Tag: Judeo-Christian

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS

This year, St. Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday. So in 2024, we essentially have an annual celebration of love wrapped up together with an annual commemoration of mortality. Consequently, this strange juxtaposition of the romance of Valentine’s Day with the solemnity of Ash Wednesday highlights the fact that this world is often a mixed bag of the joyous and the sorrowful, the wholesome and the broken. In fact, we’ve seen this mixed-bag reality on stark display within current events, both nationally and internationally. Moreover, the Bible readings for our Sunday worship services recently have been focused on Jesus’ spiritual warfare against evil spiritual forces. Therefore, we’re reminded by everything I just mentioned above that our world’s physical conflicts, both locally and globally, are actually reflections of immense spiritual conflicts.

Throughout the Four Gospels of the New Testament, we see our Lord Jesus on the march against the demonic forces that oppress and bedevil humanity. From town to town, and from synagogue to synagogue, we see Jesus in the Gospels continually on the move to cast out demons and bring us healing. And it’s not insignificant that Jesus often used the setting of a synagogue as the arena of his spiritual combat. For even the meaning of the word synagogue has something to say about this.

Although the word synagogue describes a Jewish congregation of faith, it’s actually a word of Greek origin due to the widespread Greco-Roman influence on the ancient Mediterranean world. So, synagogue literally means “together bring” or “together gather.” And this is like other such words with the “syn“ prefix: words like synthesis (meaning “together stated” or “together put forth”) and synod (meaning “together path” or “together journey”). So, over and over in the New Testament, we see Jesus moving ever onward to synagogue with us (to “gather together” with us) and to synod with us (to “journey together” with us) in order to engage with the demonic forces of the spiritual realm, and to heal us with the good news of mercy and redemptive love freely granted to us in faith by his sacrificial death and resurrection life.

Furthermore, Jesus does this healing and restoring of our souls through three principle ways: 1) through his teachings, 2) through his forgiveness, and 3) through his rebuking of evil spiritual forces. That is, Jesus synagogues with us and synods with us in order to provide us with the deep personal healing of his Divine Guidance (his teachings), of his Divine Absolution (his forgiveness of sins), and of his Divine Authority (his absolute sovereignty over all spiritual powers). So just as Yahweh-God in the Old Testament rebuked the waves of the Red Sea to lead the Israelites into freedom, our Lord Jesus Christ also rebukes the demonic disorder and chaos of our world in order to restore us to the right-guidance and wholeness of God’s goodness. For example, when Jesus was confronted with someone who had an impure spirit in Mark 1, he immediately silenced this corrupt spirit and cast it out. And he did so with no magical incantation; no wizarding spell or potion; no sorcerer’s abracadabra. It’s simply because of his Divine Authority as the Son of God through his Word of Command.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we all know that the year ahead is going to be a conflicted one because of a very contentious US Presidential election and a very unstable global system. But as Christians, we also know that all of these things are physical manifestations of the much larger spiritual warfare that is being fought. Yet we have a Commander and Champion who has absolute authority, always provoking and exposing any and all unclean spirits that vie for our hearts and minds — any and all impure philosophies or theologies or spiritualities we might have.

Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, constantly challenges any and all bad ideologies so that we might be healed from these demonic spirits. For Jesus wants us to be rightly-guided by the good order and original blessing that God intended for us and his whole creation from the very beginning of it all. He wants us to synagogue together and to synod together (“gather together” and “journey together”) according to his Word, knowing that whenever we begin speaking and sharing Jesus’ good news of his grace and truth to seek and save the lost ones of our world then that’s when the unclean spirits can be provoked and stirred-up. But our Lord Jesus Christ himself commands these unclean spirits to “Be silent!” and to “Come out!” By the Divine Authority of his Holy Word and the Divine Power of his Holy Spirit, our Lord Jesus frees us from the disorder and chaos of the various demonic forces we encounter within this fallen and sinful world, and he restores us by his grace (over and over again) unto his original blessing — unto the good order, wholeness and true fulfillment of God’s uncorrupted intention for his creation.

