Those who are not against us, are for us: A Meditation on Mark 9

And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw

one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us:

and we forbad him, because he followeth not us. But

Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall

do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.

For he that is not against us is on our part.

Christian unity is a difficult and touchy subject.  As Pope Francis conducts his tour and teaching in America this week, his very presence makes an argument for Christian unity.  In the West, for well over a thousand years, the Bishop of Rome has been a center of unity among Christians, often enforced by political and military might.  The Pope as central mark of unity for the whole Christian world did not emerge until several centuries after the Apostles were dead, as evidenced by the various rulings and decrees of the Ecumenical Councils.  However, it was proposed in emphatic terms by early medieval popes, and rejected by the Eastern Orthodox Churches just as emphatically in the Great Schism of 1054.  Roughly 500 years later in the West, the Reformation would reject this notion as well, particularly with the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and the subsequent clarifying documents to that Confession which round out the 1580 Lutheran Book of Concord.  Of central importance in these schisms is whether unity in the Church is found in the person of certain office holders, or in the very Word of God.

There is no doubt, to the scholar and the casual observer, that the visible Church of Christ is divided into thousands of variant communions today.  Within the Reformation churches there are Anglicans, Methodists, Calvinists, Lutherans, Baptists, Charismatics, and countless variations on each of them.  Within the Eastern Orthodox churches, there are national and cultural ties that define fellowships, many of which are at odds with each other over territorial controversies.  Even within Roman Catholicism, the radical distinctions between Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, Carmelites, and so forth highlight enormous divisions.  While Rome is held together by its common submission to the Pope, there’s no denying that the various competing camps within Rome continue to jockey for power and influence.  In such a mess as this, where does the Christian find unity both with Christ and His Church?

We hear Jesus guiding us toward that answer in this short section of Mark 9.  While St. John wanted to forbid a person from casting out demons in Jesus’ Name because the person wasn’t following the Disciples, Jesus points out that following the Disciples is not the heart of the matter—following Jesus, however, is.  It was not important, as St. Paul would write later in his first epistle to the Corinthian church, that the disciples have disciples in their own names, but rather that all disciples be of Jesus and in His Name.  For this reason we can see that even when the chief of the Apostles is acting and thinking wrongly (as St. Peter was in Acts,) his office of apostleship is not enough to cement his authority against correction—rather, be they prophets or apostles, saints or martyrs, doctors or theologians, the only thing that makes them worthy of gathering around is their faithfulness to Jesus.  The Disciples themselves found their unity in Christ, as would all future disciples; i.e., the Church is not united by the power or authority of any particular disciple of Jesus, but instead is bound together by the same Jesus who calls all His disciples unto Himself.

In the context of Christian unity, this shifts the focus away from man-made efforts at uniting Jesus’ Church, and back to Jesus who is the chief corner stone and head of the Church.  It is Jesus who called each of His 12 Disciples, and Jesus who calls all His disciples of every time and place.  The question really becomes, “How is it that Jesus calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies His Holy Church—His Holy People?”  The same way He always has:  by His Word and Spirit.

Consider the centrality of Jesus’ Word, as He gives His parting comfort to His disciples before His Passion, in John 14:

Jesus answered and said to him,

“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word;

and My Father will love him,

 and We will come to him and make Our home with him.

He who does not love Me does not keep My words;

and the word which you hear is not Mine

but the Father’s who sent Me.

Therefore it is in our Lord’s Word that we know Him; that we are called into His fellowship; that He gives us new and eternal life; that He forgives us our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness; that we are given faith to believe and receive His grace; that we are conformed to His image, rather than the image of the fallen world.  Furthermore, as it is by Jesus’ Word that we are called unto Jesus and made one with Him, so it is through that same Word and that same Jesus that we find fellowship and unity with one another.  There, under Jesus’ withering Word of Law, we find ourselves to be sinful and fallen beings, justly deserving death and hell.  There, under Jesus’ life giving Word of Gospel, we find ourselves forgiven and set free by the sacrifice He made for us on His Holy Cross, given eternal life in Him as He burst forth fromHis tomb on Easter morning, and sent forth in His life to live our lives in righteousness and truth.  There, in His Word of Law and Gospel, we find ourselves living as both sinner and saint, called unto lives of humble repentance and faith, given new hearts and new natures by His Holy Spirit to abide in His Word of Life both now and for eternity.

