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It’s A Good Thing God Is In Charge

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This past Friday was somewhat chilly and yet beautifully sunny. Even if only for a moment, it was as if spring welcomed summer to the podium for a few words of encouragement. Smiling brightly, he comforted his onlookers, promising eventual warmth.

“It’s nice to see all of you,” he said to his winter-worn Michigan audience. “Not to worry,” he continued. “I’ll be back soon, and I intend to stay for a while.”

Evelyn and I smiled at summer’s joyful appearance, the sun beaming brightly as we made our way to the church and school. I would spend my Friday as I usually do, catching up on the previous week’s unfinished business. Evelyn would enjoy the fast-fleeting days of her eighth-grade school year.

Thankful to the Lord for the lovely day, we cued an appropriate song for the morning’s travel: “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra. Singing along, the morning’s joy was seemingly impenetrable. I smiled. Evelyn smiled. Another song played. It was “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison. Still, nothing changed. We sang and smiled and enjoyed the sun-filled landscapes passing along beside us.

But then, near the end of our journey, as is our way, we took a moment to listen to the news.

The first and only story we could stomach was about a man on trial for beating his five-year-old daughter to death. Living in their car, it seems she soiled herself one time too many in her sleep. In a rage, he pummeled her brutally. After a few moments of gurgling moans, the little girl went quiet.

“I think I really hurt her this time,” he said nonchalantly to his wife before taking a bite from a sandwich. Unaware that he’d killed her, he shot up with heroin and then continued along his way.

For as effortlessly happy as the morning had begun, suddenly, the sun’s rays annoyed my eyes, and the sky wasn’t as cloudless and blue as before. It was motionless and empty. The passing trees no longer adorned but loomed. There were more shadows than sunlit spaces.

While just as dreadful as so many other atrocities available to this devolving world, child abuse is the one crime that cooks my arteries more than most. It’s the epitomized juxtaposition of powerful and powerless, strong and weak, predator and prey. Evelyn’s first words were that the man should pay dearly for his crimes. I agreed. However, I didn’t interpret my agreement for her. The newscaster noted he’d been sentenced to 56 years in prison. Prison wasn’t a part of my initial calculation. I had something much, much worse in mind. And so, my initial words to Evelyn were, “It’s a good thing God is in charge.” Evelyn

Why am I sharing this with you? I suppose partly because today is Mother’s Day, and I’ll while driving to the church this morning, I was thinking about all the ways my wife, Jennifer, is such a wonderful parent to our children—how she loves them with all that she is. Anyone thinking this way will make comparisons, whether they realize it or not. The newscast, still fresh in my mind, interrupted my thoughts. I couldn’t imagine a parent doing what that man did.

I suppose another reason I’m sharing this is because there’s a better point to be made. Friday morning’s happenings coalesced as a reminder relative to faith’s presence.

I described a beautiful day unexpectedly charred by tragedy’s flame. And yet, our initial inclination to rejoice in God’s beautiful creation, even as it turned dark, remained steady into and through the tragic news. We had a choice of proverbial replies in that shocking moment. Our shared response could’ve been, “How could God let this happen?” But it wasn’t. We didn’t blame Him. Intuitively, we both knew better than to think we could manage this world and its inevitable dreadfulnesses more skillfully than God. Instead, we gathered around the position, “It’s a good thing God is in charge.” In a way, this was both confession and thanksgiving. It confessed darker inclinations toward another human being while showing gratitude for God’s gracious hand in all things. It admitted that while we may not know what’s going on, God knows, and with that, we can rest assured. 

Now, I’m not going to examine the problem of suffering. Indeed, the girl’s death is terrible. Again, it’s a good thing I was not in charge of the universe when it happened. In the meantime, I’ll simply say that such tragedies should not surprise us in this fallen world. Sin enjoys many capable hands, and each perpetrated awfulness is just one more fingerprint proving sin’s infectious reach. God told us it would be this way (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21). Following the fall into sin, He said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17). Regardless of what you may have learned, this is not God cursing the earth. It was resultant. בַּֽעֲבוּרֶ֔ךָ is the word God used. “Because of you” is its translation. Adam was to blame. His action (or, more precisely, his inaction during Satan’s interaction and allure with Eve) injected the fatal poison. Still, we know that two short verses before in Genesis 3:15, God promised He would reach into and fix what was broken. The Messiah would come, and the curse would be turned back.

Having said these things, I’ll aim toward a conclusion by offering two quick observations. First, and similar to something I already said, when Christians don’t know what’s going on, not only can we trust in God’s perfect awareness and care, but we are empowered by the Holy Spirit for recalling what we do know, which is that God is by no means distant from this world. The most extraordinary proof is the cross. Behold the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15. Behold the suffering and death of God’s Son. Behold His intimate and inreaching love for a humanity mired in sin and destined for eternal condemnation.

Second, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christians are equipped to endure this world’s bipolar mess. And it’s just that, a bipolar mess. No matter the road before you, life has sharp ups and downs. It swings back and forth suddenly. Still, by the Spirit’s power, a Christian can navigate both. In the good times, a Christian holds tightly to God, giving thanks for His kindliness. During the upheavals, a Christian holds tightly to God, too, assured that we are never left to our own devices and glad for His gracious care in all things, especially the care He showed by sacrificing His Son to save us from this temporary world for the unending world to come.

Let this be an encouragement to you today.

Put the Wisdom to Work

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I just moved from the same parlor chair in the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island that I sat in last September. I’m in the Audubon Wine Bar now. It’s a classic library-style lounge a few paces from the parlor. I’m not in here because the doors were open. I’m here because I saw an early morning passerby in a security hat on his way to fetch coffee. I asked if he wouldn’t mind granting me similar benefits, and he was kind enough to oblige. I only stepped into the Audubon room to wait. Coffee in hand, I decided to stay. It’s more my style, anyway. And now that I have coffee, I can begin.

No matter the space I’m occupying, this early morning eNews is often only as sensible as it is because of coffee.

Some of you may recall that I was invited to speak at the GOP Policy Conference held at the Grand Hotel last fall. I agreed and took along my family. Well, most of them. Jennifer, Madeline, and Evelyn went along. My daughters fell in love with the place. It’s hard not to. Unfortunately, and candidly, the only way the Thoma family would be able to afford time at the Grand Hotel is if Dad was invited to speak and the accommodations were the reward. That said, as we were leaving the hotel last fall, the girls commented sadly, “We’ll probably never come back here.”

That stung a little. On the other hand, my kids know not to use the word “never” around me. Remember: there were snails on the ark. It took some time, but they made it.

Last December, I sold three antique whisky bottles I’d been keeping for a special occasion. That, combined with the graciousness of congregation members who care, we had everything we needed to enjoy three days and two all-inclusive nights at the Grand Hotel for its opening weekend. I went online and secured the dates. I made copies of the reservation, put them into envelopes under the Christmas tree, and surprised the family on Christmas Day. 

