Quasimodo Geniti - The Second Sunday of Easter (Easter 2)

(Audio)

John 20:19-31; 1 John 5:4-10; Exodus 37:1-14

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

I like Thomas. Thomas is a realist. Thomas calls a thing what it is. Thomas believes that things have meaning in and of themselves, meaning endowed in them by the very God who created them. Thomas believes that, if he observes and studies real things in the real world, he can know something about them, and thereby he can know something about the God who created them.

Do you see how radically different Thomas’ view is than the view commonly held by people today? Today, as a people, as a culture, we do not believe that things have meaning in and of themselves, and we certainly do not believe that things are endowed with meaning by God or by any other supernatural being. Rather, we assume that things only have meaning insofar as we, human beings, ascribe meaning to them. We have become like the scoffers of whom St. Peter warned us saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” Truly, this is the only way that you can arrive at a biological, chromosomal, anatomical male “identifying” as a female and legislators, lawyers, judges, the media, corporations, and all the world agreeing that this man is a woman simply because he says he is, thinks he is, or feels that he is. Somewhere in time there was a seismic shift in thinking, in common philosophy, in worldview, in common sense, away from realism, calling a thing what it is, to nominalism, calling a thing what you think it is regardless of what it really is.

Thomas is not a nominalist who calls a thing what he thinks, feels, or desires that it is, but he is a realist: Thomas calls a thing what it is, what it is endowed by God to be. “These things did Thomas count as real: The warmth of blood, the chill of steel, the grain of wood, the heft of stone, the last frail twitch of flesh and bone.” Thomas needed to see and touch and, presumably, smell, taste, and hear, in order to believe. So do I, and so do you! God created our bodies and our souls, our reason, and all our senses, good. And so, it is not a bad thing that we need to experience real things in order to believe – God made us this way – but it is only a bad thing if, after having experienced other real things that proved to be true in accordance with the Word of God, and upon hearing the testimony of trusted friends who have also experienced those same real things, also in accordance with the Word of God, we do not believe them. That is where realist Thomas goes wrong saying, “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe.” Now Thomas has shifted from being a realist who calls real things what they really are as God endowed them to be, to being a materialist who only counts as real material, physical things. Thomas believed in Jesus, to be sure. He believed Jesus to be dead. Thomas had seen his Lord scourged, whipped, and torn. He had seen the cruel thorns driven into His holy head. He had seen his blessed hands, feet, and side pierced with nails and spear. He had seen His lifeless body taken down from the cross and placed into a tomb. He had seen these things and he called them what they were: He called them death.

However, it was not the case that Thomas had only seen and touched His Lord in the past, but he had also seen the signs He performed, more than mere miracles, but signs confirming and fulfilling Messianic prophecies of God’s Word that he had heard with his God-given ears and comprehended with his God-given reason. Thomas had good reason to believe, not only that his Lord had died, but also that He had risen and was alive, just as Jesus had said before His crucifixion, just as his trusted friends accounted to Him that Sunday evening in the upper room. “The vision of his skeptic mind was keen enough to make him blind to any unexpected act too large for his small world of fact.” Just like that, faced with the certainty of death, Thomas became a Modernist and a Materialist. Though Thomas knew that Elijah had raised a widow’s son from death, and that he himself had witnessed Jesus raise a widow’s son from Nain, Jairus’ daughter, and his good friend Lazarus, nonetheless “His reasoned certainties denied that one could live when one had died.”

And, so it is with much that passes as science today; it is a close-minded ideology, a “small world of fact,” not an open search for truth. Only consider the debate on global warming, Neo-Darwinist evolutionary theory, novel untested gene therapies masking as vaccines, gender orientation, and identity politics. To be on the wrong side of these ideological issues is to be labeled anti-science, anti-intellectual, bigoted, sexist, and racist. But, true science requires critical thinking and intellectual honesty, the ability to admit that, when the findings disprove your hypothesis, then what you had believed, no matter how strongly held a viewpoint, is wrong. Those who truly want to support science should defend the right of all scientists — including dissenters — to express their views. Those who stigmatize dissent do not protect science from its enemies. Instead, they subvert the process of scientific discovery they claim to revere.

However, our Lord is gracious and merciful. He comes to us in our weakness of flesh and raises us up to faith and life. He breathes His Holy Spirit upon the dry bones of our unbelief and causes sinews and flesh to come upon us, and He fills us with His life and Spirit. The following Sunday, the disciples were gathered together again with the door bolted behind them. But, this time Thomas was present with them. Once again, our resurrected Lord Jesus came to them where they were. He passed through the barrier that kept them in and He spoke directly to Thomas saying, “Peace be with you. Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Then Thomas’ “fingers read like braille the markings of the spear and nail,” and Thomas believed and confessed “My Lord and my God!” If you think about it, Thomas’ confession is even greater than was Peter’s who confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God. No longer doubting, Thomas confessed Jesus to actually be God Himself. Jesus gently and lovingly rebuked Thomas for His foolish unbelief saying, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Thomas had everything he needed to believe, but, like we too often do, he became enslaved by his desire for visible and physical proof so that he forgot that God had also given him ears to hear His Word and Promise and believe.

