Abiding with God: A Meditation on Psalm 15

LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?

who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness,

And speaketh the truth in his heart.

He that backbiteth not with his tongue,

nor doeth evil to his neighbour,

nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.

In whose eyes a vile person is contemned;

but he honoureth them that fear the LORD.

He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.

He that putteth not out his money to usury,

nor taketh reward against the innocent.

He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

Psalm 15 is a good compliment to the perhaps better known readings for this Sunday from Matthew 5 (the Beatitudes which Jesus uses to begin His Sermon on the Mount) and the classic Old Testament summary of the what God expects from His people in Micah 6 (to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before Him.)  Like these other texts, Psalm 15 addresses the holy life God calls all people to walk if they wish to abide with Him, and rings like a harmonious chord with the other human voices God used to compose His Scriptures from Moses to the Apostles.

Of course, this harmony of Scripture sounds discordant in an age of narcissistic self-absorption where most people think that if there is a god out there, he/she/it/they are totally cool with most everyone.  Where churches or faith groups devolve “worship” into personal self-justifying affirmation love fests, sitting in the dark and trying to encounter God like pagan dancers under the moon at a solstice, or occultists holding séances and communing through Ouija boards, focusing on one’s self produces a horribly distorted image of God by casting Him in one’s own image.  Worse yet, self-absorbed navel gazing is a happy hunting ground of the demonic, where lying spirits as old as time twist and delude people into ever greater depravity and slavery.  As an answer to every generation’s temptation to look for truth and meaning inside themselves, God breaks through the confusion and darkness to speak His Word which gives meaning and dignity to human life.

Shattering the relativism of our age, the Prophet David asks, “Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?”  The response is poetically phrased in a series of observations on the holy life God demands of people if they are to dwell with Him, echoing the voice of God when it thundered from Mt. Sinai:  walk uprightly, work righteousness, and speak truth.  Walking uprightly according to God’s Law (cf. the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20) means, as Jesus so appropriately summarized it, loving God with all of one’s being (heart, soul, strength, and mind) and loving one’s neighbor as one’s self.  Lest that love of God and neighbor be neutered by self-serving sluggards into some kind of purely metaphysical or philosophical exercise of the mind, working righteousness means to put that love into action in real, physical ways.  The love of God shapes the whole of one’s existence into living faith, which cannot but reflect the inexhaustible love God has for every human being who will ever live, toward every neighbor we will ever encounter.  Working righteousness is the active living out of the love of God and neighbor which is the natural fruit of walking uprightly before the Law of God.  To round out this glorious summary is to speak truth not only to the world around us, but within our own hearts—that eternal and unchanging truth of God’s Word to mankind.  Just as no one can really separate the idea of walking uprightly before the Law of God from working righteousness of that Law of love to God and neighbor, neither can these be separated from speaking the truth of God’s Eternal Word.

The Psalmist then explicates these united principles in a few practical examples, such as not doing evil to one’s neighbor through gossip or usury, honoring those who honor God rather than those who repudiate Him, taking one’s oaths seriously even when they cause one loss or harm, and not betraying the innocent for gain.  These are not meant to be exhaustive (as if they would replace the whole testimony of God’s Word,) but explanatory, so that the one who sings this ancient hymn won’t forget that loving God and neighbor means real action in real life… and this real action in real life, brings with it real communion with the God who is Himself the basis of reality itself.

The problem, of course, is that the inverse is also true:  failure to walk uprightly, work righteousness, and speak truth will break a person’s communion with God.  This harsh reality is made all the more painful when we examine ourselves before God’s perfect Law of love, and find ourselves wanting.  No one fully loves God with every fiber of their being, every second of every day; no one fully loves their neighbor like they love themselves, every second of every day; no one fully speaks truth both within their heart and to the world at large, every second of every day.  God is always holy, righteous, upright, and truthful—always being and acting in perfect love within His perfect Unity in Trinity, and also toward His whole creation.  Even when He must judge evil and wickedness so as to preserve truth and love, He does so with perfect righteousness and goodness.  Such perfection in our God reveals in us our woeful condition after our fall into sin, and our worthiness to receive only death and hell—eternal separation and perdition—from the Author of Life and Love.  God’s character, His communion, and His Law do not change, regardless of our fallen inability to approach them.