Again, don’t tell me it can’t be done. Instead, let’s talk about how it can. And besides, God has a way of opening doors for me to find a way. 

Speaking of “never,” while looking around the room at all the books, I’m reminded that I’m very near the end of my doctoral studies—something I never thought I’d ever get the chance to do. God willing, I’ll defend my dissertation sometime this summer. It’s been a challenging experience. For one, I didn’t want to drag it out, and so, in my typically self-torturing way, I doubled up on coursework and study at almost every turn. As a result, a five-to-seven-year journey was accomplished in a little more than two.

Apart from content digestion, in a human sense, the one thing I have going for me in such circumstances is that I can write a lot in a very short time. For example, I wrote my book Ten Ways to Kill a Pastor in five days. I’m not looking for praise by saying this. I’m just saying that the time I need for tippity-tapping away at things gives me a unique advantage while schooling. This is especially helpful since my life is already a cosmos of full-time obligations. Before enrolling, just the thought of adding one more twirling solar system of responsibility made me sweat. Still, there’s something I knew about myself. When it comes to the paper writing, give me three hours, and I’ll give you twenty double-spaced pages. Whether or not they’re good pages, as with anything else I’ve ever scribbled, I would leave that determination to the reader.

As I said, it’s been a challenging experience. All of it has been beneficial, with only a few parts here and there that I didn’t necessarily enjoy. In one sense, it reminds me of the saying, “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can’t learn any other way.” I shared the same quotation in last Sunday’s adult Bible study. I mentioned Mark Twain as its author, but I don’t know that for sure. What I do know is the accuracy of its implied practicality. Doctoral work provides opportunities for learning that no other avenue provides. That said, I’m glad I’ve done it. But I’m also happy it’s concluding.

Jennifer has asked me more than once what’s next, not as in what other self-tortures she should expect to endure with me, but how I intend to use what I’ve done. That remains to be seen. However, I’d say in a broad sense that pre-seminary and seminary curricula could be improved by adding my efforts as stand-alone courses. At a minimum, additional modules could be added to existing systematic and pastoral care courses. In a narrower sense, I certainly intend to use what I’ve learned to my congregation’s benefit and maybe even a few other organizations with which I associate. Either way, we’ll see, and therein lies the tension in Jennifer’s original question. Relative to my daughters’ Mackinac Island concerns, what’s the use of having a few valuable whiskies on the shelf if I’m not going to put the value to work when and where it’s needed? Similarly, what’s the point of acquiring knowledge if the acquirer fails to use it? Knowledge is weaponry, and I intend to open-carry.

Regardless of its broader applications, I’ll use what I know wherever I am. At a bare minimum, it’ll be at the ready in every instance in the ever-unfolding war against truth.

This is an essential thing for Christians to keep in mind.

Christians bear knowledge. We know something of Christ and His immeasurable love for a world steeped in sin. We know how the Devil and the world are active powers laboring to smother truth, most especially the Gospel of salvation through faith in Christ. That said, we have access to the greatest reservoir of wisdom the world has ever known: God’s Word. And so, we are encouraged to dig deeply into it, to digest it (2 Timothy 3:14-17). 

And then we are called to put the wisdom to work (James 1:22).

Now, don’t misunderstand me. This is not an encouragement to see the Bible as a moral handbook for living. Even as the norma normans (the standard for all other standards) and the sole source for faith, life, and practice, the Bible’s epicentral purpose is the divine revelation of God’s work to save mankind from sin, culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is the molecular substance of the Bible’s wisdom, and its goal is faith. But here’s the thing: the wisdom the Bible brings and instills cannot sit idly by. It engages. It acts. It shines outwardly in ways that others can observe (Matthew 5:13-16; James 2:14-26), thereby allowing others to light their torches from your faith’s flame.

In other words, Solomon was right when he wrote, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Proverbs 9:10). Therefore, be wise. Believe. Therein is knowledge. Knowledge produces insight. Insight isn’t for the knowledge bearer alone. Insight is for others. It is meant to be shared. So, again, put your wisdom to work. Do so in faithfulness to Christ and for the benefit of others.

Be someone who openly carries the knowledge that saves.

Do Not Skim. Read.

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I do not own a single eBook. At least, I don’t think I do. I like books I can hold in my hands. I realize this makes me somewhat of a weirdo in the 21st-century world. Still, it is what it is. I’d rather turn a page than scroll. I’d rather dogear some of those pages, gripping a pencil and underlining beloved portions, than add virtual bookmarks or whatever people do in eBooks to preserve and revisit certain words.

I sometimes wonder if the world will one day be absent of physical books. I hope not. I don’t say this because I’m concerned about what people will use to balance a wobbly table or what they’ll reach for to swat an annoying fly. I’ve written before that I think a world without physical books will foster less reading—actual substantive reading and content digestion. I also say this because I think there’s something to the proverbial phrase “out of sight, out of mind.” In other words, just because a digital device offers unrestricted access to literature’s vast kingdom doesn’t mean its user is naturally inclined toward using it that way. I think this premise is relatively provable. No matter one’s age, in a room filled with books, it’s harder to resist the urge to snatch a volume and peruse it. In a room void of books, the device in one’s hand offers countless other preference-stroking arenas—video games, social media, audio and video streaming; you name it.

I know that many education experts prattle on about the lack of real differences in literacy rates among children exposed to either on-screen or in-print reading. This exceptionally convenient research deduction was reached and endlessly proffered during COVID. While I’m no expert, I’d argue that literacy research focused more so on the ability to read than reading comprehension. Mark Twain once said something about how a man who can read but doesn’t will have no advantage over a man who can’t read. I’d add that a man who can read but cannot understand what he’s reading is advantageless, too. The whole purpose of reading is comprehension.

I suppose I’m sharing this in part because I wonder how so many in our world can accept, or perhaps worse, stand idly by as some genuinely idiotic things sprout and blossom into full bloom. We just hosted an event here at Our Savior last Wednesday in which Irene Miller, a holocaust survivor, described the events of her life. Much of what she said seemed familiar, especially the parts about fascism finding room to grow as only particular bits of information were allowed to the population while all others were suppressed. I suppose I’ll come back to that point in a moment. In the meantime, let me stay with my initial heading. Some studies show how in-print reading outpaces on-screen in two essential ways: attention span formation and content processing. This makes complete sense to me.

