Give Me the OLD Apostolic Reformation (Reflections on Reformation Sunday)

 Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world…” (John 18:36a)

 This Thursday is Halloween, a spooky and fun time for most Americans, but for Lutherans it’s also that sacred day peculiar to our denomination, Reformation Day. On the Sunday which precedes it Lutherans around the globe will deck their worship spaces out with brilliant red paraments and, more likely than not, bellow out the familiar (if slightly unsingable) anthem “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” We’ll be remembering a day over 500 years ago when a brilliant, spunky, and possibly bi-polar monk challenged the awesome might of the Roman Catholic Church, daring to question the teaching of the most powerful institution in Europe, calling the Church out for its abuse of the poor and uneducated, and forever changing the course of Western Civilization.

Martin Luther dared to suggest that the Christian Church must always be reforming. Unfortunately, in the last five centuries, we’ve been pretty content to keep the status quo. Today, as church attendance is falling like a bowling ball off the Empire State Building and Millennials and Gen-Zs consider themselves “spiritual but not religious,” I’ve often opined it’s about time for a new Reformation.

Apparently, I’m not alone in this wish. There’s a group of American Christians who are determined to start their own new reformation. It’s a reformation of both the Church and the whole of American society. I’m not at all sure I like what they’re proposing. In fact, I’m quite sure I don’t.

Let me quote from Wikipedia what this movement is all about:

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is a theological belief and controversial movement that combines elements of Pentecostalism, evangelicalism and the Seven Mountain Mandate to advocate for spiritual warfare to bring about Christian dominion over all aspects of society, and end or weaken the separation of church and state.[i]

I highly recommend that you read Wikipedia’s full article on this movement. If you like feeling scared for Halloween, this will scare the crap out of you. The “Seven Mountain Mandate” refers to the belief held by NAR adherents that it is their Christian duty to exercise their godly influence over seven aspects of society: family, religion, media, arts and entertainment, business, education, and government. To my Lutheran eyes, this sounds like an attempt to take over the country and dominate the culture. I kind of like the First Amendment of the US Constitution, so I find this rather unsettling. I really like the gospel, so I find it nauseating, unbiblical, and heretical.

The nitwits—and be very afraid because there are a LOT of them!—who espouse the NAR philosophy seem to be in love with power and control. It’s no freaking surprise they see the power-mad Donald Trump as some kind of savior sent by God (Again, read the Wikipedia article. I’m not making this up). But earthly power and authority was never Jesus’ goal, nor should it be the goal of Christians. Jesus came to confront tyranny, not impose it.

Deep in our Lutheran heritage is the separation of church and state. Luther was sickened by the corruption of the Church of his day, a Church which was more concerned with establishing control, waging wars, and acquiring territory and riches than with caring for the souls of the poor. The religious hierarchy was content to let people shake in superstitious fear of God. They taught them poverty and suffering were God’s will, their salvation depended on obedience to authority, and any dissent or lack of orthodoxy would be met with crushing punishment in this world and the next. Luther fought back against this with the same weapon Jesus used to combat the devil in the wilderness—the scriptures.

Jesus entered Jerusalem humble and riding on a baby donkey. He never came as a conqueror or a monarch. He told the governor his kingdom did not belong to this world. When his followers asked for positions of authority, Jesus told them:

“You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”[ii]

I could cite more scriptural texts, but you get the idea. It’s my hope that, should you encounter anyone who bleats out, “We need to turn America back into a Christian country!” you’ll lovingly but courageously tell them the Kingdom of God is about love of all God’s children and not about governmental control. The New Apostolic Reformation may be new and an attempt at reform, but it is certainly not apostolic. I’ll stick with Martin Luther’s OLD Apostolic Reformation, thank you very much.

I hope I’m not being naïve about this, but I doubt the NAR numbskulls will ever be able to create anything like a Handmaid’s Tale-style theocracy in the United States. What they are capable of doing, however, is getting voters to concentrate on their petty culture war issues and ignore poverty, climate change, and civil rights. 

No one comes to Christ by force of law, and no law can magically make a sinful humanity become moral and empathetic. Shaming gender or sexual identity, banning books, censoring the media, imposing iconography or prayer in public schools, outlawing abortion, or any other kind of coercion will never lead anyone to Jesus. If American Christians won’t preach the love of Christ though our love of neighbor, our charity, our inclusivity, our piety, and our willingness to express the forgiveness taught us by Jesus, we deserve to be pushed to the margins of society.

