A Moment with Frederick Buechner

How much preaching we hear from the lips of men and women who give us no way of knowing that they were themselves once upon a time passionately moved by the gospel, which they proclaim now with so little apparent passion. Let them preach about the moments of grace in their own lives. Let them preach about the flesh-and-blood reality of those moments and about how, even though there are many other moments when grace seems faint and far away, those moments of grace remain their richest treasure and dearest hope.

Or if for some reason they shy away from preaching about those moments — either because they seem too precious or perhaps too threadbare and elusive to tell — then at least let them preach out of them because not to speak from the heart of where their faith comes from is to risk never really touching the hearts of those of us who so hungrily listen.

from The Longing for Home
by Frederick Buechner

Is the Reformation Over?: An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism
by Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom
Baker Academic (April 1, 2008)

• • •

On Sundays this summer, we will be blogging through Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom’s book, Is the Reformation Over? This work considers changes in the Roman Catholic Church since Vatican II and what they have meant for relationships between Catholics and Protestants.

Noll is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at Notre Dame University. He specializes in the history of Christianity in the United States and Canada. In 2005 he was named by Time Magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential evangelicals in America, and one of his most popular books, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, was Christianity Today’s book of the year in 1996. His coauthor, Carolyn Nystrom, has authored more than eighty books for adults and children. She holds an MA in historical theology from Wheaton College.

In the Introduction, they say this about their study:

It is intended as an evangelical assessment of contemporary Roman Catholicism, with special attention given to the dramatic changes that have taken place since the Second Vatican Council. It deals primarily with conditions in the United States but not to the exclusion of evidence from Canada, Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere in the world. In its pages we do not propose a final, universal, or dogmatic assessment of Roman Catholicism. Rather, we offer first as much helpful information as we can in a volume of modest size. Second, we also hope to provide evangelical interpretations, grounded in both classical Christian theology and the broad history of Christianity, of what we see in the contemporary Catholic Church.

In seeking to answer the question, “Is the Reformation over?” the authors state their intention of using the “classic ideals of the Protestant Reformation to measure contemporary Catholic Christianity: sola scriptura, sola fide, and the priesthood of all believers.” They acknowledge that this question, straightforward as it may sound, is not one that can be answered simply.

Today, we will consider what Noll and Nystrom tell us in chapter one: “Things Are Not the Way They Used to Be.”

“If…you had predicted that one day an Anglican bishop would tell me how the last Roman Catholic priest to whom he talked quizzed him hard as to whether Anglicans really preached the new birth as they should, I would probably have laughed in your face. But this month it happened. Things are not as they were!”

• J.I. Packer, 1983

• • •

The first chapter of Is the Reformation Over? is comprised of a litany of examples to show how perspectives and relations have changed with regard to evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics.

As usual, one person who provides the template for evangelical practice in post-war American evangelicalism is Billy Graham. Prior to the mid-1960s, Graham was staunchly anti-Catholic, though there is evidence that his public stance did not represent some of the changes taking place in his thinking from as early as the late 1940′s. The authors note that Catholics in the 1950s around the world discouraged their parishioners from attending his crusades and there was no participation by bishops or priests. Graham stood with other evangelicals who opposed John F. Kennedy’s presidential bid out of fear that American policy would be ruled by the Vatican should the country elect a Catholic leader. As late as 1962, a Graham associate wrote that Catholic priests were not invited to participate in crusades and that they wouldn’t join in if they were invited.

That changed in 1964, when Richard Cardinal Cushing welcomed Graham to New England, offering a prayer “of Catholics in the Boston area that God will bless his preaching and crusade, and will lead many to the knowledge of our Lord.” After the 1960s, the relationship accelerated, marked by such significant events as a 1977 crusade in Notre Dame stadium, an invitation to the shrine of the Black Madonna in Poland (the first Protestant leader ever to have been invited), preaching in Poland’s Catholic churches and later being granted an audience in the Vatican with Pope John Paul II. The authors observe, “In the 1990s and early twenty-first century, Catholics have made up a considerable portion of the people who attend his meetings, record decisions for Christ, and watch the crusades on television.” The Vatican sanctioned an official delegation to attend a Graham-sponsored evangelism conference in Amsterdam in 2000.

Noll and Nystrom also see cooperation in the “culture wars” as a catalyst bringing evangelicals and Catholics closer. They quote conservative spokesman Gary Bauer as saying, “When John F. Kennedy made his famous speech that the Vatican would not tell him what to do, evangelicals and Southern Baptists breathed a sigh of relief. But today evangelicals and Southern Baptists are hoping that the Vatican will tell Catholic politicians what to do.”

The religious publishing industry has seen a growing crossover between the Catholic and Protestant worlds in recent decades. InterVarsity Press, a leading evangelical publisher, now offers The Ancient Christian Commentary series, which is edited by a combination of evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox scholars, and 20% of those who buy its volumes are Catholic. The Pope himself invited evangelical scholars to the Vatican in 2003 to give his blessing on new translations of the series. Roman Catholic parishes are regularly using the Alpha course for evangelism. Catholics and Protestants have found fertile ground for cooperation in the realm of worship music as well, with extensive cross-pollination between traditions. In my own Lutheran congregation, we use contemporary Catholic liturgies by Marty Haugen, whose career is a good example of one whose music transcends traditional boundaries.

The authors also note a development they call “stunning.” There has been a remarkable about-face in the Catholic church in their assessment of Martin Luther and basic Reformation teachings. They point to recent Catholic works that argue Luther’s view of justification was correct and compatible with the Council of Trent, and that the condemnations of Trent are no longer meaningful today. One simple way to see how Rome has changed with regard to Luther himself, the authors assert, is to see the different reactions to two different films about the reformer. In 1953, when a Catholic commentator reviewed the film “Martin Luther,” he said that Luther was “a lewd satyr whose glandular demands were the ultimate cause of his break with the Christian Church.” In the U.S., Catholics in Chicago sought to keep the film off of television. However, fifty years later, a new Luther film, directed by Eric Till, received salutary comments from Catholic critics.