A person’s attention span is the framework for comprehension. Content processing is the comprehension process. When I think about typical on-screen reading, it seems to involve a lot of skimming and scrolling, selective reading, and keyword spotting. I can’t prove it, but I’m guessing this ever-increasing type of information intake is playing no insignificant part in our devolving world. Shorter attention spans are barriers to in-depth reading, ultimately teeing readers up to take from a text what they want or have time for it to say rather than what it actually says. It’s selective. It’s also incredibly self-centered. It isn’t discovering. It’s looking for what it already thinks it wants. It’s the kind of reading that’s incapable of grasping an issue’s truths and untruths. It’s the kind of learning that produces what we’re seeing on our college campuses right now—students and faculty who, when asked about Hamas’ actions on October 7, 2023, defend the terrorist group using some of the most irrational talking points and little more. These protestors appear incapable of a depth that understands no matter what a person’s reason for fighting, massacring unarmed concert-goers, and putting Israeli babies into ovens and cooking them is wrong. The protesters, many likely raised in hardworking families and known by friends and neighbors from their home communities, are now found wearing keffiyehs and blocking roadways, all the while having no idea what a keffiyeh represents. Pink-haired, with their bodies pierced in about every conceivable location, they lock arms and shout, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” but are entirely unaware of what the Islamic extremist chant means relative to Israel’s (let alone any non-Muslim’s) existence or that the Quran instructs that any form of bodily piercings other than the ears is satanic and worthy of severe punishment. In other words, for Hamas and the Palestinians, freedom does not mean what you think it means.

Because we’ve already seen how the universities wrestling with these protests aren’t all that interested in doing much about them, one way to stop the nonsense—or at least inhibit it—would be for the parents and grandparents doling out tuition dollars to these adolescents to turn off the financial spigot and bring them home. They’re obviously not quite ready to engage with the world yet. They’re certainly not prepared for higher education. What they need is a spanking, a lengthy grounding from video games and cellphone usage, a remedial reading course followed by a civics class or two, and an early bedtime. If that doesn’t work, a philosophy internship in Iran probably would. Be sure to send along their rainbow-colored hijab and “Allah loves equality” t-shirts. You might also want to pack a parachute. It’s standard practice to throw folks with differing opinions off of rooftops.

That said, who can argue that we don’t have the same problematic reading problems in Christianity in general, and it’s producing some seriously misinformed people? Folks skim an internet article with a few scripture verses here and there and are suddenly biblical experts capable of divinely authorized world-altering diatribes. Who needs the seminaries? We have Wikipedia and Google. And while this shallow form of study may result in some Christians stepping up and pushing back against culture, the pushback is often far weaker than the emboldened warriors may have imagined. This is because the pushback is half-baked, being more so agenda-driven than accurate, ultimately leaving immense loopholes in the logic. I’ll give you an elementary example I’ve shared with others in the past.

I’m pro-gun. I have two, a Glock 19 and a Sig Sauer P226. To argue my right to own and carry them, I would never lean on the Cain and Abel account from Genesis 4. Why not? Because, even as so many conservatives like to share memes saying things like, “Guns are not the problem” right after noting that when “Cain killed Abel with a rock, God didn’t get rid of all the rocks,” the fact is that Genesis 4:8 simply reads: “Now Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let’s go out to the field.’ While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.” There’s no mention of how Cain killed Abel. Uninspired apocryphal writings mention things like jawbones and plowheads. But the Bible doesn’t say Cain used anything to kill Abel. Verse twelve talks about Abel’s blood crying out from the ground, giving the sense there might have been quite a bit spilled. My guess is that it was Abel’s own knife used to sacrifice animals. Still, it’s a guess—purely speculative. For all anyone knows, Cain choked Abel to death, and when he fell to the ground, he hit his head and bled out. Either way, it’s the content found in the deeper strata that can make an argument sturdy or wobbly. All a non-skimming opponent needs is to go to and read Genesis 4. See, no rock, thus no direct relevance to handheld weapons.

With this in mind, the type of reading habits I’ve described are the exact same ones employed by doofuses trying to smother pure Christian doctrine who, when they discover texts like Matthew 7:1, say something like, “See, Jesus said, ‘Do not judge,’” completely missing the text’s insistence that Christians must judge, but only as they understand their own sinfulness and the ever-present need for forgiveness. In other words, a person who believes he’s perfect has lost all credibility for judging anything rightly. I suppose, worst of all, these reading habits eventually produce pro-choice Christians. They produce pro-LGBTQ believers. They result in Christian churches and schools brimming with pro-DEI and pro-CRT advocates. They inspire folks who claim faithfulness to Christ while simultaneously embracing so many ridiculously heretical Christian authors, speakers, so-called prophets, and countless internet-assembled sayings that sound good but simply aren’t.

So, how do we combat this?

That’s a good question. How about this, for starters?

First of all, read. And I mean, really read. Don’t skim. On-screen or in-print, dig deeply. Take in the information, even if you don’t like what it’s saying. My guess is that by doing so, more loopholes in your knowledge investigation will be closed than left open.

Second, while you should choose your sources carefully, you shouldn’t limit your intake to the side of the argument you prefer most. Read both. Truth has a way of outing lies, especially when the two are set side by side. In my experience, when suddenly confronted by truth, liars deflect. They redirect. They gaslight, making you think what is true might not be true. They tweak a narrative’s corners, ultimately creating alternate renditions. When queried, they cannot answer the actual questions you are asking, especially when the questions do not fit the newly constructed narrative. However, here’s the thing. If truth weren’t in the room, they might be all-convincing to the onlooker or reader. But with truth standing right beside them, their wriggling and writhing becomes apparent, and for an honest investigator, the foolishness is almost always outed.

In the final measurement, even in the barest sense, truth stands tall, and as it does, it proves itself capable of maintaining the field.

God Knows What He’s Doing

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God knows what He’s doing. That may sound like an oversimplification relative to our complex world, but oftentimes, the simple view is best. Even Longfellow recognized, “In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.”

Indeed, God knows what He’s doing. That said, I can rest easily.

Evelyn and I talk a lot during our twenty-five-minute drive to and from school throughout the week. We cover multitudes of topics. Some are serious. Others are more daydreamy. Two weeks ago, a song from The Lost Boys soundtrack carried us down the roadway. As it did, we wondered aloud what we would do if we became vampires. That was fun. Last week, we wondered what we’d be like had we been born in the 1880s. I doubted out loud that I’d have been a pastor. She agreed. She figured me for a lawman, but only after admitting the possibility that I might have owned a saloon. I agreed—minus the saloon. Standing behind a bar all day is not how I’d prefer to spend my days. Besides, notoriously shady behaviors and trades were associated with saloons, none of which fit my character.

Why not a pastor? I don’t know. I just don’t think I would’ve been one. Either way, as a believer today or in the yesteryear of 1880, I’m sure I’d continue to say, “God knows what He’s doing.” I’d have been right where He wanted me. I just happen to think it would’ve been a role requiring a gunfight or two.

There are plenty of things about which I’m certain. I love my wife, and I love the family and life God has been so gracious to grant me, just to name a few. Another is that I’m right where God wants me to be. I think that bothers some folks. In fact, I know it does. There’s a statistic out there somewhere reporting that at any given moment in a pastor’s ministry, at least 30% of his congregation wishes they had a different pastor. I don’t know if that’s entirely true in my home congregation. Although, statistics are stubborn things. Let’s just say I hope it’s closer to 10%. Either way, I know there are likely some who, if they got the chance, would actually work to lift it from 10% to 30%. Every congregation has those people. We have them, too.