Come to think of it, out on the margins—where the poor, the ostracized, the misunderstood, and the hurting are—is exactly where Jesus would want us to be.

---

[i] See the article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Apostolic_Reformation. I’m not making this shit up.

[ii] Mark 10:42-45

Call Me Crazy (Reflections on Pentecost 22, Year B 2024)

 

“..whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:43-44)

Many years ago, I paid a visit to a homebound member of my congregation, a true saint of the Lord who is, alas, now one of the Church Triumphant. I liked visiting Dot, and I usually found her in a rather chipper mood—or as chipper as an elderly lady who’d had her leg amputated and was confined to a bed could be. On this particular day, however, Dot seemed somewhat peeved.

“Oh, Pastor,” she said. “I just got off the phone with Mary. She’s talking crazy!”

I was familiar with Mary’s situation. She was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. A lovely lady when she was on her meds, but prone to some discomforting eccentricities should she neglect her daily regimen of pharmaceuticals.

“Pastor,” Dot said, “she thinks her neighbors are stealing her property. She says they’re moving their fence closer to her house during the night. Have you ever heard of anything so crazy? I’ve tried to tell her that’s ridiculous, but she doesn’t believe me.”

“I don’t think she’ll believe you, Dot. She’s got mental health problems, and she’s become delusional.”

“But that’s just crazy, Pastor!”

“That’s my point, Dot. She’s crazy. Off her medication she’s nuttier than squirrel poop. You can’t convince her of anything because you can’t make a rational argument to an irrational mind.”

Fortunately, Mary—after a pretty bizzocko episode which I don’t have time to relate—was eventually taken to live with her adult daughter somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. She was loved, supervised, properly medicated, and—as far as I know—allowed to live a happy and peaceful life until the Lord called her home. Her phone argument with Dot, however, was an epiphany for me. Some people are just irrational. No matter how many times you tell them something, no matter how cogent your argument, and no matter what evidence you present—once they get an idea in their heads that’s comfortable to them, they cannot be disabused of it. In fact, the more you prove them wrong, the more likely they are to double down on their position[i].

The problem is all of us can become slightly delusional at times. When we’ve made up our minds to a position or an idea that comforts us, we’re going to hang on to it like a deer tick on a fat man’s thigh. We’ll argue to the death for something that’s completely insane to others but gives us the sense of security or righteousness we in our insecurities crave.

Case in point: the belief held by Jesus’ disciples that their rabbi and leader will one day start a revolution which will overthrow the oppressive occupation of the Roman Empire, elevate the suffering peasants, and put Jesus on the governing throne of Israel where a son of David ought to be. James and John in our gospel text for Pentecost 22, Year B (Mark 10:35-45) are convinced that Jesus will enter into glory,[ii] and they’ll both get cabinet positions in the new administration in recognition of their faithful service to the Messiah.

They seem to have missed the point.

An earthly kingdom based on earthly power is not what Jesus is all about. If you worship victory[iii], you are, in some sense, worshiping oppression. If you’re the winner, someone else has to be the loser. If you are dominant, someone else must be subservient. Jesus is pretty clear about this. In verse 45 he spells it out: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

You’d think James and John would’ve figured that out by this time. At this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has told these boys no less than four times what his intentions are and how this story is going to play out. He told them when he went to the villages of Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:31). He told them again after they’d come down from the Mount of the Transfiguration (9:12)—where they’d been instructed by God’s voice from the cloud to listen to him (9:7). He reminded them a third time as they hiked through Galilee (9:30), and, in case that wasn’t enough, he told them all a fourth time on the road to Jerusalem (10:33-34). Did they get the message? Nope. I don’t think they wanted to get it. The idea of a magnificent earthly kingdom and a fat, juicy reward for the sacrifices they’d made was just too tempting an idea to let go.

Crazy, demented, looney as it sounds, there still are Christians who dream of an earthly kingdom. There are some on the religious right in America who want to march triumphantly over the bones of perceived enemies of the faith. They dream and espouse a dominant political hegemony of Christians—their kind of Christians—who will rule the nation and bring it back to their conception of godliness. I guess the words of Jesus in the scriptures have been no more convincing to them than they were to the first disciples. No matter how often they hear it, they just can’t grasp it.