Thanks be to God, it is also His love which moved Him to send His Son so that our communion with Him might be restored.  Through Jesus Christ alone, The Father’s Eternal Word made flesh and born of the blessed Virgin, was the sinful lack of man’s love for God and neighbor paid for in His life, death, and resurrection.  Jesus as the love of God incarnate, suffered all the depravity of mankind to be put upon Himself, so that by His stripes we might be healed.  This blessed Gospel of the Vicarious Atonement where mankind is restored to fellowship with our Creator for the sake of His suffering and death, Jesus commissioned His Apostles and their successors to preach throughout the world by the power of His Holy Spirit working through His Word.  What the Prophets of the Old Testament looked forward to in hope, the Apostles testified to as living witnesses, that all the world to the end of time might live by faith and repentance before Christ’s Word of Law and Gospel, receiving His gracious gift of forgiveness and reconciliation with God.  What we were unable to do according to the Law because of our fallen and broken nature, Christ accomplished in our stead, and continues to give freely to all who will turn from their darkness and trust in Him.

Such faith and repentance does not overthrow the Law of Love, but fulfills it.  No longer must the people of the world despair of their inability to achieve the perfection of our holy God so as to abide with Him, because He has healed our brokenness by coming to abide with us.  Such boundless grace and love does not call people to despair and terror before the holiness of the Law, but to see in it a new calling to rise up by faith which strives toward that summit of perfect love.  Though in this world we will continue to struggle against the sinful broken nature coursing like poison through our veins, we have sealed to us the promise of Christ’s reconciliation for the sake of His Cross, by His Word working in the washing of Holy Baptism, feeding us in His Holy Supper, and forgiving us in His Holy Absolution.  Even as we stumble and fall in our faith’s pursuit of God’s infinite heights of love, His Holy Spirit enlivens us to do what we could not do of ourselves, continually drawing us away from the darkness and back to His light, always ready to refresh His people in the grace and mercy of Christ.

Who shall abide with God?  By their own power, philosophy, and works:  no one.  But by the love of God in Jesus Christ, all who will receive Him in repentance and faith, will abide with Him by His grace unto life everlasting.  Let the empty words of a delusional and dying world be put away, that you may hear the Eternal Word which calls you to restored communion and life with the lover, creator, and redeemer of your soul.  Hear Him today, repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

Foolishness: A Meditation on 1st Corinthians 1

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; 

but unto us which are saved it is the power of God

As St. Paul opens his letter to the church at Corinth, he begins first by identifying the faithful as united with Christ in a common living and saving faith.  This faith was not their work so that they might glory in it, but rather it was the work of God who called them into His fellowship, just as Jesus had called the Apostles into that same fellowship.  Paul seems always quick to remind his hearers that it is God who created the world, and God who saves the world, rather than anyone else who might presume to do so.

In our age, such trust in God's providence is often considered foolishness by those who control the levers of power in politics, academia, business, and the bureaucracies of churches.  It would seem that nearly every place men gather together, they begin to measure their own power and intellect against each other, and thus begin a pecking order of who is to be preferred above or before another.  Political parties form, and within them they discern in their own wisdom who is to be preferred and who is to be rejected in the pursuit of power; academic school houses coalesce, and within them they create the opaque rules and rituals which determine whose voice and ideas will be prized and whose rebuffed in the pursuit of wisdom; corporations and industries aggregate, determining whose skills and talents will be valued and whose discarded in the pursuit of wealth and resources; church bodies build up their infrastructures as they solemnly declare who is inside and outside their communities, and whose pointy hat on whose pointy head shall be held as supreme over all in their pursuit of spiritual conquest.  Somehow, when people bring themselves together in their sinful pride, they find ways to accentuate that pride in communities which reflect and amplify their wicked hearts, justifying themselves in their own wisdom.  The politician claims his superiority by saying, "I am of the Elephant" or "I am of the Ass!"  The captain of industry says, "I am of Smith" or "I am of Marx!"  The academic says, "I am of Harvard" or "I am of Yale!"  The religionist says "I am of Peter" or "I am of Paul."