One Catholic, reviewing Martin Marty’s biography of Luther wrote that Luther himself “could not have foreseen that the Church of Rome would some four centuries later, at Vatican Council II, adopt many of the reforms that he championed.” I mentioned on this blog that a highlight of my own silent retreat at Gethsemani Abbey last fall was hearing a sermon on Romans 4 and the subject of justification that would have done Luther proud.

There are a number of other reflections in this chapter about changing relationships between evangelicals and Catholics, including an overview of what is happening in various places around the world. There is wide variation: from even more harmonious cooperation than in the U.S. to deeply entrenched antagonism, argue the authors. But there are many signs of change worth noting, including their surprising statement that “Ireland has been the scene of the most advanced movement of evangelicalism within the Catholic Church.” Martha, care to comment?

• • •

The bottom line is: we are now at a place of modest and growing engagement between Protestants and Catholics, a development Noll and Nystrom call “a genuine moment of grace in the long history of the church.”

The Unforgiving Servant, Bube

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
from May 2009

I’m thinking about grace a lot today after a bit of a mystical experience in church Sunday.

As we were preparing for communion, I was praying. The Spirit brought to mind a series of dark incidents from my own life where God was miraculously gracious to me. I’m not talking about small matters. I am talking about incidents and character failures- most of which I’ve exiled from my mind and memories- where God alone is responsible for the fact that I was not fired, humiliated, divorced, dead or immersed in grief and suffering. Incidents that, if God had allowed them to be, would have been life defining in consequence.

These are moments and situations I know about. Only God knows the very many I don’t know about. These are crossroads moments where my life could have easily gone the route of people whose names we all know for their failures and mistakes, but God graciously intervened or overruled.

These incidents processed through my mind while I prayed, some of them embarrassing and humiliating to recall even momentarily. Others were astonishing in the new mercies revealed as I review them. How often my own failures and stupid choices should have brought about another outcome, but God’s grace had the last word.

The Wedding Feast, Bube

Let me be honest: I am amazed at the grace of God in sending Jesus to the cross as my substitute and sin offering, but I am somewhat professionally jaded at the emotional impact of the Christian story. I am not ashamed to say that, because most of us struggle with how unmoved we are in comparison to all of God’s mercies and kindnesses. Every sin I commit is in full view of the cross. My heart needs the awakening power of the Holy Spirit to be freshly humbled by Jesus and his cross.

Remembering and re-experiencing these instances of God’s grace to me, particularly the fresh revelations of those experiences in the light of time and reflection, was arresting. My heart beats faster and my blood pressure surely goes up. Why has God been so gracious? So kind? So willing to see me through? It is nothing in me or about me. In fact, is there a person who is more deserving of loss, derision, failure and painful consequences than me?

Has all that kindness really been good for me? Would I be a better Christian if my missteps and sins had caught up with me and changed my life, my marriage and my ministry? Has the kindness of God led me to the right kind of repentance and the right sort of worship? Or has it “spoiled” me?

I sat there wondering, “How can I understand God’s grace when I have seen so many others fall down these same traps, stumble over these same obstacles and suffer far more from these same mistakes?”

I’m not sure that God’s grace is ever understandable. It’s amazing in all its forms. It doesn’t do interviews or supply answers. Grace is unpredictable and mysterious.

This far along in the journey, I’m wrestling with the meaning of grace almost every day. I’ve spent a year in the grip of resentment toward Christians who were unkind and selfish when I was dealing with an unthinkable rift in the spiritual unity of my marriage. It’s very easy to contemplate the enjoyment of ungracious bitterness and petty paybacks.

Situations come to me where grace is God’s clear word, but give me a few moments to consult with other Christians, and grace isn’t quite so clear after all. With the right kind of counsel, getting my way and forcing others to feel the pain of their mistakes can seem like the obvious way to go.

As a teacher and a preacher, I realize that almost every Christian my students know will give them law, law, law, morality, standards, behavior and the impression that Christian is a word award to nice people living a good life. Will I have the backbone and the honesty to let grace out of the bag? Will I let grace and the Holy Spirit define what it means to follow Christ, or will I hide behind that very convenient message of moral reformation? Will I present Jesus and the explosive good news of grace, or I will I present Jesus as the nodding, pale patron of a law-saturated religion of rule-following and practicing principles?

The big issues that face me as a teacher, writer, husband, father and employee are all about grace. Grace in everyday life. Grace to people who don’t deserve it. Grace as a way for me to live in the power of the Gospel when I’d rather be controlling things and determining outcomes. All day, every day I have to live in an atmosphere where the use of the law, guilt, manipulation and punishment are the standard ways of doing business. But I want my life to be more and more and more about grace, not to lessen the law, but to accomplish what the law cannot accomplish: create followers of Jesus and create lives- individually and communally- shaped by his Spirit.

When I remember the grace of God in my life, particularly at those moments when no one could rescue me from my sin and foolishness but GOD ALONE, it fires my heart with a hunger for grace in my relationships, actions and heart-motivation. (Thank God he didn’t treat me the way he advises that fools be treated in the book of Proverbs. Praise God for his wonderful inconsistency!)

The question for me today and from now on is “Has grace made me gracious?”

And what do you do on a holiday but go to the movies? Having seen the Avengers already, now what? You could get ready for The Master, a new film that is “lightly” based on the story of L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology. Or you can anticipate Anne Rice’s Christ The Lord being made into a movie. Or, best of all, Joel Osteen’s first foray into films, a movie about Mary the mother of Jesus staring an Israeli actress I’ve never heard of. I’m sure if Joel is in charge, this will be a whiz-bang flick.

