back resting

We are back and we are resting. And Aquila is resting his back. He has been doing the manly man thing and sighing about his backache, lots of anti-inflamatories and heating pads and all that. But today he called the doctor. Three weeks is too long.

Going away together - couple hundred bucks. Argument over theology - priceless. Really, we should not go to these kinds of conferences together. I found it less than valuable for exactly the opposite reasons he did. I thought - teaching tap dancing on the Titantic, and he thought everyone was muddled.

I am still struggling with the Matthew texts, and with the role and authority of the preacher to speak out these words and speak gospel instead of law. Or law and gospel, properly differentiated. And whether folks out there hear this - or do they primarily hear judgment (don't come to the party and you'll be slaughtered = you'll go to hell if you aren't a good church member - which was not what I said - but what they might have heard!) and check out before they hear gospel (the doors are now open to all - good and bad - to come to the feast - put on your wedding garment - which is a grateful heart - and come) which is how I completed the sermon.

I was complimented on actually taking on the question of the wedding garment guy. My line was - it's not about fairness, but about relationship with the king himself. It's not unfair to expect gratitude and joy and a proper response to the great gift.

I used the example of my Dear Son who won't dress up to look for work. What do you expect if you show up at the job fair looking like you've just come from the skate park? No, it's not fair - but if you desire a relationship with another, you have to reach out to the other on their terms.

God reaches out to us - these lessons remind me that there is a response required. A response which acknowledges who God is, what God did for us, and our proper relationship in this.
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Matt 22:1-14

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Beginning thoughts

God does not play by our rules

Like a cat, God is just God

Do we think our everyday garment of compromise is adequate for the wedding banquet?

Should I spend any part of the sermon trying to explain that the issue isn't that God is unfair? It's that God is God.

Shouldn't we be terrified? (Thanks to BB Taylor's essay "Tales of Terror, Times of Wonder.' found on Textweek.com.)

Where is grace to be spoken here? Where is true grace?
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little green men

I actually quoted Luther in the sermon. The text (I preached from Philippians 3) drove me to the idea of alien righteousness. So I had to find Luther on the "Two kinds of Righteousness" (which are the alien and proper kinds). And that was the theme of the sermon.

First we recognize that all we are, achieve and do is 'rubbish', and then we respond to our new track suit of grace by running the race with eyes on the prize.

Yeah, I know, mixed metaphors. For first service I did it straight. At the second service I had powerpoint and pictures - including a little green man for the alien.

There are two retired pastors in our congregation. They seemed to approve. Lutherans tend to be get queasy about santification - it's not a popular subject. Aquila in his pure Lutheran mode had a problem with including the last line of the passage from Philippians 2 for our wedding text - "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" (You can tend we were quite the serious couple way back when.)

However, perhaps our reluctance to think about 'proper righteousness' and preach on the challenges of the life lived in grace is part of our on-going problem of cheap grace. Yep, God died for me, now get out of my way.

We encounter the misapprehension of the church and the cheap grace over and over. An e-mail - I'm a member of the church but haven't been active for a long time. I'd like my child and spouse baptized. Can we do this privately? Can we do this without any pre-education? Can we do this without ever talking to one of the pastors? Can we do this without ever darkening the church door again? (I made those last two requests up).

About a year ago I met with a family who presented with 3 children and a baby. They wanted to join the church, enroll all the children in Sunday School and get the baby baptized. Great! Turns out each child was baptized in a different local church of our denomination - each about two years apart. The family had joined each church in succession. Children had never gone to Sunday School anywhere. I started to think that this had a lot to do with family stresses and shame. They were ashamed that they never followed through on their promises. I discouraged them from attaching to us and asked them first to contact their last pastor (a friend of mine, the gentlest soul in the world) and work with her about accommodating their family and it's needs. MP thought I had driven them away. But I felt that unless they heard a word - a considered and thoughtful word, not a shaming word - that asked them to reflect on the separation between their words and actions, they would never come to terms with God's call to them. They did not return. I didn't ask my friend if they came back to her church.

And then there are the 12 year olds who are dropped off on Wednesday night for confirmation who have never been to worship or to Sunday School - really, never. Those parents I get really angry at. And they are the ones we have the most issues with.