God is not a vending machine: the problem with the prosperity gospel

Oh Lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,

So Lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

–Janis Joplin

This song was written to be a satire on the materialistic culture of America.  Like all satires, it’s funny because it’s true: we do pray to God for that ‘Mercedes-Benz,’ whatever that may be for us.  There is a widespread belief that in the “prosperity Gospel”: if God loves you, you will be healthy and wealthy.  If you are spiritual enough, if you pray the right prayers, if you go to the right churches, if you have the right positive attitude, God will give you what material gifts you ask for.  And it makes sense–we all know people who self-sabotage, who assume the worst or prepare for the worst and through that very belief cause, in some sense, the worst to happen to them.  So if the opposite is true, that you can influence what happens to you by having a positive attitude, well, that seems fair.  And after all, didn’t Christ say “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8).  It seems clear enough.  Decide what you want, trust in God, ask, and it’s yours.

A best-selling book was written about the Prayer of Jabez from 1 Chronicles 4:10, explaining how this one verse can lead you to a deeper spirituality that will result in material prosperity, as if God were a vending machine.  Put in the correct change (the right belief and the right attitude), make the correct selection (the right prayer) and the treat drops down into your hand.  Joel Osteen and other televangelists make similar claims, as do a wide variety of other spiritual figures from Conservative Christians to New Age gurus to business consultants and life coaches.  (And what does it say about our society that business consultants give spiritual advice?)  We all want a good, long, prosperous life.  God loves us and wants us to be happy, and has said he’ll take care of us.  Surely, putting the two together can’t be a bad thing?

But what happens when things go wrong?  What happens when we don’t get that Mercedes-Benz?  What happens when bad things happen–abuse, illness, injury, the death of a loved one, the breakup of a marriage, the loss of a job?  If God rewards the right attitude, the right faith, and the right prayers with material prosperity, then the only explanation is a failure of the person in trouble.  Maybe they didn’t have a positive enough attitude.  Maybe they didn’t pray for the right things.  Maybe their faith wasn’t strong enough.  This is the fundamental problem with the prosperity gospel: during the darkest times of our lives, when we need the love and presence of our God the most, we are abandoned.

Now, I don’t mean to say that God actually leaves us, because he doesn’t.  But if we assume God only works through material prosperity and good fortune, if we assume that bad things are a sign that he is not with us, we will almost certainly blind ourselves to the ways that he is with us during times of trouble.  And then we have nothing to fall back on.  God is always with us, even if we can’t see him.  But if we can’t see or feel him, we feel as bereft as if he was truly absent.  I worked for a summer as chaplain in a mental facility, and one of the people living there was a woman with severe depression who had suffered many things in her life and so believed God was not with her.  However untrue that belief was, her anguish over the perceived abandonment was real.

But God does tell us “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8).  How do we interpret this if not through the lens of the prosperity gospel?  How do we pray to God and share with him our needs and concerns without assuming that if those needs and desires aren’t met, God has ignored us?  Let’s compare Jesus’ words in Matthew with those of James in his letter to the church:

You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

-James 4:2-3

Why do we ask for things?  How do we decide what we need, and how does that relate to God?  James points out that our attitude and our greed matter.  If we try to treat God like a cosmic vending machine, handing out treats on demand, we’re asking wrongly.  It’s not that pleasure is by itself bad, and it’s not that wealth itself is bad.  The problem comes when we allow our wants and desires and appetites to direct our thinking instead of our relationship with God.  If we’re focused on our own wealth and well-being, we’re probably ignoring both God and our neighbor.  James points out that selfish thinking separates us from the community as we try and get what we want through whatever means we can; we shouldn’t be surprised if it has the same effect of separating us from God, so that we cannot see the ways in which God is calling us and supporting us.

God is always with us, even when we can’t see or feel him.  God is with us even when we focus on our own selfish desires.  God is with us in good times and bad, and God knows our true needs better than we do ourselves.  God will never forsake us, in good times or in bad.  God’s love cannot be measured by health or wealth, but only in the fullness of his grace and mercy.

Reflections on the ELCA churchwide assembly

As some of you may be aware, the ELCA recently voted to “recognize publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”  In other words, while the Churchwide Assembly did not endorse homosexuality nor give monogamous same-gender relations the same status as heterosexual marriages, it did state that homosexuality is not inherently sinful.  Now, this is a hugely controversial thing to say, even when you’re trying to be even-handed and take a middle of the road coarse (which the ELCA is trying to do).  This is particularly controversial for a church body, and there is a great deal of confusion as to the scriptural basis (or lack thereof) on which the decision rests.  There are also a great many accusations from both sides of the argument that the other side is acting based on their own personal prejudices and politics rather than the will of God.  There is also a great deal of confusion on what it was exactly that the ELCA voted to do.  What happened can be explained fairly easily from the ELCA FAQ on the subject.  The theological basis on which those decisions rested are a bit more complicated.  Here’s a helpful article by Timothy Wengert:

“If there is one rule we need to follow in the wake of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, it is this: Do not break the eighth commandment (against false witness) in order to defend the sixth (against adultery and other sexual sins).  Both those who supported the changes in policy and those who did not need to remember this.  We must speak what we know and not cast aspersions on those who disagreed with us.  Luther’s comments on the eighth commandment in the Large Catechism are helpful here.  Even when forced by one’s office to speak out, one must not lie or distort the truth.