The Vatican has released a guide telling bishops and priests how to determine if an apparition of Mary is the real thing. The rules list requirements for those claiming to have witnessed a “positive” apparition, some of which include “psychological equilibrium, honesty and rectitude of moral life […] sincerity [and] healthy devotion.” Well, I won’t be submitting any claims of seeing Mary anytime soon, will I?

John Piper’s successor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis has been approved by the church’s board of elders. Jason Meyer is the pastor-in-waiting to Piper. No timetable for a changing of the guard has been set. Is this a good and orderly way to change church leaders, or would it be better for Pastor A to preach his last message this week, and Pastor B begin next week?

Some other Baptists chose to leave in a different manner. More than two dozen professors and teachers at Shorter University in Georgia resigned after being told they would need to sign a “personal lifestyle statement” that forbids homosexuality, premarital sex, and public drinking. And what sayest thou, iMonks? Should Christian colleges require such a document from those who work there?

Well, it’s settled then. Jesus was crucified on Friday, April 3, 33 A.D.  How do we know this is the right date? Apparently geologists have been able to research earthquakes around that time period and have concluded the quake mentioned in Matthew’s gospel matches one that rattled Jerusalem on April 3. Glad we have that cleared up?

Of course, Christianity as we know it is all washed up. Some clever blokes in Iran are set to release the Gospel of Barnabas, an ancient manuscript that “proves” Jesus was never crucified at all—not on April 3 or any other day. Well, I’m convinced. And I think I hear Dan Brown’s pen scratching out a new book.

A couple in Israel are divorcing because of … cats. No, not the annoying Broadway musical. I mean real felines. 550 of them to be exact. The husband says the cats block his way to the bathroom, steal his food from his plate and leave him no room to sleep in his bed. His wife, given the choice between her husband and the cats, chose … sigh …

Before we get to celebs’ birthdays, let us lift a glass to the Book of Common Prayer, 350 years old this month. I have several, but I much prefer my hand-stitched leatherbound copy printed by Cambridge I bought in London a couple of years ago.

Other birthdays celebrated this week include those by Malcolm X; Pete Townshend; Archie Manning; Grace Jones; Jimmy Stewart; Joe Cocker; Cher; Leo Sayer; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Drew Carey; Miles Davis; and A.J. Foyt IV.

Pete Townshend of The Who is a great rock guitarist who has a bad habit of smashing his guitar at the end of a show. That’s a lot of good guitars going to landfills when there are hungry children all over the world who would like a guitar of their own. John Hiatt, songwriter extraordinaire, sings us a little ditty about rock stars who smash their guitars. This is sound theology, iMonks. Take it to heart. Enjoy.

During Eastertide on Fridays, we are reflecting on insights from Timothy Gombis’s recent book, The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God.

• • •

For a long time, one of the passages Sunday School teachers have used to keep young boys interested is Ephesians 6:10-18: “Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Knowing that many little guys like action and weapons and the drama of conflict, we let them to be “soldiers for Jesus” and try to capture their imagination and enthusiasm (and endless energy!) so they will think church is “cool” and fun.

Which is fine, I guess. The passage at the end of Paul’s epistle is one of those vivid texts that expresses spiritual truths in concrete, easily grasped terms. But, as Timothy Gombis shows in The Drama of Ephesians, we may have missed how these words work in the context of the letter and exactly how they apply to Christians.

Ephesians 6:10-18 is one of the better known passages in this letter, if not the entire New Testament. In it, Paul exhorts his readers to be strong in God’s own strength as they battle against the powers of darkness. This passage is commonly read as an exhortation to individual Christians to put on various virtues in order to engage the daily battle of the Christian life. The attacks of Satan come in the form of temptations to sin and Christians have the armor of God at their disposal to fend off the darkness. But this is not Paul’s point. This passage is a rhetorical conclusion to the entire letter, in which Paul depicts the church as intimately identified with the exalted Lord Jesus. In Ephesians 1:23, Paul says that the church is “his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” The presence of Jesus Christ fills the church by God’s Spirit so that it literally is “the body of Jesus” on earth. Just as Jesus was the presence of God in a human person, so the church is now the presence of Jesus in the world. For Paul, there is an intense unity between Jesus Christ and the church.

The “armour of God” represents God’s own virtues, as expressed in Isaiah 59 (see especially vv. 16-17). In taking this up, the Church is not merely standing for God in the world, but standing as God’s very presence in the world. He is our armour, and we stand in this world, against the powers, intimately united to God in Christ.

But more about this passage next week in our concluding study. Gombis goes to it at this point in his book because it serves to summarize the role of God’s Church as we live out Christ’s victory on earth. The section it concludes and summarizes is Ephesians 4:17-6:9. Therefore, if we want to see what it means to “stand against the wiles of the devil,” this is the part of the letter that will tell us.

When we read this section of exhortations, we discover what we have seen elsewhere in Ephesians: “doing battle” and standing in Christ’s “triumph” is not a matter of being sacred crusaders or acting triumphalistic, advancing a righteous program through militancy and might.

Instead, as Gombis notes, “the church engages in warfare against the powers in ways that defy and overturn our expectations. Our warfare involves resisting the corrupting influences of the powers. The same pressures that produce practices of exploitation, injustice and oppression in the world are at work on church communities. The church’s warfare involves resisting such influences, transforming corrupted practices and replacing them with life-giving patterns of conduct that draw on and radiate the resurrection power of God.”

In the center of this section, we find these words:

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (4:31-5:2)

It is this kind of counter-cultural, subversive, humble and self-sacrificing way of life that points to Christ in our lives among our pagan neighbors, in our relationships within the community of faith, and in our households.

The Lord’s battle is won by loving service.

