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Our Babel Moment

April 26, 2013 — Leave a comment

I’ve grown up in the middle of the Media-Lucy-and-Charlie-Brown game. So I don’t believe anything they say. I don’t believe the suits. I don’t believe the shiny smiles. I don’t believe your sexy low-cut blouse. I don’t watch the news. I don’t read it. I subscribe to no newspapers. I do not have cable television. And whenever I have a few minutes to catch a bit of what they call news, I’m always reassured that I’m still not missing out. Someone recently asked how I get my news, and after a minute I realized that the simple answer is some kind of combination of Twitter feeds and Facebook (though I’ll admit I’ve occasionally practiced a bit haruspicy in my son’s full diaper). I’m not saying I’ve got an edge on anyone here, but I am saying I don’t think it matters.

I’ve thought for some time now that living here in the 21st century watching the talking heads and not giving a rip about what they say must be what it was like in Babel a little over four thousand years ago when God came down on their building project to confuse them. We are living in a Babel moment. God has confused our words. He has done this partially through the advent of social media and the internet: the proliferation of news outlets, news sources, coupled with the fact that anybody and their grandma can post something on Facebook or Twitter or Youtube and it has the potential to go viral. And so we have pictures of kittens and political cartoon memes and people trying to speak straight-faced on the TV about snipping the spinal cords of living babies. And this leads to the other way God has sent confusion: sin. Down the street there’s a discussion going on about whether a man with a proclivity to hump other men should be granted a marriage license. Unmanned drones are dropping bombs here and there. Terrorists are blowing themselves up in various places, rumors of economic crisis and collapse, Christians being persecuted in other countries, nuclear crisis in North Korea, and government conspiracies to confiscate all our guns and turn America into a police state. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Genesis, Culture, Economics, Justice & Mercy, Politics, Prayer

A Prayer For These Days

April 22, 2013 — 1 Comment

Almighty and Most Merciful God: You spoke the worlds into existence. The mountains stand by your command. The oceans toss and foam because you tell them to. The earth shakes at the sound of your voice.

When we disobeyed your voice, when we did not love your Word, the world grew wicked and so you spoke a flood. When men despised your word again and lifted themselves up and built a great city with a tower reaching up into the sky. You came down and spoke a flood of confusion. When our fathers went down into a strange land, they became slaved by the gods, by the demons, by their sins, by a wicked tyrant who did not know you who refused to bow to your Word. So you spoke blood in their rivers and sores on their backs. You spoke flies and locusts and you destroyed their land. You put out the light of the wicked and they went down into the darkness of death, but you had mercy on your people and you shined your light upon them, and they walked through the sea unharmed with walls of water on their right hand and on their left.

Again and again, you have been our God. You have been our fortress, our rock, our stronghold, our deliverer, our judge, our Savior. When we have forgotten your word, you have risen up for us. When we have rejected your word, you have had mercy upon us. When tyrants and cruel men have oppressed us and taunted us and sought to crush us, though you have turned your face from us for a little while, your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

And in the fullness of time, you sent your Word, and the Word became flesh dwelt among us. But sinful men hated Your Word again. They despised it. They rejected it. They spat on it. They mocked it. They condemned it. And finally, they crucified it. They hung your Word, Your Good Word, Your Life-Giving Word on a cross. They drove spikes through His hands and feet and they drove a crown of thorns into His head. They pierced His side with a spear. And they buried Him in a tomb, sealed with a stone, and guarded by a regiment of Roman soldiers. Continue Reading…

In Church, Justice & Mercy, Pastoral Theology, Prayer, TRC, Worship

The Newtown inside all of Us

December 18, 2012 — 3 Comments

There’s a Newtown, Connecticut inside all of us.

Everyone hurts. Everyone reels. Everyone sees the pictures, sees the names, reads their stories, and we all swallow back the tears. Death hurts. Death stings. We mourn with those who mourn.

There’s the initial ache (and we do).

I have a six year old daughter, who might just as well have been one of those little girls. I’ve buried another daughter whom I never got to meet.

But when the questions come, and they most certainly will come, what will we say?

Why?

How?

There is only one faithful way to answer these questions.

We have turned away from God.

We have all turned aside from the One who made us. We have turned away from His Word, His love, and we have chosen death, we have chosen heartache, we have chosen our own pain and agony and confusion. We have invited the darkness, invited the demons.