“In light of some implied (and explicit) attacks on the decision, however, it is also necessary to make one thing clear.  The change in policy was grounded in Scripture.  In fact, the calls for justice toward gays and lesbians in committed relationships and the recitation of examples of healthy same-gender relations, as important as these are to some folk, finally do not in themselves constitute a complete standard for changing church policy, since even calls for justice must for Christians be grounded in and normed by sound interpretations of Scripture as God’s Word for us….”

Timothy Wengert is an outstanding theologian of the church.  He is an expert on Luther and the early Lutheran church, having been one of two editor/translators of the latest edition of the Book of Concord (the collection of documents that form the basis of the particularly Lutheran understanding of Scripture and the Christian life, of which the Augsburg Confession is a part). He is a professor of Reformation History at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and a regular contributor to the Journal of Lutheran Ethics.

The Light of Christ

Hello all!  It’s been a while since I posted, for which I apologize; personal struggles have gotten between me and my blog.

Last Saturday night, I participated in an Easter Vigil service at my home congregation.  For those of you who don’t know, the Easter Vigil is a worship service that takes place the night before Easter, celebrating all of God’s creative and redeeming activity from the creation of the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Since it takes place after dark, by the Jewish calendar which Christ and the early disciples used it’s already Easter.  Although it will not be announced to the world until morning, Jesus Christ is risen and the tomb is  empty.

Easter Vigil starts off with a fire, outside.  The Paschal/Christ Candle for the coming year is lit from the flame and the pastor holds it up, chanting “The Light of Christ!”  The congregation responds “The Light of Christ!”  Each holds a candle.  The Christ Candle lights a few, and those light the flames of others in turn.  As the flame is passed from person to person, the one giving the flame says “The light of Christ!” and the one receiving the flame says “Thanks be to God!”

The congregation then processes to the church and inside.  Now, this year there was a bit of a wind that night, and so peoples’ candles kept blowing out.  But every time a candle blew out, the person next to them gave them a new flame.  “The Light of Christ!”  “Thanks be to God!”

It struck me that this is a metaphor for the Christian life.  We don’t create our own fire, our own light, our own faith.  It is given as a gift from God, often through the care and attention of those around us–parents, friends, mentors.  Christian means “little Christ.”  As part of our Christian lives we are called to be “little Christs” to our neighbors.  As we have been given light, so we are to share that light with all around us.  So far, everything seems great, right?  But as wonderful as it is to have the light of Christ in us, to be light for the world, we can’t sustain that light on our own.  The trials of life sometimes blow it out.  But through God’s grace, those around us can share their light with us, and help rekindle the flame of faith within us.  As we are called to be “little Christs” to them, so they are called to be “little Christs” to us.  This is most certainly true within the community of faith, but also outside of it.  Many times, it is the ones outside our communities of faith that are most in need of Christ’s light.  And many times, the light of Christ comes to us from people and places that we least expect.

Now, I realize that the world is a broken, sinful place, and because of that sin Christ’s light doesn’t always seem to work like that.  Sometimes, there isn’t anyone around when we need help the most.  (Sometimes, the ones around us who should be the ones to help kindle that flame are the very ones causing the winds that blow it out.)  But for the most part, it works pretty well.  It’s one of the reasons that we have congregations and other communities of faith, why participating in the faith life of a group of fellow believers is so important.  So that when you feel the light of Christ in you and around you is dimming or has gone out, you already know who you can go to for spiritual renewal and support.  We form communities so that you can be renewed by Christ working through those around us, and when others need help we can be a “little Christ” to our neighbors in turn.

Don’t worry: Recession and the God of Abundance

Matthew 6:25-34. ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’

In the novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, one of the reasons the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” referred to in the text is so useful a book is because it has inscribed on its cover in large letters the words “DON’T PANIC.”  It seems to me that these words are useful to remember in more times and places than just the book, and now is one of them.

Let’s be honest: the economy is in the tank, and won’t be bouncing back in the next couple of years.

Let’s be even more honest: We have been and are still incredibly blessed by God.  If you have access to a computer and the internet to read this post, you have access to more resources than most people on this planet have ever had, no matter how hard you have been hit by the recession.  If you live in the “first world,” then you almost certainly have a safety net of social programs (both secular and religious) to help when things are at their worst.  They may not be ideal or as good as they should be, but they are still better than the majority of the world’s population has ever had access to.  God has given us many blessings, and he gives them abundantly.