Note from CM: One avenue of interest that I like to explore as I write is the craft of writing itself. Today, Adam McHugh helps us think about writing as an ancient practice “that unfolds our souls and opens our hearts and minds to the God who speaks to us, with us, and through us.”

Adam blogs at Introverted Church, and is the author of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture.

• • •

The Writer as Mystic and Madman
by Adam McHugh

I spend a lot of time reading what other writers say about writing. It’s an excellent way to procrastinate from actually writing. In reading the words of seasoned authors, who themselves are usually writing about writing in order to avoid other projects, I have discovered two recurring themes. The process of writing may very well make you crazy. And it may also make you a mystic.

Sometimes the crazy is the charming kind of crazy, like the retired journalist in my hometown who walked the streets for hours a day, waving at everything that passed by: cars, people, planes, squirrels. Philip Yancey says that the first phase of his writing process “is all psychosis. I don’t even subject my wife to it. I go to a cabin in the mountains. I don’t shave. I’ll go a week without speaking to a single person, except maybe a store clerk. I work really long hours just pounding out junk.”

But sometimes the crazy is the life-choking, relationship-poisoning kind of crazy. It doesn’t take much experience with the madness of the writing life to understand Hemingway’s routine on Key West while writing A Farewell to Arms. The alarm bells start to sound when spending the mornings writing with six-fingered cats, the afternoons getting bombed on cheap scotch, and the evenings shooting at sharks with a Tommy gun begins to sound like a viable lifestyle. Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, pondering that her greatest writing success is likely behind her, confesses “It’s enough to make you start drinking gin at 9 in the morning.” She laments that the pressures of the creative process have been killing off our artists for the last 500 years.

The writing process is an emotional roller coaster that threatens to run you right off the rails. Writing is about so much more than sitting down and typing. It’s more like a war, as you, your ideas, and your words all battle each other for supremacy. In writing, your hopes, dreams, fears and inadequacies are exposed. You learn what it is you most want in life and how incompetent you are to actually achieve it. It’s easy to see how the first casualty of this war is your sanity.

But the process of writing may also make you a mystic. A life of writing can transform the most committed atheist into someone who talks of gods and spirits and muses. Countless authors attest that, in some mysterious way, the discipline of writing can connect us with outside forces, as our words become channels for other voices speaking in the universe. C.S. Lewis said, “I never exactly made a book. It’s rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.” Others take a more earthy approach when they claim they don’t invent a story, rather they excavate it. They imagine themselves as literary archeologists, discovering a story or an idea that has been buried deep within them yet cries out to be found.

Some writers seek to renew our belief in muses, those ancient spirits that inspire the creativity behind great works of art and music and literature. Elizabeth Gilbert says that in ancient cultures people themselves were not considered geniuses, but they had a genius who sparked their creative impulses. In a different spirit, Stephen King envisions his muse as a fat guy living in his basement, smoking cigars and admiring his bowling trophies and pretending to ignore you. But, says King, “the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life.”

Some people may consider the writer’s tendency towards madness and mysticism as one and the same. But from what I can see, the first leads to restlessness and despair while the second moves toward peace and freedom. Gilbert hopes that resurrecting the muse will give writers a necessary distance from their work, releasing them from the destructive side effects of the creative process.

As much as I appreciate Gilbert’s views, as a Christian I am not ultimately satisfied with her solution. I agree that there is another power that overlaps with our creative efforts, but for me it is the Holy Spirit. I won’t reduce the Holy Spirit to a muse, but I do believe that the same influence that inspired the apostles to preach and write is also, in whatever lesser form, present in my work, even in the very messiness of the writing process. I consider writing a spiritual discipline. It is one of those ancient practices that unfolds our souls and opens our hearts and minds to the God who speaks to us, with us, and through us.

The ancient muses, it was thought, helped create works of art and literature. But the God in whom I believe is about creating certain kinds of people, shaping them into men and women who believe, hope, and love. While I do think God cares about the works we create, I believe that God is more interested in the process and its effect upon us. God is in the dying – the struggle and the wounds and the agony, just as much as he is in the rising – the gleaming product at the end. Out of the chaos of the writing life, God is forming us to be people who are humbled, disciplined, persevering, surprised, grateful. And if, through the writing process, we allow ourselves to be shaped into new kinds of people, then perhaps writers will come to be known for more than just being crazy.

Honestly . . . how do you react, deep down in your gut, when someone invokes that little quote from John’s first epistle? I believe most thoughtful evangelicals are like me on this, if  honest. We have a hard time trusting love, don’t we?

Whenever any kind of apologetic or doctrinal debates turn toward love, don’t we (the theologically “in” crowd) at least internally start rolling our eyes and maybe even squirming. And for us older guard, what leaps to mind immediately is the “L” word (liberal), or from the more recent decade the “P” word (postmodern), or to the latest (and already fading) scapegoat, the “E” word (emergent . . . feel the shudders). When love is appealed to, we basically nod our heads impatiently, and with a wave of the hand dismiss sentimentality as diversion, redirecting thought and word with a simple, but all too telling, “Yes, but . . .”

In our objectively absolute, modernist evangelical’s way-of-the-worldview, love is an excuse for mushy thinking and diluted theology. When it comes down to it, we suspect it’s an attempt to minimize sin and therein God’s wrath and justice. In our guts, we know the guilty are just trying to avoid their rightful come-uppance.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I know whereof I speak—because I’ve been among the greatest of evangelical sinners in this regard . . . for decades. When my atheist friend protests, “You Christians say God is love, but we’re not feeling it from the likes of you,” before the opponent can take another breath, I’m there with, “Yes, but we’re all sinners too; just saved by grace.”