But here’s the thing. When you are immovably confident that God knows what He’s doing in your life and that you are right where you belong, then there’s little chance that a disparaging alligator lurking around you (no matter how big and powerful the gator might be) is going to frighten you away, let alone move you closer to the safety of another shore apart from Christ. In this sense, the simple and supreme excellency (as Longfellow described) of God’s omniscient care becomes an impenetrable barrier between you and the ever-vigilantly circling gators. And by ever-vigilant, you know what I mean. They’re always looking for a way to get you. They’re hoping to find a loophole in your faithfulness—an unguarded middle space in your life—so that they can accuse you, finding you guilty of failings they were sure you’d eventually commit.

That’s an interesting juxtaposition, isn’t it; the certainty of God’s gracious care and the certainty that someone will fail? In response, there’s a quotation I’ll sometimes share when standing before pro-life crowds, especially since it so often seems gators endlessly circle the pro-life cause. It was Babe Ruth who said, “You just can’t beat someone who won’t quit.” I should add my own words to that. A confident person cannot be a quitter.

There’s another essential simplicity to keep in mind in this regard, and it’s what gives the sureness described its impervious quality. When someone is immovably certain God has him right where He wants him, while at the same time, he knows he’s a sinner in need of daily repentance and forgiveness, whatever unguarded middle spaces an alligator may find, they become relatively inconsequential. Instead, they’re received as opportunities for self-reflection, amending, and carrying on in God’s extraordinary forgiveness. What were intended to be piercing accusations could only ricochet like raindrops, ultimately beading up and flowing back into the gator’s swampy mess.

Faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins, no matter what those sins may be, becomes the Christian’s foundation. Even better, when the Christian knows that God stands at the ready to dispense His immeasurably wonderful grace to the penitent sinner, that foundation becomes mountain-like in its durability.

I should clarify something before concluding.

God’s grace isn’t cheap. We do not live as we like assuming God is a divine Pez dispenser of grace (Romans 6:1-2). I say this because in order to know what God’s love is, it’s just as important to know what it isn’t. For one, it wasn’t an economical effort. It was costly. He paid top dollar. Look at the cross and see. It’s there you’ll behold the jeweled elements of certainty’s concrete. God loved you that much. Knowing this, Saint Paul’s words in Romans 8:31-39 ring truer than ever before:

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I don’t know about you, but I almost expected to read the word “alligators” somewhere in Saint Paul’s list.

Peace I Leave with You

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“Peace I leave with you,” the Lord said in John 14:27. Did He leave peace with us, though? It sure doesn’t seem like it sometimes.

The National Catholic Register reported that anti-Christian hate crimes are up 44% in a single year. Open Door’s “World Watch List” shared that more than 365 million Christians faced “very high or extreme” levels of persecution last year. This means that one in seven Christians has experienced excessive physical violence because of their faith. Nearly five thousand of these experiences resulted in death. Pretty much all of them happened in African and Asian countries.

Strangely, looking at the color-coded map, North America and Europe are greyed, which means that the kind of active persecution intent on snuffing faith entirely is nearly non-existent. I wondered about this.

But not for long.

Apart from the proof that much of mainstream Christianity’s doctrine is meme-generated, I mentioned in my sermon on Easter Sunday that countries like ours aren’t exactly robust targets for the Devil when it comes to battling faith. We’ve proven more than capable of battling it ourselves. A few examples…

In stride with its neighboring European countries, and for starters, Scotland’s parliament just made misgendering someone a criminal offense punishable by up to seven years in jail. It received vocal support from no small number of churches. Across the Atlantic in North America, Canada has been experiencing this same scenario for years. Just south of Canada’s border, here in the United States, we’re certainly not far behind. Christian pastors bless Planned Parenthood clinics, claiming Jesus was pro-choice while defending a mother’s so-called right to kill her unborn child up to and after birth. I was at this year’s State of the State address in Michigan. The Invocator, a Christian pastor, spoke this way. Should I expect anything different? Just shy of 60% of Michigan’s pew sitters elected state leaders who continue to make this infanticide possible. Those same leaders support children undergoing chemical castration and the criminalization of protesting parents. Add to that their targeting of Christian businesses and non-profit organizations for adhering to Christian doctrine.

Still, so many American Christians yawn.

I also mentioned in my Easter sermon two weeks ago that as a nation, our own president, Joe Biden, is proof that the Devil is likely disinterested in us. He already has one of his faithful in the White House, and with that, he can labor elsewhere. Even as a self-described (in every sense of the word) devout Catholic, Biden went out of his way to declare Easter Sunday to be “Transgender Day of Visibility.” Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Washington D.C., called Biden a “cafeteria catholic,” meaning he picks and chooses what he wants to believe. That could’ve been a zinging indictment if it didn’t also apply to most of mainstream American Christendom.

Either way, I chose to push back against Biden’s executive proclamation rather crisply from the pulpit. Interestingly, after the service, I was met with a visitor’s venom, insisting before an observing line of exiting worshippers I was a bigot. As you can see, I’m still thinking about it a few weeks later.

Oh well. For some of us, it goes with the territory, becoming little more than sticks-and-stones-may-break-my-bones and all that. Still, I suppose I got off easy by comparison. I read about someone burning a trailer filled with Bibles in front of a church in Tennessee on Easter morning. Unsurprisingly, the media let it slide. The usual suspects at the helm of American culture who did mention it said things like, “Any church preaching hate should expect some level of backlash.” And by “preaching hate,” the lesbian commentator who remarked meant anyone who doesn’t believe as she believes when it comes to human sexuality, or worse, who publicly teaches what the Bible teaches about sin, gender, life, and other topics.

As I said, I wondered about America not making the persecution cut. But only for a moment. I think we’re already doing the Devil’s dirty work for him. There’s really no need to behead anyone for faith in Christ when the mouths on those heads couldn’t tell you much about Him. I can’t tell you how many posts from Christians I saw (and still see) claiming a connection between Easter and Ishtar. The ignorance in our churches of Christian history and its vernacular is absolutely astounding. But again, what should one expect from a Christianity that learns its theology from the internet? What should one expect from a Christianity that wants to look and feel like the culture in almost every way rather than being the holy body of Christ, distinct and set apart from the world?

Maybe to frame what I mean, imagine if I walked into a rock concert wearing jeans and a T-shirt. No one would care. But if I walked into that same concert wearing my alb, stole, and chasuble, people would probably notice and be put off by it. That said, it seems too many people in too many churches would be put off by it, too, preferring a pastor in rock concert attire. But it’s not only that the Church and the world are to be noticeably different. Our vocabulary is different, too. We communicate using terms like catechesis, Sanctus, Tenebrae, kyrie, sacrament, and Agnus Dei. Moreover, we move differently. We carry processional crucifixes. We bow our heads when the Lord’s name is spoken. We do things like make the sign of the cross and sing sacred scripture to one another. We prefer church names that could never be mistaken for nightclubs, but instead, teach what we believe, names like Holy Trinity, Redeemer, and Our Savior.