In some ways, we’ve been too blessed.  We are used to having so much that as a society we’ve forgotten how to tell the difference between wants and needs, between things that are handy and cool and things that truly sustain our bodies and souls.  The world around us tells us that we need the newest iPhone, the hottest car, the biggest TV, the fastest computer, the biggest house, the latest tech toy, trendy clothes, to go out to eat all the time.  Thinking like that gets people into financial trouble, by encouraging them to spend more than they can afford, leaving them no savings to fall back on in times of trouble.  But even worse than that, it causes spiritual trouble in both good times and bad.

In good times, our cultural addiction with spending money encourages people to turn away from God by promising happiness through material things.  We take the abundance God has given us and depend on it without ever thinking about the one who gave it to us.

When things turn bad, our response is even worse.  Because we’re convinced that the abundance God has given us is the minimum necessary for survival, we panic at the idea of having to get by on less.  And in our panic, we turn even further from God, grasping at anything that might keep us in the style we have become accustomed to.  I’ve seen a lot of that lately, both within and outside of the church.

DON’T PANIC.  Or, as Jesus puts it in our Gospel today, don’t worry.  Don’t bury your head under the sand, either, but don’t worry about all the things that might go wrong.  Remember how much abundance you have been given.  Then take a good hard look at how you have used the abundance God has given you–your time, your talents, your posessions.  Have you used God’s gifts as a faithful Christian, or have you used that abundance selfishly?  Have you fallen into the trap of thinking material posessions lead to happiness?  If so, what can you do to change your thinking and your way of life to be more faithful and wholesome?

DON’T WORRY.  You are in God’s hands.  You have been in God’s hands all your life.  God knows what you need.  Many people in this world will need to change their spending habits because of the financial crisis, or take other actions to deal with the situation.  But don’t do so out of panic or worry over all the bad things that might happen, over the fact that you might not be able to do and have all the things you wanted.  Do so in faith that God will help you meet your needs–your true needs, not your wishes.  Know that God loves you, and will never abandon you.

No one can lengthen their life or affect the world’s economy by worrying about it.  No one can make themselves happier by worrying.  The world and we ourselves are where we have always been: in the hands of a God who loves us, and loves us abundantly, and has given us many gifts.  And who will never abandon us, no matter how much we despair.  So don’t worry.

Sermon: Christ the King

Sorry for posting this a week late, but I was a bit busy with Thanksgiving last week.

Christ the King

Sunday, November 23 2008

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Psalm 95
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

MP3 of Sermon.  Bulletin.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is the last Sunday of the church year; next week is the first Sunday of Advent, when we begin preparations for the coming of our Lord.  Today, we celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ is our King, ruler of heaven and earth.  We are citizens of two worlds, of this world we live in now and of the world to come, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead.  Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  Jesus Christ is the king of both heaven and earth.  It’s easy to imagine Christ as King of heaven, where he reigns in glory with angels and pearly gates and all that.  It’s a lot harder to imagine Christ as king of this world we live in today.

What does it mean that Christ is King?  What kind of a King is he?  When I think of kings in this world, I think of grand castles and historic wars and riches and crown jewels locked safely behind glass.  Most kings in the world today are ceremonial figureheads, like Queen Elizabeth of England.  She comes out, she waves at crowds, she makes speeches, she travels the world, but in the end the country she rules is actually governed by elected officials in Parliament.  Then there are all the kings in history, who actually did rule their people.  Some were good, some were bad, but all had flaws when you take a close look at them.  They favored the rights of the rich and powerful and ignored the needs of the poor, they played favorites, they started stupid and tragic wars, they lived in lavish palaces while the majority of their people lived in squalor and filth, they had so much power and wealth and used it to get more power and wealth.  Even David and Solomon, the two greatest kings in the Bible, had significant problems.  David’s adultery and poor parenting skills caused a vicious civil war, and his son Solomon the Wise raised taxes and forced labor levies so high to pay for his building projects that on his death the kingdom of Israel-God’s chosen people-were permanently split in two.  That split never healed because a few centuries of rule by bad kings later, the Northern Kingdom was conquered by Assyria and taken off as captives and was never heard from again.  If that’s the legacy of a good king, well, I can see why our forefathers rebelled and threw out the English king in favor of a democratic government.  It’s hard to imagine a king being a good thing, hard to think of Christ as a king, when you think of all the bad things kings have done.

Except our democratically-elected political leaders don’t have that great a track record, either.  Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the founding fathers owned slaves and left in place a system of slavery that was horribly unjust and cruel and caused a massive civil war for their children and grandchildren to fight.  Lincoln had no plans for the future besides winning the Civil War, and his lack of planning led to problems with Reconstruction after his death.  Our presidents have a better track run over the long term than the kings and queens of many other nations, but that’s not saying much.  All leaders of nations, whatever they call themselves and however they came to power, have fallen short of their promises and caused problems for their people.  Yet they keep making new promises about what they’re going to accomplish as leaders, each promise more lavish than the rest.  And we follow them, hoping they’ll fix all the things that are wrong with the world, all the mistakes their predecessors made.  We hope they’ll make things better for us, make a better world, fix the wrongs and injustices that affect our daily lives and prevent new ones from occurring.