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.” Which book is that?  It is first the Gospel of St. John, but that book is also the entirety of the Holy Scriptures, all of which testify of Jesus. “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His Name.” This is the reason you have the Holy Scriptures. This is the reason you have as Church and a Pastor. This is the reason you have preaching, teaching, and exhortation, the proclamation of your sins forgiven, Holy Baptism, and Holy Supper – that you may believe, and keep believing throughout your life until Jesus comes again. These things come to you from outside of you. You can see them and hear them, touch them, smell them, and taste them. “May we, O God, by grace believe and thus the risen Christ receive, whose raw imprinted palms reached out and beckoned Thomas from his doubt.”

By all means, use your God-given senses to observe and study His creation, and derive its meaning. By all means, use your God-given reason to know and understand and believe. However, use also your God-given ears and listen to His Word, the Holy Scriptures, for they are the revealed Word of God and they are Truth. That which you perceive finds its meaning in God’s Holy Word, “which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” For, “if we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God that He has borne concerning His Son.” Don’t be a nominalist, believing that things are essentially meaningless until you give them meaning, but be a realist like Thomas, believing and confessing that all things that are are and are sustained by the creative Word of the LORD and thus testify to their Creator and to Jesus, the Word made flesh, crucified, died, risen, reigning, and returning in glory today, tomorrow, or the next day. And, to preserve you in faith until that day and hour, your Lord Jesus is present with you now that you may believe, and that believing you may have life in His Name, to the glory of God His Father. 

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Homily for The Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord

(Audio)

Matthew 17:1-9; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Exodus 34:29-35

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

“That’s your interpretation.” No doubt you’ve heard someone say that before. Very likely, you’ve said it yourself. But, what does God’s Word plainly say? You heard it just a short moment ago in our Epistle reading: “No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Now, to be sure, this passage does not apply to man’s interpretation of Scripture, but, rather, to the Words of Scripture themselves, attesting to their truth and authority. Thus, while this may not provide us a hermeneutic, a rule of interpretation by which to approach the Scriptures, it does provide us with a place to begin, and that is with Scripture itself, which is true in itself and must be apprehended by men. Therefore, the first thing to realize when interpreting Scripture is that the meaning of the text lies in the text itself. You do not devise an interpretation of your own and then force that interpretation upon the text, but you draw the text’s meaning out of the text itself. When someone says to you, “Well, that’s your interpretation,” I would respond, “Then, let us try to get at the objective meaning of the text, beyond our own private prejudices and interpretations.”

If the Modern Era was marked by the presumption that truth can be discovered by observation and testing, then the Post-Modern Era in which we live is marked by the belief that there is no truth to uncover, or that can be uncovered, but that there are only our presuppositions and prejudices, our interpretations, with no objective standard, rule, or truth by which to judge them. The result is a form of radical relativism in which no truth claim is to be considered more valid than another and the primary values are thought to be equality and tolerance. To one who claims “This is right,” or “That is wrong,” the response must necessarily be, “That’s your interpretation.”

While this may be true concerning the words of men, it is not true concerning the Words of God. God has given men His Word in precisely the manner He desired to give it. Moreover, in many cases God’s Word interprets itself. That is to say that, often God’s Word in one place interprets the meaning of God’s Word in another place – Scripture interprets Scripture. This is not a case of men interpreting God’s Word, but of God interpreting God’s Word. Where this occurs, there is no ambiguity or uncertainty in interpretation, whether it be a Word that is easy to apprehend or difficult. We must resist the temptation to rationalize God’s Word, that is, to force it into manmade categories and expectations. But, we must let God’s Word be His Word. He has delivered it to His Prophets and Apostles precisely in the ways He desired – It is what it is. God does not demand that we understand it in every point, but only that we believe in it and trust in it. This is what St. Peter had in mind when He wrote, “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

When Moses met with God on Mount Sinai, He received the Word of God directly. He delivered to the people of Israel, not his interpretation of God’s Word, but what God had actually said, engraved by God on two tablets of stone. And, as a sign and witness of his face-to-face encounter with God, Moses’ face shone forth with God’s radiated glory. When Moses came down from the mountain, the people of Israel saw that his face shone and they knew that He had spoken with the LORD. Only after the people saw his shining face did Moses then veil himself until the next time He met with God on the mountain.

Likewise, when Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, the glory of the LORD shone all around Him and from Him, shining forth from His face and His clothing. The difference between Moses and Jesus, however, was that Moses shone with the radiated glory of God, while Jesus is the fullness of God’s glory in human flesh. Thus, Moses stands with Jesus as witness and testimony to Him, along with Elijah, the Great Prophet of God’s Holy Word. These two men stand in the glory of God, witnessing and testifying to Jesus who is the Word of God made flesh. The Greek word translated as transfiguration is actually a more familiar word, metamorphosis, meaning “to change in form.” Jesus was changed into another form. However, the form that He was changed into was something that was already there, but that was veiled in fleshly humility, much as Moses veiled His shining face. Jesus’ transfiguration was a preview and foretaste of His glory that would be revealed in His glorious resurrection from the dead, and in His even more glorious return on the Last Day. Jesus was about to veil His glory in the most humble and seemingly inglorious ways, in His Passion, crucifixion, and death. Therefore, to strengthen and prepare His disciples, that when all was accomplished they would remember His Words and the Words of God from of old, and believe that He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God and go and tell all the world the Good News of what God has done, Jesus permitted three of His disciples to witness a momentary unveiling of His glory.

