Rev. Cwirla's Blogosphere

O Day Full of Grace

2008-05-14T10:42:58-06:00

John 7:37-39 / Pentecost A / 11 May 2008 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA

In Nomine Iesu

If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in me. As the Scripture says, “From his heart will flow rivers of living waters.” (John 7:37-39)

Today is one of the highest and holiest days on our calendar. It’s a day we dare not forget, for if we do, we will forget the one who birthed us, washed us, nurtured and fed us. How dare we forget the womb that birthed us, the breasts that nursed us, the arms that comforted us. Of course, I’m talking about Church, our spiritual mother of our baptismal birth. Pentecost is, in a very real sense, our Mother’s Day, the day of the Church and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And of course, happy Mother’s Day to all who are mothers, and thanks be to God for our mothers.

St. Cyprian once said: "No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother.” There’s a great deal of truth to that. You always know who the mother is. And the mother will tell you who the father is. The Spirit of God cries out “Abba, Father” and testifies to our spirits that we are the children of God. And the Spirit speaks through the Church by which we were born of water and Spirit in Holy Baptism.

That’s why it’s fitting and proper on this Mother’s Day to recognize that Pentecost is about holy Mother Church. We cringe at that phrase sometimes. Part of it, I suspect, is our residual anti-Catholicism. It sounds just a bit too “Catholic” for our protestantized ears. Holy Mother Church. We have no problems with calling God “Father” (unless, of course, the feminist theologians have invaded our thinking), but we are reticent to realize that we also have a mother in our baptismal birth from above. Drawing on an analogy to Sarah, the wife of Abraham, the apostle Paul calls the heavenly Jerusalem, the Church, “our mother.”

You sometimes hear Pentecost called the “church’s birthday” but there already was a church before Pentecost. It numbered about 120 disciples including Jesus’ mother and brothers. Properly speaking, the Church was “born” on Good Friday, the day that Christ, the second Adam, died on the cross, and in the sleep of His death, a new Eve, the mother of all the living, was fashioned from His side by the water and the blood. As Eve was taken from the side of her sleeping Adam, so the Church was made from the baptismal water and the eucharistic blood that came from the side of Christ on the cross. As Eve was called the mother of all the living, so the Church is the mother that bears all believers in Baptism to eternal life.

John tells us in the prologue to his Gospel what it means to be the children of God: “To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, nor of a husband’s will, but born of God.” Not of natural descent - you aren’t naturally born a believer. Nor of human decision - you don’t decide to believe. Nor of a husband’s will - children of God are not conceived in the natural way.

Our small catechism puts it this way in the third article, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or senses believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him. We believe that we do not naturally believe. Our hearts are naturally dead toward God, dead in sin, hopelessly turned inward, without fear, love, and trust in God. We must be born anew, “virgin born” through water, Word, and Spirit.

Pentecost is not the church’s birthday, but the church’s birthing day, her delivery day. The day that mother Church bears her first children by the preaching of the Word and by Holy Baptism. Three thousand were baptized that day. Three thousand heard the preached Word through Peter and came to the birthing waters of Baptism with the promise that they too would receive the gift of forgiveness and the Holy Spirit. And not only them, but also their children. Pentecost is the church’s delivery date, the day she gave birth to three thousand born from above children of the heavenly Father through water and the Spirit.

The day is significant. Pentecost means “fifty.” Fifty days after the Passover came the winter wheat harvest festival. It was the celebration of the first fruits, the first harvest of the year. At the time of Jesus, it was also a day to celebrate the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai. These two themes come together - the harvest and the giving of the Word. Fifty days after Jesus’ death and resurrection comes the first fruits of the harvest, the first believers to believe through the apostolic Word and Baptism. It also comes with all the Sinai-signs - fire and wind. Three thousand people, from among the thousands that were in Jerusalem for Pentecost, heard the Word of Christ preached by the apostles, were baptized by them, and received the Holy Spirit.

In other words, those three thousand came to faith the way we came to faith. Not by walking around with Jesus, as the disciples did. But through the preached Word and through the water of Baptism. That’s why the day of Pentecost is so important in the life of the Church. These are the Church’s first children, of whom you and I are also numbered. And they were born again in the same we are born again, through water and the Word. Whoever has God as his Father has the Church as his Mother.

You don’t bring honor to Father while dishonoring Mother. Like all mothers, the Church is not without sin. But that’s no excuse for despising her or neglecting her. Luther said that we ought to thank God daily for our mothers even if they did nothing else than bear with us for nine months. Without them, we wouldn’t be around. And without the Church, flaws and all, we would not have the gifts of Baptism, the Word, the Supper. The Church is our mother. And we might wish for another, as I once did when I put a sign in the window that read, “Mom for Sale 5 Cents.” Ah, she’s the only we have, and thank God for her. Through Mother Church the Spirit, the Word, the water come to us to birth us to new life.