How is it that we see the unity Jesus creates in His Church and among His People?  By His Word and Spirit.  There we find our true brothers and sisters, alive by grace through faith, because there we find the same Jesus who calls all of us out of our darkness and into His marvelous light.  There we see our fellow saints and sinners who struggle to live into the Word of Christ, and who by His Spirit glorify His Father by abiding in His Word.  This fellowship is not made by politicians and bureaucrats, by Magisterium and Council, or by any name bandied about of men.  This fellowship is created by God alone, kept by God alone, and made perfectly whole by God alone.  This fellowship, this One Holy Catholic Church against which the gates of hell shall never prevail, is formed by and in the Word of Christ.  There we know Him, and those who belong to Him.

Do not despair of the Church’s unity, dear Christian—it was never yours to make.  Rather, return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  Return to Jesus your Savior by abiding in His Holy and Eternal Word:  let the Word of His Law break your prideful heart, and the Word of His Gospel bind you up, heal, and inspire you forever.  And as you abide in Christ by His Word, you will by His Word and Spirit see through Him all those He has also gathered unto Himself, be they prince or pauper, Pope or Patriarch or humble family huddled in a mass of refugees, bearing His Spirit of Life through His Word of Life.  There you will see that the Church has always been, and shall always be, united—as eternally indivisible as Christ and His Word.  There in Christ, find your peace, your strength, your contentment, and your innumerable brothers and sisters in the communion of the saints washed as you are in the Blood of the Lamb.  Amen.

Who Wants to be First? A Meditation on Mark 9

I find this a particularly difficult question to ask myself-- not because it is difficult to understand, but because it is difficult to hear.  Like so many of my generation, and of generations before me, I grew up playing games in which we kept score.  While softer voices said that score didn't matter, I knew full well that victory was better than defeat, especially in games like football.  Who ever strapped on his pads and helmet after months or years of brutal training, and didn't strive to win?  Later as a military member, studying the history and methodology of war, I knew that losing meant death and destruction.  No longer playing for points on a grid iron, we were playing winner takes all on a global battlefield, and nobody wanted to come in second.

In life, it is easy to let this thought process dominate our thinking.  Is it good for athletes to strive with all their focus toward victory?  Certainly.  Is it good for soldiers to fight with singular ferocity to defend our Republic from the horrors of military defeat?  Absolutely.  But should striving for the top of the award podium, or the victor's song in battle, be translated into seeking to lift oneself over his neighbors, as if to be first ahead of other men?  Jesus teaches that the answer is no.

It is a great temptation to take what is noble, and corrupt it to unsavory ends.  Be it sport, or war, or politics at every level; from every type and kind of legitimate authority or accolade arises a selfish ambition to claim honor and prestige for one's self-- to take honor from another, that we might be lifted up over our neighbor.  We seek it in business and political campaigns, and those who seek power and authority are often those worst disposed to possess it.  This reveals something about ourselves that we would rather not see:  that we are dark and lustful souls, seeking tyranny over our neighbors in our pursuit for personal ambition and privilege.

Jesus, however, speaks of a different kind of Spirit which should abide in His people.  When Jesus catches His disciples arguing among themselves about which of them should be first, or what the pecking order should be among them, He demolishes all their sinful aspirations.  He tells them that if anyone would want to be chief in the Kingdom of God, such a one should be servant of all.  He then takes a child and sets the little one in their midst, making that child a model of godly superiority among men-- not because children are inherently better than adults, but because the child was the lowest in the social pecking order of their day.  That child couldn't vote or own anything, and all he could do was serve in the household as he was commanded.  The faith of a child that loves and lives in service to their family, is the model Jesus presents to His erring disciples.

Of course, the history of the Church is full of knuckleheads forgetting what Jesus so pointedly taught His disciples long ago.  We have bishops who think they are kings; voter's assemblies that think they are Congress; elders who think they are pastors; pastors who think they are bureaucrats; and every person with an opinion, educated or not, who makes himself his own pope.  Struggles for power, prestige, honor, and rule infest the halls of churches great and small, from little country parishes to national cathedrals; from the banks of the Tiber to the Bosporus to the Mississippi, headquarters of churches are teeming with self serving individuals who pursue power and position.  But this is not what our Lord intended for us.  His will was not that we endlessly debate the relative prestige and rank of our respective clergy and laity, but find a better example of leadership and the use of power.