Side by side, the Church and the world look very little alike. Even further, the world isn’t going to hate itself. It’s going to hate what is apart from it. And it won’t stand idly by when something is snatched from it. Indeed, the Lord told us these things, saying, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).

This leads us back to where I began: persecution.

Ann Landers once said something relatively intuitive. She wrote to one of her readers, “Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.” I know what she meant in context, but in this instance, it had me thinking in a different direction. Just because your dog loves you doesn’t mean you’re wonderful. And so, the absence of the types of overt persecution happening elsewhere in the world might not be a sign that things are okay. It could just be that the world is disinterested in paying much attention to what it believes it already owns. Or, at a minimum, it sees American Christianity as a form of spirituality that can be easily molded to its liking.

Maybe.

I suppose, in conclusion, the Lord did say, “Peace I leave with you.” But that’s not all He said. The complete text of John 14:27 is, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

The Lord said this because He knew the Church on earth would exist perpetually in an unsettling time of oppression. Still, Jesus gives His believers peace. It’s not the peace we might expect, as in the absence of conflict. It’s the kind of peace that can endure persecution’s fires, no matter how hot they get. It’s also the kind of peace that inevitably draws the world’s attention. This is true because it tends to speak up even when doing so is dangerous. By the power of the Holy Spirit at work for faith in Christ, believers have this peace. It settles a troubled heart and smothers fear, just as Jesus said. How could it not, especially when the One who promised it also conquered the last and most terrifying enemy, death (1 Corinthians 15:26)? If not even death holds dominion over us, what else is there to fear?

You know the answer.

Prove It

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It’s right around this time each year that I’m reminded that my favorite of the Lord’s Apostles is Thomas. It’s not because the name Thomas is the patronymic origin for my own last name, which can be traced as far back in Germany as the 1250s. Instead, like Thomas, from among the twelve, I want to be the one who, even if foolishly misguided, along the way, demanded the real Jesus, the once dead but now alive Savior with scars.

I want to be bold enough in every crowd I occupy to demand that Christ do what He promised He’d do.

Still, Thomas has gained the descriptive prefix “Doubting.” Doubt is a tricky thing. Some theologians say doubt was the first sin committed in Eden. Maybe doubt is the word that describes what happened. I tend to think it was more than that. I think by the Devil’s line of questioning, he went straight for the jugular of faith, ultimately stirring absolute mistrust. “You will not surely die,” the Devil replied to Eve. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). This was the Devil’s way of saying, “Not only did God lie to you, but He’s hiding something from you, too.” Eve unhesitatingly believed this and went straight to dining on the fruit. Adam, who was with her, did the same (v. 6).

I could be wrong, but I think mistrust and doubt are two very different things. This reminds me of a quotation I shared in my dissertation, having first shared it during a discussion with one of the pastors participating in my doctoral research. David Mills, a former editor for Touchstone magazine, once maintained:

“In the same way, ‘permissiveness’ is a very different thing from ‘licentiousness.’ The first means relaxing the rules too much, the other means actions characterized by license and lawlessness, and usually in a lewd, lustful, and dissolute way. They are not even close to the same thing…. The ideas are related but they are not the same. One cannot do the work of the other. You might as well, in a professional baseball game, send in Barry Manilow to replace Barry Bonds, because they are both rich, famous, talented men named Barry.”

In the same way, mistrust and doubt “are related but they are not the same.” Mistrust is the demonstration of a complete lack of confidence. It establishes plainly that a person is not trustworthy, and then goes no further except to act contrarily to the untrustworthy person. Doubt, while not necessarily a good thing, often makes demands before becoming mistrust. Its first vocalized insistence will likely be, “Prove it.”

That’s precisely what Thomas did. He wanted proof. Interestingly, he wanted the same proof Jesus promised He’d give. Even better, he was willing to go further. He didn’t remain apart from the other disciples but instead returned at their pleading to join with them in the upper room. That’s not mistrust. That’s a willingness to be convinced coupled with concrete expectations. He’s in a middle space between belief and unbelief, trust and mistrust.

Still, and as I hinted before, the middle space can be a dangerous place. In this circumstance, it could lead to mistrust. Jesus knew this. In fact, He acknowledged this hazardous progression when He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27). In the English, it sounds like Jesus said he was disbelieving. In the original Greek, the Lord’s words “Do not disbelieve, but believe” are more pivotal. The verb γίνου is in there. It means “to come into being, to happen, to become.” It presents the possibility of a change in location relative to one’s position. In other words, Jesus’ literal words were, “Do not become untrusting but become trusting [μὴ γίνου ἄπιστος ἀλλὰ πιστός].”

And then Thomas’ words, “My Lord and my God!” These are some of the most beautiful in all of the scriptures.

Samuel Johnson once said, “Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.” I share these words only because they acknowledge the tension that exists between doubt and trust. That said, Jesus acknowledged the tension first and in a far better way.

The scene with Thomas ended with the Lord speaking somewhat rhetorically. His words may even have stung Thomas a little. “Have you believed because you have seen me?” the Lord asked. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (v. 29).

On second thought, if the Lord’s words were stinging, I’ll bet the sting didn’t last long. Jesus wasn’t wholly directing them at Thomas. According to this particular Gospel’s author, John, they were aimed at us (John 20:31). And if this is true, then they’re encouraging, not indicting. They point to the blessed nature of faith. They’re meant to remind us that even as we won’t experience the exact proofs that Thomas was given, in the end, faith doesn’t require physical proof to overcome every possible objection or tension, just as Samuel Johnson described. Faith knows without seeing. It can believe without feeling or experiencing. This is true because its assurance is from another sphere altogether. It is convinced by something far more powerful than what the human senses could ever grasp (Hebrews 11:1). That something, or better said, someone, is the Holy Spirit—God, Himself—at work in the believer. Christians are made by the power of the Holy Spirit at work through the Gospel in both its verbal and visible forms—Word and Sacrament. But Christians aren’t just made. They’re endowed with that which helps them hold on when there doesn’t seem to be anything to hold onto. In those moments, they’re equipped to say to the world’s imposing accusations, “Prove it,” all the while knowing that sufficient proof for measuring all things is always available in the most trustworthy of all locales, God’s Word (2 Peter 1:12-21), just as the Lord promised (John 5:24).

For a Christian to say, “Prove it,” and then look to the Word of God for what’s needed, in a way, is the same as Thomas expecting to meet only with the real Jesus. Indeed, Jesus is the Word made flesh.

The Name Above All Names

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He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

I don’t have to tell you who the pronoun “He” is referring to in those traditional Easter acclamations. You know His name. He’s Jesus, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He was dead and is now alive, owning the name that is above every name. Every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth will one day bow in absolute reverence to this name, whether it’s the knee of a believer or unbeliever, friend or foe (Philippians 2:9-10).