That brings us to the Gospel text for today. I took the liberty of rearranging the sentences a bit from what you have in front of you. The Greek permits that. Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me, and let him drink, the one believes in me.” To thirst is to be dried up and parched. Relief comes from the outside, not the inside. When you’re thirsty, you need seek a source of water and it isn’t in you. To “drink” of Jesus is to trust Him, to take Him at His word, to hear Him, to drink in all of His gifts by faith.

As the Scripture says, “Out of His heart will flow rivers of living water.” The “his” belongs to Jesus, not to you. In the OT, God is the source and fountain of living water. Jesus promised to give the Samaritan woman living water. It isn’t from our hearts that living water flows, but from the heart of Jesus. From our hearts flow murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness, gossip, slander, greed, idolatry - all that is wrong and broken and evil in our lives. The outflow of our hearts is an effluent of sin. Not fresh living water, but raw sewage.

But from the heart of Jesus, pierced for our iniquities by a Roman sword, there flows living water, water mixed with His life’s blood. (John is the one who captures this detail for us.) Jesus is the source, the fountain of that living water that cleanses from sin, that births us with a new and heavenly birth from above, that marks us as a new creation, children of God redeemed by Christ the crucified. Baptismal water is that living water Jesus was speaking, a water that flowed from His wounded heart to you in your Baptism.

John explains that Jesus was speaking about the Spirit that was to come. First Jesus had to die; it is out of His death that life flows. Then, risen and reigning, Jesus breathes out His Spirit, with the signs of fire and wind and languages. And three thousand thirsty sinful souls were quenched with water and the Word. They were baptized. And then there were more, as the three thousand went back to their homes, and the Church spread literally by word of mouth, words from mouths to ears carried along by the Spirit.

And as these last days draw to their close, that stream of living water flows to you - baptized, believing, forgiven, born anew of water and Spirit, born from above of Mother Church, heavenly Jerusalem, our free mother who bears her children in the freedom of Christ.

And so as we give thanks to God on this day for the gift of our mothers who bore us and nurtured us, we give thanks to God for the Church, our spiritual mother, who birthed us in Baptism and nurtured us with the pure spiritual milk of the Word.

Oh day full of grace! Happy Mother’s Day. Blessed Pentecost.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen

Intelligence and Static

2008-05-02T15:07:45-06:00

While searching for signs of intelligent life on the internet, I stumbled across a site for the SETI Institute. SETI stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, an attempt to find evidence for intelligent life in the universe by tuning in to the satellite radio of the cosmos. Check out this great video on the Allen Radio Telescope Array which was recently fired up at the Hat Creek Observatory in northern California.

The movie Contact, starring Jodi Foster, was based on a SETI project with Ms. Foster's character Ellie Alloway loosely modeled after SETI astronomer Dr. Jill Tartar. When I first saw Contact as an inflight movie, I thought it was pure science fiction. But the screenplay was written by Carl Sagan and, according to the SETI web site, it is "indescribably more accurate in its depiction of SETI than any Hollywood film in history."

Apparently there is more radio noise in the universe than AM talk radio in southern California. All of it appears to be just that, random electromagnetic static. The idea behind SETI is to focus lots of radio telescopes at lots of star systems and listen for any signals that rise above the static. This presumes they don't pick up our own music stations some of which are virtually indistinguishable from static.

In the movie Contact, science hero Ellie Alloway at the Phoenix Project detects a series of pulses in prime numbers on her radio telescope. Clearly more than random space noise. In the real SETI projects, scientists are looking for any concentrated, narrow band of electromagnetic radiation, sort of the cosmic equivalent of smooth jazz FM 99.6. The idea is that such a concentrated radio signal must emanate from an intelligence and cannot simply arise on its own.

So I find this interesting. Though scientists believe that "design" is undetectable, some , at least those who believe in ET, think that concentrated, coherent radio signals rising above the level of noise are a sign of intelligence. I also find it interesting that the Earth happens to be situated in such place in space that we can listen in on the universe's satellite radio. Location is everything.

This also makes me wonder. What if someone somewhere is listening in the electromagnetic noise that rises above the static in our neck of the universe, such as Don Imus, American Idol, and Wife Swap? Would they conclude that intelligent life existed here?

The Ascension of Our Lord

2008-05-02T01:01:44-06:00

He has raised our human nature
On the clouds to God's right hand;
There we sit in heav'nly places,
There with Him in glory stand.
Jesus reigns, adored by angels;
Man with God is on the throne.
By our mighty Lord's ascension
We by faith behold our own.

