Thoughts on Christian Preaching

 

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:10-11).

A lot of pulpits in American churches have been replaced with the stage, the riser, and the lectern. Regardless of whether or not the pastor speaks from behind a traditional pulpit, or walks around in a cloud of smoke-machine vapor, a lot of different things happen in that place from which he addresses the assembled gathering (which I will collectively refer to as the pulpit). Theological essays on fine points of theology are read. Political rallies are led. Self-help lectures are spoken. People claiming to hear the voice of God speak dubious prophecies, and utter gibberish as though it were the miraculous gift of tongues.

Theological essays are fine. If I didn’t think so, I would stop writing them. Speeches urging Christian men to do their civic duty are important. Men must all, from time to time, be reminded that the things we claim to believe are connected to the world in which we live; and we ought to conduct ourselves in the world according to those beliefs. That means refusing to offer the pinch of incense to Caesar, even on pain of death. It also means peacefully but firmly resisting when secular society urges, or tries to force us to do and affirm things which are contrary to Christian teaching. Speeches of such a political and social nature, in my opinion, should not happen in the pulpit. They should happen at the gatherings outside of worship: the men’s group, the women’s group, the coffee hour after church, the Sunday school, the confirmation class, the youth gathering, and the gathering of friends and family in and outside of the home. As Christians, we should want to spend a lot of time talking with each other about how God’s Law applies to us, and to what we say and do. Our pastors should want to encourage us to do this, and to guide us in it.

Needless to say, the false prophesying of modern-day prophets has no place either inside or outside of the pulpit.

What should be happening when the pastor ascends the pulpit on Sunday morning? The pastor’s job is to make disciples of Jesus by baptizing and teaching. He should, therefore, proclaim the Gospel. That seems too simple. The people in church have already heard that and believe, right? These people sitting in the pew need life-application, don't they? If we don't think we need to be called to repentance we are wrong. If we think we don't need to hear the preaching of sin and grace in Christ we should, to borrow from Luther, touch our bodies to see if we still have flesh and blood, and then believe what scripture says of them. 

Or, we might think, as I did for a long time, that the pastor should engage in a verse-by-verse, word-for-word exegesis of the appointed Biblical text for the day. If you want that, go to his Bible study. If he doesn’t do that at his Bible study, encourage him to.

We might want our pastor to organize our congregation into a community activist group that publicly protests injustices. We might want him to tell us what to think about various political issues, and to tell us which politicians to support to save western civilization. If you want that, go to a political rally. Don't be too surprised, though, when the movement, the party, or the politician lets you down. This type of thinking suggests that we are not relying on Christ and His power to save us, but rather the power of the government. I suppose the Lutheran way to say this might be that we are violating the First Commandment, since we would seem to be not fearing, loving, and trusting in God above all things.

The Bible tells us not to trust man’s power to save, because he hasn’t any. It tells us that this world is the domain of the prince of the power of the air, who is Satan. Here in this present world, the Bible tells us, the Christian has no continuing city. We look toward that which is to come. That is the reason we can be so bold as to refuse to worship Caesar even when his henchman has the knife at our throat. He may kill us, but Jesus has already made us alive in Him. We will awaken on the day of resurrection and enter into the new and perfect creation to live there forever with Christ.

That is not to say that we should completely abandon the world and the society in which we live. If that were so we should retreat to the monasteries and shut ourselves away as Christians have tired in the past. I am simply saying that we should keep two things in mind. First, the world in which we live is passing away and we are looking forward to the new world which is to supplant it. Second, the purpose of we Christians gathering together - or as we Lutherans might say, gathering together around Word and Sacrament - is not the same as any of those other types of gatherings mentioned previously. The purpose of the gathering we call church is to receive God’s gifts that were won for us by Christ’s death and resurrection. Those gifts are the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. God gives them to us, primarily, in two ways. One way is through the preaching of His Word. The other way is through baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which we call sacraments. In a way, preaching and administering the sacraments are the same thing, because they are both ways that God delivers His Word to us and creates faith in us. Right now, however, I want to focus on Christian preaching.

The main purpose of Christian preaching is to deliver to men the thing which God uses to make Christians. That is God’s Word. In Christian preaching, the preacher is to proclaim the two great teachings of God’s Word: Law and Gospel. The Law tells man what he must do for God, how he cannot do it, and the condemnation he deserves. The Gospel tells man what God has done for him; how while we were God’s enemies Christ died to redeem the world. In Christian preaching the preacher proclaims that, becoming man in the person of Jesus, God suffered and died on the cross to bear the guilt of our sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God. Such Christian preaching brings men to faith. It crushes men under the weight of God’s Law. It shows men their sin and makes them sorry for their sins. It delivers to those so brought to repentance the promise that, for the sake of Jesus those sins have been removed; it tells them that this is true not only for them individually, but also for the whole world (Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 2, 1951).

Through the preaching of the Gospel, God the Holy Spirit creates faith in men’s hearts. The Gospel is the mechanism by which God tells us what He has done for us in spite of the fact that we did not deserve it: that at just the right time, while we were still God’s enemies, Christ was born according to the scriptures, died as the sacrifice for the sins of the world, and rose again for our justification. He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead (Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3, 1953).

The reason that church is different from, for example, a formal presentation of some theological points in a lecture hall is this: the preacher isn’t trying to convince the people listening to him to believe in Jesus. He is simply discharging his duty to proclaim the message he has been given. No one can be convinced into the Christian faith by rational arguments alone. The natural man cannot receive the spiritual things or know them (1 Cor. 2:14; 1:23). It is the Holy Spirit who will prove the truth of Law and Gospel to those who hear. The man who hears God’s Law and is crushed by it into contrition does not need proof that what the Law says about mankind, and about himself individually, is true. He knows his sin when it is exposed. When he hears the Gospel proclamation of how Christ died to take away that sin, he will rejoice without the aid of scientific demonstration, or apologetic explanation of why the Gospel is true. He will be happy to be out from under the weight of condemnation and death (Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1, 1950).

