The Kingdom Comes

To the tune "Deo Gracias"

The kingdom comes, God marches forth, 

Drafts us to share His rule, restored— 

Baptized into the three-in-one, 

We venture after God the Son. 

The throne once lost is now reclaimed; 

Our King contends for all He’s made, 

Enlists us in His mission grave: 

The bound to free, the lost to save. 

The battle’s fierce, its end in doubt, 

If not for He who put to rout 

All Satan’s guild, once and for all, 

To grant us strength to heed His call. 

Baptized, we each one Body share, 

On selfsame back our burdens bear; 

Though we are wounded hands and feet, 

Christ’s Body knows not end defeat. 

The King, He comes to claim His own, 

To raise His fallen, flesh and bone. 

The blood they’ve spilled is not for naught: 

His blood their resurrection bought.

***

This is a hymn I've composed and submitted for the annual Hymn Competition at Concordia Seminary. Here is the accompanying commentary:

I composed this hymn in the desire to capture the dynamic nature of God’s reign, and our baptismal lives as God’s own who “live under Him in His kingdom.”

My seminary training has alerted me to the fact that “the kingdom of God” is no static notion, but is in fact God’s active rule, reclaiming the enemy-occupied creation for its Creator. Similarly, baptism—as the Small Catechism tells us, but we often forget—isn’t merely a one-time act, but a daily, cross-bearing way of life. We are graciously baptized (“drafted”) into this mustard seed, clandestine kingdom that is evangelically (i.e., by means of the Evangel) upending the old world of sin and death, and reestablishing the righteous, merciful rule of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I drew on martial imagery to underscore that this baptismal life is a battle—if an adventurous one. Furthermore, I wanted to capture the “proleptically eschatological” (not I, but Voelz) nature of the Christian life in this overlap of the ages: the victory is won, but the battle rages on. So whatever this life may hold, we know the triumph that belongs to the Lamb who was slain will be granted us on the Last Day. Indeed, this hope is not proclaimed, prayed, sung nearly enough, so if my hymn helps our church in some small way to recapture it, so much the better.

Invitation to Joy

A sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter, from John 15v9-17

Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

This is a dangerous proposition.

You might not think so. Joy is generally recognized as an unqualified good, like fiber. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you they’d like some joy. It’s good for you. Keeps you regular.

But dig deeper, and the distinction is also often made between “joy” and “happiness”. Happiness is transient, given to fits and starts, ups and downs, ebbs and flows. Joy, on the other hand, persists regardless of the circumstances. Joy weathers the storms; happiness flees from them.

Even so, our nation’s motto isn’t “life, liberty, and the pursuit of joy,” right? No—it’s the pursuit of happiness. Our lives are oriented around this vague goal of “pursuing happiness.” Ask someone what they want they’ll tell you: “I just want to be happy.” Talk to a friend who has gotten out of yet another relationship, they say, “I just wasn’t happy.” Or the parent who buys their kid the newest video game: “I just want to make them happy.”

But the pursuit of happiness is like that old carnival game, where you try to bonk the gopher with the mallet, and every time you almost get it—it pops up somewhere else. Or as Solomon puts it in Ecclesiastes, it’s a “chasing after the wind.” Happiness can’t be cornered. Pursuing it doesn’t pay. So why do it?

Well, happiness—as our world sees it—is the quick fix. You might be happy to go to the mall, buy a new outfit or new gadget—but not joyful. You might be happy to eat another slice of cake—but not joyful. You might be happy to sit in front of the television all evening—but not joyful. The sense of happiness quickly fades, the gopher needs to be bonked again, and there is no residual pleasure as a result. But at least it comes easy.

But joy: joy comes at a price. It’s not bought from the corner store, though; unlike happiness, joy isn’t so easily coaxed. No, the price of joy is sorrow. Show me a person who has known great joy, and I will show you a person who has known great pain. In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran wrote,

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your

laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your

tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your

being, the more joy you can contain.