More than that, God spoke and gave His Word in the hearing of Jesus’ disciples and these heavenly witnesses saying, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” Where God had given His Word by Moses and the Prophets long ago, now He has given His Word by His Son. Jesus stands on the Mount of Transfiguration as the Word of God incarnate – the interpretive key to all the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures. Scripture interprets Scripture, and Jesus is our hermeneutic, our rule for interpretation. After this glorious vision, the disciples rose up and saw no one but Jesus only. Moses and Elijah, all the Scriptures, find their fulfillment in Jesus. He did not abolish the Law and the Prophets, but He fulfilled them with His obedient life and death for the sins of all men. Through faith in Jesus, you are released from captivity to obedience to the Law for justification. Now you may do it freely, as fruit is borne from the tree or vine, out of love and thankfulness for all that God has done in His Son Jesus the Christ.

St. Peter was one of those who witnessed the Lord’s glory with his own eyes and heard the Word of the LORD with his own ears. In response to those who would say, “That’s your interpretation,” St. Peter says, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. […] We ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.” And yet, St. Peter also writes, “We have something more sure, the prophetic Word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” That “morning star” that “rises in your hearts” is faith in Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, crucified, died, risen, ascended, and reigning. Moses and all the Prophets pointed to Him who is the fulfillment of God’s Law and prophetic Word. All New Testament belief, doctrine, and confession flows out from Him who is the interpretative key to God’s Holy Word – “Listen to Him.” “But, that’s your interpretation.” No. That’s God’s interpretation, in Jesus Christ our Lord.

God’s Word is “a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.” Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh and the Light of the world. Through faith in Him, you, who once were in darkness, are children of the Light. Now that Light shines through you to lighten others who walk in darkness and in the shadow of death. The Transfiguration of Our Lord was a glorious foreshadowing of your adoption by grace, the benefits of which you reap now in your access to the Father through Him. Though His glory remains veiled, nevertheless, you receive God in Word and Water, Bread and Wine. Though, now, you see through a mirror, dimly, soon you shall see Him face to face. Until then, we have His Word and we have Jesus, His Word made flesh.

However, as glorious as that Transfiguration Mount surely appeared, its glory could not eclipse that of God’s Son upon the cross. For, at the Cross, we see God's justice through the judgment of sin, God's love through the forgiveness of sinners, God's power through his defeat of Satan, and God's wisdom in his upholding of holiness yet making a way for sinners. Christ's death is the ultimate Word of the LORD: It is finished. You are forgiven. Go in His peace. After the Transfiguration, the disciples were prepared by God to interpret the meaning of the cross. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are prepared to interpret it as well. In Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection God’s Word of promise in Genesis 3:15 is fulfilled: Satan has been defeated, you have been redeemed, God’s sacrificial Lamb stands as though slain, victorious over sin, death, Satan, and the grave. Jesus is the firstfruits of those who rise from the dead. Through baptism and faith in Him, where He lives and reigns there you shall also be. This is God’s interpretation. Believe it, for Jesus’ sake.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Why is it so hard to live freely?

It is really hard to live in the freedom of the Gospel. The flesh actually likes, loves the Law. Well, ok, it's a love/hate relationship. The flesh loves the Law because it justifies itself (falsely, of course) by it. The flesh hates the Law because it forbids what it wants to do.  Like a toddler, however, the flesh rebels against the Law in part to test that it is still there. The flesh receives comfort knowing that the rules are still in force.

This plays out in interesting ways in the Christian life. How tempting it is for those who are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ to grope around for laws to follow and to impose upon others? And then there's the temptation to rebel against the Gospel itself, because it contains the Law fulfilled in Jesus. This is to say that we are free *in* the Gospel, not *from* the Gospel. The Law is fulfilled; it has not been abolished, nor did it pass away. That's a BIG difference!

Well intentioned Christians both cast the justified back into the shackles of law and teach that the law no longer applies! My heart is comforted in the proclamation that Christ has justified me in His blood, and then some yahoo comes along and says, "Now you have to do this...: evangelize, witness, read your Bible more, attend small groups, whatever." Of course, some other yahoo will come along and say, "Just go to mass, that's all."

No. Justification means something. It means that you are freed from the Law's demands that you may live freely *in* the Gospel. You see, that's a bit different from the kind of antinomian freedom some peddle. In Christ you are a new creation; that means a new life and a new way of living. It doesn't mean a sinless life, but it means a repentant life, a contrite life, a humble life. However, the works of this new life are not to be quantified or measured -- that is purely a human rationalistic idea. The fruit of faith is not to be quantified or measured, but they must be there; and they will be there, if there is faith. Christ says that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains. I don't know anyone who's moved any mountains. Undoubtedly, "O ye of little faith" are amongst the best that our Lord will ever find. "O Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief," a father cried. "He who believes... will be saved." How much? How often? Doesn't enter into the equation.