Jesus is calling us to deny ourselves and embrace a spirit of love through servanthood. And this servanthood will not carry a guarantee of any earthly reward. Indeed, obedience to Christ and love of our neighbor will be its own reward. We are called to find a need and fill it, to find a wound and heal it. We are called to follow as Jesus led the way. Think, for example, of the home caregiver who looks after an elderly dementia patient. They do what they do out of love and compassion, even though the object of that love may never recognize the sacrifice or give the slightest hint of gratitude.

These are the things which make us great in the way of Christ: the willingness to see ourselves as vessels of God’s love, and a willingness to relinquish our insane, selfish desire to be dominant. Such a desire only leads us to frustration, anger, and ultimate disappointment. It took James and John and the other disciples a while to figure out that “the last shall be first” didn’t mean an overthrow of government. It means those who acknowledge their weakness and dependence will know the peace which comes with gratitude to God. Those who are esteemed highly by the world will win no special reward but will take their place in heaven next to the poor, the despised, the infirm, and the lost.

Call me crazy, but I take comfort from that.

God’s love to you, my friend. Please come again next week.

---

[i] Doesn’t this phenomenon explain the MAGA movement?

[ii] The word which appears in the Greek testament is doxeson. It’s a form of doxa which can mean splendor and grandeur, but it can also mean power and kingdom.

[iii] Fun fact: The Nazi salutation Sieg Heil literally translates as “Hail Victory.”

You Want Me to Do What? (Reflection on Pentecost 21, Year B 2024)

 

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)

On September 28 the world said good-bye to a guy I think is one of the greatest—if not the greatest—country music songwriters of all time, Kris Kristofferson. I guess “Me and Bobby McGee” is probably my favorite song of his. It’s got this great lyric in the chorus:

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose, and nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.”

If you think about it, Kris had a point there. If you’re not tied down to stuff—whether you’re talking about material wealth or work or position or relationships or whatnot—you won’t have a whole lot of worries or responsibilities. But then I start thinking about something another guy I admire, the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, said. He thought the greatest threat to the freedom and liberty of anyone was poverty. He also had a point. If you don’t have the dough to do stuff, there’s not a lot of stuff you’re free to do.

I’m wondering just how free those folks down in North Carolina, Kentucky, Florida, and Georgia are feeling about now. Hurricanes Helene and Milton have washed and blown away just about everything some people had in the world. How do you feel when the home or business you worked and saved for has been turned into a muddy, soggy pile of fetid crap?

It would take a very special individual to say, “Well, I seem to have lost all I possess, but I’m still alive. After all, it was only stuff.” If the seeker in the gospel lesson appointed for Pentecost 21, Year B in the RCL (Mark 10:17-31) was contented with his stuff, why would he come running after Jesus and kneeling at the Lord’s feet to ask him what more his soul needed?

This gospel passage is a tough one (Aren’t they all?). In verse 23 Jesus says, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” I don’t imagine, given this translation from the New Revised Standard Version Bible that anyone in my congregation will be too worried about this. After all, there just aren’t a whole lot of hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, or NBA stars worshiping here in Northeast Philly. But “wealth” is kind of a relative term, don’t you think? Any American with a roof over his or her head, a job, and clean drinking water is living in unimaginable wealth compared to someone living in the developing world, or someone living in the tents on the sidewalk near our local mall, or even someone who just had their house washed down a canyon by Hurricane Helene.

Of course, there’s another way to get around this warning of Jesus. If we look at verse 23 in the Greek (and why wouldn’t we?) the phrase translated as “those who have wealth” is actually “tous pepoithotas epi tois chremasin.” Or, literally, “those who trust in riches.” I guess Jesus is saying you don’t actually have to have riches, but if you put your faith in material riches, you’re going to have a rough time experiencing what God wants you to experience. This naturally begs the question, don’t we all, in some way, trust in our riches? That’s why we have Social Security and 401K plans and invest money in our homes and stash a little somethin’ somethin’ away for a rainy day. Right?

The disciples are perfectly within their rights to ask, as they do in verse 26, “Who can be saved?” Who, unless you’re Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa, is willing to commit the act of total liquidation to live only as a follower of Jesus? I don’t think I’ve met anyone with that kind of faith, and I know I don’t have it.