(Lutheran Service Book #494)

Another Comforter

2008-04-28T23:24:41-06:00

John 14:15-21 / 5 Easter A / 27 April 2008 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA

In Nomine Iesu

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. (John 14:15-21)

Our first item of business this morning will be to wash our mouths of the Law. We need a good Gospel rinse to freshen our breath, brighten our smile, and improve our vocabulary and understanding of this morning’s Gospel text. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Now for a gargle, rinse, and spit, if you please. If you love me, you will treasure, cling to, hold fast to, keep close to you, my commandments, my mandates, the things I have entrusted to you, my words. “If you love me you will cling to my mandates.” “Whoever has my mandates and clings to them, he it is who loves me.”

There. That tastes a lot better, doesn’t it. If we’re not careful, we’re going to make Jesus sound just like Moses with his commandments. The last thing we need is more commandments to keep; we can’t even manage the original ten from Sinai.

If you love Jesus, you will cling to every word He gives you. And when you cling to every word He gives you, you will love Him in the way He wishes to be loved. That makes sense. When you love someone, you cling to their every word, right? You love Jesus, don’t you? Of course you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be here this morning. And if you love Him, you will cling to His mandates. Mandates such as “He who believes in me has eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the last day.” Or “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has live and I will raise HIm up on the last day.” This is what love of Jesus means. To love Him is to receive His gifts. And the one who receives HIs gifts is the one who loves Him.

Jesus spoke these words at the table in the upper room where He had washed His disciples’ feet and given them His own Body and Blood in anticipation of His sacrifice. It is the night before the day He would be lifted up and draw all men to Himself in death. This is the sermon that went with the Supper on the night He was betrayed. This is the Word of “word and sacrament.” Jesus prepares His disciples for His coming death and resurrection and ascension, in which He would be seen no more and yet seen; in which He would depart and yet come to His disciples. And if it seems a bit like a riddle, it would only be that way for forty days, and then the disciples would understand.

With Jesus there is always more from HIm to give and more for us to receive from Him. He was about to give all that He had, His own life, for the life of the world, for the sin of the world. He was about to rise from the dead, conquering death and the grave. He was about to ascend to the right hand of Majesty from whence He came, disappearing in a cloud not to be seen again until His appearing in glory to judge the living and the dead. And here, on the eve of His death, He speaks of something more, Someone more. “I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, another Helper, to be with you forever.

Not only do you get Jesus and the Father, you also get another Helper, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. What the Spirit is good for, Jesus will spin out a bit later. The Spirit will convict and convince the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgement. He will lead and guide into all truth. He will take what is of Jesus and make it known, delivering all that Jesus has to give. The Spirit is the One by whom we are born again from above in the water of Baptism, which, as Peter reminds us, “now saves you” by granting you a clear conscience before God.

The world cannot receive the Holy Spirit, for it neither sees Him nor knows Him. The world, that is, the unbelieving world, deals only with what is seen and knowable by reason and senses. The world is a world of science and reason and measurements. But the Spirit is like breath or wind. You can’t see HIm but you can see His effects, like the leaves rustling in the wind.

Spirit, breath, and wind are all the same word. The Spirit is the breath of God, the wind that blew over the waters of the Deep in the beginning. The wind that blew over the sea when it parted in the Exodus. The breath that came from the Jesus’ mouth with His words on Resurrection Day. “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The wind the rushed through the church at Pentecost. The same breath that breathed new life into you at your Baptism where the Spirit came upon you. “You know Him,” Jesus says. “For He dwells with you and among you.”

There is a tendency to make something other of the Holy Spirit than He is. There is the “late-inning reliever” approach, in which the Father started it all, the Son clinched the game, and the Spirit comes on in the final innings as the closer. But Jesus has gone anywhere in His ascension. As He said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” So He’s gone nowhere. He’s disappeared from our sight, yes. And good thing too, because the sight of Jesus shining in majestic glory as the Lord of heaven and earth would fry us poor, miserable sinner to a crisp. You don’t want that, nor does He. So He hides Himself in the cloud, under the Word, the water, the Bread and Wine. And He sends the Spirit from the Father to be your Helper and Comforter in this in-between time of not-seeing yet believing.

There are those who make the Holy Spirit the main thing. Jesus did His thing, now it’s the Spirit’s turn. But just as the Son and the Father are one, so Father, Son, and Spirit are one even as they are distinctly three. So when you receive the Spirit, you also get Jesus and the Father. Never one without the other two, each distinct but inseparable. We’re getting a little warmup for Holy Trinity Sunday three weeks from now.

There are also those who make too little of the Spirit, or who “spiritualize the Spirit” by making Him some sort of power to do good or some sort of gas that oozes into the believer like radon gas from the church basement. But the Spirit described by Jesus is a “person,” he has an identity all his own, He is sent as another Helper, someone other than Jesus who dwells with and among us.