No matter how men aggregated themselves in their pride, it is merely their own wisdom and power which they worship as they do so.  Such pride easily forgets the distinction between creature and Creator, of redeemed and Redeemer, of saved and Savior.  Not one institution made by human hands brought the world into being, and not one of them will be standing when the Last Day dawns.  Not one academic degree was required to speak to the universe into existence, and not one of them will be worth anything before the Eternal Judge who is Himself all Wisdom.  Not one corporation was needed to order the resources of the universe, and not one of them will be solvent in the Eschaton.  Not one denomination or sect was present within the Holy Trinity to establish righteousness and holiness and love and beauty and truth-- and not one of them will endure before Him who is perfect unity in community, when His Kingdom has fully and finally come.  Quite to the contrary, every prideful work of human hearts and minds is bound in the fallen sinfulness of those who dream them up, and despite our fallen nature's inclination to receive them as eternal truth, none of them shall endure.

What does endure, however, is the Word and Wisdom of God.  He who was before all things shall also be after all things, and the wisdom He speaks by His Spirit into this fallen world will never falter nor fade.  That Eternal Word is the only begotten of the Father, the Eternal Son through whom and for whom all things were made, and of whom the Holy Spirit testifies without ceasing.  This believed Son, Jesus Christ, is the Creator of all the creation, the Redeemer of all those who have fallen into pride and foolishness, the Savior of all who are enslaved by sin, death, hell, and the devil.  This Jesus, crucified for the sins of the world, is the only Name given under heaven whereby all may be saved.  This Jesus, who was and is and is yet to come, has called all people to Himself in faith and repentance, that all might live in Him by His grace forever.

To the prideful wise of our age, such a message sounds like foolishness.  It does not help the politician's power, the academic's prestige, the businessman's profit, nor the sectarian's preeminence.  To a world which is dying by its own diseased hands, twisted hearts, and delusional minds, it is ridiculous to think that we are not the captains of our own ships, the masters of our own destinies, the saviors of our own souls.  But to all those who hear the voice of the Eternal Word speaking in tones which only the Spirit can breath into a human heart, such terrible Law and consoling Gospel is the power of God unto eternal life and salvation for all who will repent and believe.  This is the Light which shines unconquerable in the darkness of a fallen world, and though it may be freely rejected by those who sadly prefer their prideful darkness, it is the Light which always seeks to enliven every soul.  This is the Light of Christ which no darkness of man or demon can overthrow, and the love of God which desires all people to be brought into eternal fellowship with Him.  This is the power of God unto eternal life for all who will repent and believe, despite all those who ridicule and mock it.

This is the saving Light, Love, and Wisdom of God which comes to you this day:  Christ crucified and risen for the forgiveness of your sins, that through faith in Him, you might have restoration and life forevermore.  Let the bloviation of a self-impressed and dying age dissipate before the Word of God which comes to you, calls to you, and draws you into eternal fellowship with the Creator, Redeemer, and Savior of your soul.  Hear the testimony of the Holy Spirit as He speaks to your spirit, bearing witness to the love of the Father through the Son for you which is beyond time, place, and circumstance.  Hear the saving Word of the Lord break through all the pretensions and machinations of sinful men, that He might draw you unto Himself in unalloyed truth, beauty, and life.  Hear Him.  Repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

The Lamb of God: A Meditation on John 1, for the 2nd Sunday in Epiphany

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him,

 and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, 

which taketh away the sin of the world.

This is he of whom I said, 

After me cometh a man which is preferred before me:

 for he was before me.

In this season of Epiphany, the Church celebrates the bringing of light into the world.  Specifically, it celebrates the light of Christ being brought into the darkness of a fallen world, which enlightens and enlivens all to whom it comes.  Just as the darkness of a room cannot repel the light which pours into it from the sun, so the world cannot repel the light of Christ; people may close their eyes, ignore or ridicule it, but they cannot repel or overcome it.  The light of Christ comes into the world because God the Father sends His Son, and the Holy Spirit bears witness to Him-- there's nothing the world can do, but either receive His grace in faith and repentance, or reject Him in unbelief, rebellion, or disinterest.  Regardless of how we respond to the light of God, the light remains, never the less.