But what if that act of liquidation isn’t voluntary? What if you’re one of those folks down in North Carolina who have just seen everything you own washed down the river? What would matter to you then? How would you experience your own personhood? What would there be of value to sustain you?

Jesus’ disciples seem pretty smug about their own voluntary poverty. In verse 26 Peter, perhaps rather proudly, points out that he and his eleven colleagues have chucked it all to be followers of Jesus. He doesn’t seem to be trusting in wealth, but he might just be thinking he’s achieved a certain status by renouncing it. Jesus has to disabuse him of this. Sacrificing everything in hopes of gain isn’t really sacrificing. It’s actually transactional or, at the very least, gambling.

Verse 21 reminds us that Jesus looked at the man seeking salvation and loved him—even if he knew the fellow wasn’t going to be able to accept what the Good Teacher had to say. And Jesus also  knows that the reward for our abandonment of earthly things will never be enjoyed in the earthly realm. He is asking us to do what is really impossible for us—to give up our trust in everything, to go broke in terms of wealth, position, status, self-image, personal assumptions, and everything else—and just come humbly to receive the grace of God.

This is a tough ask, but it is one with which each of us will one day have to comply.

Since I began this post with a quote from Mr. Kristofferson, I might as well end with one and share these lyrics which I feel would get the Martin Luther Seal of Approval:

Why me Lord?

What have I ever done

To deserve even one

Of the pleasure I've known?

Tell me, Lord

What did I ever do

That was worth lovin' you

For the kindness you've shown?

 

Lord help me, Jesus

I've wasted it so

Help me, Jesus

I know what I am

But now that I know

That I needed you so

Help me, Jesus

My soul's in your hands.

 

Thanks for checking in on me this week. Please come back again.

PS - If you'd like to hear Kristofferson sing this great old song, just click "Why Me."

St. Francis Got the Connection (Reflections on Pentecost 20, Year B 2024)

 

So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 2:19)

Divorce is a nasty subject. I know. I’ve been divorced. It’s not really the kind of thing you want to think about on a pleasant Sunday morning even if it happens to be the subject of the gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost 20, Year B (Mark 10:2-16). Since my congregation is now comprised more of widows than divorcees, I think I’m going to dispense with this subject as quickly as I can. So here goes:

In Mark’s gospel Jesus lets the Pharisees and the disciples know that divorce, however legal it might be, is only legal because of humankind’s “hardness of heart.” He’s shooting pretty straight when he tells this crowd that breaking your promise to someone so you can hook up with someone else is still breaking a promise (You’ll remember the flack John the Baptist gave Herod about shacking up with his brother’s ex.[i] ).

In the world of this text, women didn’t have a whole lot of rights. If you were a woman and your old man decided he didn’t want you anymore, he could write you a letter of divorce and you’d be on the street. You’ll notice in the passage the Pharisees say a man has a right to divorce his wife, but nothing is mentioned about her having a right to get rid of him if he’s abusive to her. Jesus is actually standing up to protect the women from poverty when he speaks these words about divorce and adultery.

Our Roman Catholic brothers have been getting their shorts in a knot over the subject of divorce for a long time. I think they’re rather missing the point of this gospel lesson. They may be stuck like obsessed barnacles to the letter of the scripture, but they’re missing the intent. Jesus cares for the weak and the vulnerable. He also cares that we honor one another. It’s very true that two perfectly lovely and amiable human beings might discover they just can’t be lovely and amiable living under the same roof. There can be many good and legitimate reasons why couples split up. Nevertheless, a necessary separation should not negate the mutual responsibility to forgive and care for the wellbeing of the other.

Everything in the universe exists in relationship to everything else. There’s a divine interconnectedness all things share. Our gospel writer juxtaposes Jesus’ teaching about broken relationships between adults with his welcome for children—the weakest and, in the society of his day, the least important. Jesus welcomes the children as being an essential part of the whole.

I love that this gospel text is paired with the reading from Genesis 2:18-24. In this well-known and fanciful story, the first man recognizes the first woman as being a part of himself. She is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” He recognizes, as God says in verse 18, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” We are created for community and relationship.

