Thrice to Thine and Thrice to Mine

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And Now a Message from the President of the United States

This will take the place of the homily for Wednesday evening's Thanksgiving service.  Federal holidays of thanksgiving are matters for the Kingdom on the Left, and I feel it best to let that Kingdom speak for itself.

I bring you greetings, brothers and sisters, from the President of these United States—who is the legitimate and lawful holder of executive office in this, our appointed nation, within God’s greater secular rule of the Kingdom on the Left—on this national occasion of thanksgiving.  Thanks be to God, Whose moral Law is written on every human heart.  The President thus proclaims:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789—George Washington, President of these United States

May God’s will be done on in the orderly Kingdom of secular rule, as well as in the Gospel Kingdom of eternal life: on Earth as in Heaven.  In Jesus’ Name.  AMEN.

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The Two Questions

I recieved an e-mail from the newspaper yesterday asking if I could have a column ready by Monday morning for the Thanksgiving issue.  We didn't roll in from our various Church events until around 7:30 this evening, and frankly, my brain is toast from all that's been going on.  Besides, do you know how hard it is for me to keep something under 500 words?   Clearly, we had to go back to basics.  So given all that, here's my late evening offering for the county paper.

Faith & Life Column—November 24, 2009

For me, religion always boiled down to two questions.

First off:  Is there a God?

Now I don’t mean god with a little g.  Everybody has a little-g god.  Most of us have quite a few.  In the words of Luther, our gods are whatever we “fear, love and trust” above all else: money, power, sex, self, spouse, country, career, reason, environment, fame, children, what-have-you.  These are the gods everybody has, even the staunchest atheist.  But that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about God with a capital G, God with all the omni’s: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent.  Does this God exist?

Of course, by definition, God cannot be proven.  If you could prove God, then He wouldn’t be God, would He?  You would be the God, because you proved Him, you judged Him, and you said, “Okay, God, I deign You worthy of my acknowledgment.”  It doesn’t work that way.

Faith comes whether we want it or not.  In the still of the night, in your heart of hearts, when the noise of the world passes away, you either believe that there’s a God—or you don’t.  I suspect that many of today’s angriest anti-theists are so shrill specifically because they believe in God and wish that they didn’t.

Now I’ve often wondered if, deep down, we don’t all believe in God.  Who can say?  But at the very least, I suspect that Augustine was right when he wrote that we’re all born with a God-sized hole inside us, which we spend our lives trying vainly to fill.

If our answer to the first question is that there is no God, then that opens a whole new can of worms.  Nietzsche, Sartre, and Dostoyevsky didn’t have much in common, but they all agreed that if there is no God then all things are permissible.  This thrilled Nietzsche, nauseated Sartre, and was, to Dostoyevsky, irrefutable proof that we’re all believers—for only a mad man declares everything permissible.

But if we find that we do believe in God, even if He’s just a lingering suspicion, then we progress to the second question:  What is God like?  What indeed.

Once, while I was still working in the trauma bay, a young Greek man saw my cross from his hospital bed and he and said to me:

“You know, everybody wants to know why we end up here, why bad things happen.  I’m not sure we ever get a good answer in this world.  But at least you and I have a God Who knows what it’s like to go through all this—knows what it’s like to suffer unjustly, lose the ones you love, even die alone.  And He won’t abandon us the way we abandoned Him.”

It’s possible to believe in God and hate Him, if the only religion you’ve heard is judgment and wrath.  But a God like that, sharing in that man’s suffering?  Joining with the broken?

That, to me, is truly Divine.

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The Blood King

Scripture:  Christ the King, 2009 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

Alexander the Great was, without doubt, history’s most effective conqueror.  Other violent rulers may have run roughshod over larger areas of the globe, but no one truly conquered like Alexander did, remaking an entire world in his image.

On his deathbed, having no heir apparent, Alexander’s generals asked him to whom he left his sprawling empire.  He spoke only one word: “Kratistos.” To the strongest!  And so, upon his death, his mighty Greek empire—known today as the Hellenistic world—fell into chaos and violence, with each general vying to be the strongest.

The Greek empire in Egypt fell under General Ptolemy, and the Ptolemaic dynasty would continue to rule Egypt right up until Cleopatra held that asp to her breast.  Syria and most of what we would call the Middle East fell to General Seleucis, and his Greek descendants would rule the Seleucid Empire for centuries to come.  Wars between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids were common.  And guess who got stuck right smack in the in the middle: the Jews of Israel.

But even as these misbegotten children of Alexander butchered one another to carve dominions out of his empire’s corpse, a new power was arising in the West.  A power that grew and expanded and conquered in ways not seen since Alexander himself.  This, dear Christians, was the power of Rome.

Now one day, nearly five centuries after Alexander’s death, the Seleucid king—a slaughtering psychotic named Antiochus, who proclaimed himself to be “God Manifest”—assembled a vast host, tens of thousands of soldiers, and marched on Egypt to conquer the hated Ptolemies once and for all.  We’ll see who’s strongest now!