This cosmos-encompassing event Saint Paul describes will happen in the flesh. The Lord’s resurrection has sealed its certainty (Job 19-25-27; 1 Corinthians 15:42-56). This final veneration will not be a commemorative act, one performed in memory of an exceptional individual who once was but is no more. It won’t be an act of devotion recalling a person indispensable to history but nevertheless long dead and buried. Graveyards are filled with the forgotten. Even the greatest are little more than “comets of a season,” Lord Byron would say. “The glory and then nothing of a name.”

And yet, Jesus, the One bearing the name above all names, His grave was a blink. He could not own one for long. Although I suppose if owning the grave means besting the sinister powers of sin and death that give a grave its claim, He certainly holds these powers’ enduring titles (1 Corinthians 15:55-57). He owns them as a superior champion owns a weaker opponent. They came for Him. They were strong. But they approached Him in bold assumption and were met by an ugly fact. “No one takes my life from me,” Jesus said, “but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). “Now is the judgment of this world,” the Lord added, “now will the ruler of this world be cast out” (John 12:31). Indeed, and amen! His resurrection is the proof that His words were not empty. He’s alive, and if this is true, then even these darkly powers will be forced to their knees at this world’s final hour. They will coalesce from their formlessness in humble reverence for the One who is no longer the suffering servant but the Pantocrator—the ruler of all things created and uncreated.

Admittedly, the Lord’s work was not easy. The combat was stupendous, just as the lovely Victimae Paschali sings (LSB 460). But the good news remains as plainly splendid as it is plentiful. His foes were too weak. They lost everything, and their consequence was sealed for the great and final day.

In the meantime of eternity, to the victor goes the spoils. Among the prizes, to the Champion the most precious: us! He won us! And now, by the power of the Holy Spirit for faith, to be with Jesus is a believer’s forever. The grave is not our end. He filled in its gaping chasm. The devil cannot accuse us. He has been debarked. Death cannot consume us. It was defanged. And now, we are the Lord’s own, and we will be raised and adorned in bodies “like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 3:21)!

Immersed in this joyful news, may your celebration of Easter be wonderfully full-throated as you call out to this conquered and whimpering world, “He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!”

All For You

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Today is the Friday that, for centuries, the Church has called “good.” It is a strange designation, and yet, most appropriate. Without it, what hope against Sin, Death, and Satan would there be?

I’d say, “The Good Friday hour is upon us,” if that were sufficient. But it isn’t. It’s better to say, “The hours are upon us.” This is to say that the Lord’s death for mankind’s sin wasn’t swift. It didn’t happen in a flash. It didn’t come peacefully during sleep. It was preceded by ethereal misery.

When the Lord submitted Himself to the Devil’s viciousness, saying, “Now is your hour” (John 22:53a), and then allowed the fullness of Sin’s curse to crush Him, adding, “and the power of darkness” (v. 53b), unspeakable suffering began. There are no words to describe it. Which is why the Gospel writers really don’t even try. Like emotionless correspondents, they report the events. They speak simply.

For scope, Mark’s Gospel tells us the betrayal in Gethsemane occurred at midnight. That’s when it began. Beyond Gethsemane, Mark records:

“Then some of them began to spit on him; they blindfolded him, struck him, and said to him, ‘Prophesy to us, O Christ, who is it that struck you?’ The guards beat him…” (Mark 14:65).

All the inspired writers tell you these kinds of things. Within the limitations of human language, they present unfathomable cruelty in the plainest details.

“Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged” (John 19:1).

They don’t describe the event’s flaying nature. They don’t share the supernatural turmoil—the unseen grappling, the invisible but slicing dreadfulness occurring as the unholy trinity of Sin, Death, and Satan meet with God’s own flesh.

“When [the soldiers] had woven a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and a reed in his right hand, and they knelt before him and mocked him…. They spat on him and took the reed and struck him on the head” (Matthew 27:29-30).

The hours go on. Things get worse. But the writers scribble dryly. They don’t describe the bruising, the torn flesh, the streaming blood that pools whenever and wherever the Lord might stop to rest. Instead, He receives His cross and continues on.

“Carrying his own cross, he went out of the city to a place called Skull Hill, in Hebrew, Golgotha” (John 19:17).

The following is peculiar:

“As they led him away, they laid hold of Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, who was coming in from the country. On him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus” (Mark 15:21).

Has the visible and invisible cruelty become too much for even the unholy trinity and its agents to stomach? We can’t see or describe it. But they can. They know every drop of its tarry horror. Beholding the Lord’s exhaustion, are they becoming sympathetic? Are they relenting a little?

No. Simon of Cyrene is of little consequence except to ensure that Jesus makes it Golgotha. Simon will be their ignorant mule.

“And there they crucified him” (John 19:18).

The writers are succinct. It’s a gory scene—ghastly all along—but they do not describe its carnage. Some might say it’s because the reader already knew a crucifixion’s harshest details, and to describe them would be a waste of precious papyrus. That may be somewhat true. However, it’ll never be the only reason. The Gospel writer John tells his readers that to record and share in print everything Jesus said and did would require more library real estate than the earth can provide (John 21:25). But if the world unexpectedly grew a thousand times larger, and the books suddenly appeared, some containing the Passion’s accounting within, what’s written would still be an atom-sized jot incapable of describing the Lord’s fullest work.

And so, our loving God has taken something massively incomprehensible and made it simple.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

“He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

“[Jesus said] For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18).

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13).

I could go on and on sharing more and more of God’s simplified yet preferred renditions of His great love for you accomplished through the person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ. But I won’t. However, I will encourage you to join with the faithful for Good Friday worship. I urge you to immerse yourself in the Church’s consolidated remembrance of the hours in which our Savior labored to set the whole world free from the grip of perpetual night.

For the readers beyond my congregation’s borders, if your church does not observe Good Friday, find one that does. Go there. Settle into a pew. If you can, spy a crucifix. See there a hint to Sin’s weight. “Here may view its nature rightly,” the great hymn whispers solemnly, “Here its guilt may estimate” (“Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted,” LSB 451).

Even so, listen to God’s Word being read. Take in the Gospel preaching. Hear and rejoice that the Lord endured the horrible hours willingly. Take into yourself that His divine mind was thinking of you. You could not do it. But He could. And He did, all for you.

It was all for you.

P.S. If you need a place to go for Good Friday worship, here at Our Savior, we offer a 1:00 p.m. Tre Ore service and a 6:30 p.m. Tenebrae service. Consider joining us.

A Good Kind of Tired

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Holy Week begins today with Palm Sunday. Like any other week, Holy Week has seven days. And yet, it seems exceptionally longer than the others. By the time we get from Palm Sunday to Easter, a lot will have happened. For perspective, here at Our Savior, we will have packed at least ten weeks of sacred worship into these seven days. For our Kantor, musicians, and choirs, that’s an abundance of preparation and rehearsals. For the pastors, among so many other things, that’s a lot of sermon writing. I suppose that’s why you might hear me say in jest that the Lord and His pastors trade places on Easter morning. I often get very sick the week after Easter, usually from over-exertion. Although, I think it hit me early this year. I was terribly sick this past week.