In our superficial world, a mile wide and an inch deep, happiness is a welcome companion. We like to stay in the shallow end—but we never know joy that way. As Gibran has it, the depth hasn’t been carved out to contain joy. Tell me this isn’t an affliction of our age: people sleep-walking through life, knowing neither joy nor sorrow, but only some ersatz “happiness”!

But that isn’t why Jesus’ proposition is so dangerous. Closer, but not quite.

Jesus says that He wants His joy for us. So what is Jesus’ joy? To do the Father’s will: to seek and save the lost; to reclaim God’s creatures for his kingdom. The author of Hebrews writes that Jesus, “for the joy set before Him endured the cross…” Jesus’ joy is laying down His life, that He may take it up again.

Jesus does not wish for His disciples—for you and I—just any supposed “joy,” but His joy, the joy of the Lord. And here is why it’s such a dangerous proposition: His joy only comes through the cross. There are no shortcuts to joy, no bypassing death on the way to resurrection. They go hand-in-hand: death and life, cross and crown, sorrow and joy.

Jesus, staring down the fate that awaited him, never let up for a second. He spat on the grave, gave Satan the finger, submit Himself to the cross—for you. For your joy. He endured the cross so that you would know not only life’s sorrows, which—if we don’t sedate ourselves with illusory happiness—are suffered even without God’s help, but also that you would know the joy that is sorrow’s counterpart and fulfilment. Jesus gave Himself unto death to deliver you from the hopelessness and despair of a life that knows only tunnels and no lights.

The life of following Jesus is an invitation to a life of great sorrow, yes, because in this world you will have trouble. You will be persecuted and ridiculed for His name. You will weep over a world that has forgotten its Creator. You will groan for a creation that awaits its liberation. You will grow frustrated with your own persistent sin.

But if it is an invitation to sorrow, if in this world we do have trouble, it is much more an invitation to joy—for Jesus has overcome the world. He calls you to life—true life—where you are in tune with reality, in sync with the rhythm of creation. He invites you to immerse yourself in the joy that comes with living as you were created to live.

We humans, we fight and fight to have it our own way, to make up our own rules. It’s vanity. We’re going against the grain of God’s universe. Who better to know what makes for our joy than the God who made us? But it might not look right; it might look downright dangerous, because living in Jesus’ joy means following His example. It means enduring the cross, it means bearing with your brother or sister. It means laying down your lives for one another, that you might take them up again.

Embrace this dangerous joy—His joy—since in the end, it’s the only joy there is.

Practicing contentment; or Sour grapes don't taste so bad

Throughout the Scriptures, not least from Jesus Himself, we are warned of the allure of possessions. The Lord says flatly, You can't worship God and stuff. Just a pragmatic matter, really; you can only bow down to one altar at a time. And similarly St. Paul exhorts Timothy, "There is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world" (1 Tim 6v6-7).

So for a Christian, contentment in Jesus is a good thing. Yet, in a cultural and economic machine that is fueled by discontent, how does one practice contentment? Surrounded by the siren songs of This Year's Model, how do we fight the urge for the newest, fastest, coolest? Or is wanton consumerism good for the economy, and so our civic duty, and therefore imperative for the Christian--since being a good Christian and being a good American are effectively one and the same?

No, gratuitously spending money is not a Christian virtue, and contentment indeed is. But, though I'm aware of this, though I reckon myself rather vigilant in these matters, I find myself constantly justifying this or that would-be purchase, being allured by This Year's Model. So I have a new strategy for practicing contentment. See what you think.

I'm a "Mac guy." (Not the Mac guy, though I'm told we look alike.) I've even been something of a Macvangelist on occasion, I'll admit. What can I say, I like stuff that works. But there is a well-documented epidemic among Mac users: Mac envy. Steve Jobs comes prancing out in his turtleneck every few months with the newest gadget, and Mac folk start drooling like Pavlov's hounds. It's pathetic.