In fact, it is Jesus who presents to us what it is to be first in the Kingdom of God.  It is Jesus who, though He is the very Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, sets aside His rightful glory so that He might save all mankind.  Jesus, who is legitimately First because there is none who precede Him in time or eternity, has become the servant of all, that all might have life in His Name.  And it is Jesus who serves us, a sinful and ungrateful world, all the way to and through the Cross.  This Jesus, the great King of all Creation, has given His life as a ransom for many, so that we might live by His grace through faith in Him forever.

What is the medicine for a Church fractured by a sinful lust for power, whose local congregations and national bureaucracies are possessed by demons drunk on their quest for illegitimate authority and honors?  It is the same medicine given for us all:  Jesus Christ, crucified for the sins of the world-- including adulterous people like us who desire the baubles of the world's affections, marks of rank and dignity, rather than the service of the Living God.

So to you, dear Christian, comes both the Word and Person of Christ Himself, calling you to lay down your fevered lusts and ambitions to rule your neighbor, and rather by faith and repentance to receive His Holy Cross of suffering servitude.  There in the bloody road to Calvary you will find what the King of Glory has always sought to teach His people:  that the first will be last, and the last will be first.  In a world which longs to slake its lust through domination and tyranny, mirroring the blackened heart of the evil one who inspires such monstrosity among men, it is Jesus who establishes the Kingdom of God among us, calling us away from the devil's highway of death to His Way of everlasting life.  Lay down your disordered passions for rule or primacy over your neighbor, and receive the rule of Him who leads by serving; who rules through suffering; who is Himself first and yet has made Himself last.  Receive the scornful wonder of His Cross, which though despised in this passing and fevered world, is glorious beyond measure in the Kingdom which does not pass away.  Do not think you can take for yourself the honor and authority which only He rightfully possesses, and only He can rightfully give.  Hear the gentle call of the King of Glory who comes to you as your servant, offering you the forgiveness of your sins, and life everlasting.  Hear Him, before His gentle call of the Gospel turns to the hard word of judgement at the end of days.  Hear Him.  Repent.  Believe.  Live.

Amen.

Bridling the Tongue: A Meditation on James 3, for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost

Even so the tongue is a little member, and

boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire

kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of

iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it

defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of

nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

In a land where freedom of speech is treasured above nearly all other things, the idea of bridling one’s tongue may seem archaic.  We have more magazines and newspapers than could be easily named, with journals and periodicals focused on every topic under the sun.  Add to this a new revolution in information distribution, and the internet is pulsing with more writings and videos than can be counted.  If one is unable or unwilling to be published in a print medium, there are innumerable outlets for blogs, posting boards, and social media which will take our thoughts and broadcast them to every corner of the earth.  We are a people who love to speak our minds, who chafe at boundaries to free expression, and even become defensive if our expressed ideas are challenged as inferior or wrong.  In our time and place, it is common for people to publish every passing thought throughout any given day, with opinions on everything from breakfast to traffic to politics.

What is easily forgotten in our age is where ideas come from.  Ideas aren’t floating around in either newspapers or wiki sites apart from a mind which produced them; i.e., whoever saw an idea that formed itself?  We may not know the author of every idea ever published or word ever spoken, but we know that they came from somewhere.  Even if a computer were to randomly or serially generate words, those words would have to originate with the programming of the system, which would have originated from a mind capable of those ideas set to code.  Ideas and their expression come from people, and they reflect the people from which they come.

Of course, there are some really ignorant ideas out there.  There are also illogical ideas, unlivable ideas, and ideas completely detached from reality.  Take for instance the idea that a person can “self identify” as a gender other than his genetics define in his DNA; or the idea that one human being is more “evolved” than another, based upon their geographic heritage; or the idea that one person’s life is worth more or less than another person’s life, based upon the age or development of the person; or the idea that improving our local neighborhood means looting it and burning it to the ground; or the idea that repairing relationships with police means ambushing them with gunfire; or the idea that the universe as a whole, and mankind in particular, is a meaningless accident without the capacity for moral virtue; and a countless host of other ridiculous concepts floating around today.  Each of these ideas came from people who propagated them, and are continued in the public discourse by people who embrace them.

