(60) Three Celebrations

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Three Celebrations, originally shared on October 29, 2020. It was the sixtieth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   How we celebrate is as important as what we celebrate. What are you celebrating this week, and how?

   This is a week of three celebrations.

   First, the Dodgers won the World Series! You probably already knew that, but it’s nice to say. It ends 32 years without a world series victory, something every baseball player dreams about. It also happened in a year when the Lakers also won a national championship, which also happened in 1988, the last time the Dodgers won the world series.

    I spent the last inning, as did most people, stating the obvious: one at-bat to go, one out to go, one strike to go…There it is!

   Of course, this is 2020 so it wasn’t surprising when something happened to stick a pin in our ballooning celebration. The Dodgers got results during the end of the game that Justin Turner had tested positive for COVID-19, and so, by previously agreed upon protocols, he was taken out of the game and isolated. When the Dodgers won, however, he pushed past security and went back on the field for the celebrations and the team picture.

   Who knows what any of us would have done under the same circumstances, but his behavior put everyone with whom he cam into contact at risk. Even if no one gets the virus, I think his act of self-interest diminishes the heroic behavior of the team as a whole. It diminishes our celebrations.

   Second, this coming Saturday, we will celebrate two events, Reformation Day and Halloween.

   First, Reformation Day. There won’t be costumes or lawn decorations, no specially themed movies or TV shows. It will seem somewhat anti-climactic, or even unnoticed as most of our churches will have celebrated it last Sunday, but it marks one of the most history-changing events of human history.

   I don’t think I’m exaggerating or engaging in a little bit of Lutheran chauvinism here. A few years ago the History Channel asked its viewers for their opinions of the most influential persons of event of the past 1,000 years. Martin Luther was second. The invention of the printing press was first, and it’s interesting that they both happened at about the same time.

   Martin Luther was a young man on the move. His father wanted him to be a lawyer and be rich, and that’s where young Martin was heading.

   Luther was walking across a field when he got caught in lightening storm. He prayed to his saint, Saint Ann, as a good Catholic young man would, and said that if she saved him from this storm that he would show his gratitude by becoming a monk.

   He was not hurt and, much to his father’s chagrin, he became an Augustinian monk.

   The more he studied the scriptures, however, the more he became absolutely convinced that he was going to hell. Even when he spent an entire day praying, going to Mass and reading to the Bible and coming to the end of the day and feeling good that at least he had spent one day without sinning, that he had right then committed the sin of Pride.

   His superiors sent him to teach the Bible at the University of Wittenberg. And, he discovered a verse where the Latin vulgate had translated the original Greek “metanoia” into the Latin “poenitentia”, that is, “do penance”.

   The church had been selling indulgences, which Luther believed to be in conflict with the fundamental teaching of scripture that we are put right with God through faith, through a gift of God’s grace. Metanoia was better translated “to turn around, or repent” he said.

   Indulgences were a promise of time off from purgatory, the place for those who weren’t bad enough for hell, but got good enough to be in heaven.

   Doing penance meant you could do good stuff to make up for the bad stuff. The Church was selling indulgences, a good act, to get time off from purgatory for yourself or a loved one (‘cause you wouldn’t want Grandma to be in purgatory, would you?) by buying yourself time off. Luther looked to the statements of scripture and said the whole idea of indulgences was ridiculous.

   Paul, in one such statement, wrote:

*Romans 1:16-17

   On October 31^st, he nailed 95 theses (plural of thesis, as when a Phd. Student comes up with an original idea, or thesis, that he must successfully defend in order to qualify for his degree) to the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg for academic debate.

   He didn’t want to leave the Catholic church, he wanted to reform it. He wanted to debate the idea of indulgences. The Church, particularly the pope, who Luther saw as unnecessary, did not want to hear it.

   Under trial for heresy, the punishment could have included excommunication, imprisonment, torture, and death.

   At the end of one of his trials, in Worms, Germany, Luther was being tried before the emperor and was accused of being vague in his defense of his written works. Luther replied,

   “Since then your sere Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen."

   This may seem like a mild argument, but to those hearing it or hearing of it was mind-blowing.

   Luther lived when the Church and its teaching were everything and in everything. One of its teachings, in a time when the Church and the State were almost indistinguishable, was that both the pope and the emperor were put in their positions by God. To go against either one was not to enter into a dialogue over a reasonable disagreement, but to go against God.

   I think you can draw a straight line from Luther’s idea that the individual is responsible for acting on his or her own conscience, not the dictates of those in authority, to the idea of  democracy in the West.

   Luther was convicted and, at one time, the pope declared that anyone who murdered Luther would not be sinning.

