Here is this week’s Church Write-Up.
A. At the LCMS church, the pastor’s text was Jeremiah 23:1-6, in
which God criticizes the shepherds of Israel for neglecting God’s
flock. These shepherds were the kings and the priests of Israel. The
pastor opened with a story about when he was four years old and his
older brother was supposed to pick him up from his first day of
kindergarten but forgot, because the brother was working; his mother
finally came when the school called her. We, like the brother, and like
the shepherds of Israel, have obligations and duties to which we are
not always faithful.
The pastor observed that this sermon was becoming a typical Lutheran
sermon that begins by hitting people over the head with God’s law and
their failure to observe it. Why go through this process? Most of us
think that we are doing the best that we can! Plus, if we were to
interview the shepherds of Israel—-Jehoiakim, Jehoiakin, Zedekiah, the
priests—-they would probably admit that they were not as good as King
David but would say that they are doing their best. But this outlook is
problematic because it focuses on us and our attempts to fix the
problem rather than on God and what God does. If our salvation
depending in the smallest degree on our own efforts—-even one
percent—-then we would continually wonder if we are doing enough, and we
would probably recognize that we could always do more. The reason that
we are reminded of our failure to keep the law is so that we can focus
on God and our need for God’s mercy.
When we are Christians, we are with Christ, so we go into our days,
the days’ activities, and our relationships with Christ. And, when we
find ourselves in the same situation that the pastor was when he was
four—-feeling alone, lost, and confused—-we can be assured that Christ
is with us.
The pastor’s point about the perspective of the shepherds of Israel
was intriguing because what would Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah, and
the priests have said? I doubt they would have seen themselves as bad
people. They may have said that they were doing their best with what
they had. On some level, they were trying to safeguard their nation,
whether that be by going to Egypt for help, by consulting idols, or by
attempting to rebel against the Babylonians when God wanted Judah to
surrender peacefully. At the same time, they did exploitative and
oppressive things. Perhaps they saw those things, consciously or
unconsciously, as the perks of leadership: they were God’s anointed
rulers, so they had a right to prosper.
B. The LCMS church’s Sunday school class covered I John 2:13-17. The pastor made three points.
First of all, the pastor was revisiting last week’s discussion on the
fathers and the young men whom John addresses. The pastor said that
the correct approach to Scripture is to ask how a passage relates to
Christ, before asking how it relates to us. He candidly confessed that
he did not do that last week, but rather was going into a sociological
discussion about the identities of the fathers and the young men and how
the church should engage young people; his lecture, in that case, was
becoming about law. But he said that the class was trying to pull him
back to where he should have been: focusing on Christ. The pastor’s
humble confession was interesting to me because it showed that church is
about far, far more than us sharing our knowledge: it is about Christ.
Second, in discussing the fathers and the young men, the pastor
speculated that the fathers may have been people who sat at the feet of
Jesus or Jesus’ disciples. This generation was dying off, and the next
generation, which had no contact with the historical Jesus, was about to
take their place. These were the people of John 20:29 who believed
even though they had not seen the historical Jesus, and Jesus blesses
these people. John was exhorting them to be faithful. The pastor
appealed to the Puritans as an example of what happens when one is not
faithful. The Puritans considered the second generation to be elect,
even though it was not behaving as Puritans should, and the result was
that Boston went from Puritanism into Unitarianism.
Third, the pastor talked about John’s comments about not loving the
world. The world is the system that is sinful and that hates God. God
loves the world, even though it is hostile to God and rejects him. We
usually are not so generous towards those who reject us or are hostile
towards us, but we, too, are to love the people of the world, serving
it. But we are not to be devoted to the world’s system, or the things
that are in the world. It is acceptable to have things, but if those
things own us, and we obsessively focus on those things to the exclusion
of thinking about God, then that is a problem. We become like the rich
fool of Luke 12:16-21, who was so wrapped up in enjoying his prosperity
that he did not give a thought towards God. The world, John says, is
passing away, so our attachment should be to the eternal.
C. The pastor at the “Word of Faith” church was continuing his
series through the Book of Revelation. His perspective struck me as
rather post-millennial: God, amidst setbacks, acts in creating a world
of justice, peace, and love, converting people. God is preparing
Christians to be rulers in this new world. The pastor does not seem to
interpret Revelation in terms of Christ coming back and punishing
people. The pastor said that focusing on God’s agenda in creating a new
world is preferable to the emphasis of much of Christianity: saying the
right words or doing the right things to escape this world and go to
heaven.
God’s sealing of the 144,000, the pastor said, is about God’s sealing
of Christians: they may go through affliction, but they are ultimately
not harmed, for they belong to God. They can be triumphant amidst their
perils. They also have authority, as seals were marks of the king’s
authority. The pastor also stressed the importance of worship in the
midst of our problems, as Revelation focused on the throne-room of God
in discussing the early Christians’ problems.