Together in Christ, Pastor Tim

AN ECUMENICAL PEOPLE OF GOD

While staying with our son, daughter-in-law and grandkids this past August, we were able to see many of our national shrines and memorials in Washington DC and the surrounding area. We were blessed to be able to visit the giant obelisk monument to the Father of our Country, George Washington, at the National Mall area. We also visited Mount Vernon, George Washington’s beloved home in Alexandria VA, of which he famously said, “I’d rather be at Mount Vernon with a friend or two about me, than to be attended at the Seat of Government by the Officers of State and the Representatives of every Power in Europe.” We were also able to see the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the Smithsonian Museum of American History (which displays the actual Star-Spangled Banner of our national anthem), and the Smithsonian Museum of Air & Space. In addition, we visited the US Naval Academy and harbor area of Annapolis MD, and we saw Fort McHenry (of Star-Spangled banner fame) in Baltimore.

As we traveled around these amazing historical sites, one thing I took note of was the fact that our national founding (although imperfect) was deeply rooted in biblical faith. However, our Founders made sure that our establishment was nonsectarian. While they repeatedly appealed to God in our founding documents (speaking of our “Creator” and our “Lord”), and while they regularly addressed God in our founding traditions (Congressional prayer, oaths of office, and so on), they also made sure that there would be no establishment of a state-run religious denomination. Therefore, I observed during our trip a clear Judeo-Christian rootedness on display at all of our national shrines and memorials, but this was accompanied by a clear interdenominational, nonsectarian and ecumenical emphasis according to the clear direction of our Founders.

By the way, the word “ecumenical” (oikoumene in Greek) literally means “the whole inhabitable earth” — but it refers to the concept that the entire Christian Church of all its various denominations should work together to develop closer relationships and to promote Christian unity according to the biblical High Priestly Prayer of Jesus in John, chapter 17, verses 20-26.

So all of this stuff got me thinking about our ecumenical relations right here where we live as Mt. Olive Lutheran Church. I think of Via De Cristo (VDC), the spiritual retreat ministry our congregation participates in. While it’s mostly a retreat ministry involving Lutherans, rooted in the covenantal and sacramental theology of the Lutheran branch of Christianity, VDC also draws in people from many different denominations of our Lord’s Holy Church. I also think about the Lift Up Crescenta Valley ecumenical association we are a part of, as well as all the various ecumenical partnerships we support like the Bailey Human Care Center.

Like the ark of the Prophet Noah and the fishing boat of the Apostle Peter, all the denominations of the Christian Faith constitute the holy life raft for all believers and followers of Jesus Christ in a world deluged with the floodwaters of hopelessness and spiritual death. In fact, the Christian ecumenical movement is often symbolized by a boat, representing that all the people of all the denominations of the Church of Jesus Christ are in the same spiritual boat together.

So essentially, the various branches of the Christian Church are UNITED IN THE ESSENTIALS of our Christian Faith: 1) Jesus of Nazareth was and is more than a man, even much more than a prophet or priest or king, 2) Jesus is the only-begotten divine Son of God, 3) Jesus freely gave of himself in sacrificial love to be the once-and-for-all-time offering of atonement for our sins, 4) Jesus was crucified, was dead, was buried, then he rose from the grave and ascended into heaven, 5) Jesus is our Lord and Savior, 6) We proclaim the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life by the blood of Jesus, and 7) We do good works of lovingkindness and service in the name of Jesus. However, we also have DIVERSITY IN THE NON-ESSENTIALS of our Christian Life: that is, diversity of denominational practices related to sacraments, ordination, worship, piety, organizational structures, etc.

Therefore, as the various branches of the Christian Church have diversity in the non-essentials but unity in the essentials, we should also have CHARITY IN ALL THINGS. We can have a joyful and charitable spirit with one another as we agree to disagree regarding the non-essentials, because we share together in the all-surpassing seven Christian essentials I listed above.

“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:22-23)

Together in Christ,  Pastor Tim

THE REALLY REAL STRAWBERRY OF GOD

(I was asked by a parishioner on Pentecost Sunday several weeks ago for a printed copy of my sermon for that morning, so I’ve decided to also use this sermon as the basis for my July/August article.)

Have you ever eaten any kind of wild berry? If you have, then you might have noticed a difference in flavor from the garden-variety that’s been selectively bred vs. the wild-variety of the natural world. And there’s even some taste differences between berries that have been farmed conventionally (with chemical pesticides and artificial fertilizers) vs. berries that have been farmed more organically.