   Luther came along at the right time, however. The German princes were promoting nationalism, a breaking-away from the Holy Roman Empire, so they protected Luther. They figured that anything that weakened the Roman church would weaken the Roman empire.

   And, the printing press had just been invented. Luther’s 95 theses were printed in bulk and in two weeks were being read in Spain! That was viral media in those days.

   And, in the course of the Reformation, Luther brought in revolutions.

   Does your congregation sing during worship? Thank Martin Luther. He brought in congregational singing, which had previously been done by monks. He declared the freedom of priests to marry, something for which I am grateful. He translated the Bible into German, the language of the people, and for the first time in 1,000 years, people could read the Bible in their own language, not Latin, the language of the educated which were at the time pretty much only priests. Principles of translation he invented are still in use today.

   Today we say that the church is always reforming. It is in no less need of reformation than it was in 1517. It constantly needs to be called to scripture alone as the only source of our belief and conduct, to teach salvation through faith alone through God’s grace alone.

   We seek reformation of our lives as well as of our congregations and our Church.

   That brings us to Halloween

   Was there anything significant about October 31^st, in 1517, that Luther chose this day to nail the 95 Theses to the church door? This was not an act of vandalism. The church door was a public bulletin board, and he knew that a lot of people would see them there.

    All Hallows Eve was to be celebrated that evening. It was the night before All Saints Day, a day for the celebration of all the Saints, a big deal in the Roman Catholic Church. Luther chose this day because he knew that the church would be packed.

   You know those round glowing things above the heads of certain people in Christian art? That’s right, “halo’s”. They are there to show that the person under them is a saint, or holy, or hallowed, as in “hallowed be thy name”. All Saints Day was, therefore, All Hallows Day. The night before this day was All Hallows Eve, shortened over time, to Halloween.

   Christians in the Middle Ages believed that the forces that defy God were allowed to come out at night to scare Christians. Christians would dress up to mock them and to mock-scare each other.

   At Midnight, these forces were required to return to whatever hole they came from because it was the beginning of All Saints Day.

   Then, they were mocked. Today, in our secular society, people celebrate them. They pretend scary things are fun in order to convince themselves that they are not scary at all. Yet, people are frightened, especially when left to themselves.

   This third celebration is our culture’s celebration of the forces that oppose God of evil.

   Halloween used to be fun, now it has gotten very dark and is way more about what adults want than about what children want. Most children have difficulty separating what they see from what they feel, or what is true.

   People now decorate their lawns, they invest in elaborate costumes, they seek out terror as entertainment. They spend an enormous amount of money on the decorations, the parties, the costumes, etc.

   Christians, those who believe and are baptized have nothing to fear, and we also have something to real to celebrate: our salvation. Without anything to celebrate in terms of our salvation, we have everything to fear.

[What do you think?   What are you celebrating this week, and how? Share your thoughts in the comments section below and we’ll respond to every one.]

Paul writes,

*Ephesians 6:10-18

   Notice that salvation has nothing to do with us. We put on the armor of God.

   We are set free from sin, death and the power of the devil, by God.

   Our baptism service actually contains an exorcism. Our sponsors are asked, or we are asked if we are old enough, to renounce all the forces that defy God. We do. Those forces now have no power over us. None.

   This is why we celebrate and praise God this week and every week, forever. The victory of God over everything that hold us back from being free from sin, death, and the powers of all the forces that defy God, to know the abundant life that truly is life, in a living relationship with the one true living God, has been won.  

   We have nothing to fear. We have several real things to celebrate this week: faith, baptism, and salvation, all gifts from God.

(59) This Is Not My Life

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for This Is Not My Life, originally shared on October 26, 2020. It was the fifty-ninth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We turned on the news this morning and saw the pictures of the Trabuco Canyon fire. It started small and is growing. The Santa Ana winds are blowing and it’s actually a little nippy by California standards. The smoke from the fires wasn’t rising up, it was blowing sideways, flowing through the canyons like fog. Do you feel like you are in a fog? Do you look around and say to yourself, “This is not my life.” Today we are going to consider why you might be right, and that you are not alone.

   One of my favorite parts of the textbook for Biblical Greek, the language in which the original documents of the New Testament was recorded, I’m slowly working through, comes at the end of the third chapter. Here the author, Dr. Bill Mounce, says “You are now entering the fog. You will have read this chapter and think you understand it – and perhaps you do – but it will seem foggy. That’s okay. If living in the fog becomes discouraging, look two chapters back and you should understand that chapter clearly. In two more chapters this chapter will be clear, assuming you keep studying.”  (Basics of Greek Grammar, page 38).