Yet as he led this massive force on to annihilate his ancient foe, he found someone standing in his way:  a single solitary old man.  This old man’s name was Gaius Popillus Laenas.  And he was wearing the toga of a Roman senator.  One old man between the king and his conquest.  Yet Antiochus—“God Manifest”—immediately broke out in a cold sweat.

Not content to send an emissary, Antiochus himself scampered out in front of his army to speak with the old man.  “Egypt,” said withered old Gaius, “is a friend of Rome.”

“Come now,” said King Antiochus.  “Let’s talk this over.  Surely we can be reasonable.”

But Gaius took his cane and drew a line in front of the King.  “Turn back,” said the old man, “for if you cross this line, you are at war with Rome.”

“This is ridiculous!” snapped Antiochus, looking back at his great army.  But the old man was quicker than he seemed, and rapidly drew a circle around the king.

“Step outside this circle without giving me your answer,” Gaius said, “and you are at war with Rome.”  Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of all the Middle East, commander of tens of thousands of soldiers—turned tail and immediately ran back home.  All because of one old man from a country hundreds of miles away.  From that day forward, it became clear who the strongest really was.  Rome alone was king.  To this day, we still talk about “drawing lines in the sand,” thanks to Gaius and his stick.

On his way back, Antiochus, now humiliated and enraged, turned loose his wrath against the Jews of Israel, whom he accused of treason.  The mad king butchered 40,000 in the city of Jerusalem, and profaned the one true Temple of the Jewish God.  Pigs, which the Laws of Moses denounce as unclean, were sacrificed on the Altar of the Lord, and a massive statue of Zeus—the false idol to end all false idols—was erected and worshipped in place of Yahweh.  For the Jews it was an inconceivable horror.  And it led, of course, to seething fury, massive revolt, and yet more war.  The Middle East is as much blood as sand.

All of this is recorded in the Bible.  The Books of Maccabees, from our Apocrypha, tell the story of Antiochus’ blasphemy, of the Jewish revolt that followed, and of the king’s untimely demise—struck down with plague by a wrathful God.  Both the Prophet Daniel and Jesus Christ, in no less than three Gospels, refer to the “Desolating Sacrilege,” or “Abomination of Desolation,” which is what Antiochus did to the Temple with those pigs and that stone-wrought Zeus.  Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, died horribly.  And why?  All because generals and emperors, conquerors and kings, wished to claim the unparalleled power, the kingship, the godhood, due kratistos—to the strongest!

In our Gospel reading this morning, brothers and sisters, we have two very different kings staring each other right in the face.  One is Rome.  And the other is Christ.

Now what is a king, really?  Originally, amongst the Teutonic tribes of Europe, kings were popularly elected by common consent of the warriors.  In the Bible, the kings of Israel come not from noble or aristocratic backgrounds, but are declared by the prophets of God and acclaimed by the 12 Tribes.  King David was a shepherd, the smallest and most inconsequential of his many rural brothers!

What makes a king a king and not, say, a despot or a tyrant, is the idea that a king holds legitimate authority, by whatever right a given people recognize.  And history makes it pretty clear that no matter who we are, or what blood flows in our veins, the authority we most tend hold up as legitimate is that of raw force.  Who is the king?  The king is the strongest!

It’s all about violence, really.  Might makes right!  As the Athenians used to say, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”  Any king, any government, eventually ends up being recognized as legitimate when they wield overwhelming force over their dominion.  That’s still true today.  Rebel groups in Africa, paramilitaries in Latin America, separatist bombers in Europe, no matter how monstrous or blood-soaked, gain the cloak of legitimacy once they’ve managed to kill and terrify and subjugate enough people!  That is the right, the legitimacy, the kingship of this world—kratistos!

And this is the kingship that Pilate wields before Christ.  Not in that he’s a king in name, but in that he represents Rome!  Rome is power, Rome is lord, Rome is strongest!

And then there’s Jesus.  “So you’re a king,” Pilate says, in that bemused way that’s half question and half statement.

To which Jesus replies, “You say that I am king.  For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the Truth.  Everyone who belongs to the Truth listens to My voice.”

Jesus’ authority—the authority of God—is not based on force or power or coercion.  When you’re omnipotent, such words have little meaning.  “Don’t you know,” Jesus tells Peter, “that if I but ask, My Father would send Me legions of angels?  But that’s not what God is about; that’s not how God works.  God’s authority, God’s Kingship, is based on Truth, and that is more powerful than any army.

It should be clear, for example, that democracy is not spread by bombs.  Democracy is spread by truth—truths about inalienable rights and the innate value of every human life; truths endowed not by force of arms but by our Creator.  Where these truths take root, tyrants may be toppled and freedom start to bloom.  But where these truths are unknown, no amount of bullets can win hearts and minds.  Only truth can do that.  Compared to force and violence, truth is the strongest.

Now in the historic spread of Christianity, many misbegotten rulers have baptized heathens by the sword, but this is blasphemy, plain and simple.  The sword of God’s Word does not need some blood-soaked human sword to aid it.