My favorite kind of berry is the strawberry for sure, and the kind of strawberry we’re all most familiar with is the conventionally farmed garden-variety strawberry that’s the descendant of the wild strawberry. And of course, the garden-variety strawberry that we’re most accustomed to is a mass produced strawberry breed that has been designed and grown to be consistently the biggest, most beautiful and juiciest strawberry possible. These strawberries are still technically real strawberries, but they’re selectively grown using only the best GMO seeds. So the supermarket strawberries that we’re used to eating are essentially the very pinnacle of what a strawberry could be.

Now because the flavor of the strawberry is so delicious, people have also devised ways to distill its flavor down to be even more concentrated than the flavor of the strawberry itself. And wanting to make it even more powerful, we’ve taken that distilled juice to make delicious strawberry candy, with a heavy dose of sugar and a little sodium added to it. Then, because real strawberry juice and pure cane sugar are too expensive, the large scale candy maker has decided to use artificial strawberry flavor along with high fructose corn syrup, and they’ve even bumped up the sodium a little bit more.

Then the soft drink company comes along, and says they’re going to make a soda pop out of the popular mass produced strawberry candy. And then the gas station minimart people come along and say they’re going to make a slurpee that’s flavored like the soda, that was flavored like the mass produced candy, that was flavored like the original candy, that was distilled from the genetically modified strawberry, that was based upon the wild strawberry of the real natural world. So by the time we go from the wild strawberry through all the various iterations down to the slurpee, we have something that tastes vaguely strawberry-ish, but isn’t anything like a real strawberry.

Consequently, if someone buys that slurpee and they start drinking it as they’re walking along the road, and they see off the road some funny little red things that kind of look like the picture of the red berries on the plastic cup of their slurpee, then they just might pick one of those berries and take a bite. And they would realize that it sort of tastes a little bit like their slurpee, but it’s not nearly as flavorful. So they decide to stick with their slurpee.

Brothers and sisters, we live in a time of hyper-reality, where things are supposedly now more real than real — more strawberry than a real strawberry, so to speak. There are the hyper-realities of virtual reality and virtual community, for instance, but all this unreality of our present era is no accident. In fact, sociologists say that our society has moved out of the modern era into what they call the post-modern era.

In the modern era, society accepted the idea that there is such a thing as objective reality. However, in our new postmodern era, there’s only your truth and my truth — there’s only subjective reality. So in this present upside-down era, there is no such thing as an objective reality that is universally true. It’s like Pontius Pilate cynically stating to Jesus, “What is truth?” (see John 18:37-38). Just like the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, today’s postmodern mindset assumes there is no such thing as “the truth.” It assumes there is only power, and whichever narrative can muster the most muscle to support it is the winner. But what do the Holy Scriptures declare about this?

Several of our Bible readings on Pentecost Sunday 2021 declared that there is such a thing as universal truth. In our Gospel Reading from John 15:26-27 and 16:4b-15, our Lord Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit of God twice as the “Spirit of Truth.” And in our Epistle Reading from Second Corinthians 3:17–4:9, the Apostle Paul refers to the plain truth of the gospel. So for Christians, there is indeed such a thing as objective reality and universal truth, and God is the source of all truth (both natural truth and spiritual truth). Whether revealed by the natural world through science and reason, or revealed by the supernatural world through faith and spirit, God is the source and foundation of all of it.

But we’re now being told these days that the distinctions between mother, father and child are unjust power categories from a bygone era. We’re being told that a mother is now a “birthing parent,” and that a child must give their permission for a diaper change. Give me a break! And some educators now want us to believe that 2+2=4 is a “subjective cultural construct,” and not objectively true. Well, just try rocketing astronauts to Mars without 2+2=4. Good luck with that!

While there’s some usefulness to the various critical deconstructions of absolutely everything these days, I’m convinced that the radical cynicism, criticism and deconstruction which characterize our present postmodern era are ultimately a dead end road. It’s essentially what our passage from Second Corinthians 3 and 4 would call “the god of this age” — what we might call the god of this era — and it’s a god that continues to try to blind hearts and minds to the grace and truth of Almighty God.

However, the “Spirit of Truth” will guide us through it all. Like Dante in Dante’s Inferno, we must pass through the fires of this present age before we come to the glorious return to the harmonious natural reality of Eden that God promises us through Jesus Christ our Savior — the glorious return to the really real natural strawberry (so to speak) of God’s original blessing in the Garden.