He is called the Spirit of Truth. He is in the truth-telling, truth-delivering business. He reveals the truth of our sin, how we are conceived and born into a condition of sinfulness from which we cannot save ourselves. He hold the mirror of the Law up to our eyes so that we can see the symptoms for ourselves - our idolatries and adulteries and murders and lies. He shows our hearts for what they really are - stony, hard, loveless hearts that refuse to let God have its way with us. He shows us our sin that He might show us our Savior. He takes what Jesus has and delivers it to us - the absolving Word, the water of Baptism, forgiveness, life, and salvation in the Body and the Blood of Jesus.

We must never doubt that the Spirit is at work. Where the Word is there the Spirit is. You hear people say sometimes, “I could just feel the Spirit of God at work in this place.” They probably weren’t in a Lutheran church, especially one of a traditional bent. No feeling the spirit around here. Oh, maybe once and a while a tickle when the preacher says something that hits you a certain way, or a favorite hymn gets dialed in and the organist nails it. But that’s not the point. Where the Word is preached and heard, where the Supper is being given out, there the Spirit is at work.

Our Confessions say that through the preaching of the Word and through the sacraments, the Holy Spirit works saving faith “when and where He pleases” in those who hear the Gospel. I am acutely aware of the “when and where He pleases” part. The Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it pleases. I have watched the effects of the Spirit as the Word brings repentance, sorrow, contrition over sin, and as the Word of the Gospel brings faith in Christ and the joy of freedom in sins forgiven. I’ve seen it over and over that it is not by might, nor by power, nor by cleverness or gimmicks or methods but by the Spirit working through the Word that people come to faith and are kept in faith.

The explanation of the third article to the Creed is a fine summary of what the Holy Spirit is up to:

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and keeps me in the one, true faith;

In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.

In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers.

On the Last Day, He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ.

In short, the Holy Spirit is busy making us holy - calling us, gathering us, opening the eyes and ears of faith, delivering forgiveness to our ears, the Body and Blood of Christ to our mouths, preparing us for the world’s Last Day and eternity’s endless Day when the Spirit of life breath life into our bodies once again, and we will rise to the life unending that is already ours in Jesus.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen

Friday at the Movies

2008-04-25T17:36:14-06:00

Another preacher video from Steve and Kathy. Warning - This one may hit a bit close to home for some of you preachers out there.

Living Stones, A Holy Priesthood

2008-04-25T09:04:54-06:00

1 Peter 2:2-10/ 5 Easter A / 20 April 2008 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA

In Nomine Iesu

Who are you? There’s a deep question to get things rolling. Who are you? In the martial arts they teach you to know your center of gravity. If you know your center of gravity, you aren’t easily knocked over, no matter how hard you are hit. It allows you to stand firm in the midst of battle without being locked in place. You can move and act with confidence, because you know where your center of gravity is. If you don’t know who you are, you have no personal center of gravity. You’re easily knocked off balance by the slightest thing. You let other people define who you are, lay expectations on you, try to bend and mold you to their idea of who you are.

When we don’t know who we are, we tend to ball up on ourselves, assume a kind of fetal position with respect to the world. And we never mature, we never grow up, when we don’t know who we are. We have no sense of meaning, purpose, place. We simply exist and let others or our circumstances define us.

Who are you? Peter answers that question for some newly baptized Christians in his first epistle, part of which you just heard. They are newborn infants that need to nuzzle up to the breast of mother Church, to drink the pure spiritual milk of the Word so that by it they would grow up to salvation. They have tasted that the Lord is good. They have come to the table, still dripping wet from their Baptism, wearing white robes, oil running down their faces and onto their robes. They have come to eat their Savior’s body and drink His blood and taste that the Lord is good.

Now Peter tells them who they are as baptized believers: They are living stones built into a spiritual temple; and they are a holy and royal priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Another way of saying it: they are worshipers who worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth.

They are living stones, and so are you. You probably never thought of yourself as a stone before, let alone a living stone. Stubborn as a rock, maybe. Jesus named Cephas “Peter,” petros, which means rock, but we know how solid he was. You are living stones. Not dead rocks, but living stones. Alive because you have come to the Living Stone, the rejected Rock named Jesus, the Stumbling Stone that God the Father laid in Zion that causes men who refuse to believe to stumble in their attempts to save themselves, and yet saves those who fall on Him in faith.

That’s how it is with Jesus and His death and resurrection. He’s the big Rock in the middle of the religious road. There’s no avoiding Him. You’re going to have to deal with Him sooner or later. Now or on the Last Day. And you can’t be agnostic about Him. Either you will trip over Him to your eternal shame and ruin, or you will fall on Him in faith to your salvation. He is the Way, and there is no other way; He is the Truth, and there is no other truth. He is the Life, and there is no other life.