Christianity spreads amongst the disenfranchised, the distressed, and the diseased.  In Rome it spread amongst slaves and women long before it reached the aristocracy.  The martyrs of our Church, whom we commemorate each Sunday, were not suicide bombers making force calculations: “I die, but I take 10 of you with me.”  Rather, they were men and women of faith, hope, and love, who spoke truth to power.  And when power raised force against them—when the mighty used their kingship to silence the truth’s tongue—their bodies were slain, but the Word spread all the faster. Empires fall, strength wanes, but the Truth?  The Truth can never be killed.

On this day, brothers and sisters, when we celebrate the crowning of Christ the King, we must never, never confuse Christ with the supposed kings of this broken world.  Jesus is a completely different kind of king; He is the true King, the first and last and only King.  The kings of this world rule by dint of their ability to make the living dead.  They are but blood kings, death kings.  But Christ rules because He is the Truth that raises the dead to new life!

The truth is that we are not gods, we are not the strongest; we are but wretched sinners!  So gross is our sin that when Love came down, when Truth became flesh, we broke Him on a Cross, crammed Him in a tomb, and sent Him straight to Hell.  Yet He rose again!  Love has returned!  Truth has arisen!  Life has broken death forever!  He is King!  And He shall reign forevermore!  Alleluia!

And to whom, do you suppose, does this King leave His empire?  Not to the generals.  Not to the strongest.  He leaves it to us.  He leaves it—to the weakest.

Thanks be to Christ, King of Kings and Lord or Lords.  In Jesus’ Name.  AMEN.

Are You Smarter Than An Eighth Grader?

Confirmation Study Guide for Quiz #1

I.  BASIC IDEAS:

1.  Are we saved by what we do (climbing ladders)?

Nope!  We can’t do it on our own.  We are saved by grace through faith.

2.  What is God’s Word, and what are its two parts?

God’s Word is what God reveals to us about Himself.  God does this in many ways, but the ultimate and truest Word of God is Jesus!

God’s Word has two parts: Law and Gospel.  The Law teaches us the truth about ourselves:  We’re sinners.  The Gospel teaches us the truth about God:  God loves us anyway!

3.  What is more important:  Jesus or the Bible?

Jesus.  Duh.  We love the Bible because it teaches us about Jesus.

4.  How many books are there in the Old and New Testaments?

39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New, for a total of 66 books.  If you have trouble, just remember: 3 x 9 = 27

II.  CREATION:

1.  The three main lessons of Genesis 1 & 2 (the Creation stories) are what?

(1.)  The pagans thought that gods were part of the world, but the Bible teaches us that God is supreme and created the world!

(2.)  The pagans thought that Creation is naturally chaotic and hostile, but the Bible teaches us that Creation is really about harmonious relationships—between God, the world, and us.  God’s world is good!

(3.)  The pagans thought that the gods didn’t much like or care about people, but the Bible teaches that God loves people most of all!

III.  THE FALL:

1.  The three main lessons of Genesis 3 & 4 (the Fall) are what?

(1.) Free will is God’s crowning gift to us.  We’re not meat puppets.

(2.)  God didn’t screw up the world; we did.

(3.)  Even when we sin, God still loves and protects us.

2.  What do we mean by the terms “pride,” “sin,” and “wrath”?

Pride is when we try to be our own gods.  It’s the first and worst sin.

Sin is the breaking of relationships, between God, humanity, & the world.

Wrath is God tearfully removing His hand of protection and giving us what we think we want.  Having free will means that our actions have consequences, both for ourselves and for others.

IV.  THE FLOOD

1.  In Genesis 6 through 9 (the Flood) why does God deluge Creation?

The Bible says that God is not angry, but that He is grieved by all the suffering and sin in the world.  The Flood washes such monstrous evil away in order to give Creation another chance.  It’s an act of mercy.

2.  What do we mean by God’s “alien” work vs. God’s “proper” work?

Alien work is stuff that seems harmful but is really for a greater good, like a surgeon making a first cut or a parent disciplining a child.

Proper work is what God really wants to do:  His direct work of loving, healing, blessing, resurrecting, &c.

V.  ABRAHAM:

1.  Why is Abraham important?

He’s history’s first monotheist, and the spiritual father of three religions!

2.  Is Abraham perfect?

Good heavens, no.  He’s a withered old illegal immigrant who doesn’t treat his wife very well. He’s the last person you’d expect God to choose!

3.  When God comes to Abraham, who makes and keeps promises?

God does.  Abraham keeps messing up, but God doesn’t break promises!

4.  Who are Abraham’s children?

Abraham has a son, Ishmael, with his wife’s slave, Hagar.  Ishmael is claimed by Muslims as their ancestor.

Abraham also has a son, Isaac, with his wife, Sarah.  Isaac’s descendants are Israelites and the modern Jewish people.

5.  What’s up with Abraham “sacrificing” his son?

The Jews are actually the first people to abhor and forbid child sacrifice.  Even the lowliest and weakest child is beloved and protected by God!

VI.  JOSEPH:

1.  How did Joseph get to Egypt?

His jealous brothers sold him into slavery.

2.  Why did Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of Egypt?

Because he could interpret prophetic dreams & plan wisely for the future.

3.  When Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt to buy grain, what did he do?

Joseph forgave them and brought his whole family to live safely in Egypt!