Then there’s that agnostic’s furtive glance from around his newspaper, headlined “Death Toll in the Thousands,” with his particularly bitter quip, “For a God who is so loving and omnipotent, he sure has a knack for inflicting arbitrarily brutal disasters.” And perhaps with not quite so much relish, I’ll still retort, “Yes, but that’s God’s wrath upon fallen, sinful humanity.” At least I avoid tossing out for good measure the exhausted cliché, “Yes God loves sinners, but he so hates sin.”

I’m also finding these days that my rationales are not so quick to the political draw when a homeless mother on the street corner, with her marker-scrawled cardboard sign, fixes her eyes on mine and (without a word) asks, “Why me, and not you?” Or when that middle-aged, unemployed friend sitting next to me in our men’s Bible study, falters in voice mid-prayer-request and awkwardly rolls his glazing eyes away from us. Seems he can’t put into words the hopelessness of this latest installment in eighteen months of rejection. Thankfully I can’t bring myself to “yes-but-provident-God” him.

I am getting better at keeping my “yes buts” to myself . . . on these occasions, at least.

The Good News Must Be Love

So of late I’ve been mulling through some very familiar scriptures, and I believe God’s Spirit has shifted them for me toward a rare certainty in the inescapable and ineffable profundity that God himself is love. By definition—that everything he has been about and is about is uncompromisingly love.

We of all people must not distrust love—we should never find ourselves responding to love with anything less than “yes, absolutely.” So how is a church elder to respond to my friend when she corners him in the back of the sanctuary after service and, in tearful, pleading whispers, once more brings up her alienated lesbian daughter: “Do you think she could come and just be a part of this church?”

Should he simply respond, “Yes, absolutely”? Shouldn’t he rather, in all good evangelical conscience at least qualify, “Yes, but she cannot be a member.” Isn’t it worth the implicit “Yes, I suppose; but she’ll never be accepted as long as she remains . . . you know, in sin”? It must be worth the qualifying of love so that we can be certain at least everyone knows where we stand on absolute truth and justice, mustn’t it?  Can we really trust that love is sufficient without performance conditions?

After all, we’ll certainly agree that if there is any core or essence to the Gospel, it is love. But love alone? I’ve found it no small challenge in some of my late musings to convince my evangelical brethren that love is the sole essence of spirituality, of all morality, of holiness—that the Gospel is no less than entirely about it. (Think about it—everything that matters in Christianity: faith, spirituality, morality . . . all are about persons relating to persons with more or less love.)

Sure, we can generally agree that love is the purpose and means by which Christ came into the world, and that it was love’s failing in human terms for which he came to redeem us. We might even agree (at least we should) that sin in its essence is one’s not being in right love relationship with God; and by application, not being loving amounts to sin in all of its various forms toward other people (most of all toward the person of God).

We also must agree (though some of us more begrudgingly) that Jesus insisted no less than love for God and love for one’s neighbor is the sum total and hinge-point for everything else that is the biblical “law” (modernist evangelicals, read “theology” and “doctrine”). Love is the significance of the faith that was counted as righteousness unto Abraham and all other patriarchs. Their faith was the measure of their love for the one true God. And no less than love is the essence of the Old Testament Wisdom Literature’s “fear of the Lord” mantra.

It is even at the heart of “God’s wrath.”

To deny the centrality and primacy of love is to deny the New Testament Gospel as well. What’s more, to distrust love is to distrust the Gospel. That’s because the Gospel is all about God’s love, our inability to love (sin), and God’s sacrificial remedy (love incarnate). All we must do is believe in his means of redemptive love (Jesus Christ and his Gospel story) and respond in kind.

Sin + Wrath = God’s Love

But we evangelicals know this like the back of our collective hand—that’s the problem. We need to be reminded (constantly) that Christ himself came because God “so loved,” so that humanity could respond to God’s love with love for him.

I think, though, if we can be even a little more honest with ourselves, the need for reminding is more than passive negligence or distraction—there’s an “aggressive” to that passivity. For example, if we can just set aside the vitriol over concerns for strains of universalism, we should really have to admit it is hard and even bitter irony that anything labeled “love wins” could create such a tightening of the Evangelical gut, rather than a rousing “Amen!” I think many of us would even have to admit that deep down, we elder-brothers-to-the-prodigal are afraid the likes of those questioning hell are going to let sinners off too easily (as if God doesn’t).

“But” (there it is!), chime in the theologically shrewd, “what of God’s propitiation?” And I agree—to refuse salvation is to deny propitiation and remain in God’s wrath.

But what requires appeasement? There’s the rub.

Isn’t it, necessarily first and foremost, the original sin, which has been passed on down from generation to generation? And isn’t the essence of Adam’s and Eve’s first sin-act the very same state we’re all born into: God’s love estranged, distrusted, and then unrequited by disobedience? This is the state of every unbeliever’s existence: we all are born into “God’s wrath” because we are from without in respect to his love. To be sure, with our inherited state of both original human sin and God’s wrath, come all of the inevitable, unlovely, unloving consequences known as sins, from generation to generation. But it’s our corporate original sin—humanity’s great divorce from God—that occasions the need for God’s appeasement.

So naturally (literally), the unbeliever who remains in God’s wrath has chosen to remain in that general condition of humanity that is itself the byproduct of estrangement from God’s love. Being “in sin” is being in the state of God’s wrath—the just and only logical alternative to being in his love (as darkness is simply the state of being without light). Likewise, God’s justice is meaningful only in terms of his love—it is the fulfillment and consequence of God’s love (hell included).

This is why the only remedy to being without, with respect to God’s love, is . . . to be in it (that is, “grace”: God’s unconditionally unearned love).

So how else should that evangelical elder welcome the daughter, who is all-too-familiar-thank-you with the common wisdom of (and religion’s zeal for) God’s wrath? How other than with, “Yes, absolutely she is welcome! She would be so loved here. I guarantee she will be unconditionally accepted by this local body of Christ.”

And what’s more, imagine he could be just that confident, without even a thought or motive toward “but.” 