In our Gospel reading from John 1, John the Baptist had been sent to prepare the way of Jesus without first knowing precisely who Jesus was.  When the Holy Spirit revealed to John that Jesus was the eternally begotten Son of God (the One who was preferred before John, and before all created things, because Jesus is fully God long before all things were created through Him), John's ministry transitions to pointing everyone who will listen to Jesus.  The simple, but eloquent sermon, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world," bore witness to the light which Jesus had brought into the world.  This light, unlike any other light, was the light of life, hope, redemption, and grace-- a light that would penetrate the darkness of sinful human hearts and clouded human minds, that everyone may know and encounter the saving love of God.

To continue reading the Gospel according to St. John, is to hear from Christ's own lips exactly what this light and life entailed.  We hear Jesus teach His disciples that He did not come into the world to condemn the world, because the world was already condemned by its own hand, dying under the curse of sin, death, hell, and slavery to the devil, all by everyone's own most grievous fault; that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son fully into it, that the world might be saved through Him; that everyone who would abide in Jesus' Word would truly and eternally be bound to Him, and bound also to everyone else who trusted in Jesus; that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection was an indisputable testimony of His victory over every enemy which enslaves and torments mankind; that He gladly gave His victorious grace and Spirit to His disciples freely, that they might have life abundantly in this world and the next; that He commissioned His disciples to preach His Good News to everyone who sat in darkness, so that His Light might enliven them, too, by these same most blessed free gifts of grace.  St. John doesn't try to record everything Jesus ever said or did, because such a task was unassailable.  Rather, John wrote what he did so that people would hear Jesus, and that hearing they might believe and live in Him, abiding in the Light of His Eternal Word, rescued from their prisons of darkness and death.

That same Light comes to you today, as John the Baptist's testimony reaches your eyes and ears:  Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.  Behold the Lamb of God, who takes upon Himself your sins and death, so that He might give to you His forgiveness and eternal life.  Behold the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, who alone wins your salvation through His Cross, and alone gives to you the free gift of salvation by grace through faith in Him.  Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away your darkness, that you might bask in His marvelous light, and be raised up to a new life in Him.  Hear Him, as the light of His Everlasting Gospel comes to pierce your darkness and break your chains.  Repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

Whose Servant are You? A Meditation on Romans 6, for the first Sunday in Epiphany

Know ye not,

 that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, 

his servants ye are to whom ye obey; 

whether of sin unto death, 

or of obedience unto righteousness?

Epiphany is a season which reflects on the revelation of God made known to the world, and is a natural transition from Advent (season of preparation for God's prophesied arrival) and Christmas (season of God with Us as the Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ).  Here in Epiphany we reflect on who God has revealed Himself to be, who He has shown us to be, and the work of salvation He has accomplished for us on our behalf.  While it is certainly true that no finite human mind will ever fully grasp the infinite mind of God, we should expect that when God chooses to reveal Himself to us, He will teach us things He wants us to understand.  Just because we cannot know or understand the totality of God, doesn't mean that God can't teach us what we need to know.

Among those things He teaches us, and that our readings reflect on this Sunday, is the link between Baptism, Repentance, and a living, saving faith in Jesus.  In the Gospel text from Matthew 3, we read of Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist-- a baptism which Jesus did not need of Himself, having no sin to repent of in either His human or divine natures, but a baptism which He would bless and establish for all His disciples who would come after Him.  At the end of Matthew's Gospel, the risen Jesus sends His Apostles out into the world to make disciples by baptizing (in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and teaching (everything that Jesus had taught them, and which we have now as the Scriptural writings of the Prophets and Apostles).  This same baptism is referred to by Paul in his letter to the Christians at Rome, pointing out the very real unity Christians have with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus through that baptism which He instituted and sanctified.  Such great things as the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation could not come through human works, and so we know that these gifts of grace which come through Holy Baptism are His works rather than ours.  Baptism is not something that people do, but something Jesus does through His servants in His Church, by His Word and Spirit.  This is why the Church has always greatly valued Baptism as a sacred mystery-- a Sacrament-- by which Jesus binds people to Himself, and the Vicarious Atonement of his Cross.  What Baptism accomplishes is a real union with Jesus by the power of Jesus' Word and the Holy Spirit, and not just a human work of proclamation or reflection.  Jesus is real, as are His promises and His Spirit, and His Word accomplishes what He sends it out to do.