Getting sick this time every year is one of many proofs that I could not do what the Lord did. He endured cosmic suffering. And yet, I count myself blessed if I can think through and preach a relatively coherent Easter sermon after Lent and Holy Week’s busyness has concluded.

I had an interesting conversation about these things last Sunday in the ER at Maclaren Hospital. A man sitting a few seats away from me in the waiting room started it. The worship pastor at his church, he endeavored to ask me how my church “does” Easter. I told him, even taking a chance at assuming between two clergy its exhausting nature. I assumed incorrectly. Along the way, he asked rather awkwardly why we continue doing it this way, especially when I almost always get sick year after year. At first, I took it as a reasonable observation and told him I had thought about cutting things back a little. But then he did something else. He took a passive-aggressive shot at what he believed was traditional worship’s tiredness. As he did, He explained worship shouldn’t be tiring, and he went out of his way to tell me that his church’s worship life could never be considered exhausting, that his church’s contemporary style was comfortable and easy—always fresh and new, always joyful, and always inspiring. He explained that worship is about praising God—about really feeling it, and blah blah blah.

Let me first say that’s not what worship is about. Praise is part of it (the lesser part, mind you) but that’s not its purpose. Worship begins with God. He serves us what we need—forgiveness. We respond with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. Think Isaiah 55:11 and Ecclesiastes 5:1-3.

Next, I’ll ask, “Why?” What’s going on inside a person that would cause him to impose on a stranger in this way? I get that I’m easily identifiable in my clerical collar, and perhaps by it, I may represent a more traditional position. I’m no stranger to such interactions. But that alone doesn’t invite the imposition. I certainly didn’t ask for a critique of our worship style or life. As a normal human being confiding in someone I assumed might understand, I would never even think to steer into another church leader’s sphere in this way. I have no reason to criticize him. I’ve never been to his church.

Thankfully, few clergyfolk I meet are like this. Most just want to meet and visit—like normal humans. Also, thankfully, I didn’t have the time (nor the mood) to debate this particular guitar-slinger. I was seconds from being escorted to the bedside of one of my church members who’d been in a car accident. I was pondering my words to them and not to the worship pastor. Although, Blaise Pascal’s thoughts on reason would have been appropriate if the conversation had continued. Pascal once said something about how human reason’s final use is to admit there’s an infinite vastness beyond its capabilities.

What does this have to do with the interaction I just described? If I’d had the time and energy, I think it might have mattered in at least two ways.

First, Holy Week does sometimes feel unreasonably challenging. As I said, I’ve considered excluding some of the worship opportunities for this reason. And yet, as Pascal implied, even human reason admits to blessings that can only be reached by extending beyond what’s reasonable. No, the Lord doesn’t want us murdering ourselves with devotion. Still, we can (and often should) stretch ourselves past what we know is easier. This is the “no pain, no gain” principle. Still, even in an elementary sense, we also can’t remain infants, drinking only milk. We need solid food (1 Corinthians 3:1-13). The historic rites and ceremonies of the Church embody this opportunity, and if there’s ever a time to reach for solid food, it’s during this pinnacle time of the Church Year.

Some might refer to our worship style here at Our Savior as “high mass.” That description has various outside interpretations. Although, compared to other Lutheran churches, I can guess what it means. Still, I’m not interested in the other churches. I’m the pastor here. And no matter what is implied or who we’re being compared to, I’m convinced we’re enjoying solid food in this place—meat and potatoes, not frozen waffles and milk duds. It’s certainly far from being about the preacher or service meeting us right where we are, giving us what we like, and never demanding anything more. God does not call for us to remain forever where we are. We are to reach higher (Colossians 3:1-2).

By the way, a person should be able to tell when they’ve left the “where we are” of every day and entered into the new day of “higher.” Our regular worship is already wired for this. Stop by anytime. You’ll know you’ve stepped from the secular world onto holy ground. Holy Week is this on steroids, and for very good reasons.

This stirs a second thought relative to what’s reasonable. Pascal admitted to an endless array of things beyond reason’s reach. Isn’t that more or less a nod toward the nature of faith? It’s the same kind of nod Saint Paul offers in the Epistle appointed for today’s Palm Sunday celebration. In Philippians 2:6, Paul admits Christ’s incarnation was an ungraspable truth existing far beyond reason’s borders. Very little about it makes sense. However, as challenging as it is, it’s utterly accessible to faith. This is where I might have pushed back on my conversation partner even further, crossing the border into his doctrines and sharing how I think it’s strange how someone like John Calvin could ever insist, “Finitum non capax infinitum,” which is to say, finite things cannot contain infinite things. Of course, Ulrich Zwingli assumed it years before when debating Luther at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529. But either way, to say the infinite cannot be located in the finite is to be trapped behind reason’s barrier. It certainly binds God to human premises.

Since I’ve already mentioned Christ’s incarnation, if Calvin’s words are valid, then we must dismiss Saint Paul’s reason-pummeling words in Colossians 1:19-20, where he writes, “For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19-20). Had the conversation gotten this far, I would have encouraged my new ER friend to reconsider what the finite containing the infinite means for things like Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I’m guessing he thinks these are just symbols. I wouldn’t attack him on this. But I would at least ask, “Is it possible they could be more?”

In the meantime, yes, the fullness of the infinite God was located in a finite human man—an object occupying a limited location. That man was Jesus. No, it doesn’t make sense. And Paul knows it. But that doesn’t stop him from upping lunacy’s ante in the Palm Sunday epistle with the reminder that the God-man Christ actually died. You think the incarnation is unreasonable; how about God dying? Paul goes further into irrationality, adding, “even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:8).

The historic rites and ceremonies dig deeply into this, especially during Holy Week. From Palm Sunday through to Holy Wednesday and then the Triduum—the holy three days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter—it’s a week that carries us into these things and more. It isn’t just a day or two of our favorite and most syrupy worship songs, whatever Bible verses the preacher happens to prefer at the time, and an engaging sermon with some fetching slides. It’s several days of reaching further.

To be fair, I should come at this from another direction. As insulting as the worship pastor in the ER waiting room was with his passive aggression (most of which I didn’t share), I’ll admit some in my more traditional camp do the same things he did; not a lot, but a few. They take similar opportunities to impose their pretentiousness rather than enjoying the conversation and encouraging others toward Christian worship’s inherent beauty and benefit. For example, they can make a pastor shepherding a storefront church feel lesser for not having what they have or doing what they’re doing. Again, there aren’t a lot of them. But as the saying goes, there’s one in every bunch. Confessional Lutheranism is no exception.

In conclusion, let me just say this: For those out there who are moving in the better direction—who are reaching higher—whether or not you have the classically ornate worship space, vestments, smells, bells, or whatever, I encourage you to stay the course. You already likely know we’re in a dark time in worship history, days when almost anything goes, and as it does, the faith that worship is supposed to feed becomes shallow and weak among so many. Nevertheless, anyone who’s served as a pastor for any reasonable length of time will tell you that shepherding God’s people from point A to point B takes time. Building the muscle to reach higher takes exercise. Catechesis is key. Introduce. Teach. Stay the course. As you do, rest assured your labors are not in vain, no matter the pace or progress.