"Give, and it will be given..."
"Love God...., and love your neighbor..."
"Forgive...., and you will be forgiven..."

How much? How often?
Doesn't enter into the equation.

Living in the freedom of the Gospel can only be done in continual contrition, humility, and repentance in faith and trust in Jesus Christ who is making (still) all things new. The faithful follow Him in the Way that He goes. They cannot be Him, but they are baptized into Him and He will make them like Him throughout their lives, culminating in the resurrection of their bodies on the Last Day and eternal life with Him thereafter.

What does that life look like? Perhaps it's better to say what it does not look like. The new life does *not* look like a life lived under the Law or law. It does not have a long list of "must dos" or "pieties" or "steps" or anything else contrived by human reason and sinful pride.  It does not force a rationalistic interpretation upon God's Word breaking it into "three rules" or "seven dispensations" or any other forced categorization. I suppose it might be said to look like the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, not because they describe a new Law, rule, or guide for the Christian life, but because they describe Christ and His kingdom which has broken into this world and is day by day establishing its reign until the culmination and unveiling of Christ's glory on the Last Day.

Think fruits, not rules.
Think contrition, repentance, and humility, not works and obedience.
Think what Christ has done, not what I must do.
And, do your vocation. Be your vocation. Faithfully, in humility and repentance, every day of your life.
Live *in* the freedom of the Gospel. That is all.

"We need to stop arguing about trivial things like the truth."

Ok, so there are some problems with the red balloon handler's argumentation, but still, this video, in a simple way, demonstrates the many problems with post-modern, relativistic theories of, and denials of, truth and it also elegantly sets forth one of the chief conditions for truth: The truth is true whether you believe it or not.

A Reflection on Knowledge and Faith

Recently, frescoes dated from the 4^th century were discovered in a catacomb underneath a modern office building in Rome. Amongst the frescoes are what Vatican archeologists believe to be the oldest known portraits of the Apostles Paul, Andrew, and John, as well as another portrait of Peter that is consistent with other, earlier, iconographic images of the Apostle. Consequently, questions have been raised concerning the accuracy of images created 250 years after the death of their subjects.

This discovery has caused me to ponder, again, Epistemology, the branch of Philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. Epistemology considers questions such as: What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? What can people know? How do we know what we know? These are not ridiculous questions as some are want to think, but they bear considerably upon our worldviews, history, science, religion, and, well, just about everything!

Consider the debates that occur regularly concerning the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Typically, two viewpoints prevail, though there are several others: Those holding to an Originalist philosophy interpret the Constitution conservatively, seeking to determine the author’s original intent. Others maintain that the Constitution must be interpreted in the context of other decisions. This philosophy of interpretation may be called Contextualism or Dynamic Evolution. In but a little over two hundred years there has become considerable disagreement and debate concerning what the Constitution means and what the intent of its authors was. How do we know what the authors meant? How do we know the interpretation they intended or would desire for today? Does it matter? These are Epistemological questions in the context of United States history.

Recent conversations I have had with unbelievers and atheists have born the importance of such questions about the Christian faith. Unbelievers ask: How do you know that God is three-in-one? How do you know the Bible is true? How do you know God exists? If God does exists, how do you know He has the ability to change things in the world? If God is God, why must I believe in Jesus? These are not ridiculous questions, but they deserve to be answered by Christians (1 Peter 3:15).

What questions such as these, in addition to the discovery of the portraits of the Apostles, have caused me to contemplate these past few days is the importance of tradition in conjunction with faith and reason. I tend to share the Foundationalist views of St. Augustine and Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga that all of our beliefs rest ultimately on beliefs accepted by faith. In regard to the portraits of the Apostles, we cannot know if the frescoes accurately depict the actual Apostles. However, both their antiquity and their consistency with earlier iconography, along with the tradition of the Church handed down in the writings of the early Church Fathers and other Christian traditions, lend credence to the belief that they are rather close approximations of the actual Apostles.

Ultimately, perhaps, we cannot know the answers to many questions that unbelievers might ask us; we accept them as truth by faith – faith informed by reason and evidence historical, biblical, experiential, etc. But is this not how any belief is justified, experientially? The Preacher to the Hebrews defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). The Preacher uses the words assurance and conviction to describe faith; these are strong words that most would count as knowledge. This is to say that faith is no weak, unfounded belief in something that may or may not exist, but faith is objective – this is to say, you do not simply have faith, but you have faith in something. Tradition is the shared faith of a community – a family, a tribe, a nation, a congregation, a denomination, a religion, etc. Tradition serves objective faith, but it must never be the object of faith.