Taste and See Some Familiar Scriptures

Here compiled are a few familiar biblical reminders for why love must necessarily be the foundation and premise of everything authentically Christian:

1. God preemptively loved the world. It’s so familiar, we can easily miss the profound implications, particularly with respect to those “wicked” who are under God’s wrath: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). God has loved, from Adam and Eve to this present day, all of us wicked who have been and will yet be in his wrath—the wrath from which he would yet save (still future tense when Jesus spoke these words into time). In the very context of an Adam-and-Eve-fallen world, God so loved it.

After all, God has always been in love with the yet-sinners: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him” (Rom. 5:8-9). Interesting, isn’t it, how God’s justice and wrath must be described in the context of his love? God’s wrath is not an exception or counterpart to his love—if anything, it is a consequence of it.

2. In no uncertain terms, God the Son affirmed what even the Pharisees knew to be the foundational, preeminent law of the entirety of Scriptures—love. It’s the same significance as what James affirms to be the “Royal Law” (2:8). Unequivocally, the entirety of the Bible’s good news message is love (Matt. 22:34-40; see also Mark 12:28-34). In fact, as Paul echoes in his letter to the Galatians, the whole of Scriptures can be summed up in that single word: “Through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (5:13-14).

3. Significantly, per John’s first epistle, without love one cannot make a legitimate claim to the Gospel, or even its application to his or her own salvation. One has to question salvation itself if he or she would deny love as God’s motive or (more concerning) refuse to be about loving neighbors (1 John 4:7-9).

4. This is so much the case, that God’s response to his own wrath, in the form of his “propitiation,” is itself motivated by and all about his love (vv. 10-12). God’s wrath and propitiation cannot be about eliciting fear, as if salvation were about avoiding the frightening prospects of God’s retribution or hate. (As if Jesus actually came to save us from some monster Father God.) John is clear on this—you don’t legitimately love neighbors or God out of fear of his wrath (vv. 18-20).

So in love, God preemptively provided propitiation (no alliteration particularly intended). And the only response he requires is that we return to him the love for which we were created in the first place. That is the glory of God for which we were created, and that is very good news.

Putting Away Childish (Unloving) Things

One cannot discuss the preeminence of love without at least citing 1 Corinthians 13. But it has struck me recently how rare it is that I hear verses 11-13 (the “put away childish things” reference) cited in the context that Paul intended. Love’s preeminence is actually what God inspired Paul to represent as the measure and mark of Christian maturity. Childish religion is about mere performance of good works, sin management, protectionism, and fear. The Christian who would be in right relationship with God will put away such immature and inadequate motives, because from beginning to end, faith and hope are all about love (vv. 11-13).

So when next challenged to sum up the Good News of Jesus Christ, how much will we really believe (without qualification or caveat) that it must amount to very little more than this? God loves you so much that he [his Son] died and resurrected for you, enabling you to accept and requite his love, and in turn love those he puts in your proximity.

Still, many of my evangelical brethren will protest, “I agree that love was the motivating factor and that the cross is the ultimate display of love. But . . . that being said, the good news is only ‘good’ to those in a bad situation, else it would just be ‘news,’ not ‘good news.’ So what is the bad news, according to Scriptures? And should the bad news be acknowledged within the presentation of the good news?”

I know this protest first hand; and I also know that in my case, honestly, I was protesting way too much. I’ve since come to know that sin too must be understood in terms of love. So even the bad news is that people are not in love with God (i.e., original sin), and they accordingly act out unlovingly (personal sin) against God and other people.

See, even the bad news can only be understood and framed in the context of good news of God’s love. Sin is meaningless without love (not the reverse).

Likewise my sense of justice is meaningless without love. To the homeless mother’s unspoken, “Why not you,” I dare not look away and don my default theological and political postures—could I just bring myself to engage her gaze and somehow respond in so many words (if any), I don’t know, and even, What do you need? Or to my unemployed friend’s ashamed glancing off, can I for once keep my Eliphaz mouth shut and simply touch him . . . put my hand on his shoulder, and just affirm either by word or deed, This is just so wrong, or, You do not deserve this. (Or must I one more time opine in thought, “Rabbi, who sinned—this man or his parents, that he should be unemployed?”)

Because love is not rude—it cannot roll its eyes up against hers, which accuse from the street corner. Neither is it self-seeking, rationalizing away the dreadful implications of the unemployed not somehow deserving this. Love keeps no record of wrongs, even of daughters unrepentantly the objects of God’s wrath, “living in sin.” And love never (ever) delights in any of their come-uppance (never, “God, I thank you that I am not like [these] other people”).

The more I realize it is all about love, the more I grow in authentic faith, putting away childish rationalizations and hyperboles of justice, wrath, guilt, and fear. There is no counterpoint or equal in God’s economy to love. Everything that is truth comes down to love and is measured by it—everything! There is not a single piece of Scripture that should be understood without the context of God’s love.

It should sadden us deeply that we evangelicals can be so prone to distrust love—to always be responding (in effect), “Well yes, love; but . . .”

If Christianity is not all about love, it is nothing other than one more impotently human religious construct—a loud and annoyingly clanging cymbal. For grown-up Christian thinking, there can be no alternative. There is no “but” to God’s love.

Journey into New Life, part seven (conclusion)

Our Gospel text for this Easter season is Luke 24:13-35, the story of the risen Lord’s encounter with his disciples on the road to Emmaus.

In this passage Luke tells us what it means to walk with the living Lord Jesus Christ. It is more than a story of something that happened back then. It represents what newness of life is all about, how it works, and what it is like to experience the new creation.

We are the disciples on the road, and Jesus comes to walk with us.

