June 2008 Newsletter

Words

In this political campaign year, words and their meaning become very important. Each candidate, from every party, will be trying to get their message out. There is nothing wrong with this; it is a part of being a free society. Sometimes these words become personal and ugly, and we know that some of these attacks work. I will leave that to the candidates, parties, and electorate, to work out the political ethics of attack ads. My point for this newsletter is that words have meaning and can be the instrument conveying powerful symbols both positively and negatively. They say "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". That was taught to children for a long time to teach them not to respond to those who taunt them. There is some truth and some falsehood to this. We have all known people who are the name calling type. Many times we just ignore them. We have all known people prone to hateful sarcastic outbursts, denigrating the person on whom they look down. Most of the time we ignore them, because their taunts are unimportant. We also know that words can do grave harm. Parents who verbally abuse their children cause the child to grow up hating themselves and with a lack of confidence in their abilities. They may even grow up to be verbally abusive themselves. There are indeed words that can hurt, and words that can do damage. Words, and the ideas they can convey, are very important.

As Christians we inherit a reverence for words from Jewish tradition. We know their power. By a word of command, "Let there be light!” God created the universe. Therefore God's spoken word became our reality and our life. We Christians believe that the Living Word, Jesus Christ, became flesh and lived among us, died a human death, and rose to give us new life. He is the Word of love God spoke to us, uniting us forever to God and saving us. Jesus is what God has to say to us, and we are forever changed. As Christians, we also believe that God inspired the writers of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. We call these writings the Word of God. If we speak more precisely, the scriptures are the written word of God. They direct us to a living relationship with the triune God. They are the authority and directive force of our lives when used by the Holy Spirit to make us alive in Christ.

Along with sacraments, which are the word of God enacted in the Church, we preach the word of God. Most of us think that this means a sermon in churches on Sundays, holy days, and other occasions. It does mean that, of course. Recently, in the political arena, the words of certain preachers came into public knowledge. The words of all the preachers involved, on both sides of the spectrum, were outrageous. It seems to me that this is the old human tribal tendency to vilify those who are different from us. We want to paint a clear and uncompromising picture of our goodness in contrast to our enemy. The problem is in the delivery. In the 34 years of my pastoral ministry I have heard pastors say really negative and hurtful things in their pulpits and personal conversations. I know these people to be good Christians who sincerely serve Christ. Sometimes we become so afraid of those whom we perceive to be enemies we react with our verbal violence. We call them non-Christians if they disagree with us on even trivial matters.

There is a place and a time for strong and uncompromising speech. It is an art to know when and how to use it. I am not sure that I have grasped that art at all. There are times when Christians must make clear statements about evil and oppression in the world. However, I think now we are in a time for the Church to speak healing words in our culture. We are severely divided about many issues. People on all sides are hurting. Sometimes Christians on all sides are doing the hurting. They go beyond taking a stand on issues to belittle and even speak hate speech toward the enemy. Yes Jesus did confront evil and he did so uncompromisingly. He also told us to love our enemies. We can stand for right and not be verbally aggressive. Loving our neighbors can be difficult. Loving our enemies is a tall order. Let us try to make stands for right with respect for others. Let us speak words of healing and blessing wherever possible. Maybe then the world will become less skeptical about the way of Christ. Let's begin today! Whom can you bless on this day that the Lord has made?

Yours in the Living Word,
Jim Stahr

Can't Have One Without The Other!

No I am not talking about love and marriage, but about life and death, cross and resurrection. Note the reversal in those two ideas. Our normal way of thinking is life first, then death. But the faith reverses things in the light of Jesus resurrection. It is cross and resurrection, death to life. In the death of our Lord Jesus, we have life, death and life again. That is why Jesus is unique and both are essential.

A few years ago the Mel Gibson movie "The Passion of the Christ" was shown during Lent. It portrayed what the title said it would, the death of Jesus. This movie moved many people and may have brought a few to faith. It showed the great lengths our Lord took in order to win our salvation. However, in my mind, two hours of beating Jesus and crucifying him and two or three minutes of his resurrection puts the emphasis in absolutely the wrong place. At the very least there should be a sequel to portray all of the appearances of Jesus and his ascension, ending in Pentecost. Yet, for many Christians, the cross has much more significance than the resurrection. I have never been able to figure that out. Why would the cross be the most important thing? I grant it is of supreme importance to our atonement and forgiveness, but is it the ultimate thing to which to cling?

As I have said nearly every Lent, the cross is important. In it we find the mystery of our forgiveness through Christ's sacrifice. There are many theories of atonement in Western theology. The Western mind wants to understand the meaning of things, particularly in our culture. None of the theories of atonement are easy to understand. They give us no more than a partial glimpse of what atonement is about. If the cross is ultimate, then death is ultimate. It is life, death and nothing. Then there is the fact that the cross was a common punishment for state criminals who were not citizens of Rome. I have seen estimates as high as 300,000 crucifixions in the Holy Land in the time Rome ruled it. What is one more dead traitor to Rome? Two other people died the day Jesus did that day. His death was not unique. Why is it that only one of those deaths, that of Jesus of Nazareth, is revered as atoning by a billion people on earth today? Of course it was because Jesus was the incarnate God and because he rose from the dead. So, the thing that makes the cross unique and atoning is who Jesus was and that he rose on the third day. God alone can give us the gift of life eternal. It is a gift of grace!