The lesson from Genesis also stresses the human being’s relationship with the natural world. Before Adam meets his intended bride, God (showing a great sense of humor if you ask me!) has him encounter a bunch of unsuitable “partners.” In doing this, God creates a relationship between the man and all the other living creatures. How? The man gives them names. It is so important that we know each other by name, don’t you think? And don’t we even nickname or rename people who are closest to us? Sometimes nicknames are meant to be insulting and oppressive,[ii] but even this labeling defines a relationship. Lovers often have secret pet names for each other which only they know. To know by name creates a bond.

So bottom line? It’s not too deep a thought: we’re all in this together. We all have responsibility for each other. We are all called to see God in one another—even in the little children and the beasts of the field.

Saying this allows me to segue into a few words about the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi which is celebrated on October 4. If ever there was a fellow who understood the interconnectedness of all living creatures, it was Francis. He lived in the late 12^th and early 13^th centuries, the son of a wealthy Italian cloth merchant. As a young man he joined the army of his duchy which was waging war on its neighbor—something which was not at all uncommon in 13^th century Italy. He was taken prisoner and held for ransom for about a year. Following his release, he started to have a change of heart about many things.

Although Francis was wealthy, he slowly began to lose interest in his father’s enterprise and began to devote himself to a life of the spirit. Sometime around 1205 it is said that Francis had a divine vision which ultimately led him to renounce his father’s business and wealth. He began to spend more time alone and in prayer. After encountering beggars while on a pilgrimage to Rome, Francis determined to enter into a relationship with them by becoming a mendicant himself.

Francis is said to have had a vision of Jesus who told him to rebuild his church. He spent a few years around the vicinity of Assisi repairing dilapidated chapels and nursing lepers. By 1208 he had developed a following of eleven disciples who were moved by his embrace of poverty and love for the poor. The following year he approached Pope Innocence III and requested and was granted permission to form a new religious order.

Francis is remembered and beloved for his relationship with all living things. This included his love for the poor and marginalized and his love for the natural world and the creatures which inhabit it. He is considered the patron saint of animals, and it’s not uncommon for churches to hold a blessing of the animals on the Sunday nearest his feast day. It’s said that Francis referred to all creatures as his brothers and sisters. Legend has it that he’d preach to the birds and ventured into the wild to encounter a vicious wolf which had been devouring the livestock of a local village. Francis, so the story goes, was able to convince the predator to give up attacking sheep and accept food scraps from the villagers instead. The animal lived with the people of the town for two years as something of a collective pet. In the late 19th century, the skeletal remains of a large wolf were discovered buried near the wall of the village church.[iii]

Francis is also credited for being the inventor of the Christmas creche in 1220. He celebrated Christmas mass by bringing a straw-filled manager into the worship space of the church along with some live donkeys and bovines so the worshipers could have an experience of the birth of Christ.

In an attempt to restore broken human relationships, Francis and some of his disciples traveled to Egypt in 1219, hoping to bring an end to the 5^th Crusade. During a temporary ceasefire, he crossed the lines to the Muslim camp and met with the Sultan of Egypt. His attempt was to bring peace or die as a martyr. He achieved neither goal, but the severe African sunlight damaged his eyes and claimed a portion of his sight.

We remember Francis today because he really seemed to understand that a goal of our human existence is to see Christ in each other and God in all things, to put away our selfish exclusivity, and love the world as a child might—with wonder and affection and joy.

Thanks for being connected to me this week. Please drop by again.

---

[i] See Mark 6:17ff

[ii] Especially if Donald Trump is doing the naming.

[iii] Who knows if this story is true or not, but, if it isn’t, it ought to be. You can read the whole tale by clicking Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio.

Angels Watchin' Over Me (Reflections on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, 2024)

 

Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. (Daniel 12:3)

Happy Michaelmas!

Yes, this Sunday is the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, a festival celebrated annually on September 29^th by Lutherans as well as by our Roman Catholic and Anglican brothers and sisters.[i] It’s a tradition dating back to the fifth century when a basilica near Rome was dedicated to the Archangel Michael. In the Middle Ages Michaelmas signaled the start of Autumn, and was a time when tenant farmers, who were just bringing their crops to market, were called upon to settle accounts with their overlords and pay their rent.[ii] Later, in English schools the festival signaled the start of the fall term. For whatever reason our ancestors had, it was celebrated by feasting on a goose.