The questions asked by unbelievers and atheists should be answered in accord with faith and tradition, acknowledging that it is a matter of faith – reasonable faith. It is not the job of a Christian to convert anyone – that’s the Holy Spirit’s work! – but it is the job of a Christian to confess your faith before men (Matthew 10:32). There is good reason, drawn from experience and tradition, grounded in faith, to believe that the frescoes in the Roman catacomb are fairly accurate depictions of the Apostles. Can we know for certain? Perhaps not. Can we know anything for certain? We believe…., in something…., and that is faith, religious or otherwise. And faith in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is faith that is assured and convicted, it is a confession. “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33)

In Christ’s service, Pastor Ellingworth

Homily for the Second Sunday after Trinity (Trinity 2)

(Audio)

Luke 14:15-24; 1 John 3:13-18; Proverbs 9:1-10

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Today’s Gospel lesson from St. Luke is often called The Parable of the Great Banquet. In context, in Luke’s Gospel, however, today’s pericope is one of four teachings of Jesus that occur during a single meal at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees. Throughout that meal, Jesus had occasion to teach about how love is the fulfilling of the Sabbath Law, how humility is a virtue as opposed to the vice of pride, and about the virtue of charity and grace, selfless giving without thought of recognition or compensation.

But, what occasioned our Lord’s teaching in The Parable of the Great Banquet was the exclamation of one of those who sat with Him at the meal: “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” The man was most likely thinking of the type of banquet that would typically be held by the Jews following a great victory in battle. Many Jews of Jesus’ day held the false belief that the Messiah would be a great king like David who would free Israel from bondage and captivity to the Romans. Even if the man were thinking about a spiritual victory, feast, and kingdom, he was sighing for something he believed to be far off, while the Bread of Heaven Himself sat there before him.

Parables are funny things, they seem so simple on the surface, and yet their meaning eludes and confounds so many, so that seeing, they do not see, and hearing, they do not hear. Often this frustration is expressed “Why doesn’t Jesus just speak plainly? Doesn’t He want people to understand and believe?” Well, of course He wants people to understand and to believe. Nevertheless, He will not force Himself on anyone. Jesus preaches to the Law inscribed on all men’s hearts even while He extends to them the Gospel invitation. Only those who feel the conviction of the Law and drop their facades of pride and self-righteousness will turn in repentance and receive forgiveness and life. Ironically, how often a pastor is told by his parishioners, “You should just preach like Jesus, you know, simple stories, and parables. He was always so clear, a child could understand Him.” Such a comment, however, brings to my mind something one of my seminary professors is still known to regularly say: “You know not the Scriptures or the power therein.” God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the parables were constructed by the Wisdom of God incarnate, the Son of God, Jesus Christ. It is Wisdom that speaks when Jesus speaks, and the truly wise among men bring nothing to the table but humility and repentance.

The Church’s lectionary has wisely paired the wisdom of Proverbs this day with the wisdom of The Parable of the Great Banquet. Recorded nearly a millennium before the advent of Jesus, our pericope from Proverbs is The Parable of the Great Banquet told in the high form of wisdom literature: Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who lacks sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” In both Proverbs and in the Parable, the great feast is fully prepared and many are invited simply to come, eat, and drink. Yet, how so very many refuse! In the Parable, those who refuse offer worldly and fleshly excuses or justifications. These betray their pride and self-righteousness and expose their false religions and idolatries. In Proverbs, those who refuse are scoffers and wicked men. It is the humble and selfless man who accepts reproving and instruction that is wise and righteous. In accepting reproving and instruction, the wise man becomes wiser still, for, to the one that has, more will be given, and to the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away; for, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

Let us now turn directly to the Parable. The “man” is God the Father and the “great banquet” He has prepared is the fulfillment of the Passover Feast in the flesh and blood of the Lamb of God, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. All was fully prepared and “many” were invited to the feast, so God “sent His [Suffering] servant to say to those invited ‘Come, for everything is now ready’. But they all began to make excuses.” One has purchased a field and must attend to it. Another has bought five yoke of oxen and must examine them. And another has married a wife and cannot come. All three excuses sound reasonable enough to fleshly ears and worldly wisdom. In fact, at least two of the excuses were counted as reasonable exceptions to military service in the Old Testament (Deut. 20:6-7). However, this story being a parable, and parables being what they are, there is at the same time a literal and true meaning and a deeper, spiritual meaning. Spiritually, the excuses offered by the three invitees had to do with their preoccupation and love of worldly, physical, and fleshly things over and against the spiritual gifts of God. Here, the Fathers of the Church, especially Augustine and Gregory, offer us insight as to how the early Church understood this parable.

Augustine writes: In the purchase of the farm, the pride of dominion is signified. For to have a farm, to hold it as their possession, to occupy it, to have it subject to them, to rule it, delights men. The first man wished to rule, and wished no one to have dominion over him. And what does having dominion mean but taking delight in one’s own power?

