Earth Day, Part II

The Sunday of the Resurrection is the payoff, the greatest of all in fact. On this day Jesus rose from the dead. He did not just "spiritually" rise from the dead. He did not just in "the hearts and minds of his disciples" rise from the dead. Jesus rose physically, fully human, fully God, from the dead.

The Gospel accounts go to great lengths to show that this was no mere spiritual awakening or sudden moment of enlightenment that had come upon those who loved Jesus. In fact, those who loved Him went to the tomb early on the morning of the first day of the week to further prepare the dead body because as the Sabbath approached on Friday they were rushed to lay him in the earth. They expected to anoint a corpse. They expected to adorn a lifeless body. They expected Jesus to be dead.

You could say this was the most unexpected act in history, because when they got there they did not find anything. They did not even find a body! The body was gone, and an angel proclaimed to them that Christ is risen! That is what today is all about. The eternal Son took on flesh and lived the life we humans cannot live in perfect obedience to the Father. He suffered death and was buried. But, on the third day He rose again.

The Christian Church dating back to these very days in the first century proclaimed the joyous news the Christ is risen! This day is about the resurrection of the Son of God. This day is not really about an old pagan fertility feast that the big bad institutional church took over as an empire. This day is not about bunnies, eggs, and chocolate (as cute and/or delicious as these things may be). And this day is not about allowing the wise words of a great teacher to "live on" in our hearts and minds.

This day is about Jesus' physical resurrection from the grave. This is the day the LORD has made! This resurrection of the Son of God also points to the day when all humans will be raised on the Last Day because of this physical resurrection of the Son of God! This resurrection of the Son of God, as the first fruits of the renewed creation, points to the restoration of all things on Earth. The pain, the death, the decay that marks the world we know in everything from humans to animals to earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, all point to creations groaning waiting for Christ to return and to reveal those who will have life in Him and with Him forever. On this day LIFE wins. On this day we celebrate the feast of the Lamb and look forward to the Day of the great feast when Jesus drinks the fruit of the vine with us again.

Resurrection Sunday is about reality, it's about physicality, it's about living again. This is the day all of Earth rejoices. This is Earth Day, as the Creator restores creation, beginning with the resurrected Son of God. That's the Hope in which we live, that is what today is all about!

CHRIST IS RISEN!

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. It is also Good Friday. This won't happen again until 2095. I was talking to a longtime friend this morning from my home congregation and thought I'd be clever and send him a message that said, "Happy Earth Day!" The significance of Earth Day falling on Good Friday was something I have been trying to formulate in my mind.

The idea of Earth Day on Easter Sunday (2057) seems to be the clearer connection. Earth Day celebrates all of creation and (albeit falling short of what this means) promotes "restoration" to all the earth. Easter, the Resurrection Sunday, also promotes restoration (albeit rightly). But how is it that Good Friday and Earth Day can connect?

Well, my longtime friend replied to "Happy Earth Day," with,"Happy Tree Hugging Day." It then hit me like a ton of pollen, Good Friday is Tree Hugging Day. Good Friday is Earth Day. Jesus goes to the rugged cross, that unsightly tree, and He grips it to die. Jesus grips the tree to reconcile the whole world to the Father. We know the rest of the story that comes on Sunday, but ponder for today the beautiful image of Christ gripping the cross to reconcile the world to the Father. That is the best gift the Earth has ever received, that is the best medicine for a sick Earth, that is what it means to celebrate creation. The Creator has rescued the creation from sin, decay, and death, all by gripping the tree.

As most of the Earth celebrates the apparent beauty of creation and life I will be sitting in a dark, undecorated, no apparent beauty of a church. Today, though humans lost the tree of life and all its splendor with the rushing rivers, we look to the Tree of Life which has the rushing river flowing from the Creator (John 19:33-34) in all His glory (John 7:37-39).

Happy Earth Day.