   I found that extremely comforting and encouraging. OK. I’m not the only one. This is normal.

   It seems to me that we, most of us, are at a point in the pandemic where it feels like we are in a fog. Like we are in a fog of anticipation, of disorientation, and spent hopes. Like we’ve become disengaged from our real lives and we’ve followed Alice down the rabbit hole to a world that looks familiar in some ways, but doesn’t make sense.

   We are looking around and saying, “This is not my life”.

   It’s certainly not the way any of us could have imagined it even 6-months ago.

   But then, the world is not the way it’s supposed to be.

   God made the world to be a perfect place, where everything was clean and new, where all living things lived in harmony, where human beings were made, as the pinnacle of creation, in God’s image, that is, for a living relationship with the living God. No conflict, no pain, no want, no death. No work, except to just live in harmony in the garden God had created and pick the fruit off the trees.

   Did you have a favorite doll or action figure when you were very young? And, did that doll or action figure talk to you. I mean really talk to you. Or really sound like it was talking to you, when you’d pull a string or squeezed its tummy and it would say something like, “I love you.” Or “You’re my best friend.”

   Did that doll or action figure love you? Was it your best friend? In your imagination, maybe. But, and I hope I’m not saying anything traumatic here, it really didn’t. It was only programmed to say that. That doll or action figure was only a material thing. It was incapable of love, or of doing anything for which it was not programmed to do or mimic.

   So, when God asked Mr. and Mrs. Pinnacle of Creation, “Do you love me”, saying “Yes”, could have no meaning unless they had the ability to say “No.”

   So, God put a tree in the middle of the garden

   God said that Adam and Eve could do anything they wanted, they just couldn’t eat of that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

   And, human beings said “No”. They ate the fruit of the tree, and evil entered the world. Sin, the thing that separates us from God entered the world and our sin separated us from the living relationship with the living God for which we were created.

   In fact, this is not my life. At least it’s not the way it’s supposed to be.

   But, in what we call the Old Testament of the Bible, God is steadfast, and we see a record of the acts of God done to restore that relationship. A flood and a new start, slavery in Egypt, liberation from slavery in Egypt, prophets, priests, kings, the division of the nation of the people of God, 1,000 years of waiting for the Messiah the deliverer, the last 300 of which God went radio silent and there was no word from the Lord.

   We rejected all of them until, finally, God acted unilaterally to restore that relationship at the cross. God entered human history, fully God and fully human being, in Jesus Christ. God proclaims God’s already and not yet kingdom, God suffers and dies on the cross to restore that living relationship for all who accept it, that is, all who believe.

   We who have put on Christ in our baptism, whose sins are covered by Christ, now live as those who have already died. We died with Christ in a death like his and will rise with Christ in a resurrection like his. That promise makes it a done deal.

   We are in the in-between period between final act and perfection. In the already but not yet Kingdom of God. We await its perfection in the coming Judgement, when Christ will be revealed to all.

   It’s true. This is not my life.

   My life, my true life, is hidden, hidden in Christ.

*Colossians 3:1-4

   When I was seminary, after college and the Marine Corps, I had been in school for what seemed to me to be a very long time. I was growing frustrated because it seemed to me like I had only been preparing for life. I was anxious to start living that life for which I had been preparing.

   One day I realized that I was not just preparing for life. I was living it.

   “Right now, anyway,” I thought, “this is my life.”

   Years later, I realized that while “This is my life” may be true, “This is my life” does not really fully describe an authentic life, but a shadow life. “This is not my life.” We belong to Christ. Our lives are not our own.

   What we emphasize makes a huge difference in whether or not we live an authentic life.

*Romans 14:7-8

   Likewise, we may look around today and say, This is not my life. And we may be right, it may not be anything like we could have imagined it even 6-months ago.

   But, when we say “This is not my life”, this is most certainly true.

   Do you feel you are now entering the fog.

   Come out of it, and come into the river, the Streams of Living Water that is the Holy Spirit, working within us the Baptism that has given us new life in Christ, the abundant life given to us at the cross.

(58) What Would Jesus Wear?

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for What Would Jesus Wear?, originally shared on October 22, 2020. It was the fifty-eighth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What would Jesus wear? Today, we’re going to consider our changing habits of dress during the pandemic and how Jesus can help us with that.

   We’re at a point in the Coronavirus pandemic where things are starting to wear down on us. There’s a certain malaise setting in, I think, a resignation to a difficult future for most Americans. Maybe we’re just lowering our expectations given what we anticipate will be a volatile national life following the November presidential election, no matter who wins, which may not be known for some time, prolonging everybody’s anxiety.