Augustine and Gregory both understand the five yoke of oxen as a symbol for the five senses of man, which also are yoked in pairs: two eyes with which to see, two ears with which to hear, two nostrils with which to smell, a tongue and palate which work together to taste, and a sense of touch, paired in a concealed manner, being both internal and external. The five senses are creaturely and of the earth; they can only perceive what has been made by God and according to God’s own design. Yet, men trust in these creaturely senses and not in their Creator. They will not believe anything unless what they can discover by the fivefold perception of the body. They regard these five senses as the sole norm of their decisions. Such a man was the Apostle Thomas who famously insisted “Unless I see with my eyes and touch with my hands, I will never believe.” Such a man also was the guest at the meal who exclaimed “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Again, this man was sighing for what he believed was far off, while the Bread of Heaven Himself sat there before him. For, it is not what is seen that feeds us, but what is believed. Indeed, what faithlessness and idolatry that our God-created and God-given senses should be loved and trusted more than our Creator and Giver God!

Augustine and Gregory alike also see the man who has taken a wife as a symbol for the desires of the fleshly over and against the spiritual. Augustine summarizes all of the excuses of the invitees, saying “Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life.”

But, are not these the excuses that serve all men who decline to come to the Lord’s Banquet? The invited guests offered these excuses to justify their absence, to justify their refusal to come to the feast that the Lord had prepared for them. And, their excuses demonstrated their belief in their own self-sufficiency, that they had no need of handouts from the Lord. The owner of the farm viewed himself as the owner of his own life, dependent only upon himself and his own works and labor. The owner of the five yoke of oxen, likewise, has made himself the judge of what is real and what is true; but the reality is that man is slave to his senses, created by God, perceiving only what God has created them and allowed them to perceive. It is the Lord who is Truth, not what can be perceived by our God-created and given senses. The man who has married a wife and cannot come is one who is completely enslaved to fleshly desires and passions. For him, the sensations of the flesh have become all important and above the One who created the flesh and its sensations that He might be worshiped and glorified as the Lord and giver of all things.

And, the Master was angry with the invited guests and their excuses. He ordered his servant to bring in those people who were unable to provide for themselves, people like the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. These are set in contrast to the invited guests who made excuses. For, the truth is that the invited guests should have seen that all the material and worldly things that they valued and loved were gifts from God; they should have gone to the Master’s feast out of love, reverence, and thanksgiving. But they refused. For, they did not truly love the master. They believed that their fields, oxen, and marriage were the fruits of their own labors. They did not respect, love, or thank the master for his kindness, grace, and mercy. And, none of those invited, offering their own excuses and justifications, will taste of the Master’s banquet, but even today the invitation is extended to all those pilgrims on the highways and the byways of this world who will receive and not refuse the Lord’s gracious invitation.

For, God the Father’s Suffering Servant has called you by His Word to the Master’s Banquet where He is both Host and Meal. His invitation will not be rescinded, it can only be rejected. All is prepared for you, the finest of meats and the choicest of wines, that you may eat His flesh and drink His blood and live. There is no need to covet dominion, power, and control, for the Lord knows what you need and He willingly and lovingly gives you all things. Must you see and touch, taste, hear, and feel to believe? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. Nevertheless, the Lord graciously meets you where you are in Word, Bread, Wine, and Water that He might dwell in you, flesh, blood, and Spirit, and you in Him. Have you a spouse to love you and to give you physical comfort and security? They are a gift of God to you that you might have a glimpse of the love and comfort you will find in the Lord. And this feast, at which we recline this day and every Lord’s Day, is but a foretaste of the Feast that is to come, the Marriage Feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom which has no end. For, blessed is everyone who eats bread in the kingdom of God. “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

There Are No Postmodernists In Electric Chairs

There Are No Postmodernists In Electric Chairs » First Thoughts A First Things Blog

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris on the epistemological equivalent of “There are no atheists in foxholes”:

It has become fashionable nowadays to speak of the subjectivity or the relativity of truth. I find such talk ridiculous at best. Let’s go back to Randall Dale Adams. He found himself within days of being executed in “Old Sparky,” the electric chair in Walls Unit, Huntsville Texas.

There is nothing post-modern about the electric chair. It takes a living human being and turns him into a piece of meat. Imagine you – you the young journalists of tomorrow – being strapped into an electric chair for a crime you didn’t commit. Would you take comfort from a witness telling you that it really doesn’t make any difference whether you are guilty or innocent? That there is no truth? “I think you’re guilty; you think you’re innocent. Can’t we work it all out?”

Well, the answer is: No. We can’t. There are facts. There is a world in which things happen and the journalist’s job is to figure out what those things are. Anything less, is giving up on the most important task around – separating truth from illusion, truth from fantasy, truth from wishful thinking.