• • •

“They didn’t waste a minute. They were up and on their way…” (Luke 24:33)

One of the least emphasized parts of the liturgy is the “sending” or the “dismissal.” Robert Webber writes, “The Dismissal is an integral part of worship because it brings closure to the public act of worship and sends God’s people forth into the world, where their private worship is expressed in relationships, in leisure, and in work” (The Renewal of Sunday Worship).

The Church exists in two forms: (1) Gathered, and (2) Scattered. In our gatherings, we meet together in the presence of the risen Christ, his Spirit nourishes through Word and Sacrament, and we respond in prayer and praise. But then we scatter into the world; to our homes and communities to do our daily work, relate to our neighbors, and walk with Christ in every dimension of what it means to be human. At the end of worship, we who have gathered are sent as God’s ambassadors to serve in the Missio Dei.

Traditionally, the dismissal consists of (1) a blessing, (2) a recessional hymn, (3) a word of dismissal. The Church leaves the worship gathering forgiven and in the favor of Christ, glorifying the Father, and empowered by the Spirit for service.

The events at Emmaus give us a picture of people blessed, praising, and moving in mission.

These two disciples from Emmaus might possibly have stayed in their home after Jesus disappeared from their midst. I could see them wanting to revel in the “experience” they just had, soaking it in, discussing what had happened, what it all meant, what they ought to do about it.

However, an inner compulsion shot them to their feet and set them running.

Jesus was alive, and their brothers and sisters needed to know the news. Now!

No one needed to motivate them or give them reasons to share Jesus. They couldn’t help themselves.

Every faithful pastor wishes his or her people would leave church on Sunday morning with such enthusiasm and vitality, filled with Word and Spirit and ready to serve. But such vibrant faith is not something that we can manufacture through technique and emotional stimulation. A genuine missional spirit grows out of encountering the risen Christ. Going to our “between Sundays” lives trusting in Christ to help us fulfill our vocations for God’s glory and the good of our neighbors is fruit that emerges from life, not programs.

Rev. Richard Halverson once said, “The program of our church is everything all the members are doing between Sundays.” Our mission is not accomplished at the table in Emmaus. We have to get out on the road again. Back to Jerusalem. Back into the world. Where others who need to know that Jesus is risen live and work and wonder what the future holds.

We who have met him on the road and sat with him at the table can tell them.

The 2009 ELCA decision to approve their social statement on human sexuality, with its provisions for homosexuality, have never been on my radar in terms of why I choose to affiliate with the ELCA. I explained in this morning’s post that these things have never been “hot-button” issues for me. I came to believe that I am a Christian called to practice my faith and exercise my ministry in the Lutheran tradition, and this particular denomination works best for me. Period.

The ELCA also handled this matter in somewhat different fashion than other mainline denominations such as the Episcopal Church and the PCUSA. The ELCA decision is grounded in an understanding that at this moment in history members of the denomination do not agree about these matters. How then, are we to proceed?

Typically, in the evangelical world I come from, someone usually steps forward and says, “It’s my way or the highway because the Bible says ____________.” A split or splintering takes place and the denomination takes its particular stand while the dissenters form groups around their particular positions.

That’s not exactly what happened in the ELCA. Recognizing the deep divisions that exist between brothers and sisters in the same faith community about these issue, the denomination sought to produce decisions that would intentionally include people from conflicting sides within a broader context of Christian truth, morality, and love.

Trying to foster both truth and unity is a tricky undertaking, and there have been significant numbers of Lutherans who decided their position was being threatened, who have left and formed other groups. But that did not happen because one point of view “took over” the denomination.

Today, I simply want to set forth some of the ways the ELCA decided to approach these issues so that we can discuss one Christian group’s efforts to maintain unity in the midst of profound disagreement. After the break, I will highlight some of the provisions in the ELCA statement.

In terms of homosexual practice, please note that the ELCA limited their focus to same-gender couples in committed, life-long, monagamous relationships.

First, the ELCA affirms the special gift of marriage between a man and a woman.

Marriage is a covenant of mutual promises, commitment, and hope authorized legally by the state and blessed by God. The historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions have recognized marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman, reflecting Mark 10: 6–9: “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one put asunder.” (Jesus here recalls Genesis 1:27; 2:23–24.)

Lutherans long have affirmed that the public accountability of marriage, as expressed through a legal contract, provides the necessary social support and social trust for relationships that are intended to be sustained throughout life and within changing and often challenging life situations. In this country, pastors carry both legal and religious responsibilities for marriage. In carrying out these responsibilities, pastors hold and exercise pastoral discretion for the decision to marry in the church. In the community of the church they preside over the mutual promises made between a couple seeking the lifelong, monogamous, and faithful relationship of marriage.

The ELCA recognizes the brokenness caused by divorce and vowed to help families avoid that, but when it occurs, will be there to receive and minister to those affected by this brokenness:

This church recognizes that in some situations the trust upon which marriage is built becomes so deeply damaged or is so deeply flawed that the marriage itself must come to a legal end (Matthew 19:3–12). This church does not treat divorce lightly nor does it disregard the responsibilities of marriage. However, in such situations, it provides support to the people involved and all who are affected. Divorced individuals are encouraged to avail themselves of pastoral care, to be assured of God’s presence, forgiveness, and healing, and to remain in the communion of the church, recogniz- ing the all-encompassing mercy of God.

This church will provide supportive pastoral care to those who are divorced. Further, it believes that those who wish to remarry may gain wisdom from the past and may be assured of the Gospel’s freedom, in the midst of brokenness and forgiveness, to enter into their new responsibilities in joy and hope. This church will tend pastorally to the special concerns of blended families, to children of divorced parents, and to the particular tensions that may accompany family breakdown and transition.