And some final advice: If a man in a waiting room scoots a few chairs closer to you to have a genuine conversation about differing worship styles, enjoy the discussion. Such conversation can be refreshing and interesting. But if a peacocking purpose becomes obvious, before the conversation goes any further, I recommend leaning toward him and asking with wide room-scanning eyes, “You can see me?” That’ll close the conversation shop’s doors. Of course, if you’re not comfortable doing that, first, compliment his retro tee, and next, tell him the hospital called you to perform an exorcism, asking if he’s the one they called about. That’ll probably work.

Don’t Risk It

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We’re entering the fifth week of Lent. The further we go into Lent, the more I’m sad for the churches that skip this penitential season, electing to go straight to Easter. They’ll have missed a critical view of the empty tomb.

The Gospel should always be a church’s center. That said, one of the grand benefits of observing church seasons is that they provide us with different perspectives on the Gospel. Advent considers it one way. Epiphany another. Rather than letting us coast along thinking we know everything there is to know, church seasons lift the Gospel and turn it, allowing examination on all sides. Lent is no different. If observed rightly, Lent, and then Holy Week, deliver us to the Lord’s resurrection, having first shown us the cost of Easter’s joy. Holy Week—the days between Palm Sunday and Easter—dig so incredibly deeply in this regard. It needs to. Humanly speaking, we’d much rather come to worship on Palm Sunday and then again at Easter. We’d much rather enjoy these brighter festivals, having skipped the hours of terribleness that cement the two together.

Why is this? My first guess is that the sinful nature would prefer to keep its role in the narrative a secret. It knows that if we investigate the harder scenes, there’s a chance we’ll be shocked by what we discover—perhaps even learning something about ourselves we’d prefer not to know. These reasons feed my appreciation of the masters—Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and the like. They looked into these spaces and shared the details. A more recent master, Carl Bloch, handled the details well, too. Perhaps you’ve seen his portrait of Christ being comforted by the angel in Gethsemane (Luke 22:43)? Far too many images of Christ in the garden before His betrayal are portrayed with the preferred fluffiness of gilded rays pouring from heaven, Jesus intently meditating but untouched by sadness. But that’s not what the Scriptures describe. They describe intense sadness. Bloch captures the Lord’s physical exhaustion and the angel that came to bolster Him for the forthcoming fight.

Since I already brought it up, Luther wondered aloud about the Lord’s time in Gethsemane. In a sermon in 1545, he asked his listeners why the Lord shivered and shook with such dread while praying. The gory mistreatments hadn’t even begun yet. And still, His behavior is shocking. It grips us. The Lord’s sweat became drops of blood, and Luther shared the reason: “It is for the sin of the world which God has laid upon Him.” Speaking for each of us, Luther added, “My intolerable sin brings Him to this, my sin which He has taken upon Himself and which is so hard to carry” (W.A. 52. 738). Who wants to be blamed for another person’s sadness? Not me. It stings as few other things do. When it happens, I want to look away.

Lent and Holy Week insist, “Don’t look away. Behold the bludgeoned and pathetic Christ. Indeed, it’s startling that He would suffer and die in this way. You’ve heard so often how He did it for you. Do you see what ‘for you’ means? Let your unsettled heart be a clue.”

Of course, that’s not the end of the story. Lifting the Lententide narrative and turning it for a better view, Luther continued that the Lord’s startling grief is also filling in confidence’s terrible gaps, becoming “a comfort to you, that you may be certain that Christ has taken your sin upon Himself, and paid the price for it. If, then, your sins are laid on Christ, be content. They lie in the right place, where they belong” (Ibid.).

Still, there’s the startling nature to all of this.

The topic of abortion came up during our church’s School Board meeting this past Tuesday. Relative to what we were discussing, I mentioned to the Board that I’m one who believes that the only way to end abortion once and for all would be to require our populace to see it—to experience the sights, sounds, and smells of genocide, much like the Allied troops marched Germany’s complacent citizens through the concentration camps after World War II. Changes in heart and mind occurred almost instantaneously in Germany. My theory, which I cannot necessarily prove, is that while incremental behavioral conditioning works, there’s a layer of our being that can only be pierced by jarring news. In a sense, the Bible does both. So much of the Lord’s comings and goings in the Bible are given in ways that caress us to careful attention. In a purely human sense, we’re being incrementally habituated to His identity and what He has come to do. But then there’s the actual doing—the viciousness of His suffering and death. The events themselves are anything but careful. They were a swift and consolidated shotgun blast of dreadfulness. Mark’s Gospel says the Lord was betrayed at midnight on Thursday, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the Lord died about the ninth hour, or 3:00 pm, on Friday. Compared to the rest of the Lord’s ministry, there’s very little time to be eased into it.

While it might not be the best analogy, this reminds me of something W.H. Auden wrote about stark incentives. I’ve been reading and writing about the psychology of attitudinal shifts for my doctoral work. Auden agreed that behavioral conditioning had a proven record. But then he joked that with a few select drugs and a simple electrical appliance, he could have almost anyone reciting the Athanasian Creed in public, and he could produce the results far more quickly than any behaviorist. Of course, he was talking about torturing someone into compliance. But beneath his dark comedy lies an elementary truth: extreme experiences have a way of cutting through our protected selves, revealing what might otherwise remain hidden to us, ultimately passing us by.

If Easter greeting cards draped in sunshine, lilies, empty crosses, and empty tombs are all one knows of the Lord’s passion, then something incredibly important has been overlooked.

I guess I’m saying this morning that Lent and Holy Week play an essential role in preventing a superficial understanding of the Lord’s labors. They were jarring, and much of these penitential seasons’ collegial goal is to remind us that redemption came at a cost, that its price tag was attached to a world-sized pile of human brokenness, and then to show us the price was paid in full. From there, the startling image becomes one of genuine comfort. A crucified Jesus is a testament to the unfathomable depths of God’s mercy. His resurrection becomes an indescribable celebration worthy of a joyful ruckus. Skipping over the precision of Lent and Holy Week risks missing this.

Don’t miss out. Start making plans now, especially for Holy Week. Here at Our Savior, we’ll have services every day, sometimes twice daily. If you do not have a church home, or perhaps your church offers little opportunity to observe the harder things, feel free to join us. You are more than welcome. Listen to God’s Word and its preaching. By these things, look into the challenging moments. Measure sin’s cost. Be equipped for another startling of sorts.

In other words, no one goes to someone’s tomb who has been viciously mauled expecting to find that person restored and alive. And yet, we do. We behold and hear Easter’s cosmic announcement that the One who suffered and died so gruesomely is now alive, never to die again, His resurrection victory being ours by faith. Talk about shocking! Indeed, it’s the overwhelming sense of joy that the Easter celebration means to bring.