On November 5, the day after the recent election, I visited a few shut-ins, and the conversation naturally turned to politics.  The Obama supporters spoke as if Obama was a savior who would right all the wrongs in America and in the world.  The McCain supporters spoke as if America was doomed and would crumble and fall within the next four years.  Now, politics is a touchy and dangerous subject for any pastor to discuss with parishioners, and I’m not quite comfortable yet with where the boundaries are.  But one thing I know for sure is that no matter which political party won this or any election, no matter which candidate is installed in office, the world is in God’s hands and will always be in God’s hands, difficult as that can be to remember at times.  And so we come back to the question: what does it mean that Christ is King of this world as well as the next?

In the first lesson, the leaders of the world-particularly the kings of Israel and Judah-have failed at their task as leaders and shepherds of their people.  The people are scattered and divided, the rich have gotten greedy and the poor have gotten trampled.  There is no justice anywhere.  The ones with God-given gifts to take care of and protect others have used those gifts to make themselves even richer and stronger at the expense of the ones they’re supposed to be protecting.  It’s not their riches God objects to-it’s the way they’ve used those riches to do the exact opposite of what they should be doing.  The result?  Everyone has suffered.  The nation has been conquered by foreigners and everyone-rich and poor alike-has been carried off into exile.  God sent the prophet Ezekiel to bring comfort: exile is not permanent.  The injustices that plague Israel will be redressed, and a new shepherd, a new king, will be given to lead them.  This king, however, will not be like their old leaders who brought them to this low point.  This new David will be a true shepherd-he will take care of the people with justice, and both rich and poor will be fed and protected and cared for.  This new David is Christ, the Messiah, king of heaven and earth.  What does it mean that Christ is King?  Christ is not just a ceremonial king, there to be brought out for rituals and holidays and ignored the rest of the time.  He has true power of both judgment and protection.  Christ’s kingship means that the old way of doing things, the way of life in which value is calculated by riches and power, will come to an end.  In its place will come a world in which all people are valued, in which everyone gets a fair chance and all will be cared for.  Christ’s kingship means that justice isn’t about who’s got the biggest army or the most money, and it means that no matter how bad things seem to be now, this world is not the end.

But justice can’t happen without judgment, and that means that injustices can’t be swept away under the rug or excused as simply the way things are.  People need to be held accountable for the things they’ve done, good and bad.  God’s justice can’t be bribed, or swayed by politics, or biased in any way.  God knows what is in our hearts and minds, God knows what we’ve done even better than we do, and God will judge everyone with greater justice than any human court could ever hope to do.  Let me repeat that: God will judge.  Not us, God.

In the second lesson, Jesus talks about the judgment that will happen when he comes again.  The story is simple: everyone will be judged and sorted into two groups.  The ones who are righteous-the sheep-will go into the Kingdom of heaven, and those who are not righteous-the goats-will be sent away to eternal punishment.  This parable is pretty well known.  It’s a common subject of sermons and Bible study classes.  It’s an excellent way to show what God’s justice looks like: when we see someone in trouble, and we have the power to help, we should do it.  We see the face of God not in the kings and rulers and powerful and wealthy of this world, but in those who are the most vulnerable.  We see the face of God in people who are hungry, thirsty, alone, naked, sick, imprisoned.  We have been given many gifts, not just of money but of time and talents as well, and we should use them to take care of those who honestly cannot take care of themselves.  This is what Christ our King commands.  This is the standard against which he will judge us.

And again I point out: the standard against which Christ will judge us, not the standard we will use to judge others.  Here’s what most people miss when they read this parable: the sheep don’t think they’re sheep and the goats don’t think they’re goats.  The sheep are honestly surprised to hear that they’ve been serving Christ in their daily lives, and the goats honestly can’t think of a time when they haven’t served.  The problem is that the goats were serving the wrong things-and didn’t know it.  They got so caught up in what they thought needed to be done, they forgot to ask what God thought needed to be done, and how God wanted them to go about doing it.

It’s kind of like when I was a kid and I would take care of my younger brother on Saturdays while Mom and Dad were at work.  We had a list of chores to accomplish, and it was my responsibility to see to it the chores got done and that we both did our fair share.  Now, I was a fairly bossy girl, and my brother has always been laid back, and so normally he’d just go along with whatever I told him to do, and normally I tried to divide things relatively equally.  But sometimes I’d get so caught up in the fact that I was in charge that I would try to make my brother do a lot more than his fair share-and then try and micromanage how he did it.  Well, I never got away with it for very long-eventually, even my laid-back brother would call Mom and Dad to complain, and I would get in trouble.  Even if the chores got done like Mom and Dad wanted, they didn’t get done how Mom and Dad wanted when I made my brother do most of the work, and they got done in ways that harmed the relationship between myself and my brother.  Just as it was easy for me to think I was doing what my parents wanted by bossing my brother around and making him do most of the work, it’s easy for us to arrange things the way we want them and justify it by thinking we’re doing what God wants.  It’s easy to fall back into the habits of power-seeking, of seeing things through the eyes of this world instead of through the eyes of Christ, and not even realize we’re doing it.