   Maybe we’re anticipating the cooler wetter weather that will push people inside, and the coming flu season, that could push an otherwise stable LA County and surrounding areas, into a second wave as most of the rest of the country is now experiencing.

   Maybe it’s the gray skies and the fact that the Dodgers lost the second game of the World Series last night.

   On the other hand, we are adapting to the “new normal” and there’s every reason to think that Americans are and will continue to be a resilient people. We’ll adapt and overcome, as we have so many times before.

   With most of us at home more, and even working from home, would it be safe to say that our dress has adapted, that it has become more “informal” than usual? I can’t remember the last time I wore a clergy collar. I wore dress pants to an online fundraising non-dinner that Sally and I support every year; I think that was the first time in 6-months. I usually wear jeans or ratty cargoes. Our yard is my gym now, and I’ve worn one set of grubby outdoor work clothes to threads and am on my second set.

   Even if you’re working from home and have to dress up a little bit, though, you don’t have to completely dress-up. Although now, maybe you do.

   You’ve seen the memes and watched the embarrassing Zoom moments, the breakdowns and lapses of judgement. Mainstream TV commercials now spoof this Zoom dubious dress code.

   Mark Twain, via Shakespeare, said that “clothes make the man”, or the person. That is, we feel a certain way when we wear certain clothes. And, people judge who we are based, in part, on what we are wearing.

   Sally and I were talking about using my collection of silly hats for one of these videos the other day, and I got to thinking about whether Jesus wore a hat. I couldn’t think of any reference in the Bible, so I Googled it. “Did Jesus wear a hat?”

   I didn’t find much help, but I did find a very interesting article on what Jesus wore. Here’s a link: https://theconversation.com/what-did-jesus-wear-90783

   The article described recent interest in Jesus’ appearance, referencing the 2011 BBC documentary “Son of God” in which a skull from 1^st century Israel was reconstructed, CSI style, with flesh and tendons, etc. to give a picture of what Jesus might have looked like. The author pointed out that the olive skin tone, and black, shortish hair and beard were correct, but everything else was just a guess.

   That observation bears some reflection. We speak, sometimes, of the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. The Jesus of history was a dark skinned, middle eastern Jew. Some things about that can be known, and some things are reasonable guesses. The Jesus of faith is like me, can relate to me, understands me, loves me. That is why Jesus looks Asian in Asian Christian art, African in African Christian art, European in European Christian art, and so on. Jesus was not likely taller, blonder, more blue-eyed, or more white than his contemporaries; that is an image of European art, not of history.

   Jesus’ clothes are also not what we are used to seeing. They were not likely based around a single robe, always white, and not long. And, they were embarrassing.

   The Bible indicates that Jesus likely wore a mantle, which men preferred to be undyed, and sandals. (Mark 6:56; Matthew 3:11)

   He wore a tunic, which for men stopped just below the knee, not at the ankles. Only rich men wore long tunics.

   Jesus’ tunic was also made in one piece. I had believed that this was rare and expensive. The soldiers at the cross are described as gambling to see who would get Jesus tunic. In fact, I heard a preacher once saying that this was evidence that Jesus wasn’t poor, having a one-piece tunic.

   Apparently this is not the case. The author, Joan Taylor, Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, King’s College London, points out that, “One-piece tunics in first-century Judaea were normally thin undergarments or children’s wear. We shouldn’t think of contemporary underwear, but wearing a one-piece on its own was probably not good form. It was extremely basic.”

   A critic of Christianity later remembered that Jesus’ clothes were shabby and that he “obtained his means of livelihood in a disgraceful and importunate way” that is, the author observes, by begging or receiving donations.

   When Christian author Origen argued against this critic, he did not dispute these things.

   Jesus “wore a basic tunic that others wore as an undergarment” Professor Taylor writes, bluntly.

   Jesus identified with the poor. Why? Because he wanted to romanticize poverty? Because it’s best to be poor? I don’t think so.

   I think it was because the poor have no options. That’s what it means to be poor. No options meant that they had nothing to turn to in order to distract them from the living relationship with the living God, the Kingdom of God, that Jesus came to offer all.

   Jesus emptied himself of everything to give us eternity, here and in the world to come. We, in response, are cheerfully generous.

   Jesus said,

*Matthew 6:25-33

   What is our most important garment?

*Galatians 3:27

   That is the streams of living water. God, God’s self within us.

   What would Jesus wear? Jesus wore a crown of thorns. He wore a mantle of blood on the cross. He did it for us, for our Sin, that is, all that separates us from God. And we wear Jesus.