The Psalms

One of the most helpful resources I have ever bought, and I did so in my "Contemplate" visit to the seminary in 2007, is the CPH book Reading the Psalms with Luther. It is the complete Book of Psalms with some notes on each Psalm by Luther himself. In addition each Psalm begins and ends with a prayer.

The Psalms as a book of prayer is definitely something we ought to be communicating to people. For me personally I find it easier to "read" the Psalms when I am immersing myself in them as prayer rather than something I am reading just to say I have read them, or studying for the purposes of a test. In the fall I took the course at the seminary pertaining to the Psalms with Dr. Reed Lessing (CPH Commentaries Amos, Jonah, and the upcoming Isaiah 40-55). He communicated, in no uncertain terms, the the Psalter (another word for the entire collection of Psalms) is the Christian book of prayer and it should be a part of our praying for our entire lives. The Psalter seems to cover the topics of human life as they weave in and out of human suffering and joys, and even many times combining the two in one Psalm!

Plus, if you're like me, maybe you struggle with prayer as in how to pray and what to say. The Psalter provides for us the how and what in prayer. This is important especially in a "postmodern" world that looks for answers and truth in a variety of places, and does not allow anyone else to speak for them, the Christian can be comforted by this book of prayer where we do allow Another to speak for us, the human authors of the Psalms, but also the Holy Spirit who leads us to pray. The Psalms are very human, yet also very much divine as God's Word speaks to us through them. Most notably God's Word speaks to us through them in the person and work of Jesus the Christ.

So often the weight of sin and brokenness in this age brings us down, the Psalter is the perfect book for those who have broken hearts because it communicates the reality of our broken world so clearly and honestly. Yet they do not leave us in our brokenness, but drive us back to Yahweh, our God, and His faithful promises. One such promise is the one received at Baptism. As the Psalms communicate it is there that we know that even if God feels far off, He is not far at all, but close to delivering us. What a great comfort! It's the comfort of being joined with Christ, which does not "save" us from the realities of this world, but plunges us head first into them to not only find comfort ourselves, but also for our neighbors around us.

Honest and Thoughtful Reviews of Rob Bell

I regret actually posting about a book I have not read. But since this has been blowing up all over the Christian interwebs for a couple of weeks now, I figured I would point people into the direction of two non-reactionary, honest, and yet thoughtful reviews of Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins (Harper Collins). Big ups to Mockingbird Blog for supplying their readers with these thoughtful analyses. One is by Mark Galli and the other by Casey Hobbs.

I hope to read this book after spring quarter. I think it is very important to engage a book like this because it does open up a worthy conversation and because Bell is such a popular person. It is much better to engage someone and speak the truth in love than lob reactionary critiques and use big words which tickle us silly. Let me know what you think!

P.S. I think its helpful to cite folks who are actually coming from a similar--or similar enough--environment to Bell to understand his thought process and context. Again, I hope to read the book and come at it from a Lutheran perspective, but that is a good couple months away yet.

P.S.S In the interest of being "fair," here is a link to Bell's reaction to the reaction(s).

The Unobtainable Deity

Very interesting quote from an article on the latest "Jesus Seminar" meeting in Santa Cruz, CA. For more information on the Jesus Seminar just google or go to their website. The long and short of it is this is an academic community searching to find the "real" Jesus, the "historical" Jesus, opposed to the Jesus of orthodox Christianity.

These quotes, one from a presenter in the seminar, and the other from a student observer were striking to me:

"We are not here to advocate religion," said Sheehan, who has participated in the Jesus Seminar since 1999. "We study religion critically. We're scientists of religion. We come here to say what we have learned about the historical Jesus Christ. It's more to inform people who may not have an opportunity to hear what university professors are saying about Jesus."

Miller, 21, who sat with fellow UCSC students to hear Scott's lecture, said "I do identify as a Christian, but I am very interested in learning about who Jesus was as an actual person."

Miller, who plans to graduate early with a degree in American studies, said, "I want to know more about the humanity of Jesus rather than the Divinity.