In recent years the festival has been enlarged from celebrating Michael to contemplating all the heavenly messengers and the messages they bring.

I confess I never thought much about angels. For me, an angel was a member of the American League baseball team I followed via my Westinghouse AM clock radio when I was a kid growing up in Southern California.[iii] I hadn’t given much mental energy to contemplating the presence of invisible (or maybe not-so-invisible) spiritual beings which might be surrounding us at this very minute. Nevertheless, the belief in angels goes back a long, long time. Our Jewish brothers and sisters and our Muslim brothers and sisters also believe in angels. Throughout the centuries some people have felt a divine presence which, if it were not exactly God, was at least someone on God’s payroll.

The Bible is full of references to these beings. If you look at Genesis, there’s the story of Hagar (the slave girl Abraham was fooling around with when he thought his wife couldn’t get pregnant) being rescued by an angel in the wilderness (Genesis 16:7-9). There’s the story of Jacob seeing angels on a ladder to Heaven (Genesis 28:12). Moses was promised that an angel would go before him and the children of Israel to help them whoop the locals and take over the Promised Land (Exodus 33:2). There are a bunch of other angel sightings in the Hebrew Scriptures, including visions to Elijah, Isaiah, and Daniel[iv].

As Christians, we usually think of angels in connection to the Christmas story: the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist, the announcement to Mary that she’ll be the mother of Jesus, the announcement to the perplexed Joseph telling him to chill and raise this baby as his own, and the stupendous appearance of the Heavenly Host to the shepherds on the night Jesus is born. The angels do what they’re supposed to do: bring messages from God—no matter how unexpected, wonderful, or weird those messages might be.

Michael is called an archangel, which means he’s pretty much the top angel. He is referenced in the First Lesson assigned for this feast Sunday (Daniel 10:10-14, 12:1-3) by an un-named angel who tells the hero Daniel that Michael is a protector of the Jewish people. In the New Testament epistle of Jude, we’re told that Michael contended with Satan for the body of Moses, and the book of Revelation (our Second Lesson for Michaelmas, Revelation 12:7-12) depicts Michael as a warrior angel who kicked Satan’s butt out of heaven[v]. In art, he’s almost always depicted wearing armor and brandishing a sword. Michael is pretty much a badass as angels go.

Jewish literature lists the names of some angels and a taxonomy and hierarchy of their different types and jobs. Basically, however, an angel is a messenger of God. The main duties of angels, as we find them in the Bible, are a) praising God, b) delivering messages from God, c) protecting and rescuing God’s faithful, and d) acting as agents of God’s divine judgment.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t say I’ve ever experienced the supernatural presence of one of God’s angels, but I have been inspired time and again by some flesh-and-blood folks who could very well qualify as angels given the above job description. In fact, in the gospel appointed for Michaelmas (Luke 10:17-20), Jesus commends the twelve disciples for their mission trip and tells them they’ve been warriors who have made Satan fall just as Michael did. Those who spread God’s Word and share God’s love are given authority over the power of the enemy. We are called to do the work of the angels—praising, proclaiming, protecting and nurturing, and standing up for the righteousness of God in a culture which is violent, wasteful, selfish, and uncaring.

I believe in angels—seen and unseen. As I said, there have been a few times in my life when I’ve experienced unexpected, but greatly needed, acts of kindness. When I’ve been down or discouraged some individual has appeared who has been a comfort or has shared a word of wisdom. When I interview the families of the deceased in preparation for a funeral service, I always close the conversation with prayer, and I always pray that God would send a messenger—a person who can come into the life of the bereaved as a bearer of patience and understanding amidst the loss and grief.

We all like to think our departed loved ones have become angels. Maybe they have. Who’s to say? But all the messengers and the protectors, and the friends we have are gifts from God. We are in the presence of the angels now, just as the old spiritual (which I learned at the now-defunct St. Michael’s Lutheran in Germantown) says:

“All night, all day: angels watching over me, my Lord. All night, all day, I got angels watching over me.”

May the angels bless you this week, my friend. May they keep you safe and bring you God’s peace.

 

---

[i] The Easter Orthodox Communion also celebrates Michaelmas, but they do it on November 8^th. They like to be different.