Why then do that certain groups put more emphasis on the cross, rather than the resurrection? I think it is partly their burden of guilt. They believe they deserve that punishment, but Jesus took it for them. Are we to spend our lives wallowing in our own sins? Is there not some resurrection for us to Christian joy and love of life, rather than constant guilt and looking past death toward where we are going to spend eternity? We become a death cult when we put the cross ahead of the resurrection. That is something to be pitied, for the earliest Christians saw the resurrection as that which gives life in this world and into the next world as well. The broken relationship with God which our sin has created, which brought on death, is reversed in the resurrection. We can be really alive because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can be assured of life as the ultimate good gift from God. We can be sure that no evil will destroy our relationship with God. Yes, life seems to be a case of life, then death. But it is really life, death and life, for believers

As we continue the journey of Lent, the holy spring of the Church, the shadows will grow darker, and the shadow of the cross, and of death, will be cast upon us. That shadow reminds us that we are dust, and to dust we too shall return. Then will come the full burst of the light of the resurrection! The cross is of immense importance, but it is not ultimate. Good Friday is not the high holy day we are preparing to celebrate, but the festival of the resurrection of Christ. Yes in Lent we do focus on the fact that is all too apparent in human history, we sin, and we die. But that is penultimate for Christians. We also live a life that is eternal. Otherwise Christianity would really be as depressing as people sometimes think it is. Yes there is the darkness of Holy Week. There is also the light of resurrection. We must have the cross! We must have the resurrection! We can't have one without the other! As we continue the journey of Lent, seeking God's mercy, remember the life that lies beyond the darkness of sin and death. As we ask for God's mercy, remember the profound gift of forgiving love that God gave us. We live and will live eternally because Christ is risen.

In Hope,
Jim Stahr

The Third Person

When I was a youth I wondered why the Apostle's creed gave so little time to the third article of the creed, "I believe in the Holy Spirit". We spent a lot of time on the Son, and somewhat more on the Father. Why so little on the Holy Spirit? I learned in my theological education that the third article of the Creed is the whole last paragraph, and not so neglected after all... "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting" is the work of the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. The holy Church, the communion with those Christians who are now with us, and those who have gone before us, the forgiveness of sins, the life giving resurrection of the body in the last day, and life eternal, are works of the Holy Spirit within the triune Godhead.

We are the church. We are a community of flesh and blood that is called by God to do his work in the world as the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is God's life within us and among us, breathed into us by the Father and the Son. The biggest problem I have with that idea is that the church is so sinful and fails often. Of course, when I feel that way about the church, I forget that, I too, fail and sin often. We have this sort of Gnostic heresy as Christians generally, and Protestants particularly, that somehow being a body of flesh is bad. The only hope we have is to survive in this world, keep the faith, and wait for a better world as spirits in heaven. There are several problems with this idea. Note how much human flesh is important in the creed. We say that the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, was "born of the Virgin Mary". That shook many people who heard the original message of the church, in the words of the Nicene Creed; Christ was "incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary". It was a scandal to many that God would come in human flesh, and incarnate means just that, of a human mother. Human flesh was honored to have God incarnate as one of us. Life in this world is not seen as bad, but a gift from God. Further, Jesus was bodily raised. A lot of people when I was in seminary felt that it was more intellectually pleasing and more scientifically plausible to say Jesus was spiritually raised and not bodily raised. Well, the Gospels go to great lengths to deny Jesus is a ghost, a spirit without body, and affirm he was raised and ascended in a human body, albeit glorified. Also, from a scientific point of view there is no more absolute scientific evidence for a ghost than a dead person rising from the grave. It is not anymore intellectually honest to believe in one form or the other. Jesus is raised in the flesh. Without that, the Gospel is out the window. Also, the Creed says we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Note that, while we may be spirits sustained by God's power and in his presence after death, that is not the final and perfect form of humanity. Rising as human flesh at the last day is our final state.

I also questioned why Jesus' teachings were not emphasized as important in the Creed, as if they did not matter. What I learned also applies to the shorter articles concerning the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Creed put emphasis on the areas of controversy, and Jesus' coming in the flesh and dying like all humans were areas of controversy. Jesus’ teachings, the Father creating the world, and the Holy Spirit sustaining it were not areas of controversy. So, it is assumed that the work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify the Father and the Son, and to empower us to live and obey the will of God, as Jesus revealed it. Without the Spirit, scripture says, we cannot even say "Jesus is Lord", our saving confession.

What does all this heavy theology mean? First, God affirms our life in the world and in our own humanity. This life is not "hell" while we wait in this supposedly "horrible" world for a better heaven. In fact, God has given us life physically and spiritually as a gift. God has chosen to become flesh in Jesus Christ to be like us, so that we may grow into what God wants us to be. We have not yet fully become what God intends for us, but that does not mean God cannot use us in this world. In fact, life is so good that, in the resurrection, Jesus extended its bounds for eternity. Yes, we fail. Yes we are sinful. By the power of the Holy Spirit, God raises us up again, and again. Far from saying "this world is not my home" and perhaps "this body is not me". We are saying this life in the world, with all our sinfulness and failures, and with all the pains we suffer, is good and we have a mission here and now. As Pentecost comes again, when we mark the Holy Spirit being breathed on the Church, let us rejoice in the gift of life and resurrection power given us by the Source of life itself. This is a life that will one day transform this world. THAT is Good News!

In The Spirit's Love and Power,
Jim