"It makes it more believable for me when I think of Jesus as a person rather than an unobtainable Deity."

My thoughts:

Has the church made Jesus an "unobtainable deity?" There are numerous issues with the Jesus Seminar. Their academic integrity is highly questionable and they throw out any sniffs of deification in regards to Jesus, because well hey that just isn't "historical." What Christians know is that the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus the early church attests to, the Jesus the church throughout the ages into today attests to is the very "historical" Jesus.

I do wonder however, if Christians have propped up Jesus as some "unobtainable deity." When we defend Jesus' deity and neglect his humanity we don't have Jesus. The church needs to affirm his humanity, as attested to in scripture, and affirm his deity together as a whole. There is no such thing as a historical Jesus a part from the God-Man. Jesus is fully God and fully man. When either is backed off of problems ensue.

The student observers quote from above shows how askew folks' view of Jesus and Christianity are. Jesus is the most attainable deity there is, given He came down out of heaven incarnate and born of the Virgin Mary. Why is it that society views Jesus as an unobtainable deity? Perhaps we would do well to teach the whole Jesus to our people?

Bonhoeffer, pt. 2

Too good not to share...this snippet comes from a section where Metaxas deconstructs the story that Bonhoeffer radically changed in prison and his Christianity was suddenly co-opted by bad theology and theologically liberal techniques. Sadly theological liberals aren't the only ones who have bought this story, theological conservatives have too.

Here is a paragraph of Metaxas' thoughts on the whole thing:

Bonhoeffer's theology had always leaned toward the incarnational view that did not eschew "the world," but that saw it as God's good creation to be enjoyed and celebrated, not merely transcended. According to this view, God had redeemed mankind through Jesus Christ, had re-created us "good." So we weren't to dismiss our humanity as something "un-spiritual." As Bonhoeffer had said before, God wanted our "yes" to him to be a "yes" to the world he had created. This was not the thin pseudohumanism of the liberal "God is dead" theologians who would claim Bonhoeffer's mantle as their own in the decades to come, nor was it the antihumanism of the pious and "religious" theologians who would abdicate Bonhoeffer's theology to the liberals. It was something else entirely: it was God's humanism, redeemed in Jesus Christ. (p.468)

In addition, Metaxas provides information that Bonhoeffer's closest confidant in those prison days, Eberhard Bethge, lamented how many misconstrued his letters/thoughts in prison. It should be further noted that these thoughts and letters were written privately to Bethge, and were only released by Bethge after the war to give certain theologians a glimpse of what prison life was like for Bonhoeffer the person and theologian. Bethge's own thoughts were,

The isolated use and handing down of the famous term 'religionless Christianity' has made Bonhoeffer the champion of an undialectical shallow modernism which obscures all that he wanted to tell us about the living God.

Nearly finished with the book, already highly recommend it for all to read!

Bonhoeffer

Winter Quarter is over, been spending a few days in the warm Florida sun (West Palm Beach/Port St. Lucie) reading Eric Metaxas' great biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Go out and get this book, I'm halfway through (300+ pages of an almost 600 page book, but don't let that scare you!) and this book has rocked my world. There have been so many quotes Metaxas has provided of Bonhoeffer's that have touched me, but I felt compelled to post this one in particular. The context is Bonhoeffer's second trip to America, he writes in his diary:

The voice of Lutheranism is there in America, but it is one among others: it has never been able to confront the other denominations. There hardly ever seem to be "encounters" in this great country, in which the one can always avoid the other. But where there is no encounter, where liberty is the only unifying factor, one naturally knows nothing of the community which is created through encounter. The whole life together is completely different as a result. Community in our sense, whether cultural or ecclesiastical, cannot develop there. Is that true?

The year is 1939, and he's about ready to return to Germany to have an encounter with the anti-Christian German Christian Church and Hitler himself. What kind of encounters are we having in America? Lutherans especially...

Heavy