That’s a scary thought.  If it’s that easy to forget about the true justice of Christ, if we can honestly think we’re serving God when we really aren’t, what’s to stop us from being goats?  How can we make sure we’re headed for eternal life rather than eternal punishment?  We do our best, but what if that isn’t enough?  Well, the bad news is, our best isn’t enough and there’s no way we can make sure we’re sheep and not goats.  We can’t judge anyone, not ourselves, not others.  The power of judgment belongs exclusively to Christ our King, who isn’t blinded by power and money and all the things we use to decide status.  But the good news is that Christ exercises that judgment along with mercy, in grace and love.  Christ uses his kingship for protection and care.  As sinners, we stand condemned before the throne.  But Christ loves us still.  And that is where we place our trust and our hope of salvation, not in our deeds that often go wrong, but in the grace of God.

Jesus Christ is our king both in this world and the next.  Doing good things isn’t just about salvation.  We do good works because our God and King desires justice in this world, and mercy, and he wants to work through us to accomplish it.  We do good works because our God cares just as much about the weak as he does the strong.  Christ can be seen in the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick, the dying.  The world may have forgotten them, but God hasn’t.  And neither should we.

Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  The rulers of this world have the power of laws and armies and bureaucracy in their control, but Christ is still the one in ultimate control.  Things may seem grim or depressing when we see all that’s wrong with the world, all the things that we as human beings have done wrong.  But Christ doesn’t exercise that power through a show of riches and might.  He rules by bringing justice and grace to the world, to those who need it the most.  He rules by gathering up the lost and forsaken, by being a good shepherd to his people.  Thanks be to God.

Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.  22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom,  23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,  24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.  26 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;  28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are,  29 so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  30 He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,  31 in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:21-31)

Paul divides the world up into two categories in this passage: the “Jews” who want signs of God’s power to prove his existence and their own righteousness, and the “Greeks” who want to prove God’s existence through wisdom, which they can then use to enhance their standing in society (“wisdom” being highly valuable in Greek culture).  Now, obviously our world does not fall into the neat ethnic categories of Jew and Greek today … but the two basic mindsets of how people approach religion are still much the same.  People generally want religion for one of two reasons.  Either they want a sign of God’s power (preferably one that benefits them in some way–wealth, healing, political or military power, etc.) or they want some special wisdom that will enlighten them, help them climb up the path to heaven.  (Remember when I talked about up religion and down religion?  These are the two main forms of up religion.)

But God the deepest and most powerful way in which God shows Godself to us is not through great wisdom and great power (or, at least, not what the world counts as great wisdom and great power).  God came down to earth and took on human form.  Then he allowed himself to be arrested for a crime he was innocent of, and died one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable, naked and broken for all the world to see.  This does not look like power, and it does not look like wisdom.  At least not what we think of as power and wisdom.

Yet through that cross, through that weakness, that foolishness, God broke the power of sin and death and the hold it had over the world.  This is the way God works in the world: through weakness and foolishness, things that we humans would normally try to avoid at all costs.  The cross is what God’s power and wisdom truly look like.  So if we truly want to see and experience God’s power and wisdom, we can’t rely on our own views of what power and wisdom should look like.  We need to let God show us what “Christ crucified” looks like in the 21st century.  We need to stop boasting in ourselves or the things we think we can get from God, and start paying attention instead to what God is doing in us and through us in things that look weak and foolish.

We need to start seeing every person through the lens of the cross.

Law and Gospel: living in the tension between sin and salvation

We Christians talk a lot about the Gospel.  It’s a term so basic we don’t often stop to define what we mean when we say it, but let’s take the time now.  “Gospel” can actually mean two things: first and most obviously, the four Gospels are the four books of the Bible that chronicle the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  But there’s a deeper meaning.  “Gospel” literally comes from an old English word meaning “Good News.”  “Evangelism” is derived from an old Greek word meaning “Good News.”  On a fundamental level, the Gospel is the Good News that God loves us and wants to save us from our sins, to make us happy and healthy and whole and in a right relationship with God and with our fellow human beings.  Gospel, then can be found in more places in the Bible than just the four Gospels.  The Gospel can be found in every single book in the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation.  (“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” Isaiah 40:1, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Genesis 28:15, etc.)