(57) Restless Hearts

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Restless Hearts, originally shared on October 19, 2020. It was the fifty-seventh video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   It has been said that Christianity is always one generation from extinction. How do we generate a model and message of the Church that is humble, transparent, and real? How can we be the agents of renewal in our churches?

   We’re at a point in the Coronavirus pandemic where Johns Hopkins says there have been 60,000 new cases a day worldwide on average over the past week. While California continues to improve, many other states are experiencing spikes in new cases, prompting fears of a second wave or coronavirus even as flu season is just around the corner.

   Some are predicting that places around the world with poor cold storage facilities will get the vaccine at a much slower pace than more developed areas.

   We’ve been isolated and restricted, our worship has changed, our work has changed, our education has changed, we are within two weeks of a divisive national election, and we’re restless. How do we find rest in a pandemic?

   John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard church movement, tells about how he had been a professional musician in Las Vegas and then toured with the Righteous Brothers. He said that, in 1963, when he had first been drawn to God, he was a beer-guzzling, drug abusing pop musician, who was converted at the age of 29 while chain-smoking his way through a Quaker-led Bible Study.”

   He began reading the Bible ravenously like a starving person being given food and, after a few weeks reading about the mighty acts of God and attending what were to him uneventful worship services, he asked a lay church leader, “When do we do the stuff? You know, the stuff here in the Bible; the stuff Jesus did, like healing the sick, raising the dead, healing the blind – stuff like that?” The lay leader told him that they didn’t to that stuff anymore, just what happened in their worship services.

   John Wimber replied, “You mean I gave up drugs for that?”

   I think about that story sometimes. Not because of what have been called the signs-and-wonders “stuff”, but because I think this story raises some important questions about what the Church is and why people have found no sacrifice too small for the Church and its message throughout the centuries, people who ordered their lives by its rhythms, who refused to deny their faith as members of the Body of Christ whatever the cost including of their lives, whose art and architecture, music and poetry, were dedicated to the glory of God.

   Why aren’t more people in our own time active in a local church. Why is the Church no longer a major influence in our society? Not that that’s all bad. It’s better when the church is not so entwined with the culture that people go for the business connections, to feel (and for others to believe) that they are good persons, or to be part of what we used to describe as “cultural Christianity.”

   Some people say its because they are spiritual but not religious (that is, not restricted), they don’t have to go to church to believe in God and that’s true. But it’s inconceivable that a person could be a Christian and not want to be with believers in worship. Christianity is about relationships, our relationship with God and the common relationship that makes with other believers, and the way we treat one another and the world. Jesus said, in

*Matthew 18:20

   To gather in Jesus’ name means to gather in his essential self. The early Christians believed that the essential self of a person was in their name. That’s why God does not have a proper noun for a name. It is inconceivable that we could know God’s essential self. When we gather, we gather in the essential self of God. Jesus is there among us. We gather and meet in relationship between God and among human beings.

   Where are the young people, and by young I mean under say 55? What happened to the children of the saints of the Church? Busy? Gone for entertainment? Seeking fewer expectations on them? Youth sports?

   The reasons are really all the same. Individualism is chosen over community. Christian community.

   When we gather as the people of God, what the Bible calls the Body of Christ, we recognize that each of us has been given a gift, one of the non signs-and-wonders gifts, for the sake of building up that body. That gift is not given to us, it is given through us for the sake of all. We are a community, gifted to build up one another.

*Matthew 16:17-18

   This passage is a defining one for both Protestants Catholics, but in different ways. Peter had for the first time just identified Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God”. Jesus replies that God had revealed this to him. Protestants say that Jesus then said that “this rock” upon which the Church would be built was Peter’s faith. The words Peter and rock are similar in the original Greek. Catholics say that it was Peter himself on which the Church would be built, that Peter would be the first pope.

   But, in focusing on that verse’s important distinction, we often miss the rest of the passage: the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The Church is the means by which the people of God experience the presence of God and salvation. It’s a want to thing, a matter of the heart, not a have-to in order to check all the boxes.

   We experience that root desire, but I think we have done a very poor job of communicating it.

   Have you ever seen a stained glass window? What does it look like from the outside? It’s a lifeless, colorless blob, a void. What does it look like from the inside? Colors and patterns forming meaning and inspiration.

   During a time of illiteracy, they became the teaching graphics of the Church. They told the whole story when, on any given Sunday, the people of God only heard some of it. They inspired and lifted people up with a sense of God’s majesty and glory. But only on the inside. (Or, on the outside at night when the church is lighted on the inside.)

   The difference is the light.

