who calls God by his proper name: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. In the Trinity it is revealed to us that the entire life of God is grace, love and unity (2 Cor 13:14).  It is infinite relatedness, sharing, giving, sending out and returning. Some others of the Church fathers describe the life of God as an eternal dance.
4. Therefore we encounter the life of the Trinity as redemption and healing. As the earth is drawn into the suns orbit and thereby reflects the suns light to a dark world, so as we are drawn into the divine life we begin to reflect God’s love to the world.
5. It is only then, as we experience healing and redemption, that we come to recognize our own sin and brokenness.
6. A side note about evangelism: We often take the strategy when we introduce people to the Christian life of talking to them about their sinfulness, but this is the exact of the Trinitarian approach. Instead we should invite people into the love of God expressed in the life of the Trinity. Recognition of sinfulness will then come as a natural discovery. This leads us to the next point.
7. There’s a point right at end of Augustine’s De Trinitate—this massive and deeply philosophical tome on what may seem like an obscure point of Christian theology—when Augustine says that it was written for non-believers. So De Trinitate is an appeal to conversion—it’s an attempt to show how attractive Christian faith is! Trinitarian theology, says Meyers, is essentially evangelical. Only when it devolves into intra-Christian nitpicking does the doctrine of the Trinity become stuffy and boring.
8. Finally, the doctrine of the Trinity is eschatological. Only when we have been fully drawn into the Trinitarian life will we perfectly reflect God’s love to the world. Until then all of life is a journey deeper into the divine life. Think of life as “cleaning off a dirty mirror.”

As you know, debates about universalism have raged in the blogosphere and even made their way to major news outlets in the weeks before the book even hit the shelves—all the result of one conservative bloggers heated response to a promo video released by the publisher.

I vowed not to get involved in the debate, but that was when I thought the debate was properly about universalism, and I just did not feel ready yet to make any sort of decisive statements about that issue. But I was mistaken. So, before I get on to the real point of this post—to pose for you some questions that this book helped me to raise and which are relevant to my soteriology “class”—allow me first to make a few comments as a sort of outside observer. After reading Love Wins, I don’t have any idea why there remain debates about universalism surrounding it. Bell makes no claim anywhere in the book that sounds even remotely like universalism. To the contrary, he explicitly denies it. “Love demands freedom. It always has and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God’s ways for us. We can have all the hell we want” (p. 113). I could site others, but why don’t you just read the book?

Don’t get me wrong, this is a hard-hitting book. Bell is stunningly frank and people will find lots that they might take issue with. For instance, some might think that Bell has an unbiblical view of both heaven and hell. “Here is the new there,” he says. Heaven is not somewhere “out there” beyond the spacio-temporal word where disembodied souls float up to be with God. Heaven is about God’s kingdom come on earth (his will be done on earth as it is in heaven). It’s about resurrection life. Heaven is a physical, local reality that is both here and now as well as extended into the future (see chapter 2). So also, hell is not a place of eternal, conscious torment for those who have rejected Christ after they have died. Hell is the torment, suffering, violence and heartbreak that is the result of rejecting Christ’s way of love. Hell is a physical, local reality that is both here and now as well as extending into the future (see chapter 3). So heaven and hell are right here together. If C. S. Lewis wrote of the “great divorce” of heaven and hell, Bell writes of their marriage. Both the younger brother and the older brother are “at the party,” he notes, echoing the story of the prodigal son. But for the older brother it’s not much of a party.

It’s important to note that Bells teaching on these points is well within the broad stream of historic Christianity, and I for one tend to think that he is closer to the biblical account than many of the alternatives. Those who would oppose Bell on these grounds will have to deal with the relevant passages of scripture at least as thoroughly as he has—and that’s no small feat!  But at least then they might have a case.