The Apostle Paul says in our Second Corinthians reading, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” and our Lord Jesus says in our Gospel of John reading, this freedom-giving Spirit of the Lord is the “Spirit of Truth.” So it’s clear that these two aspects of God’s Spirit are inseparably linked together. Freedom and Truth… Truth and Freedom… You can’t have one without the other.

Therefore, if we stand firm upon our Judeo-Christian belief in objective reality and universal truth — unlike the false gospel of the postmodern god of this era — then we will be grounded in the really real and we will be truly free indeed.

Together in Christ, Pastor Tim

BUILDING BRIDGES IN JESUS’ NAME

In the Beatitudes of Jesus Christ in Matthew 5:1-12, our Lord Jesus very plainly states that his believers and followers will be persecuted because of our faith in him.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”

Matthew 5:11

And after Jesus states this, he goes on in Matthew 5 to specify the particular aspects of following him that will get us into trouble within our world. He specifies things like being salt and light, which means being active witnesses to his gospel within our world. And he highlights that his followers will be observant of the Ten Commandments, listing the following: that his followers will value human life within a world that devalues it, that we will honor and uphold the covenant of marriage within an adulterous world, that we will be keepers of our word within a deceitful world, and he adds that we will be merciful within an unforgiving world, that we will love all people as children of our Heavenly Father, and that we will prayerfully seek to build bridges even with our enemies.

Many despised Jesus for his ethics of inclusivity and bridge-building. He was absolutely despised for his insistence that all people are to be treated as children of God and they must be regarded equally as such: Hebrew and Pagan, Jew and Roman, male and female, countryman and foreigner, so on and so forth. However, when building bridges between very different people according to his grace and truth, Jesus essentially warns us in Matthew 5:11 that IF YOU BUILD BRIDGES THEN YOU WILL OFTEN BE MISUNDERSTOOD FROM BOTH SIDES.

When we follow Jesus by building bridges between different people, especially people of different points of view, the simple truth is that we should expect to be persecuted, reviled, and have all kinds of evil uttered against us. And this is especially true when we follow Jesus by building bridges of understanding, coexistence and cooperation in all areas of human life (ethnicity, religion, politics, sexuality, culture, etc.). So, we ought to be prepared for this rejection and condemnation.

In particular, within today’s religiously diverse society, how are we as Christians to be reconcilers and bridge builders? How are we to be true to our own spiritual inheritance while we seek greater understanding with other religious groups? How are we to understand our own religious faith and spirituality in relation to non-Christian groups? Is there a positive and constructive perspective on this issue that glorifies God and benefits everyone?

For me, “non-Christian” does not mean “un-Christian” or “anti-Christian.” And for me, God is like a great body of water connecting all the various ports and harbors that occupy God’s shoreline. These various harbors are the various religions, and the various piers (on which we dock our individual boats) are the various traditions within each religion. Consequently, there’s a Judeo-Christian harbor that Jews and Christians share (although we have different piers in this shared harbor). There’s also a Muslim harbor, a Hindu harbor, a Buddhist harbor, a Sikh harbor, and so on. So, in this metaphor we are all connected by the Great Water (God), but we each occupy a unique and special place on it.

Therefore, we can explore God’s diverse Oneness from our own safe harbor (“Judeo-Christian Harbor”) and from our own particular dock in this harbor (“Christianity Pier”). So, as with all the various peoples of faith, we can sail out on the great water of God to explore, discover and grow in understanding and wisdom. We can visit other harbors, and we can fish the Great Water (as fishers of people for Christ), but we come home to our own safe harbor when we are tired from our journeys and are in need of our spiritual home port.

Our Christianity Pier and Judeo-Christian Harbor are our secure jumping-off point into the Great Ocean of God. The doctrines of our Christian Faith are wonderfully and gloriously true — especially the tri-unity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as well as the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus the Son of God. So yes, God is truly revealed in these wonderful doctrines of Christianity, but God is also much more than is revealed in these doctrines.

Therefore, we travel out to sea for religious exploration and discovery, and for fishing for people out at sea, but NOT for religious conquest of other ports. For me, I enjoy going out into the beautiful Ocean of God and exploring, and I seek to fish for people in Jesus’ name, but I don’t raid the other harbors and ports like some kind of spiritual pirate. Simply put, we witness to Christ Jesus best in this bridge-building way, and it will bring upon us misunderstanding, condemnation, and even persecution, but Jesus gives to his persecuted believers the following promise:

“Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Matthew 5:12

Together in Christ, Pastor Tim