Here are some items from the church services and activities that I attended last Sunday.
A. Last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday. The pastor at the Missouri
Synod Lutheran church was preaching about Ezekiel 37, which is about the
valley of the dry bones. The pastor painted a compelling picture of
the exiled Israelites’ situation. They were exiled and demoralized,
feeling dead. They had lost to the Babylonians. They were like dry
bones on a battlefield. But God animated them through Ezekiel’s word
and God’s Spirit. Similarly, we may be feeling demoralized or like
losers, but God wants to give us abundant life, zoe, which goes beyond
mere survival (bios).
The pastor also opened his sermon with a personal anecdote about when
one of his daughter’s was born. He and his wife could actually see her
in the womb through technology, and they saw her face. He could tell
by her nose that she was theirs! But they felt even more joyful when
she actually was born. I do not entirely recall how this fit into the
message of the sermon. I was expecting him to say that we may
intellectually know about God, but there is a difference between that
and having an experience of God through God’s Spirit. That may have
been his implication.
B. As is often the case, the Missouri Synod church’s Sunday school
class got into a lot of issues. This particular class is about the
topic of forgiveness, and it focuses on II Corinthians 1-7. Some points
that were made:
—-A lady pointed out II Corinthians 1:22, in which Paul affirms that
God put God’s seal on the Corinthian Christians and gave them the Spirit
in their hearts as a first installment of the redemption that is to
come. Why did Paul mention this? The teacher speculated that Paul was
saying this so that the Corinthians could feel truly forgiven. Both
Paul and the Corinthians hurt one another deeply. The Corinthians may
have wondered if they truly were forgiven, like Joseph’s brothers in
Genesis 50 wondered if Joseph truly had forgiven them after the PTSD
that they had put them through. Paul reassured the Corinthian
Christians that they were indeed forgiven, sealed by God.
—-Paul in II Corinthians 1:8 refers to affliction that he and his
co-workers experienced in Asia. The teacher said that this may refer to
the riot in Ephesus in Acts 19, but he thinks it may also refer to
Paul’s eagerness to hear from Titus, who was his go-between with the
Corinthian church. Paul wanted to know that his relationship with the
Corinthian Christians had improved: that they knew he was sorry, and
that he had forgiven them. II Corinthians 2:12 and chapter 7 presents
these feelings.
—-Paul in II Corinthians 1:12-13 talks about Paul and Corinthians
boasting in their forgiveness of each other on the day of Christ Jesus.
In those days, the teacher said, boasting was a good thing: people
would show their resumes so that others would know where to place them
in society. Paul said that his resume before God would be, not his
preaching or his travels or his miracles, but the mutual forgiveness
between him and the Corinthian church.
—-Paul talks in II Corinthians 1 about his sufferings. The teacher
seemed to be suggesting that Paul’s sufferings helped him to forgive,
perhaps because they humbled him. The teacher speculated that at least
part of Paul’s sufferings was his feelings of guilt over his persecution
of the church. When Paul in Romans 12:14 exhorts the Roman Christians
to bless those who persecute them, he may have had in mind that he had
been such a persecutor. Paul also could reach out to Sosthenes, who had
been one of his accusers, because Paul, like Sosthenes, had been a
persecutor of Christians (cp. Acts 18:17; I Corinthians 1:1). The
teacher also referred to I Timothy 1:15, in which Paul (or, for liberal
scholars, “Paul”) calls himself the chief of sinners. In our own little
universe, we are the chief of sinners. We only know some of another
person’s sins, the teacher said. But we know all of our own.
—-In II Corinthians 2:5-11, Paul presents forgiveness as somewhat of a
communal exercise. The teacher said that, when the pastor pronounces
forgiveness on us in the services, the pastor is speaking for the
community. Our sins can impact the body, sowing offense and division
(as Satan desires). We need healing and forgiveness as and from the
Christian community. The teacher said that this also occurs when the
pastor visits a shut-in and pronounces forgiveness: it may occur
one-on-one, but it is still public.
—-The teacher reiterated his point from last week that forgiving an
embezzler does not mean making him church treasurer. But it can entail
kneeling with him at the communion altar, greeting him after church, and
loving him.
—-The teacher referred to the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant in
Matthew 18. The teacher said that the servant was trying to shake down
the person who owed him money because the servant wanted the money in
order to help pay off the debt that he had owed to the king, the debt
that the king had just cancelled. He was unwilling to accept the king’s
forgiveness. The king’s response was (in the teacher’s telling), “So
be it according to your attitude: if you think that you still owe the
debt, then I will treat you as if you still owe the debt.”
C. At the “Word of Faith” church, the pastor preached about the
story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Zacchaeus was a hated tax-collector. He
shook people down for their money and kept some of it for himself. He
had a non-Jewish name, indicating, according to the pastor, that he was
considered to be outside of the community of Israel; that, according to
the pastor, is why Jesus would later call him a son of Abraham.
Zacchaeus climbed up to the tree to see Jesus because we was not
interested in merely being “nice” but recognized that he needed change
and wanted to know if Jesus could provide it. Jesus publicly reached
out to him and identified himself with him, and, touched by Jesus’ love
and generosity, Zacchaeus became generous. The pastor noticed that, in a
sense, the Gospels associate salvation with giving: Jesus affirmed that
salvation came to Zacchaeus’ house after Zacchaeus announced his
intention to give generously to the poor. The rich young ruler in Luke
18, by contrast, walked away from the Kingdom of God because he was
unwilling to sell all that he had and give to the poor. The preacher
said that our generosity is an indication that we have been personally
impacted and touched by the love, generosity, and grace of God. The
pastor also said that God wants people to switch their game: they are
playing the game of law and performance, but God wants them to switch to
the game of grace.
D. I went to the “Word of Faith” church’s monthly praise and prayer
service. It had some “Word of Faith” elements: wanting financial
increase from God, claiming God’s “promises,” sowing a seed and reaping a
harvest. The pastor talked about the deaths of many prominent church
planters, and also Billy Graham. He said that he believes that God is
raising up a new generation of spiritual fathers and mothers, as God
raised up Joshua to replace Moses. Pastors from the church were going
out and laying hands on people, praying for them. One of them prayed
for me, asking God that I might have a new beginning, that the desires
of my heart might be met in God, that God might give me a thirst for
God, and that I might enjoy God’s people.
I’ll stop here. I hesitantly leave the comments open, in case
someone wants to offer feedback. I can envision people reading (C.) and
cynically saying, “That sounds like salvation by works,” or “That
sounds like a fund-raising ploy.” Or reading (A.) and saying, “Is the
Missouri-Synod becoming Joel Osteenish these days?” I relay these
items, not out of total agreement, or even having ideas about how I can
relate them to my own life and walk with God. Still, I think that they
are getting at something, even if one can take them to unhelpful
extremes if one is not careful.