And…., a great comment to the post:

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that postmodernism has been more influential outside of the discipline of philosophy than within it–where most academic philosophers in the United States think it sloppy thinking at best. Postmodernism has tended to be more influential in departments of English, history, and the social sciences–all places that placed a low premium on precise thinking or the truth of the matter and high premium on being original and even eccentric. This general observation is particularly true of Richard Rorty who has not been influential with academic philosophers but who has exercised influence outside of the philosophical rank and file. Meanwhile, one hardly thinks the French were wrong to make fun of Rorty. Consider Foucault’s attempt to carry out what might be called a Nietzchean program of analysis. Foucault was certainly aware that Nietzsche didn’t aim to make us think in a new way but rather to subvert the foundations of thought and to replace thought with will to power. What then can Foucault’s project be? It is at best Foucault having fun at the expense of those who take him seriously, when he does not meant to be so taken (he told a former teacher of mine that he was quite deliberately obtuse in all his writing). It is at worst Foucault’s own attempt to exercise will to power over his readers and over those who fall under the spell of his work. Being persuaded by him would then to become enslaved to his mastery rather than to arrive in those elysium fields of the truth of the matter. Postmodern philosophy shoots itself in the foot–and the prescient postmodern philosopher knows this and doesn’t care. Rather, he seeks to use it for his own advantage.

Atheists questioning their atheism

Gene Veith posted this on his blog Cranach: The Blog of Veith. It is a summation of an article by Chuck Colson in Christianity Today noting how several prominent atheists have changed their tunes

Well-known scholar Antony Flew was the first, saying he had to go "where the evidence [led]." Evolutionary theory, he concluded, has no reasonable explanation for the origin of life. When I met with Flew in Oxford, he told me that while he had not come to believe in the biblical God, he had concluded that atheism is not logically sustainable.

More recently, A. N. Wilson, once thought to be the next C. S. Lewis who then renounced his faith and spent years mocking Christianity, returned to faith. The reason, he said in an interview with New Statesman, was that atheists "are missing out on some very basic experiences of life." Listening to Bach and reading the works of religious authors, he realized that their worldview or "perception of life was deeper, wiser, and more rounded than my own."

He noticed that the people who insist we are "simply anthropoid apes" cannot account for things as basic as language, love, and music. That, along with the "even stronger argument" of how the "Christian faith transforms individual lives," convinced Wilson that "the religion of the incarnation … is simply true."

Likewise, Matthew Parris, another well-known British atheist, made the mistake of visiting Christian aid workers in Malawi, where he saw the power of the gospel transforming them and others. Concerned with what he saw, he wrote that it "confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my worldview, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God." While Parris is unwilling to follow where his observations lead, he is obviously wrestling with how Christianity makes better sense of the world than other worldviews.

Prolegomena

Exhortation of the mind to the contemplation of God. – It casts aside cares, and excludes all thoughts save that of God, that it may seek Him. Man was created to see God. Man by sin lost the blessedness for which he was made, and found the misery for which he was not made. He did not keep this good when he could keep it easily. Without God it is ill with us. Our labors and attempts are in vain without God. Man cannot seek God, unless God himself teaches him; nor find him, unless he reveals himself. God created man in his image, that he might be mindful of him, think of him, and love him. The believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand: for unless he believed he would not understand.

St. Anselm: Basic Writings, Second Edition. Open Court, 1962.

Luther On the Faith of Infants and the Place of Reason

Let us look at the reason why they hold that children do not believe. They say since they have as yet not come to use their reason, they cannot hear God’s Word. Children have not come to the use of their reason, you say, therefore they cannot believe. What if you have already fallen from faith through this reason and the children had come to faith through their unreason? My friend, what good does reason do when faith and God’s Word are concerned. Is it not a fact that reason resists faith and the Word of God so that because of it, no one can come to faith or put up with God’s Word unless reason is blinded and put to shame? A man must die to reason and become a fool, so to speak, yes, and must become more unreasoning and irrational than any young child if he is to come to faith and accept God’s grace, as Christ says (Matt. 18:3) “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of haven.” How often Christ points out to us that we must become children and fools and how often He condemns reason!

Again, tell me, what sort of reason did the little children have when Christ caressed and blessed and assigned to heaven? Surely they, too, were as yet without reason. Why, then, does He order that they be brought to Him, and why does He bless them? Where did they get the faith that made them children of the kingdom of heaven? The fact is that just because they are unreasoning and foolish, they are better fitted to come to faith than the old and reasoning people whose way is always blocked by reason, which does not want to force its beg head through the narrow door.

What Luther Says, 142 Objection: Unreasoning Infants Cannot Believe, p51.

Luther On Infant Baptism

I still maintain, as I have maintained, that the surest Baptism is infant Baptism. For an old person may deceive, may come to Christ as a Judas and permit himself to be baptized. But a child cannot deceive. It comes to Christ in Baptism as John came to Him and as the little children were brought to Him, that His Word may come over them, touch them, and thus make them holy. For His Word and work cannot pass by without effect; and in Baptism they are directed at the child alone. If they were to fail of success here, they would have to be entire failures and useless means, which is impossible.

What Luther Says, 139 Baptism of Infants Surely Efficacious, p50. Emphasis mine.

The Bread of Freedom

The Seventh Sunday after Trinity 26 July 2009

Mark 8:1-9 / Romans 6:19-23 / Genesis 2:7-17

Audio of sermon.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ever since the fall into sin, labor and bread go together. We all need our daily bread to live, and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In the 60’s the term bread became synonymous with money, the means by which bread was acquired. Money implies work, but that same generation loathed work. The fall into sin brought the curse, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,” and then death, “till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The result of the curse is that we must toil and labor to put daily bread upon our tables. Each day is a struggle to survive – with the end result that we die. All our striving to feed ourselves and our families, to put a roof over our heads and clothing on our backs, all our striving to do the right thing, the moral thing, the good thing, leads to death. Life is short and then you die.