But there’s more in the Bible than just Gospel.  Before you can talk about the need for healing, you have to understand that you’re sick.  Before you can see the need for salvation, you have to be able to see sin.  That’s where the other thing in the Bible comes in: the Law.  The Law is the stuff that points out just how far short we fall of the life God intends for us.  The Law is not just the legal codes in Leviticus and other places in the Old Testament.  Just as there is Gospel in the Old Testament, there is also Law in the New Testament.  The parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids in Matthew 25:1-13 is a good example.  The bridesmaids were to meet the groom with lamps lit.  Five brought enough oil, five didn’t.  The groom was delayed.  The five who ran out of oil left to find more, and when they came back they found they had missed the bridegroom’s coming and were not allowed to enter the wedding.  It’s an allegory for the coming of the kingdom of God, and the message is that if you’re not prepared, you don’t get to come in.  After two thousand years of waiting, how many of us are truly ready for the coming of God?  This passage is law because it points out to us just how unready we are for God’s coming into our lives, and because the redeeming mercy of God is not shown to the bridesmaids who weren’t ready.  Will there be mercy?  Yes, because God is a merciful God.  But before there can be mercy, there must be the recognition of a need for it.  The Law convicts us, and the Gospel saves us.

We are redeemed by God’s love manifest in Christ Jesus.  But sin is the default condition of the world and everyone in it, and this will be the case until Christ comes again.  We still sin, every day, which is why we still need God’s love and forgiveness.  We are saints–people made holy by God–who are also sinners.  If we forget that we are saints, we turn away from God in despair at our brokenness.  If we forget we are sinners, we turn away from God because we think we can rely on our own merit, and we become self-righteous hypocrites who condemn sin in others without recognizing it in ourselves.

We need both law and gospel.  We need the law to remind us of our need for God, and we need the Gospel to remind us that God answers our needs.

If you have any questions about this article, or any aspect of Christianity, please comment and I will address the question next week.

On righteousness

Reformation Sunday

Sunday, October 26

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is Reformation Sunday. Four hundred and ninety-one years ago this Friday, Martin Luther nailed a list of ninety-five things he thought the church was doing wrong on the church door in Wittenburg, hoping initially only for a theological debate that might reform the church he served. The lessons for today are taken from those texts that were especially valuable to Luther in his realization that the theology of the medieval Roman Catholic church had serious problems in need of reformation. We celebrate this day as a festival of the church to remind ourselves that since the church is made up of humans who have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, it is in constant need of reformation and renewal.

There is a question in the readings today. It stands behind Jeremiah’s vision of the future, and behind Paul’s vision of what Christ has done and is doing in our midst, and behind Jesus’ rebuke of the Jews who had believed in him. The question is this: we are all sinners, so how do we get a right relationship with God?

Israel had been created and formed by God throughout its entire history, and yet by Jeremiah’s day they had strayed so far from the path God taught them that they were destroyed. God was with them in their suffering and promised to rebuild them, but Jeremiah wanted to know what was to keep them from going so far astray a second time? God’s answer was a new covenant, in which God’s commands, God’s words, weren’t just something heard during worship but were so deeply a part of the community of believers that they could never be forgotten or discarded again. Not just the rules and regulations, but knowledge of how to live a happy, healthy, whole life in community with God and with all believers. This new covenant would be given not because they earned it or deserved it, but because they needed it. This gift from God is what would save Israel from another destruction and exile.

Centuries later, the new covenant was created in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote a letter to the church in Rome explaining what that meant not just for Jews but for everyone, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No amount of external rules and regulations can keep us safe from sin. Even though we try our hardest to make up for it by following the laws as best we can, we can’t possibly do enough good works to earn our own salvation. The good news of Christ Jesus is that God loves us anyway, and created a new covenant with us to save us. Jesus took the punishment for our sins as his own, and suffered and died so that we would not have to. As baptized children of God, we are tied to his death and resurrection, and through his sacrifice we are given freedom and grace. Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit live within us and surround us, showing us how to life happy, healthy, whole lives in community with God and with all believers. We have nothing to boast about; it’s not our own actions or beliefs that save us but God’s actions and the faith he gives us.

It’s a wonderful thing, to be saved by God. Unfortunately, we often take that salvation for granted. We have been claimed and saved by God, but we aren’t perfect. The final destruction of sin and death won’t happen until Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. Until that time, we are caught in between sin and salvation, unable to free ourselves from bondage to sin and yet constantly claimed and forgiven by God, renewed in faith and life. We are, in Luther’s words, both saint and sinner at the same time. Being both saint and sinner is not a comfortable thing to be. We don’t like to think of ourselves as sinners; we prefer to focus on our good deeds, on God’s love for us, and forget the bad things we do. I was participating in a bible study two years ago, when a woman said she didn’t see why we had to start every service with the confession and forgiveness—after all, she wasn’t a sinner, she was a good woman who followed the ten commandments and took care of her family and worked hard, so why should she have to confess anything?

I didn’t quite know what to say. I mean, I know that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but at the same time I understood where she was coming from. I don’t worship other gods, I don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, I worship on Sundays, I honor my parents, I don’t kill, I don’t commit adultery, I don’t steal, I don’t lie, and I do my best never to covet anything. I’m not perfect, but it sure seems like I’ve got the major stuff covered, right? And there are a lot of people out there, many of them in this church right now, who could say the same thing. It’s so easy to start thinking like the Jews who believed in Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson. “I’m a child of God, who follows the commandments and isn’t a slave to sin. What do you mean ‘you will be made free’? What have I done that needs saving?” And yet, according to Paul, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, including me and everyone else who does their best to obey the commandments. What are we doing wrong?