So what's a Mac guy to do when he finds himself bewitched by a faster processor or aluminum unibody? Pooh-pooh it. Pan it. Look for something that could be perceived as a weakness or design flaw, and harp on it. Then, go on about the "old model" like a senior citizen extolling the phonograph. The new model is too modern, too hip, too complicated, too expensive, too curvaceous. The old model is functional, simple, reliable, inexpensive, and gleefully stodgy. You'd have to be a fool to buy this newfangled thing!

Some might call this sour grapes. I call it practicing contentment. And I think it could have legs, not just for Macphiles. Give it a shot next time you're strolling past Bath & Body Works and their latest fragrance hooks your nostrils, or when you see that new sports car/SUV/minivan and a want suddenly becomes a need. That stuff sucks, really. Jesus says so.

Bier-side

With words that quieted the weeping waves,
Sent swineherds sweeping to their grave,
Begat the cosmos at their breath, He laid to rest
her fears.

Bier-side He drew the curtain on the Day
When, stooping down beside each grave,
He'll lay a hand upon the ground and pry
Open those clenched teeth, exhume

The world as once it was, yet buried
Beneath the rubble of ten thousand
widows' sons.

from Luke 7

Cool Hand Jesus

I don't care for the portrayal of Jesus offered in the usual translation of Hebrews 12v2. Here is how the NIV does it:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

My beef is with that phrase "scorning its shame." It simply doesn't fit with the portrayal of Jesus given in the rest of the passage (not to mention the rest of the NT). This is Weenie Jesus, cursing that he got himself into this mess. When he signed up for the messiah gig, he didn't read the small print about this crucifixion business. He's Joe Pesci in Home Alone, muttering to himself after being duped by a little punk. This is not the Jesus who sets his face like flint for Jerusalem and the fate he knows awaits him there.

Here is my translation:

...looking to Jesus, the Beginner and Finisher of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, disregarding disgrace; and who is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Aside from removing the impersonal possessive pronoun "its," which the NIV gratuitously adds, my translation differs only in a shade of meaning, but I think it is significant (either translation, theoretically speaking, is possible).

If you'd humor me some (more) irreverent conjecture: here is Jesus with a cigarette dangling from His mouth, giving a middle-finger to Satan. Here is Jesus knowing full well what He's doing, and not about to let some supposed "disgrace" stop Him. Here is Jesus being Jesus, operating according to the backward kingdom and not the ways of the world.

Paul Newman, not Joe Pesci, comes to mind:

Our Lord doesn't let a thing hold Him down. He disregards disgrace up and down for the joy of crowing you and I with His grace. He takes every blow this damned world has to offer, and bounces back.

The Patron Saint of Vocation

Yesterday's TDP reading told us of Bezalel (Exodus 31). Here is Bezalel, of whom we know not much. He is ostensibly neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet. He is, however, filled with the Spirit of God, thus all that he sets his hand to do brims with an overflow of God's creativity.

He does not take a spiritual gift inventory to sanctify his mere worldly gifts. In fact, God himself endowed him with "ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs...to work in every craft."

And Yahweh uses these "secular" talents for his purposes. We're not told if Bezalel had to join an Israelite NGO first or learn to carve wood in a "spiritual" way, but my hunch is not. The art & craft is good in itself. It doesn't need to be apologized for or ashamed of; God is the giver of every good gift--our talents included--and will use them, in every realm, for his good ends.

In a quote that may seem unrelated to anyone but me, Flannery O'Connor wrote, "When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic I cannot afford to be less than an artist." In my imagination, Bezalel and Flannery are in a company I aspire to join.

Right and Wrong

A sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany (Listen to it)
1 Corinthians 8v1-13
Mark 1v21-28

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

You can be right—and still be dead wrong. This is the message St. Paul has for the Corinthian church, which was having disputes about eating food offered to idols: some were for it, some against. Offering food to idols—much less eating that food—sounds like an exotic and arcane practice, and I’ll grant you, in our part of the world these days, it is. But at its heart, this dispute is a perennial issue in the church.

Think about this. Is it okay for Christians to do yoga? How about celebrating Halloween? Or keep a rabbit’s foot, or cross their fingers? In each of these instances, and countless more, some well-meaning Christians will say yes, some no.