   I wonder if all the compromises, the desire for relevancy, the concern for professionalism, a place of respect in the community, and having the marks of success in our culture, have not put us in a position where, except for a few eccentricities, we are indistinguishable from the world around us.

   I wonder why our political advocacy is based on the coercive threat of our numbers with no reference to our spiritual authority whatsoever.

   I wonder if all our attempts to adapt to the world have not, ironically, pushed it away.

   I wonder if we have so little expectation that people will repent, receive the gift of faith, and believe in the Good News of Jesus, that we don’t even think to provide the mechanisms for a person to come to Christ and be nurtured as a new disciple.

   I think that we, as a group, are afraid.

   We are afraid of offending people and losing friends and family members, even our closest family.

   We are afraid that our faith is actually so fragile that we might be challenged in such a way that would break it.

   We are afraid of losing our traditions and cultural identity.

   We are afraid that someone might rightly point out our sinner’s hypocrisy.

   We are afraid of being accused of being intolerant or judgmental.

   We fall back to rationalizations like: I don’t talk about my faith, I live it. I lead people to Christ by example. I love them until they ask me why. The Evangelicals or the Baptists get them born again while we raise them up into maturity.

   All of these would be fine, if they were happening. If not, they are just the armor we put on to protect our fragility.

   What do we say to people when they come to us without knowing the rules of church behavior that everybody else there knows, when they come from lifestyles, jobs, friendships, or beliefs that are inconsistent with the Christian life?

   Are we prepared?

   How would we communicate the basic message of the Church in our elevator speech, the speech we make when there is only a very short time of contact?

   At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gives his disciples what we call The Great Commission, not The Great Suggestion. The Great Commission:

*Matthew 28:16-20

   We are called to go to where the broken people are, and to be ready when they come looking for something and possibly not even knowing what questions to ask. Not knowing what they are missing in life, only that something’s wrong with the way they are living their lives now.

   How do we start an evangelical conversation? Would we recognize an opening for sharing the Gospel if we heard it?

   What mechanisms do we have in our church for feeding, nurturing, and encouraging a new believer to live the Christian life and to grow in it?

   Our power as a Church is not based on our numbers, but on the power of the Holy Spirit within us. We are called to live in humility, pointing to that power, and not to our own.

   We cannot adapt to the world and expect the world to see in us another way, a better alternative, a more real worldview.

   Recognition that we have made lots of mistakes, that we are sinners, but that we believe in a great and perfect God who has made us saints by his grace, even as we are sinners, that God accepts us as we are but never leaves us as we are.

   Our confidence does not come from what is seen, but what is unseen. We must regain our confidence in a loving and gracious God, we must believe and what we glibly preach, that God is real, that God has made and continues to make a real and transformative difference in our lives.  

   It has often been said that there is a God-shaped hole in each of us. We try to fill it with money, or sex, or status, or personal development, or whatever, but nothing in this world, no political, no economic, or social system, can fill that hole. Only God can.

   Augustine of Hippo, a father of the Church, and someone who knew something about living without God and then coming to faith, wrote. “'Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.'

   For that to happen we must become more than a shell of an institutional Christianity and more of a Body of Christ, point to Jesus, name the name and invite fearlessly (or fearfully) unbelievers to come to Christ and to do the stuff…the transformational “stuff” that puts Jesus in a place that defines every part of our lives, that make of us a new Creation, born again, that gives us rest in Him. That’s the real “stuff”, not the show “stuff”.

   Pray, read your Bible, worship, serve others, be ready to defend the hope that is within you, and sometimes to go on offense.

   We are called in The Great Commission to “go, make disciples, teach, baptize, and remember”.

   We are not alone. Jesus promised to be with us. We are a community in his name.

   We are called to be the Body of Christ, and to point restless hearts to God.

(56) Transformers

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Transformers, originally shared on October 15, 2020. It was the fifty-sixth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    “Character” was defined by the speaker at the Eagle Scout award ceremony for one of the members of the church I served in San Dimas as, “what we do when there is no reward for doing the right thing and no punishment for doing the wrong thing.” Today, we’re going to consider the character of our culture in these times, and how we can be a transformative influence within it.

   Sally and I celebrated our 37^th wedding anniversary yesterday in typical pandemic fashion: low-key and at home. Our thanks to all who sent their greetings and congratulations.

   Things have certainly been interesting during the pandemic. Of course, there is a Chinese curse that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” And, 2020 has certainly been interesting.

   I posted a meme yesterday that showed a panel with a deity-like figure holding a stone tablet with the words “Love Thy Neighbor” written on it and a group of people pushing each other away. In the second panel, the deity had written-in another word so that the tablet said, “Love Thy Neighbor Challenge” and the same group was loving and hugging one another.