Still others may take issue with Bell’s affirmation of “inclusivism”—the teaching that “Jesus is the way, but…the all-embracing, saving love of this particular Jesus the Christ will of course include all sorts of unexpected people,” including those who do not call themselves his followers or even know his name (p. 155). Again, I suspect it would be no small task to make a case from scripture negating inclusivism as strong as Bell’s case for the affirmative, but the charge of inclusivism is at least a legitimate one. (For Bell’s argument for inclusivism see chapter 6). The charge of universalism, on the other hand, is completely unfounded. I really don’t understand why we’re having the conversation. The only explanation I can come up with is that those people who jumped the gun and reviewed the book before it was released were successful in hijacking the conversation and distracting us from the real issues. They owe us all an apology.

Lest you think I just some die-hard Rob Bell supporter who thinks he can do no wrong, let me say that there is one entire chapter in the book that I thought was totally misguided. In chapter five Bell writes about how the entire universe is structured around the great mystery that death leads to life. Leaves fall to the ground and die causing new ones to spring into life. Gradually every few years we slough off our old skin cells making room for new ones to emerge. “This is true for ecosystems, food chains, the seasons—it’s true all across the environment. Death gives way to life” (p. 130). So far, so good. But Bell asserts that the ultimate example of this universal pattern is the cross and resurrection of Jesus.  “Although the cross is often understood as a religious icon, it’s a symbol of an elemental reality” (p. 131). A symbol of an elemental reality? So the cross is just a symbol of the pattern which exists intrinsically in the universe? Karl Barth would roll over in his grave! Look at the evidence another way. Yes there is a cycle that moves from death to life, but at other times in the cycle it is moving from life to death. Sure those leaves that fall to the ground make way for new life, but they’re dead—gone forever! When you and I take our last breath our organic material will eventually break down and become the food of the earth, but does that really feel like life the loved ones of the lost? The fact of the matter is that the evidence is neutral. Life springs forth all around us—but there is death, too.  We Christians understand that the universe arcs toward life only because the resurrection of Jesus makes the case.  It is the hope that the cycle will end in life, not death. The resurrection is not the prime example of some universal truth. It is the key fact around which all the evidence is organized. Bell gets it backwards. Now that’s a legitimate critique of one of Bell’s premises but it is about the doctrine of revelation—and it has absolutely nothing to do with universalism. Let’s be a bit more precise in our theological language, shall we? Otherwise we lose the legitimate points of contention and launch pads into rich conversation amid the wild goose chase for universalists statements that do not exist.

Okay, now onto the point. Before reading Love Wins I was working with theological framework pretty similar to Bell’s (with, of course, the exceptions noted above), but reading it has caused me to ask a couple of questions, and I’d like to know what you think. One quick disclaimer: If you’ve read the book, say whatever you want. If you haven’t read the book, I don’t care what you have to say about it, about Bell, or about universalism. Write it on your own blog. That said, whether you’ve read the book or not, I’d love to hear your thoughts about these questions.

1. My first question is about the nature of judgment. The good news about judgement—and, I take it, part of what makes heaven heaven, whether it is here or somewhere else—is that is that evil and violence and chaos will be banished. (The biblical way of saying this is “and there was no more sea”). Bell clearly understands this (see pp. 37 ff; p. 113), though he never offers any clear account of what this great and final judgement will be like. So, then, how can both heaven and hell be here and now and extending into the future? If heaven and hell are physical and local realities, then wouldn’t those who continue to choose violence, oppression and evil have to be in a separate physical locality? Otherwise what’s to keep them from rendering heaven unheavenly? My suspicion is that if you push this question too far you end up having to say that heaven and hell are internal realities. I’m not sure that Bell would want to go there…I know I wouldn’t.
2. The second is like it. If the gates to heaven are “never shut,” as Bell say, quoting the Revelation of St. John, then can and will those who would seek to cause chaos and war be exiled peacefully? If the division between heaven and hell is permeable, as both Bell and Lewis affirm, can judgement be non-violent? How, in other words, do justice and mercy embrace?