Those who say that it’s okay to do Yoga, for instance, might say, “Look, whatever kind of spiritual mumbo-jumbo might be going on with it, I just like the exercising—and anyway, I know who the true God is! I don’t have to worship Gaia to do a downward-facing dog!” Meanwhile, those who oppose it—maybe someone who used to run with Zen Buddhists (or whatever you do with Zen Buddhists)—could respond, “This is no harmless workout; this is idolatry, this is evil.” Both sides have a point.

In Corinth, Paul’s beef was mostly with the Yoga-boosters, so to speak: the advocates for eating this food offered to idols, the self-proclaimed “strong”, who were taunting the so-called “weak”, the ones whose singed consciences would not let them eat the food.

The food in question is specifically meat, and meat in the ancient world was a luxury, not like in America. You could get it at wholesale prices, though, after it had been used in religious ceremonies; kind of like getting a great deal on a demo car—a demo car that had been driven to appease Vishnu, or something like that.

So the advocates for eating the meat, the so-called “strong”, are saying, “Hey! We can get a great deal on some flank steaks, and what does it hurt? We know better about these supposed ‘gods’, these idols they’re sacrificing the meat to; they’re just ‘sacrificing’ to the ceiling!” To justify their position they are even invoking this wonderful creedal statement:

There is one God, the Father,
from whom are all things and for whom we exist,
and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Being that there’s only one true God, then, meat sacrificed to all would-be gods is fair game. It only makes sense that, in Christian freedom, the strong may enjoy their wholesale hamburgers. Their logic is impeccable, their reasoning sound, their theology orthodox, and yet—they are dead wrong. Why? Because, as Paul puts it later in this letter, I can have all the knowledge in the world, but if I have not love I gain nothing.

****

You can be right—and still be dead wrong. This is one lesson that may be drawn from our Gospel text this morning. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is an enigma to everyone. Up to the very end, the disciples are scratching their heads wondering just who this Jesus character really is. They’re consistently portrayed as the twelve stooges. And of course the religious leaders of the day don’t get it, nor the hangers-on, nor even Jesus’ own family, who wonders if He isn’t a little touched, as they say.

No one has the foggiest who Jesus really is. No one, that is, except the demons. Jesus has been teaching forcefully in the synagogue, and all in attendance are hailing this great new teacher. But nobody takes the leap and says, “Hey! This guy teaches so well, I think He’s God!” Occasionally star-struck freshman think this of their favorite professors, but it isn’t a typical reaction, so it’s hard to fault the folks in the synagogue that day.

But then this man who’s possessed by an unclean spirit storms in and starts making a racket. He takes one look at Jesus and has a conniption fit: “What do you want, Jesus of Nazareth! Have you come to destroy us?!” Now the crowd is all riled up. Seeing a real demon-possession at synagogue is like seeing a fight at the hockey game, or a crash at the race; you know you shouldn’t like it, but you kind of do.

So the crowd is looking back and forth at Jesus, then the demoniac, as the saloon doors swing back and forth and there’s that whistling… And the demon says, “I know who you are—you’re the Holy One of God!” Well, now the crowd knows they’ve got a real nut on their hands. “The Holy One of God”? This Jesus character? But of course he’s right; Jesus is no mere teacher, but God in the flesh. And without his blood pressure rising one tick, Jesus coolly says to him, “Shut up—and get out.” And the demon does.

St. James writes, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” The demon says to Jesus, “I know who you are…” And so he does. And he is most definitely not a follower of Jesus, not a faithful Christian, but the antithesis of a true believer, an enemy of God. But he can take this solace: he’s right.

****

You can be right—and still be dead wrong. This is a lesson that I have had to learn countless times, but to give just one instance. A few years back, I was on a short term mission trip to Haiti with my church back home. There was a dozen or so of us, including our pastor.

My pastor was (and is) a young man, with a young family--which family didn't join us on the trip. Now, Haiti is a dangerous place. I have lived in Bangkok, I have even lived in Detroit, but Haiti takes the cake. If the crime weren't enough to frighten you, the roads most definitely are, with school buses full of naive missionaries passing cars on narrow mountain curves in the dead of night. It's enough to make a man a Christian.