He is God’s cornerstone, the elect one and precious. He is the eternal Son of God, the elect Son chosen to be the world’s Savior. Jesus is the only one who is elect in Himself. Everyone else is elect in Him; just as you are living stones only as you are joined to Jesus the Living Stone. Without Jesus, you are just a dead pile of rubble. In Baptism, God takes you, a dead rock, and makes you alive in Christ Jesus, a living stone. A precious stone, worth the price of Jesus’ blood shed on the cross.

Notice this. You are a stone in a temple; you are a priest in a priesthood. There are no loose boulders, no isolated priests. Stones have a building; priests have a priesthood. There is no such thing as an isolated Christian believing on his own or her own. The same Spirit who calls you also calls me and gather us together into congregations that manifest the whole gathered church.

Christians congregate. It goes with being baptized. You are living stones built into a house built by the Spirit, a Spirit-built house, the Church. It’s noteworthy that none of the descriptions of the church are individual in the Scriptures. No “I am the church, you are the church.” The church is always an aggregate whole - a body made up of members, a priesthood of priests, a temple of stones, a household of family members, a nation of citizens. When we congregate, especially to worship, we are doing the natural thing for baptized people to do. We are following the urging of the Spirit that calls us together. Even our Lord promises to meet us in congregations, where two or three are gather in my Name, there I am in their midst.

So let’s be done with this individualized “spirituality” that floats around today. Yes, if you were on a desert island all alone, there would be no one with whom to congregate, and Christ would still be with you. And if you brought a Bible along with you on your desert island, then that’s all the preaching you would have, and it’s all you would need. But we’re hardly on an island here, are we? And God is so much richer in His goodness toward us. He brings us together. He arranges to have the Word laid into our ears. The Body and Blood of Jesus put in our mouths. Taste and see that the Lord is good! And nothing tastes better than forgiveness, life, and salvation in the Name of Jesus.

You are a stone built into a spiritual house. You have a place and a purpose, and without you, the building is impoverished, the priesthood is lacking. Every baptized man, woman, and child has a place and a purpose in the Christ’s priesthood.

You are a chosen race, as OT Israel was once a chosen group of people. Don’t think of “race” the way we commonly do. Rather, a chosen group, selected to show God’s mercy to sinners to the world. He chose you. You didn’t choose Him, He chose you. You say, “But I didn’t do anything.” That’s right. He chose you to show the world that it’s by grace and not by works. You say, “But I’m not a very good person. Why would God choose me?” Precisely the point - to show the world that it’s not about being good, that God is merciful to sinners, that He justifies the ungodly.

You are a royal priesthood - kings and priests. You say, “I don’t feel like a king and a priest. No one treats me like king and a priest.” That’s right. That’s why you have to be told; you wouldn’t know that. You are kings in Christ’s kingdom; priests in His priesthood. But don’t priests wear robes? You do. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus have been clothed with Christ.” You wear Christ like a robe. I wear a robe to remind you of the baptismal robe you wear. You could all wear robes, but then you’d have another excuse not to come to church on Sunday. I’m happy if you don’t wear beach clothes.

You say, “But don’t priests do religious things?” And that’s where your old Adam has you tricked. He’s very religious that old Adam of yours. He thinks you have to get religious. Spiritual sacrifices are what Paul calls “living sacrifices,” the worship of your day to day life. Your vocation, your calling as father, mother, son, daughter, worker, citizen, worshiper. This is the liturgy of life. You’re a priest. You consecrate stuff with the Word of God and with prayer. All that ordinary stuff of your day to day work is holy because you are holy on account of Christ.

It begins in worship. Priests gather for worship, and your priesthood is to hear the Word, receive the Body and Blood, and offer your spiritual sacrifices of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. That’s how you “proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” That’s what’s happening in the liturgy when you say your “amen.” You’re doing your priestly work, offering spiritual sacrifices, not to atone for your sins but because your sins are atoned for by Jesus’ sacrifice. That’s why your sacrifices, your worship, is acceptable to God. It comes to the Father “through Jesus Christ.”

It extends through all your life. Priestly work doesn’t just happen on Sunday morning or whenever you come here. Priestly work goes on where God has called you to be a priest - at home with your children, in your community, in your workplace, in the classroom, on the playground, with friends, family , coworkers, neighbors. You are priests of God blessing, teaching, praying. Baptism permits you to worship God, to pray, to praise, to give thanks, to bless others, to teach others. That’s what priests do.

The mother nursing her baby, the father teaching his children, the worker doing excellent work, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker are priests to God in Baptism, offering up their work, their lives and bodies, as living spiritual sacrifices through the one atoning Sacrifice of Jesus.