Let’s start from the beginning. The first commandment says “You shall have no other gods but me.” It sounds easy enough. Who here has ever worshipped, say, Buddha? That’s easy enough to avoid. But considering that today is Reformation Sunday, let’s check out what Luther has to say. In the section on the first commandment in the Large Catechism, Luther asks this question: what does it mean to have a god? Think about it. What does it mean to have a god? Besides the obvious things like coming to church on Sundays, how does believing in God and being a Christian affect you and your daily life? According to Luther, a “god” is what we look to for all good and in which we find refuge in all need. To have a god is … to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. And that’s the problem, the thing that makes the first commandment so very difficult to follow no matter how good we think we’re being. We may not consciously worship other gods, but it’s very easy to slip into trusting something in this world that we can see and hear and touch more than we trust God.

For me, I know I’m a smart, competent woman. The temptation for me is to put my trust in my own abilities and intelligence, instead of in God. I can think my way out of most problems: figure out what’s wrong, figure out how to fix it, and go out and do what needs to be done. I believe in God, but I also believe I can handle most things. When I need something, when I have a problem, my first instinct isn’t to turn to God for help and guidance, it’s to look for what I can do to fix it. And I never realized how little trust I had in God until I spent last summer working as a chaplain at a mental hospital. You see, the thing about mental illness severe enough to need hospitalization is that you can’t fix it. You can’t think your way through it. Even with the best medication and counseling available to them, the people in that hospital will have to struggle with their illness for the rest of their lives. There was nothing I could do to fix them, or help them fix themselves. Going there ever day, knowing I could do nothing, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. It forced me to realize just how much I relied on myself and how little I relied on God. As the summer went on, I had to learn to open myself to the possibility of God working in and through me and in the lives of the staff and patients at that hospital, and put my faith and trust in God instead of in myself. I could not help them. But God could.

Self-reliance is one form of idolatry that Americans are particularly prone to, but not the only one. Look at the political campaigns going on in our country right now. Both sides believe that if they are elected they can fix all the problems in America. Their ultimate trust and faith is in their ideology and political proposals. Or how about money? If there’s one thing that the marked fluctuations and economic problems of the past few weeks have proven, it’s that there are a lot of Americans who put their ultimate faith and trust in the economy instead of in God. To listen to people talk, in our community and in the national news, you would have thought the whole world was coming to an end. What will we do if our investments aren’t worth as much? What will we do if we don’t get a raise this year? What will we do if we don’t have the money to take the vacation we wanted? What will we do if we get laid off? How will we live? As a culture, our love of money and financial security has become the driving force in our lives. Let me be very clear here: being smart, or interested in politics, or having money are not the problem. The problem is when we put more trust in our abilities, politics, and money than we do in God.

The question in today’s lessons is the question for our age as well. I’ve only talked about one of the commandments today, but when you truly look at each of the commandments, at the spirit of the law and not just the letter of it, each one is just as difficult to follow. Paul was right. We are all sinners. We are all slaves to sin. If we can’t even keep the first commandment, how can we possibly make a right relationship with God and our fellow believers?

The answer is simple. We can’t. But God can. We are slaves to sin, but if the son of God makes us free then we are free indeed. God has made a new covenant with us, a new promise, to be our God and make us God’s people. Through Jesus Christ our sins have been forgiven and we have been made whole. Not because we’ve earned it—we haven’t—but because God loves us in spite of our sin and loves us no matter what we do. The God who created us and gave us every good thing in the world, the God we turn away from every day with each sin, loves us enough to die for our sake that we might be saved even though we are still sinners. This is a gift we could never earn, and we cannot pay back. The only thing we can do is rejoice, and open our hearts and minds to the presence of God in us and among us, and allow ourselves to be re-formed in God’s image and in God’s steadfast love.

No Other Gods

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” (Deuteronomy 5:6-7)

Thus begin the Ten Commandments, the laws given by God to his people to teach them how to live good lives.  This commandment is the first because without a strong foundation, without knowing who our God is who is the basis of our faith, everything else becomes relative, shaky, a house of cards ready to fall.  After all, look at the story that follows the Ten Commandments: while Moses is up on Mount Sinai talking to God, the people of Israel get afraid and make an idol to worship to reassure themselves.  This is quickly followed by the people of Israel breaking just about every single one of the Ten Commandments they’ve just been given.

It sounds so simple to follow.  When we go to church on Sunday, it’s pretty clear who we worship: all the songs, scripture, preaching, etc., point to God, and it’s pretty easy to avoid going to the worship services of other religions which would involve the worship of other gods.  So it’s easy to read the story and condemn the Israelites for a lack of faith.  What we don’t realize is that idolatry is easy to spot when it’s wrapped up in a golden calf.  It’s a lot subtler in its modern forms, and we are very guilty of it.