Such awful ideas point to a reality which St. James addresses in the third chapter of his epistle.  The fire we can kindle with an unbridled tongue is enormously greater than the relatively modest size of the human tongue.  What’s worse, though, than realizing what devastation we can bring upon the world through our horrible ideas (from burning towns to burning nations) is where such fires are really originating.  It’s not just that the fires we light with a filthy tongue do great and often irreparable damage to our neighbors, but the fire which our tongue bears is one born in hell itself.  Our wicked nature is not just a corruption bound up in ourselves, but it is a devilish corruption that makes us puppets of a hellish horde.  It is not that we simply come up with bad ideas—and certainly we do—but all our bad ideas actually originate with the one for whom lies are a native language, and who has been a murderer from the beginning.  When we yield our tongues to the service of ideas which harm, enslave, defraud, covet, slander, and murder our neighbors, we have become the spokespeople of the devil himself.

Knowing this, St. James warns his readers at the opening of this chapter, that not many should be teachers, since those who teach shall bear a greater judgment.  When we seek to persuade our neighbors to our ideas, we become teachers of our ideas, and God will hold us accountable not only for the ideas we have espoused, but the fires they light in everyone who both hears them and is impacted by them.  We might be tempted to think that hell is some kind of monolith in which judgment is all the same, but we ought not be fooled:  our judgment shall be proportional to the gifts we were given, and the harm we have done.  Not many should be teachers, because the judgment against false teachers with evil ideas is horrific beyond description, proportionate to the devastation wrought by the propagation of soul slaying heresy.

So, if our ideas are corrupt, and our natural tongue set on fire by hell, from whence do we find good ideas?  From the Author of all that is good, right, and salutary, and the Mind from which flows all the good and beauty in creation.  It is the God whose idea to create the universe with order, logic, truth, beauty and virtue, who has given us this world in which we live and move and have our being.  It is this same God who watched mankind listen to the corrupting ideas of the devil, and by embracing them, cast the whole creation into its burning corruption.  It is this same God the Father, who sent His Only Begotten Son as His Incarnate Word to become flesh and dwell among us, that He might reconcile the fallen world to Himself through His Cross.  It is this same God the Father and God the Son who sent the Holy Spirit to bear witness to His Word of salvation, to the Gospel of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name alone.  It is this same God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who continues to be the Word of our reconciliation, of our hope, and of our life eternal in Him.  It is our God who has shown us again what love, mercy, truth, and virtue are, and how they both originate and are completed in Him.

It is true that all have sinned, and fallen short of God’s glory and goodness.  We have all failed to bridle our tongues, and set fires in the world with our tongues that bring forth suffering, death and hell to our neighbors.  But there is a greater Word that calls to us from before our fall into wickedness, before our enslavement to a devilish tyrant, and before our tongues were set aflame by the hell we justly deserve.  It is the Word of Life:  of Faith, Hope, and Love.  This Word of Life, Jesus Christ, brings His Word into your very soul, extinguishing the hellish flames of your nature by the blessed waters of Holy Baptism.  His Word of Gospel calls you out of your burning darkness, and gives to you a new Word to speak to your neighbor which brings healing and restoration.  His Word feeds you at His holy table, putting within you the medicine of immortality which sooths the flames of your passions, making of you a messenger of His Word to others who need this same heavenly medicine.  And when you fall to temptation, His Word comes to you in your faith and repentance, bringing Holy Absolution and restoration to you by His inexhaustible grace and mercy.

Lift your eyes from the burning wreckage of a world destroyed by human tongues, bearing human ideas which are forged in the hellish fires of our fallen nature.  Look instead to the Word of God which comes not only to sooth the flames of your own personal hell, but the hellfire consuming the whole world.  The Word of Life calls you to hear Him, to turn from the ideas and words which destroy, and embrace instead the eternal life He offers you by grace through faith in Him.  Hear Him, turn, be healed, and live.  Amen.

Faith and Good Works: A Meditation on James 2, for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost

 

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and

have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or

sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one

of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and

filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which

are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even

so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works:

shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee

my faith by my works.

The Epistle of James has troubled many a soul since it’s writing, and that was likely its intent.  St. James writes about various aspects of Christian life, cautioning his readers against an unholy life which can only bring forth death, and having a ridiculous hypocrisy of favoritism toward the rich when earthly riches are all passing away.  When he writes at length about the nature of Faith and Good Works, he concludes his section at the end of chapter two with these haunting and frightening words:

For as the body without the spirit is dead,

so faith without works is dead also.