In Romans 6, however, we find that there are other realities we must also be aware of.  Sin is also real, as is the devil who temps us into slavery by it.  In our fallen state, before the Word of Christ comes to us, we are enslaved to the devil and compelled by him and our fallen nature to do wicked, stupid, and unnatural things.  Our hearts are darkened to what is good, and we chase the phantasms of our own deluded minds, our own twisted passions, and our own corrupted pride.  In such a state the devil plays us like a drum, exciting our passions and fanning our proclivities to evil, all the while knowing that he leads us inexorably toward death and hell-- a work of insane rage and rebellion against the Creator who he has repudiated, and in whose image all mankind are made.  It is from this slavery to sin, death, and the devil that Jesus rescues us by His life, death, and resurrection, as He delivers to us forgiveness, life, and salvation by His grace which we receive by faith in Him.  This Gospel of salvation, the reconciliation of fallen man with our holy God for the sake of Jesus' sacrifice upon His Cross, pulls us out of our slavery to the devil leading to death, and makes us servants of God leading to eternal life.  Again, this not some philosophical concept or academic proposition, but a reality we cannot escape:  we are either slaves to the devil through sin, death, and hell, or we are servants of God  by grace through faith in Jesus Christ unto eternal life.  Today, every human being in all the world, at this very moment, is either one or the other-- you and I included.  We can only either be servants of our God, the Author of Life and all that is beautiful, good, and eternal... or rebels against him, the pawns of unspeakable evil, destined together for the fires of hell's eternal prison.  For every person that has ever lived or ever shall live, this is the reality they must face, either in this world or the next.

Our world, our communities, and our churches, desperately need this Epiphany.  They need to know who they are, who God is, and what He has spoken to them.  For the pagan world, under the diabolical sway of the evil one, constantly driven from one exhausting and unfulfilling  passion to the next, they need to know that there is forgiveness, life, peace, and salvation for them in Jesus-- that the twisted paths upon which they tread lead only to misery, death, and hell, but that the path of life, liberty, hope, and joy is in Jesus Christ alone.  As Jesus is the only Savior who has died for the sins of the world, reconciling the fallen world to the Father through His Cross, and giving the grace He earned for us freely by faith in Him, no other path can lead to eternal life.  God so loved our fallen, pagan world that He sent His Son to die for it, and sent His people to preach His Gospel of faith and repentance in Jesus that all might live in Him, rather than die in condemnation with the devil.

Our churches need this Epiphany, too.  Too long have our fellowships deceived themselves into thinking that accommodation to the pagan world and its demonic puppet master would have no real or lasting consequence for their people.  Too long have they taught their people that sin has no real significance when everyone in the culture is doing it.  Too long have they sought the praise of secular institutions, dreaming that the accolades and accreditations of sinful men would be worthy substitutes for faithfulness to the eternal Word of God.  Today the western churches shrink at alarming rates, having lost their saltiness in a corrupt world, no longer slowing its decay.  They have taught their people to become slaves to the same sins which pervert and torment the secular world, such that many in the world cannot see a meaningful difference between the secular paths of death inside the church from those outside it.  They need to hear God again speaking to them through His Word given through His Prophets and Apostles, that regardless of the denominational signs on the doors or the trappings decorating the building, the way of life is Jesus and none other.  They need to hear that what they teach matters, both for themselves and those whom they lead either into life-giving fellowship with Jesus or death-giving slavery to the devil.  They must be reminded that the praise of the world led by Lucifer will never give them what Jesus offers freely through His Word, and that they must choose which path they will follow, whose servants they will be, and to which ends they will go.

So, too, do each of us need this great Epiphany.  For the pagan enslaved in the snares of death, Jesus comes to you with His urgent call to repent of your wickedness, and in faith cling to Him and His Word, so that you might believe and be baptized unto eternal life in Him.  For the Christian who has compromised with the world and become enslaved once again to the evil one through sin, Jesus calls just as urgently to you for faith and repentance, that the blessing of your baptism might be restored, and your feet placed once again on the path of life.  And to everyone in our decadent and self-impressed civilization, who have forgotten or never known that sin has real and eternal consequences, Jesus calls out with truth in love that no one might live in slavery to sin, death, hell, and the devil anymore.  Hear the Word of the Lord as He calls to you today, that you might turn from the ways of death, and live in Him forever.  Amen.