Martin Luther said that our god is whatever we put our trust in.  Think about that: your god is whatever you put your trust in.  It’s not just about what you worship in formal ceremonies, it’s about what you rely on in your day to day life.  And watching what’s going on in America today, it’s pretty obvious that even in a nominally Christian nation, what we put our trust in is not the God who led our ancestors out of slavery and sent his only son to save us and make us whole and who has promised to be with us no matter what.

From the reactions to and panic about the banks and the stock market, it’s blatantly obvious that the thing in which many Americans put their trust is the nation’s economy.  And I’ll bet most Western nations have similar attitudes.  When the financial system falters and people start hearing the word “recession,” people feel nervous because the thing in which they put their trust–their god–is failing them.

From the reactions to and talk about the Presidential race, it’s blatantly obvious that the thing in which many Americans put their trust is their political party or specific political candidates.  America has problems; so does every other nation on earth.  People believe that a political ideal, or a political party, or a certain politician can fix those problems and make things right; that’s what they put their faith in.

Now, I’m certainly not saying that having a working economy is bad, or that participating in and caring about politics is bad.  Both are necessary to a functioning society.  But you always have to ask yourself: what do I put my trust in?  What is my God?

If your ultimate trust is in any human institution, you are doomed to disappointment.  All humans have flaws; all humans have problems; all humans have limitations.  Every human society and institution since the beginning of history has eventually collapsed in one way or another, because of those human failings.  If they are what you put your ultimate trust in, what will you do when things go wrong?  When the economy fails or the politician turns out to be just like all the others that came before or the ideology that sounds so great in speeches turns out not to work in real life?

All humans eventually fail.  But God, the one true God who created us and loves us and redeems us, will never fail.  You can put your trust in God whether things are going well or badly, whether the economy is strong or fails, whether politicians keep their promises or not.  God will never abandon you.

If you have any questions about the Christian faith, please comment and I will answer them next week.

In the world but not of it: Christians and the World

Not long ago, I heard someone saying that the world was evil and sinful and that Christians should avoid and ignore the world, focusing instead on the coming reign of God. The role of Christians in the world around it has been debated since the very beginning, but I would disagree with the idea that the world is completely evil, and so does Lutheran theology. The devil can’t create anything; only God can create things. All the devil (or sin and evil, if you prefer not to believe in an actual “devil”) can do is warp things.

God created the whole world and all that is in it. He is present in all things, always beside us in the world. Nothing that God has created can ever be wholly evil. It can be twisted by the devil and used for evil purposes, but it is not by nature evil. Everything we have, everything in heaven and on Earth, is daily given, sustained, and protected by God. That includes the food we eat and the clothes we wear. Now, both can be used for bad purposes, but being fed and clothed is good, right? Some things are easier to misuse than others, but that doesn’t mean that that they are by nature evil. God provides for us through the things he has created, through the whole world we live in and all the creatures that inhabit it. Our daily needs are fulfilled as gifts from God, not evil things from the devil.

It is true that the world is broken and twisted by sin, and so is everyone who lives in it, including you and me. This is not because human nature is bad. God created human nature to be good, and recognizes it as his own work even as sinful as we are now. After the fall, we became corrupted by sin so deeply that nothing is left whole and pure and only God can separate the sin from our nature. Even when we try to do good, we don’t always succeed, and we’re not always as focused as we should be on doing good. Both goodness and sin are present at the same time and in the same place.

We know that we are held captive by sin and cannot free ourselves. We depend on God’s grace and love to free us from the dominion of sin. It isn’t just individuals who are captive to sin, either—all of creation is. Theologians like to talk about “systemic sins”—that’s a fancy way of saying that everything is affected by sin, and it’s not always traceable to single people or causes. Things like poverty, war, hunger, homelessness, inability to afford medical care—those things are sins that are not the result of any one person’s action or inaction. They just are. As Christians, it is our job to bring Christ’s redeeming presence into the world, in both word and deed, to individuals and communities. Sometimes that means rejecting parts of the world that are most twisted by sin. Sometimes that means going out into the world as God’s hands and feet, to bring good news and healing through word and deed. It always means shining a light in darkness and treating others with the same love and forgiveness God has granted us.

As Christians, we are in the world but not of it. Our true home is the kingdom of God, and yet we live here in this flawed and fallen world. Although the world is God’s good creation, it is also twisted by sin. We love the goodness while hating the sin. It can be difficult to balance the two perspectives. Being God’s children means we can’t just withdraw and write off everything as evil and bad. God called us and loves us despite our own sins, and renews us every day. As God’s children, we are sent out into the world to bring that healing where we can. We can’t fix everything; only God can do that when he comes in glory. But we can, with God’s help, make a difference in the lives of those around us, through prayer and action.

If you have any questions about Christianity, Christian life, or Christian theology, please leave a comment and I will address it next week.