   Would the proclamation of Jesus be more successful if it was presented as a game? A goal to be accomplished by us?

   Has Social Media, particularly in this pandemic, become a more real arena than reality itself?

   Will people not act upon God’s call to live the good news of Jesus Christ, but will eagerly act in response to the latest fad? Is being up to the moment more important than being prepared for eternity?

   Has the community of social media become more real to us than Reality itself?

   We’re at a point where an increasing number of people live only in their own created reality, rather than the world as it is.

   What do you think about where we are today in terms our world view? Have we Christians become conformed to this world, or transformed by the Holy Spirit? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

   We’re at a point in the Coronavirus pandemic where LA may be moving down a level in scale of readiness for reopening in California. The majority of states in our nation are experiencing spikes of coronavirus cases, just as they are in Europe. There is talk of a second wave, of another round of shut-downs, and that things will only get worse has we move into flu season and the rain and cold and snow starts moving groups of people back indoors, unless those indoor activities are closed.

   And the backlash has already begin, with people calling for everyone but those currently believed to be a greatest risk to congregate, get sick, and establish a heard immunity, as if we didn’t live in an actual community of all kinds of real people.

   As they were invulnerable to sickness and death. Or, as if they didn’t care either way.

   How do we make a difference in a world where many prefer a virtual world to a real one, where people think only about what is good for themselves, and that is becoming more and more secular?

   That would actually be an odd question for most Christians today, and for almost all Christians throughout history. The long stretch of influence and peace for Christians in the United State, and even in Europe, is weirdly exceptional in world history.

   Jesus said, in the very next words after the Beatitudes, in the Sermon on the Mount,

*Matthew 5:13-16

and a few chapters later,

*Matthew 13:33

   We are the agents of the Kingdom of God. We are small, in and of ourselves, but we make a huge difference in what is around us. Huge. Salt, and Light, and Leaven. If we maintain our character. What is character but our true self, who we are when there is no reward for doing the right thing and no punishment for doing the wrong thing, only who we truly are in the power of the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water that shape and nourish us from within.

   Actually lived Christianity has been in a minority among almost all of the nations and cultures of the world from its beginning.

   The world is constantly working to make-over the Church into its own image: to be more tolerant of other beliefs for the sake of cultural unity, to be more focused on contributing social services that supplement the culture’s public policy and saves it money, to be more docile, more entertaining, more like the world.

   I was watching the news on Channel 5 this morning where entertainment reporter Sam Rubin was interviewing an actress about in a show she was in about a society where people take tests to find their “soul mates”, like online dating on steroids. He said that he was once on a flight with a senior executive from E-harmony who said, “people basically want to date themselves.” Sam Rubin and the actress agreed that it was a bad idea. “Why would I want to date myself?”, the actress said. “I’m with myself all day.”

   Isn’t that the temptation in all relationships? To try to make the other into someone just like myself? To have no where to grow, nothing to argue about, nothing to learn, nowhere that iron sharpens iron?

   Isn’t that what the world tries to do to the Church, to make it into something just like itself? And doesn’t it suffer as a result?

Paul wrote:

*Romans 12:1-2

   We don’t want to make the world to be just like the Church. God reigns through two kingdoms. This world and the Church. We want this world to be just what God wants the world to be, a place that provides for the common good in a Sinful world. And, we want the Church to be the Church, a place that points to the living relationship with the living God for which human beings were created, who seek to make the world more like the already but not yet Kingdom of God that will be brought to perfection only in the world to come.

   Now, when the Bible speaks of “the world” it usually means the people who have not yet received a living faith, a living relationship with the one true living God. When we speak of this world, we generally mean the world that ministers outside the already but not yet Kingdom of God, such as governments.

   We are called to be transformers of people and societies into what God has created them to be.

   Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

   That is our purpose, to be transformers in the world and in the Church, to be God’s transformed and transforming agents of change to something more like what the world was and is intended to be.

(55) Disappointed Eyes

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Disappointed Eyes, originally shared on October 12, 2020. It was the fifty-fifth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Have you ever experienced disappointment? Maybe you’re disappointed right now in the lack of a accessible coronavirus vaccine or treatment, or the slowness of the economic recovery, or in your political party or the other one, or in your life in isolation.

   Today we’re going to look at a hope that does not disappoint us. In fact, it brings us a life that really is life.

   I could not see well as a child, but I didn’t know it. I thought everyone saw things as I did. Blurry from a distance.

   I remember sitting close to the TV and up-front at the movies. I would sit close to the blackboard at school and, if necessary, I would look through a little pin hole I made with my thumbs and forefingers that made things sharper.