[ii] Fun fact: The person elected to collect rents and settle accounts was called a “reeve.” The term for a reeve of a shire or “shire’s reeve,” gave rise to the tern sheriff. Hence, St. Michael is also the patron saint of law enforcement professionals.

[iii] My parents got me the clock radio when I was about eleven years old, and it lasted me all the way through graduate school. It was obtained by redeeming the now-outlawed coupons which were once attached to packs of cigarettes. When you collected enough coupons, you could turn them in for cool stuff. I got the clock radio. My mom got emphysema.

[iv] Excuse me if I don’t list all the textual citations. You can look them up yourself or take my word for it, okay?

[v] There are also some references to Michael in the Apocryphal books of Tobit and Enoch.

I'm Thinking About the Kids (Reflections on Pentecost 18, Year B 2024)

 

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:37)

I love Raelyn. She’s the great-granddaughter of one of our faithful members at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia. She’s just started preschool, and she loves to come to church. She gets to sit with great-grandma in the Praise Team chairs, and she sometimes accompanies our singing with percussion instruments—under great-grandma’s strict supervision, of course. But, as four-year-old little girls are wont, she often likes to scamper around the worship space to sit with her auntie or to retreat to the adjacent nursery room when Pastor is giving his boring sermon.

I don’t mind. There was a time, you’ll recall, when children were to be seen and not heard. A certain large, Evangelical denomination was known for insisting children under twelve years of age be sent to “Children’s Church” and not permitted in the main worship space while services were being conducted. Remember when a crying baby or a fussing toddler in church would provoke blood-freezing stares of indignation from the sedate elders of the congregation? An inappropriate squeal was tantamount to a crime against humanity. I sure hope we’ve gotten past that. Ever since COVID-19 decimated our church Sunday School, I am grateful when anyone young enough to still have their own gall bladder comes through our doors. Of the many crimes Christians—with all good intentions, I’m sure—commit is sending the unspoken message that children are not welcome in church.

When I was younger, I never really had time for little kids. I spent a number of years in the Los Angeles Unified School District teaching adolescents, but I never had the gift my sister Lorraine has for reaching the real little ones. But now that I’m in my sixties, a very curious thing has happened to me. I’ve started to find little children charming. Perhaps because I’ve never had any of my own. I never had to change diapers or lose sleep with a cranky baby or ferry a kid to ballet or Lettle League. I never had to do the dirty work of parenting, and yet, I find myself thinking about kids more and more.

Did you know that, according to the Children’s Defense Fund, over eleven million children in the United States are living at or below the poverty line? What’s going to happen to them? What effect will global climate change have on our kids? Do you realize that children now engage in “Active Shooter” drills in public school? And what kind of economy are we leaving them? How can we make future generations our priority?

In the world of our gospel lesson for Pentecost 18, Year B ((Mark 9:30-37), it’s pretty clear kids weren’t a priority. Jesus uses a little child as an object lesson, an illustration of the weakest and least important in the society. The Greek word used (piadion[i]) does not identify the gender of the child, but I always imagine this is a little girl. Girls were valued even less than boys and considered to be the property of their fathers until they were of age to become the property of their husbands.

Jesus challenges us in this passage—as Jesus always does—to think beyond ourselves. His numbskull disciples are busy arguing about their status, but Jesus wants them—and us—to deny ourselves and start thinking about our brothers and sisters who are in need. I wonder if young people have deserted the Christian Church in America because they’ve seen or heard only an emphasis on individual salvation or self-actualization. I wonder if the Millennials and Gen-Z’s aren’t starving for a relationship with the Savior whose primary concern is for the weakest members of society. Do they look into the future and see a freight train of disaster or injustice coming at them and ask what we’re doing to derail it?

If young people want a church at all, I suspect they want a church in mission. Granted, there’s not a whole heck of a lot a little chapel like Faith Lutheran[ii] can do to change the world, but we can still change part of it. We lost a lot when the COVID pandemic changed the model of ministry which allowed us to shelter the temporarily unhoused in our basement during the summer. Recently, however, we’ve received an overture from our Lutheran food bank and advocacy ministry Feast of Justice. They’re asking us to put together a team to greet and supply some of the 2,000 neighbors who come to their door each week because of food insecurity. Yes, nice church folks can always write a check to help the needy, but it’s a whole different thing to look them in the eye. Jesus warns us that his mission isn’t always going to be smooth and convenient. It might even be a little uncomfortable[iii], but I’m praying this ministry will be meaningful and impactful for all who participate.