You are a holy nation. God’s nation. The United States isn’t God’s nation; it’s just another nation among the nations in the eyes of God. Israel today is not God’s nation. God’s nation is the Church, His baptized believers united with Christ in His death and resurrection. You are a holy nation. You may be American or a citizen of some other country, but that’s your temporary citizenship. Your permanent citizenship is in God’s nation.

Once you were not a people. LIke Hosea’s son - Lo Ami - not my people. What a thing to name a son. Not my people. Once you were outside of God’s mercy. Like Hosea’s daugher - Lo Ruhamah - not mercied. What a thing to name a daughter. Not mercied. Imagine Hosea calling the kids for dinner - Not my people, Not Mercied. I’m sure the neighbors loved it.

That’s what it means to be outside of Christ. You are not God’s people, you are not mercied. That’s what happens when in unbelief you trip over the the stumbling Stone. Not my people; not mercied.

Who are you? You know who you are. You are living stones in God’s temple; a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. You are God’s prized possession. You are baptized into Jesus Christ, the crucified, risen, and reigning Lord. He is the source of your identity. He is your center of gravity. Built on Him, baptized into Him, believing in Him, nothing can knock you over.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen

Happy Earth Day!

2008-04-22T08:59:17-06:00

Politics aside, you have to admit that ours is one pretty planet. It may not be our "mother" but it is our home, and we don't have a summer cabin elsewhere in the universe.

There's no doubt about it - we live on a privileged planet. Considering the earth's place in its galaxy, its proximity to the right kind of parent star for heat and light, its eccentric orbit, surface gravity, thin surface crust over a molten core, oxygen/water atmosphere, water/land ratio, and large, single moon to govern tides just to name a few facets, the statistical chances of there being another gem like this one anywhere else are pretty slim. We need to take good care of this rare earth of ours.

For our Earth Day devotions, I offer a few paragraphs from Eugene H. Petersen's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places and his comments on Genesis 1 as the rhythm of the liturgy of creation and life.

The interesting thing about rhythm is that we can slow down or quicken the tempo, but we cannot eliminate the beat, the cadence. This can be realized most readily in music and dance, but the very creation itself is this way. This is the nature of the creation of which we are part. We are embedded in time, but time is also embedded in us. Creation is called into being, not haphazardly and not in a cacophony of noise but rhythmically; as we listen and observe we find ourselves integrated into the rhythms. The great creative cadences keep sounding and resounding around and within us: And God said...and God created...and God blessed...and God made...and God gave...and God called....

Genesis "has a certain liturgical flavor...a highly regular and repetitive description of the process of creation, step by step, day by day,'"writes John Levenson. We continue to be part of this process as the Genesis text gets us in tune with, puts us in step with, keeps us present to creation time: light and darkness...sky and sea...earth and vegetation...sun, moon, and stars...fish and birds...animals and humans. As we enter each night's rest and each day's work, the great formative rhythms keep us aware of and participant with God's formational words: "and God said...be fruitful and multiply and fill...according to its kind...and it was good...and it was so...and there was evening and there was morning...."

There is much more in Genesis 1, of course. There is the work of each of the six days by which we are guided to attend to everything that is going on around us. But the gift of time is, first, that by which we become present and participant in the work. Nothing in this creation is here merely to be studied, analyzed, figured out; each element, each day's "work," is here first of all to be received as an integrated and coherent "note" in the all-encompassing rhythms of the creation oratorio, in which we breath the same air that God breathed over the deep, and from deep in our lungs - our lives! - we sing and play to the glory of God. (Petersen, 68-69)

Yale University and Art

2008-04-21T15:29:38-06:00

Yale University has threatened to pull Aliza Shvartz's controversial "abortion art" senior project unless she clearly admits it was a hoax.

"In this case, we will not permit her to install the project unless she submits a clear and unambiguous written statement that her installation is a work of fiction: that she did not try to inseminate herself and induce miscarriages, and that no human blood will be physically displayed in her installation," Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said in a statement released Monday.

OK, so let me get this straight. If Ms. Shvartz admits that her indecent , obscene, disgusting political statement on abortion, miscarriage, and motherhood was a hoax, and she assures everyone that no human blood was used in her installation, the show can go on? Has ivy clogged their minds over at Yale University? A political hoax on self-induced abortion is admissible as a work of art at Yale so long as it isn't real?

I wonder if a sculpture depicting a DNA double helix with the words "Intelligent Design" would be acceptable at Yale?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351984,00.html

"Expelled" Expounded

2008-04-20T18:04:27-06:00

This is a movie about the politics of science. Politics in science, you say with a gasp? Say it isn’t so! Next thing you’ll be telling me is that there is politics in religion, too. Yes, Virginia, there most certainly is, but that’s another bedtime story for another time.