   I think I was in 4^th grade when I got glasses. I vividly remember walking to school the next day and looking at the tall trees. I could see leaves at the top! I could see stop signs from a block away? I literally could see the big picture.

   The Bible’s book of Proverbs (29:18), in the King James Version, says, “Where there is no vision, the people parish”. One of my colleagues once said, “Where there is no vision, there is a Lutheran parish. 😊  Hey! Now, I don’t think that’s fair. I think that could describe a lot, may most, of our Christian congregations. The problem is that we don’t see the big picture. Many of us lack a vision for ministry beyond ourselves or what the world likes about us.

   The New Revised Standard Version translation renders that same passage as, “Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint.” That’s interesting, isn’t it? “Vision” is rendered as a voice from God and “perish” is equivalent to casting off restraint, or not living by the Law of God.

   Jesus often made the distinction between physically seeing and not getting the point. Like, “Do you have eyes and fail to see?” in Mark 8:18

   One of my cousins is a well-known and influential jazz guitarist. Pat Metheny. We go to his concerts whenever he’s in town. We go backstage after the concert and wait for him and the band to catch their breath and then to come out and see people.

   There are usually a lot of industry people backstage as well. It never fails that, as I look around the room, I see other pairs of eye scanning the scene and, when our eyes meet, I see this flicker of disappointment, “He’s nobody famous.” And the eyes move on.

   It has never bothered me. In fact, it strikes me as kind of funny but also sad to see so many people who are so attached to celebrity that it is all they care to see in a person.

   The origin of their disappointment is a standard of status that is attached to the other person’s success, or lack of it, by their standards.

   The Lakers won their 17^th national championship last night. It was an exciting series ending an unusual season. Watching those games and the contributions made by the whole team, I thought about my favorite Laker, Derek Fisher. Derek Fisher was not flashy. He was not a superstar. He’s just the guy you call in when you just want to get the job done. In other words, he’s the most Lutheran of all the lakers. 😊

   I once shared that story in a sermon. A man who had been coming to worship with his wife, but who was not yet a member, later started attending our membership classes. I asked him one day, as I usually asked everybody in those classes, what had led him to become a member at our church. He said, “I heard you talk about Derek Fisher and I realized that I have been a Lutheran all my life but didn’t know it.”  😊

   What is God’s standard of success? It is a life lived for others. It is not always an easy life, but is an abundant life. Life that really is life.

   I posted a meme in Facebook that contains the words of Yoda in the Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace, to Anakin Skywalker (who later becomes Darth Vader), “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."

Paul, in his letter to the Church at Rome says,

*Romans 5:3-5

   My eyesight eventually grew to 20/400 and stayed there through most of my adulthood. And then I needed cataract surgery a few years ago. The results of having cataract surgery weren’t as dramatic as getting glasses, but it improved. I now need glasses for reading, but that’s it. My eyesight was made better, overall.

   How do we improve the vision of the Church? How do we open the heart of the Church to the power of the Holy Spirit, to see the big picture of God’s work, beyond each person’s concern, beyond each congregation’s concerns, beyond things like making the budget, preserving a history, or attracting more young people to save the church? How do we change the focus of the Church to call, gather, equip and make holy people into the whole Church as it’s central activity?

   We can’t

   We can only open our hearts to the living water that transforms and nourishes us and get out of God’s way.

   We can only ask God to put our hearts right and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit leading us into service.

   What do you think? What brings you affirmation and hope? How do you respond when the world judges you by its standards? Put your thoughts in the comment section below.

   Ross Douthat, a conservative opinion section editor and writer for the New York Times, wrote a book called Bad Religion a few years ago. He chronicles what he believes has put the Church in its current position. He finds that most of our wounds have been self-inflicted.

   Near the end he notes that the church has been in the same position in the past that we find ourselves in today, with a loss of influence, a decline in numbers, and a feeling that it will soon go out of existence except as a few museums.

   He said that, in every case, two things have brought the Church back: the Arts and holy living. The Arts because they are a means of communication with the world. Holy living because it is a credible witness to what the church has to offer those who know there is something important that is missing in their lives.

   What is missing is not to be made better, it is a Savior. What is missing is not more entertainment, but something that is real. What is missing is not something that they can make the most important thing in their lives, but that God is everything.

   God accepts us as we are, but God never leaves us as we are. God makes us better from the inside out and, even with lives that are difficult and rebellious, God does not abandon us. God is steadfast.

   Our hope is in God who, no matter what, looks upon us with eyes of love.

   That hope does not disappoint us.