Those little girls and boys were no more or less deserving of death then my four children or any other children. Continue Reading…

In Advent, Child Kingdom, Christmas, Culture, Justice & Mercy, Politics, Prayer

Shining Faces

November 27, 2012 — Leave a comment

In our sermon text today, we noted that the tabernacle and the priests were anointed with oil for their dedication. In the New Testament, all Christians are ordained to the new priesthood through the water of baptism and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. But in James 5 it says that if anyone is sick, he should call for the elders of the church to come pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord (Js. 5:14-15). The elders of Trinity take this seriously, and this is why from time to time we gather with individuals and families and anoint them with oil and lay hands on them and pray for their healing. One of the things that we regularly say when we perform this is to remind the individual or family that this anointing should remind them and is a prayer to God to remember their baptism, to remember His promises to them in Jesus. It’s a way to enact prayer before God with actions, we are asking the Holy Spirit to heal, to empower, to transform a difficult trial, a sickness into an occasion for great glory. We want Jesus to shine out in power, just like the oil makes your face shine. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Exodus, Bible - James, Eucharistic Meditations, Prayer, Theology - Sacraments, TRC

Pleading with Joy

November 27, 2012 — 1 Comment

This is the last Sunday in Trinity Season. This is the close of the second half of the Church year in which we celebrate the work of the Spirit since Pentecost in the history of the Church. We remember the powerful work of the Spirit in the ordinary things of life and in ordinary people who are transformed into extraordinary saints by the grace of God. But next week we begin Advent, when we celebrate the fact that we serve the God who comes, the God who arrives, the God who intervenes dramatically at times. We serve God in the ordinary things, in the dishes and the homework, but we are not merely on autopilot to the end of history. The same Spirit that bids the sun rise every morning, the same Spirit that upholds every atom in our body, is the Spirit that hovers over the world and thunders the creative Word of God. The Spirit comes and transforms. The Spirit comes and gives life. The Spirit comes and raises the dead. Trinity Season reminds us that God is eternally good, eternally glorious, and He reigns over all things perfectly forever, growing us up in millions of little, ordinary things. Trinity Season teaches us to bow our heads and kneel before His majesty and wisdom, to receive from His hand all things and bless His holy name. But Advent reminds us to stand up on our chairs and cry out to God. Advent teaches us to sing, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. Continue Reading…

In Advent, Church Calendar, Prayer, Worship

Trampling Death Beneath Our Feet

November 5, 2012 — 1 Comment

Since a few folks have asked for a copy, here’s the prayer I offered at Mike Rench’s memorial service this last Friday:

Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling over death by death. O Death, where is your sting! O Hell, where is your victory! But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Our Gracious God and Father, Creator of the Universe, sustainer of all things, Lord and Giver of all life: you are all good. You are all gracious. You are all wonderful.

We are gathered here this day to worship you, to bless your name, to lift high the cross of Jesus over the grave of our dear brother Michael Eugene Rench. We do not lift a cross as some kind of sentimental ritual, some sort of traditional way of marking the dead. No, we lift the cross over our brother in triumph. We lift the cross up as the sign of our victory in our Lord Jesus. We lift up the cross as a sign to the world that death has not won, and we trample death beneath our feet.

And so Father, we call out to you, in the name of the One who overcame death, in the name of the One who went down into death and has disarmed it. We call out to you in the name of Jesus, the Lord of Life and the Lord of the Grave, in the Name of Him who holds the keys of death and hades in his hand. Continue Reading…

In Bible - 1 Corinthians, Funeral Meditation, Prayer, TRC

A Prayer for Reformation Sunday 2012

October 28, 2012 — Leave a comment

Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You are God, and there is no other. You know from the beginning all the way to the end. And this is because You are the One telling the story. You are the Author and Perfector of this world. You are the One who spoke light out of darkness. You are the One spoke life out of the grave. You are the One who called to us in our sin and guilt. You are the One who spoke our names and woke us up and breathed Your Spirit into us. You are the One who breaks the spells of wicked men, the prognosticators and wizards of every generation. You are the One who raises up the beaten down. You are the One who raises up the broken and forgotten. You are the One who remembers the poor and the needy. You are the One, and there is no other.

Who do we have in heaven but you? To whom will we cry out except to you? There is no other god, no other lord. We have no other Master; we have no other King.