I wouldn’t call “Expelled” a documentary in the narrow sense of the genre. It’s more of an intelligently designed anti-propaganda piece. Using the Berlin Wall as a metaphor for the wall of division between atheistic Big Science and theistic Religion, Stein builds the case that academic science is now on a witch hunt for religion. It builds on the firing of some scientists from the Smithsonian and universities, allegedly for their belief that the cosmos bears the marks of “intelligent design.”

The movie plays out as a conflict of good vs. evil - the white hats being worn by the mostly young, hip, geeky-cool, highly articulate, deeply philosophical “intelligent design” guys; the black hats being the beady-eyed, yellow-toothed, sweaty atheists of Big Science, with New Atheism’s chief evangelist Richard Dawkins playing the role of his own slimy self, albeit in a somewhat over the top way that will surely cause him to be overlooked at next year’s academy awards.

Stein’s movie style is at once engaging and irritating. He drops old clips from newsreels and other black and white footage to make the abrupt, stream of consciousness transition from one point of “discovery” to the next. The hand-held camera style gives a certain Blair Witch look to the film, not to mention a Blair Witch sense of vertigo. No, that's not a reference to evolution’s poster girl Eugenie Scott.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have a problem with documentary filmmakers who insert themselves into their own movies and become the hero. Michael Moore does this as does Ben Stein in this movie, becoming the great advocate for free speech in the science academy. To me, this is a self-serving exercise of the reporter becoming the story.

I was personally entertained by the various ways people organized or didn’t organize their desks and books, noting “filers” and “pilers” in both camps. I happen to be a piler, and reveled in the sight of the guy who was nearly buried under piles and boxes of books. I feel so much better about my study.

Positively, the movie is a good opportunity to meet some of the players face to face, albeit a little too close for comfort. What is it about science that lends to bad complexion? The movie does correctly point out that this is a political war of competing world views - atheism vs. theism - and that academic science seems to have pitched its tent on the side of atheism. It calls into question the so-called “objectivity” of science, especially when religious implications are involved.

The question on the table is this: Is the concept of “intelligent design” rejected by science because it is not actually science or because of a political war being waged against religion in the academy? The answer is much more nuanced than the movie presents. The movie never really explains what “Intelligent Design” actually entails, and presumes that the viewer already knows.

Intelligent Design is an attempt to explain the apparent ordering of the universe. Evolutionists say that the order of things is an inherent property of material, that given sufficient time, things will order themselves by a self-guided process of natural selection. Intelligent Design people argue that the statistical odds of that are infinitesimally small to the point of nearly impossible. Instead, they claim that the various ordered properties observed in the world, such as the genetic code, biological systems, the cosmos, etc. are evidence of “intelligent design.”

Of course, scientists, especially of the atheist stripe, immediately rush in and have a God-attack, because to suggest “intelligent design” is to suggest an intelligent Designer. And no matter how many times the intelligent design crowd swears on a stack of Bill Dembski’s books that it isn’t so, it is so. You can’t have design without a designer.

The arch-bad guy Richard Dawkins admits as much in a priceless scene of sweaty self-contradiction that alone is worth the price of admission. Pressed by Stein regarding the ultimate cause of life on earth, Dawkins proposes that it might have been seeded by some form of intelligence, likely from beyond our solar system, which of course would have been seeded by some other form of yet higher intelligence, ad infinitum. Yes, that’s right. Dawkins believes that the intelligent designers of life as we know it may have been aliens. When you don’t believe in God, you’ve got to believe in something.

The problem, as Dawkins illustrates nicely, is that the question of ultimate cause and origin cannot be answered by science. “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear” (Heb 11:2). You can’t do the Creation Experiment, so empirical science isn’t really in the game. And you can stare at rocks and fossils until your teeth turn yellow and your skin looks bad and you still won’t be able to say definitively who or what (if anyone) is responsible or how it happened. Yes, Virginia, science is limited in what it can teach us. That’s why there are other departments at your college, so be sure to enroll in a few other classes on your way to your evolutionary biology degree.

The “naturalist presuppostion,” that natural events must have a natural cause, is perfectly workable in empirical science. We don’t expect a chemist in the lab to cry out “It’s a miracle!” when he observes an unexpected result. That would be very bad science. Empirical science reasons from specific to general, from observation to theory. It deals with penultimate causes, not ultimate causes. A chemist knows what causes polystyrene, but he doesn’t know what caused carbon.

In the study of origins and ultimate causes, the naturalist presupposition is, in effect, presuppositional atheism. The Creatior is ruled out as a possible cause for creation. But the study of origins is a forensic science, reasoning from observations to cause, which is always a circumstantial case. And the good forensic researcher must be open to any and all possibilities, including aliens or God.