And I don’t think anyone would mind if we brought little Raelyn along.

I’m glad you dropped by this week. Take a chance and get a little more involved, won’t you?

---

[i] In fact, even the personal pronoun (auto) is neutral. Our Bible translates the pronoun as “it” as our Greek Bible authors had no distinct pronouns for “he” or “she.” Still, I hate to think of a child as an “it.”

[ii] We’re down to about 30 in-person worshipers per Sunday, and half of them are over the age of 70. Sound like your church?

[iii] Like the cross was.

Jesus Who? (Reflections on Pentecost 17, Year B 2024)

 

He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. (Mark 8:29)

I’m pretty excited and more than a little intimidated as I begin writing this post. In a few hours I’ll be teaching my first Confirmation class of the fall season. I’ve got five brand new students, ranging in age from eleven to seventeen, who will join me over Zoom. None of them fall into the classification of “regular churchgoers,” so I’ll bet they’d rather eat a bucket of dead worms than spend thirty minutes with a 65-year-old pastor talking about religion. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to pound a little spiritual information into their Gen-Z skulls. That’s about all I can do. I can’t give them faith, but I can give them information. I can try to tell them who Jesus is.

Who we say Jesus is happens to be the subject of the gospel text appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost 17, Year B (Mark 8:27-38, and wasn’t that a slick way I introduced the topic?). If I were to ask the average Lutheran Joe or Josephine Pew Sitter the question Jesus put to the disciples, what do you think the answer might be? It might go like this:

ME: Who do you say Jesus is?

THEM: He’s my Savior.

ME: But what does that mean?

THEM: He died for my sins.

ME: But what does that mean?

What do you think the next response would be? What would your response be? Do you ever get the urge to go beyond the churchy language and really wrestle with what your faith in Jesus means and why it’s important to you? Certainly, some will say they call upon Jesus in time of need and find him a comforter and a helper. Others might say they look to Jesus as the model of the Godly life. I like that last part, but our gospel lesson shows us he’s a pretty weird model to follow—a model who tells us he’s going to be rejected and killed and then urges us to deny ourselves and take up our cross in order to be his followers.

What is it, exactly, that Jesus models? What tells us about who he is? He’s certainly rather modest. He doesn’t want his identity to be made known. He lowers himself to wash the feet of his disciples like a slave would do. He looks silly riding into Jerusalem on a baby donkey. He clearly has empathy for others. He breaks society’s rules and hangs out with the “wrong” crowd and accepts unacceptable people. He tells people they’re forgiven. He preaches non-violence and love for the poor and for enemies. He reminds us that everyone is our neighbor. And he talks back to authority. Maybe that’s something my Confirmation students could get into. You think?

In the gospel reading Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus doesn’t deny this, but he doesn’t want this bit of news to be spread around. I always figured—and I think the story bears this out—that Jesus knows people will misinterpret that title. For Peter, the anointed one of God would be a political leader and a real badass warrior who would vanquish the enemies of the nation. It seems that for a lot of folks living in America today, that is exactly how they see Jesus[i]. As Christianity slips out of the mainstream of American life a breed of Christian jihadists has sprung up to fight what they perceive are the forces of Satan. They will rescue unborn babies, revoke LGBTQ+ rights, ban books, dictate curriculum to teachers, put the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, eliminate inclusive language, and champion a whole truckload of their other cultural priorities—and do it with a screaming zeal that would seem excessive from the Taliban.

Who are they saying Jesus is?

Who does the American Church say Jesus is? Or do we say it at all? Are we locked into our institutional vocabulary and figure that’s enough? What do our actions say about the one we worship? If you’d never heard of Jesus, what message would you take away from the Church? What should I tell my new Confirmation students? I need to ponder this because I want them to confirm a living faith, not just conform to an institutional church.

Who do you say Jesus is? What do your actions, your words, and the way you live your life say about you and Jesus? What are we telling our kids about who Jesus is?

Think about it, won’t you? Maybe have a little talk with Jesus this week. I’m always glad you stopped by.

                                                            

---

[i] You may want to google the names Lance Wallnau or Greg Locke or the term Christian Nationalism.