Notice how we call it a “fall” into sin? Almost makes it sound like an accident, doesn’t it? And of course, if it’s an accident, then we like to reason that “We didn’t mean to do it, it just kind of happened.” And that doesn’t sound quite so bad. However, honestly, man didn’t simply fall into sin, it was a choice. In fact it was man’s first free choice. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” That day is today. That day is tomorrow. That day is each and every day that you insist that you provide for yourself. That day is each and every day that you insist on determining for yourself what is good and what is evil. That day is each and every day that you insist on being god unto yourself.

In the beginning, God provided for man’s sustenance – all that he needed to support his body and his life. The fall into sin, the willful eating of that one forbidden food, the one free choice that man made of his own will in opposition to the will of God, to decide for himself what was good and what was evil, was a willful turning away from God. And from that day, and every day since, man has toiled and striven to provide for himself, physically and spiritually, daily bread – to the inevitable end, death. For the wages of sin is death – what you earn for your labor, what you earn for your striving, what you earn for your struggle, is death. From the very moment of conception we die a little more each and every day. It is what we have chosen freely. It is what we have earned.

Too much is made of human free will. There was no free will in the beginning, at least not in the way we commonly think of free will, for there was only God’s will. Man, made in God’s image, knew God’s will and shared God’s will. Man knew nothing other than God’s will. It was in the eating of that forbidden food, a sustenance that the LORD had not given man, a food that the LORD had commanded man not to eat of, it was in the eating of that forbidden food that man came to know something other than the will of God. And in his knowledge of good and evil, free will entered the picture – man no longer shared the will of God, but man knew something in opposition to God’s will – his own will. Dietrich Bonheoffer put it this way:

In knowing about good and evil, human beings understand themselves not within the reality of being defined by the origin [God], but from their own possibilities, namely, to be either good or evil. They now know themselves beside and outside of God, which means they now know nothing but themselves, and God not at all. For they can only know God by knowing God alone. The knowledge of good and evil is thus disunion with God. Human beings can know about good and evil only in opposition to God.

And so what seemed like freedom, turned out to be slavery. Man found himself knowing that he must do God’s will, and striving to do it, but without knowing any longer what God’s will actually was. And worse, man, exercising his own fallen will, began to call good evil and evil good. Man presented the members of his body as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness with the result that the fruit of his efforts, the fruit of his labor and toil, was still more lawlessness: man’s striving to produce bread on his own still leads only to death.

Bread is not supposed to bring death, but life – Bread is a staple for life, bread is good for you. The poorest people on the earth eat bread and drink water and survive. But man’s bread still brings only death, not life. For man does not live by bread alone but by every, but man lives by the Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And God’s Word became flesh and made His dwelling here amongst us. As in the beginning God provided man’s daily bread, so again God would provide the only Bread that truly give life – Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, our Bread King, the daily Bread of our earthly lives and the Bread that gives life that never dies.

Jesus was the Second Adam. He was sent to labor and travail and to die. By the sweat of His brow and the stripes on His back He would produce the Bread of Life. He would eat the bread of our death so that He might provide us His bread that brings life. Jesus looked at that crowd and had compassion on them because they had been with him three days and had nothing to eat. That word compassion is telling – it literally means “to suffer together with”. Jesus didn’t simply feel pity for the 4,000 plus, but he suffered with them – He suffered their toil, their struggle, and their strife, and, ultimately, He suffered their hunger and their inability to produce life-giving bread. Jesus took the meager offering of bread that they could produce – seven loaves and a few small fish – and in a way hidden from the crowd provided them food enough that they were satisfied, with leftovers to spare.

But there’s still no such thing as a free lunch and the wages of sin is still death. Shortly after the miraculous feeding of the four thousand Jesus began to teach His disciples that “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” The bread He provided them in the feeding of the four thousand was but a foretaste of the bread that He would die to provide them. Jesus, who knew no sin, was made to be sin for us. Even though He was innocent, sinless, holy, Jesus became our sin. He became our sin so that the wage of death would no longer be ours. He didn’t just take our sin upon Himself, He became our sin. And death was meted out to Him – PAID IN FULL. It is finished. You are free, truly free – free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight all the days of your life.

“When you were slaves to sin you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, [‘slaves of God’, see, I told you that free will was overrated] the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”

On the third day He provided hungry, fainting pilgrims bread in the desolate wilderness. On the third day our Bread King was raised from the dead to give us the Bread of Life which a man eats that he may never die. And that Bread of Life is His body, given for you, and His precious blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. This bread is not food enough to keep you alive in this body forever, it’s barely enough to keep you from fainting today; but this Bread will keep the life freely given you in Holy Baptism alive forever, and it is all you will ever need.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.