What has happened in academic science is that the empirical sciences have rushed to the aid of their weak-eyed sister, the forensic science of origins under the grand banner of Science. This has become a political war of Science vs Religion, when it should be a matter of empirical science vs forensic science and the limitations of the latter when it comes to the study of ultimate cause and origin.

Even if evolution were to collapse tomorrow, the periodic table, molecular orbital theory, quantum mechanics, and the genetic code would all continue to operate without a glitch, because they do not rely on a materialistic presupposition of ultimate cause. What began as Darwin’s observation about the adaptation of species, grew into a hypothesis about the origin of species, which became a hypothesis for the origin of the universe, which became the answer to life, the universe, and everything (which readers of Douglas Adams know is 42). Theology, which was once called the “queen of the sciences” has been expelled from the academy and left to talk to itself in the academic ghettos of theology departments and seminaries, while science has become the new religion. The Dawkins vision of a world where theism is on the wane and atheism is the new religion is taking shape in the hallowed halls of academia.

At first viewing, “Expelled” seems to go down a slippery slop from evolution to atheism to nazi eugenics to social nihilism. The testimonies of the former Christians turned atheists are chilling. I thought the movie went too far with its shots of Dawkins and Eugenie Scott interspersed with nazi newsreel footage.

But a member of my congregation noted that this might be a clever case of turnabout is fair play on the part of Stein. The atheist evolutionists argue that ID is a wedge that will lead to religion taking over science and the establishment of a creationist theocracy that will stifle all academic freedom. But they have no problem with science taking over religion, or ID proponents being censured and fired. They also seem to have no regard for the ethical implications of evolutionary atheism. Stein delivers a taste of their own medicine, and they don’t seem to like it.

I would have liked to have heard from some Christians who also hold to some version of evolution, such as Dr. Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project, who writes openly about his Christian faith as a scientist. Christians who believe in evolution are viewed as inconsistent by both creationists and evolutionists. At least the two agree on something.

Go see the movie and have a good conversation. To listen to him whine about his appearance in this movie, you’d think Dawkins had just appeared in Borat. I love outrage on the part of people who make a living saying outrageous things, such as Dawkins' atheist manifesto "The God Delusion." Even with Borat, the people had only themselves to blame for looking like idiots. It may be a challenge, but I encourage you to pray for these folks. They are about as darkened as darkness can be.

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened." (Romans 1:18-21)

Abortion as Art

2008-04-17T18:23:56-06:00

*Warning* - Not for the squeamish nor is this funny!

It used to be that the senior art project in college meant some work of art. No longer, at least at Yale University, one of our nations oldest institutions of higher learning, originally founded by Congregationalist ministers to train clergy, home of Yale Divinity School, whose seal reads "Truth and Light."

Senior Aliza Shvarts ’08 wanted to make a political statement with her senior art project and turn herself into a piece of performance art. She repeatedly inseminated herself artificially, took abortificants to induce miscarriages, filmed and collected everything to be displayed in a large cube wrapped in hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting. For the fuller description, you may click here, but you already know more than you wish you had. (The link may redirect you; apparently the traffic is high.) Even if the whole thing turns out to be a hoax**, which I doubt it will, it is still perverse beyond measure.

Fellow "artist" Juan Castillo ’08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result. “I really loved the idea of this project, but a lot other people didn’t,” Castillo said. “I think that most people were very resistant to thinking about what the project was really about."

Right. Like murder as art. If this is what passes as "art" at Yale University, I shudder to think what is considered theology. I thought these senior projects had to be approved by an adviser.

If this doesn't repulse you and drive you to your knees in prayer, you'd better pinch yourself to see if you're still alive. If you're a Yale alum, pray for your alma mater, and don't send another nickel. I pray this is not representative of a rising generation which has been raised in a culture of godless self-idolatry, who have exchanged the glory of the Creator for the creature, and have degraded their own bodies which are gifts of God redeemed by the body of His Son on the cross.

Truly the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven, as God hands us over to the most degrading and vile things which is now called "art."

Kyrie eleison!
Maranatha!

**Update** An alert reader has linked to this http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080418/D903VVSO0.html indicating that Ms. Shvartz has perpetuated a disgusting and perverted hoax in the name of performance art. Hey, we've already had crucifixes immersed in urine as art, why not abortions, real or imagined? The hardened callousness of a young mind and heart that can conceive of such things simply astounds. The murder of unborn children and the pain of a woman's miscarriage become the topic of some smirking senior prank! What's next? The Holocaust as performance art? How about the abuse of women as performance art? Yeah, that would make a political statement, wouldn't it? I hope she flunks.

I pray that someone confronts this young woman in her sin, reaches her with the Gospel of Christ, and that God would grant her repentance and faith before she herself becomes a piece of eternally damned to hell performance art. And that won't be a hoax.