Like I said, my pastor had a young family at home: a wife and, at the time, three kids. The ubiquitous danger had him rattled, worried for his family back home. What if he died? What would they do? Why did he even come?--how irresponsible!

All this was going through his mind when he candidly opened up to me one of the first nights, a rare moment of vulnerability. He confessed his fears and his concerns in hopes of finding a sympathetic ear. Brash me, though--still single at the time, mind you--took it as an opportunity to instruct my pastor. I responded piously, "O thou silly Pastor, does not Jesus say, 'Do not worry'? Whence, then, comes your concern? Take physic, dear Pastor, and heed your Lord's words."

This, of course, only made him feel worse and, I suspect, a little mad--and duly so. Was I right? Sure. Was I loving? No. My pious sentiment demonstrated my knowledge, but failed miserably to exhibit love.

Have you been there? Rather than truly empathizing with someone, you give some greeting card cliché—or maybe even a Bible verse—that isn’t so much a comfort as a rebuke. As Christians, we know the score; we know that God is God, and so all the concerns of this life are, by comparison, relatively insignificant. There’s a temptation there, to flaunt that we know the truth. And so you say things like,

“Oh, you’re worried about the economy? Man does not live on bread alone, you know.”

“Well, even though you lost your job, God works all things to the good for those who love him!”

“You shouldn’t be sad about your sister dying; she’s in heaven now.”

Maybe these are well-intentioned, maybe they’re not; in either case, knowledge trumps love, being right over showing care. The knowledge that should be used as a crutch to help a weaker brother or sister is used as a club to beat them into “knowing like me”. You can be right—and still be wrong. As Paul says, “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” If you think knowing the right thing exempts you from doing the right thing, you’re wrong.

****

Right before our Lord is betrayed, St. John gives us a glimpse into the upper room, where Jesus is sharing some last precious moments with His disciples (John 13). And John tells us that Jesus, knowing all things were in His hands—knowing the fate that awaited Him; knowing that if He so desired He could call down a legion of angels and put a stop to this right now; knowing that each of these disciples will abandon Him in His darkest hour—knowing all this, Jesus gets down on His hands and knees, and begins washing His disciples’ feet.

Knowing all things, Jesus serves. He does not scold His disciples; He does not show off his incredible divine knowledge; He does not insist that they wash His feet. If He had done any of this, we would understand, and have no cause for disagreement. Though He is the Strong One, the Almighty, the Holy One of God, He takes His place alongside the weak, and serves.

Jesus did not seek to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for you: while you were yet weak, Christ died for you. Knowing all things about you and I: knowing how we are proud in our knowledge; knowing how we choose to be right, rather than do the right thing; knowing how we will do just about anything to get out of having to really love someone when it’s hard, when it hurts; knowing everything about you and I, our sins plain before Him like the dust on your cabinet in the sunlight, He dies for us anyway.

To put us right, Jesus is dead wronged. Wronged by religious people, who were right in their assessments: this man claims to be God, they said. This man upends our religious laws, they said. And if you or I were there, we would have done the same: we would have used our knowledge as a cross to pin Him to. We can be right—and still be dead wrong.

But the same Lord who was bruised for your wrongs, beaten and buried for your sins, God raised from the dead to declare, “No, He was right.” His victory speech is not “I told you so” but “I love you so—I loved you so much that I laid down my life for you.”

And our Lord Jesus is yet putting our world to rights, and a day is coming when He will return, and all wrongs will be righted, all fears and worries allayed, all questions answered: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now we know in part; then we shall know fully, even as we have been fully known.” Our sin and all its effects driven out like the devil it is, we will be restored, body and soul, to what God intended us to be.

So love one another, brothers and sisters. Bear with each other’s burdens, and do not worry so much about being right, as being there for your neighbor in need. Lay down your life for others and see if, in that, you do not come to know your Lord.

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.