And so, Father, we come before you now, your children, your little ones, because we know that unless we come as children, we cannot come at all. And so we come with our wandering attention spans and hungry bellies and skinned knees. We come with our cheeks smeared, and we come with imaginations and hopes and stories that we long to know the endings to. We come in faith because our Older Brother is Jesus whom you crowned with glory and honor and majesty and dominion forever. You have given Him a Kingdom that will never end, a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, a Kingdom that cannot be destroyed, a Kingdom that will fill the earth, a Kingdom that will give water to the thirsty and bread to the hungry, a Kingdom full of justice and mercy for the orphan and the widow and the immigrant. Continue Reading…

In Church Calendar, Evangelism, Justice & Mercy, Prayer, TRC, Worship

The Wrecking Ball of the Spirit

October 23, 2012 — Leave a comment

We gathered here for war. We have been summonsed by our King: You are His nobles, His princes, His lords and ladies; You are His hosts, His armies, His lieutenants and captains and infantry. You have been in the fray this week. You have faced enemies, you have faced giants and dragons and sins and pain. You may be coming off of a week of victories; you may be coming off of a week of failures. You may be coming off of a week of a few of both.

But the wonderful thing is that here, now, in this place as God calls us each by name and all of us by His own name, and we call upon Him as our God, our Lord, our Master, our King, as He invites us to lift up our hearts to Him, He lifts us up to Himself, the Spirit lifts us up into His very presence, and we are invited to wage war on sin and death and Satan and all evil in a way that far surpasses anything you might imagine, in a way that far surpasses what you’re able to do during the week. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Genesis, Bible - Joshua, Exhortations, Justice & Mercy, Prayer, Preaching, Worship

No Other Savior

September 24, 2012 — 1 Comment

Our sermon text today demands that we, like Israel of old, reckon with the question: is there any other god? Is there any other Savior? That is the fundamental question, the most important question in your day to day life. When the kids are screaming and disobeying, the question is: is there any other god? When temptation hits in the form of pornography or peer pressure or loneliness, the question is: is there any other god? When your wife is critical of you, your boss at work, or no one has had a nice thing to say in days, the question is: is there any other god? Is there any other Savior? When storms hit: cancer, job loss, broken relationships, when you are hurt, abused, sinned against, in your confusion, despair, fear, the question is the same: is there any other god? Is there any other Savior? And the answer to that question determines how you will respond every time. If there is another god, if there is another Savior you may despair, you may sin, you may give in to temptation, you may snap, you may blow up, you may be bitter, you may nurse your grudge. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Isaiah, Exhortations, Pastoral Theology, Prayer

NSA Exhortation: How Worship Trains Us for War and Life

December 4, 2011 — Leave a comment

We are an educational community that believes in the power of prayer and worship. We believe that when Jesus is worshiped as Lord of all things, and when His will is sought earnestly, God answers, God acts, and Reformations break out.

We not only believe that God is capable of starting Reformations and Revivals. We believe that He plans to do some pretty big ones because He plans to fill this world with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Is. 11). We believe that Jesus is in heaven putting all of His enemies beneath His feet (1 Cor. 15).

This is why we put worship at the center. Jesus is at the center because we have been rescued, because we have been forgiven. We love the gospel, we love God because He has first loved us. Worship is at the center because we love Jesus. We love what He has done, is doing, and will do in this world.

We put worship at the center because we believe that it forms us, shapes us, molds us. At the center of our educational program is the worship of the Triune God every Lord’s Day. But more generally, our prayer and worship is the central formative course that we are taking now and we are committed to throughout our lives. This is what it means to be a disciple. We want to spend time with Jesus so that we can become like Him.

Liturgical prayer in particular is this training. Just as we believe that children should not get to design their own curriculum, we don’t think it’s the best idea to just make up our worship as we go along. Particularly, we want to listen to our fathers and mothers in the faith. We want to honor them, listen to them, and treat their wisdom as weighty. Liturgical worship and prayer is just putting thought into how we will pray, how we will gather, what we will sing, and when we will sing it.

No one mocks a teacher for her detailed lesson plans. We admire her and respect her. Just as we value the old books, the classic books in our literature and history classes, so we value the old hymns, the old prayers, the old patterns of worship in our central course of worship. Centrally, we want our worship full of Scripture, full of Psalms, full of the Word of God. And so we plan for that. Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Education, NSA Exhortations, Prayer, Worship