The ELCA acknowledges that some today in the Lutheran family and the broader Christian community think that the protections offered by institutions such as marriage or legal contracts such as civil unions should also be granted to same-gender couples entering into lifelong, monogamous relationships. The ELCA also frankly acknowledges that this conclusion differs from historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions:

Recognizing that this conclusion differs from the historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions, some people, though not all, in this church and within the larger Christian community, conclude that marriage is also the appropriate term to use in describing similar benefits, protection, and support for same-gender couples entering into lifelong, monogamous relationships. They believe that such accountable relationships also provide the necessary foundation that supports trust and familial and community thriving. Other contractual agreements, such as civil unions, also seek to provide some of these protections and to hold those involved in such relationships accountable to one another and to society.

The ELCA acknowledges that the issue of how to deal pastorally within the Christian community with same-gender couples in lifelong, monogamous relationships has been a growing concern in recent decades. They also state the fact that little agreement has come about in how to regard such relationships and how to help such couples. But they express the commitment to try and seek responsible policies and actions, knowing well that there will be disagreement.

This church also acknowledges that consensus does not exist concerning how to regard same-gender committed relationships, even after many years of thoughtful, respectful, and faithful study and conversation. We do not have agreement on whether this church should honor these relationships and uplift, shelter, and protect them or on precisely how it is appropriate to do so.

In response, this church draws on the foundational Lutheran understanding that the baptized are called to discern God’s love in service to the neighbor. In our Christian freedom, we therefore seek responsible actions that serve others and do so with humility and deep respect for the conscience-bound beliefs of others. We understand that, in this discernment about ethics and church practice, faithful people can and will come to different conclusions about the meaning of Scripture and about what constitutes responsible action. We further believe that this church, on the basis of “the bound conscience,”will include these different understandings and practices within its life as it seeks to live out its mission and ministry in the world.

The ELCA recognizes four different approaches people take to the matter of acting responsibly toward people in same-gender committed relationships:

This church recognizes that, with conviction and integrity:

• On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are convinced that same-gender sexual behavior is sinful, contrary to biblical teaching and their understanding of natural law. They believe same-gender sexual behavior carries the grave danger of unrepentant sin. They therefore conclude that the neighbor and the community are best served by calling people in same-gender sexual relationships to repentance for that behavior and to a celibate lifestyle. Such decisions are intended to be accompa- nied by pastoral response and community support.

• On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are convinced that homosexuality and even lifelong, monogamous, homosexual relationships reflect a broken world in which some relationships do not pattern themselves after the creation God intended. While they acknowledge that such relationships may be lived out with mutuality and care, they do not believe that the neighbor or community are best served by publicly recognizing such relationships as traditional marriage.

• On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are convinced that the scriptural witness does not address the context of sexual orientation and lifelong loving and committed relationships that we experience today. They believe that the neighbor and community are best served when same-gender relationships are honored and held to high standards and public accountability, but they do not equate these relationships with marriage. They do, however, affirm the need for community support and the role of pastoral care and may wish to surround lifelong, monogamous relationships or covenant unions with prayer.

• On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are convinced that the scriptural witness does not address the context of sexual orientation and committed relationships that we experience today. They believe that the neighbor and community are best served when same-gender relationships are lived out with lifelong and monogamous commitments that are held to the same rigorous standards, sexual ethics, and status as heterosexual marriage. They surround such couples and their lifelong commitments with prayer to live in ways that glorify God, find strength for the challenges that will be faced, and serve others. They believe same-gender couples should avail themselves of social and legal support for themselves, their children, and other dependents and seek the highest legal accountability available for their relationships.

The ELCA affirms its opposition to promiscuous sexual behaviors:

For this reason, this church teaches that degrees of physical intimacy should be carefully matched to degrees of growing affection and commitment. This also suggests a way to understand why this church teaches that the greatest sexual intimacies, such as coitus, should be matched with and sheltered both by the highest level of binding commitment and by social and legal protection, such as is found in marriage. Here, promises of fidelity and public accountability provide the foundational basis and support for trust, intimacy, and safety, especially for the most vulnerable.

This is why this church opposes non-monogamous, promiscuous, or casual sexual relationships of any kind. Indulging immediate desires for satisfaction, sexual or otherwise, is to “gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16–19). Such transient encounters do not allow for trust in the relationship to create the context for trust in sexual intimacy.

The ELCA affirms its opposition to transient sexual relationships and cohabitation:

Because this church urges couples to seek the highest social and legal support for their relationships, it does not favor cohabitation arrangements outside of marriage. It has a special concern when such arrangements are entered into as an end in themselves. It does, however, acknowledge the social forces at work that encourage such practices. This church also recognizes the pastoral and familial issues that accompany these contemporary social patterns.

In cases where a decision is made for cohabitation, regardless of the reasons, this church expects its pastors and members to be clear with the couple regarding the reasons for the position of this church and to support the couple in recognizing their obligation to be open and candid with each other about their plans, expectations, and levels of mutual commitment.

In conclusion, the ELCA summarizes the purpose of this statement and its intended use in the churches:

Because of the love of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are a people set free for lives of responsibility committed to seeking the good of all. This statement responds to this church’s call for a foundational framework48 that will help it discern what it means to follow faithfully God’s law of love in the increasingly complex sphere of human sexuality. It does not offer once-and-for-all answers to contemporary questions. Rather, it seeks to tap the deep roots of Scripture and the Lutheran theological tradition for specific Christian convictions, themes, and wisdom that will assist people of faith to discern what is responsible and faithful action in the midst of the complexity of daily life.

It proposes guideposts to direct this church’s discernment as it tries to be faithful. It provides markers by which individual and communal decisions can be tested under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It seeks to describe the social realities of this age and to address them pastorally. Insofar as it is possible, it also seeks to speak in ways that can address both religious and secular discussions of these matters.

There it is. Feel free to comment, and remember I am not an expert on this statement. You can read the whole thing HERE. I’m sure you can find a lot of discussion about it on various sites around the web.  The following page from my own Synod has listed several resources reflecting on this statement HERE.