Many errors in the Church have come about by failing to read St. James properly.  First, it should be noted, that St. James is right.  He was an Apostle, and as such had the seal of the Holy Spirit so as to teach the Word of God rightly.  The Church recognized St. James’ writings for what they were, and included them in the canon of Holy Scripture, thereby putting his inspired writings out for all the faithful to read and believe.  Even if his writings may be hard for us to understand or accept, we ought not try to pull them out of the canon of Scripture, or cast doubts upon the author.  Rather, like all of Scripture, we should learn from it and submit ourselves to it, because it proceeds out from the very Word of God Himself:  Jesus Christ.

Secondly, we must be careful not to pit St. James against St. Paul.  The same Holy Spirit which inspired St. Paul to bear witness to Christ, is the One who inspired St. James to do likewise.  St. Paul and St. James were not at odds with one another, but taught the same body of doctrine given by God through the Old Testament and our Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry.  St. James and St. Paul should be read together as brothers in the same faith, hope, and love which united the whole Apostolic band.

So, without throwing either St. James or St. Paul out the proverbial window, or dreaming up a rivalry between the two, how do we understand this relationship between faith and works?  Precisely by listening to them both in their own words.  St. Paul will teach in Ephesians 2:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not of works, lest anyone should boast. ¹⁰ For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” and St. James will teach that, “faith without works is dead.”  The reconciliation comes in understanding what living, saving faith actually is.

Faith, first and foremost, is a gift from God.  It is not the product of degrees and education, or any other work of mankind (as evidenced by so many wealthy and educated unbelievers in the world, and so many heretics with a wall full of degrees.)  It is not a creation of man, but a gift of God, which clings to God above all things.  It hears God, loves God, obeys God, and lives in God by His grace.  This living, saving faith is a divine gift which comes by divine means, for as St. Paul will also write in Romans 10, “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”  It is God who creates the kind of faith St. Paul is talking about, which brings forth repentance from sins and works the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the lives of all who are born from above by Water and the Spirit.  When St. Paul speaks of saving faith, he speaks of a living thing that gives life to the believer, which cannot do anything but bring forth good works in accordance with the same Word which brought forth this faith.  It is a faith born of grace, which abides in grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God.  It is a faith which alone receives grace and salvation in Jesus Christ, but a faith which by its own definition is never alone (never without the good works of faith.)

On the other hand, the faith St. James is writing about is not saving faith.  It is something more like theoretical knowledge, or studied opinions.  Such a faith which abides only in the mind and does nothing to transform the whole life of the Christian, is no faith at all—it is a dead, hypocritical, and vain thing.  St. James rightly observes that “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.”  The devil and all his accursed fallen angels also fully know who God is, and understand that He exists.  But the devil and the demons cannot love and trust God, because they do not believe that He loves them.  They live under the curse of the Law, knowing God only as Judge.  Such intellectual knowledge will not save them, and it will not save us.  If you share the same vain intellectual faith of the devil, you’ll end up in the same hell with him.

There is no way you can seek out a faith which will save you.  You can’t work yourself into a saving faith, nor can you earn it with a lifetime of merits.  Such faith only comes from God, and it only comes through His Word.  This Word is more than the Word of the Law, which shows us how much more like the devil we are in thought, word and deed—things we’ve done, and things we’ve left undone.  This Word which creates a saving faith in you is the Word of His Holy Gospel:  that Jesus Christ has come to save you, precisely because you could not save yourself.  His great and boundless love for you is manifested in this, that while we were yet sinners, He died for us that our sins might be forgiven.  This Holy Gospel is what comes to us from above, and creates in us a saving faith which loves God for His mercy.  Having imbibed of the wondrous waters of life He gives to us through His merciful grace, out flows from us works of love, mercy, compassion, and grace to all we come in contact with.  The Word of Jesus Christ crucified and risen for you, is the Word which the Spirit uses to create living, saving faith in you.

That same Word will continue to call you to repentance of your sins, that you might turn away from the works of darkness.  It will call you to works of mercy for your neighbor, beginning in your own household.  It will show you the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.  But more than this, His Word will give you a faith which can walk in these sacred paths, can turn from evil, and reflect the love of God to a lost and dying world.  You cannot earn this grace—it is given to you freely for Christ’s sake, and born to you by His free and Eternal Word.  Hear His Word call you to faith and repentance today, that you may live forever in Him, bringing forth His good works both now and for eternity.  Amen.