That isn’t to say, however, that the only place from which the Gospel can be heard is the pulpit. The Holy Spirit works how He wants to, when and where it pleases Him. He may very well use the Gospel spoken in that theological lecture, or in that conversation with colleagues in the lunchroom, to cause someone listening to come to faith. The same thing goes for all the other gatherings where Christians are present. All Christians are, in fact, called to preach the Gospel. Every person who confesses Christ is member of the priesthood of all believers. Every Christian is called to preach and teach those in whose midst he finds himself according to his various vocations (Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3, 1953).

The general call of the Christian to preach the Gospel, however, is different from the call to the public ministry. The call to the public ministry, that is, to serve as a pastor in a Christian congregation, is one to preach and teach in the gathering of Christians of a specific place and time (Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3, 1953). This is not a matter to be taken lightly for either the congregation, or the pastor who is called. He will be, as James writes, held to a higher standard on Judgment Day. So, where Christians are gathered together they are to choose men to administer God’s word and sacraments to them according to the guidelines set forth in Holy Scripture. This is because God is a God of order, and not of disorder (Ap AC XIV). The man whom they call is to proclaim God’s Word boldly, and in its purity, and to administer the sacraments rightly according to Christ’s institution.

Finally, Christian preaching should proclaim the hope of glory. This is nothing other than proclaiming Law and Gospel, but from the angle of Christ’s return. Preaching the coming of Christ’s kingdom of glory was something the Apostles did from the beginning. The eyes of the early Christians were constantly directed upwards in anticipation of Christ’s return. Christian preaching should give the Christian comfort in the midst of suffering by reminding him of the fulfillment of the promise of the resurrection, and of eternal life with Jesus and all the saints in the restored creation (Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 2, 1952).

The more purely and boldly preachers proclaim the Gospel, the more the Holy Spirit will do His own work of making Christians. Those saints who are regularly fed with Jesus’ body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, and by hearing their faithful pastors preach, will be sustained and grow in the faith by the miraculous power of God. Indeed, as Paul wrote, how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? They will then go out into the world to be salt and light. They won’t be able to help it. Their good works will just proceed forth from them as apples proceed forth from an apple tree. They will be bold to say, as Peter and John did, we must obey God rather than men, when confronted with ridicule and persecution. If, however, our pastors give us essays, pop psychology, seminars on positive thinking, mystical gibberish, and lies, we will begin to believe in those things instead of Jesus. ###

Works Cited

Pieper, Francis. 1950. Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

Pieper, Francis. 1951. Christian Dogmatics, vol. 2. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

Pieper, Francis. 1953. Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

A Migration Story - Season's Greetings from the Unitarian Universalist Church

MS St. Louis

Citations from the Book of Concord have been taken from Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord.

 

It’s that time of year again - time for the Christmas visit to Evansville, IN. It’s nice to get away from home and work for a while, and catch up with out-of-town family and friends. Of course it also means that I get to indulge in one of my other, more recent Christmas traditions; seeing what sort of nonsense the Unitarian Universalist Church is up to. Their church sign is usually good for a laugh, and some fodder for an article or two. This year has been no exception (though I don’t think anything will beat “Fire Communion” from 2013). 

 

Driving past the small white cinderblock building on Morgan Avenue, I saw that their sign advertised “A Migration Story.” I was immediately turned off, as this title conjured images of the whole, “Jesus was an unwelcome immigrant too!” chestnut, so often roasted by liberals when discussing the topic of illegal immigration. A little internet searching showed this Sunday’s service would indeed focus on immigration, but the message would be one that had been delivered on Thanksgiving at UU Rockford, IL by Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson. This piqued my curiosity so I went looking for the text. Unfortunately for me I was unable to locate the printed text, but the people at UU Rockford did publish a podcast to iTunes, which I downloaded and listened to.

 

I won’t do a point-by-point critique of the Homily. In summary, the Rev. Dr. Johnson’s message was that, in the wake of terror and fear, some people seek to close the doors of immigration altogether. How dare you! God loves the stranger, and you were a stranger once to.

 

“If we want to be fair about it, that it is only those folks whose migration stories predate written history who were themselves overrun by the Europeans some 500 years ago who I think get a vote on which migrants we take in now,” he said (Johnson, 2015).

 

As I listened to the Rev. Dr. Johnson spout on and on about Americans should be completely open to accepting refugees and illegal aliens because of the 500 years of white European oppression of brown people I was struck by two things, one concerning the left-hand, the other concerning the right-hand kingdom.

 

First, the left-hand kingdom issue: The bulk of the approximately 20 minute homily focused on the telling of Rev. Dr. Johnson’s own migration story, and the tragic tale of the St. Louis. For those who don’t know, the St. Louis was a ship filled with asylum-seeking Jews which departed from Germany in 1939 bound for Cuba. The ship was turned away. They attempted to gain permission to land in America. The Nazi government, attempting to “help” the United States, warned that the people on board the St. Louis were Communists, criminals, and all manner of subversives. They were again rebuffed. The ship eventually made its way back to Europe. The Jews of the St. Louis found asylum in Great Britain and other countries on the continent. Half of them, however, would not survive the coming Second World War (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2015).

 

Rev. Dr. Johnson explained how his family had come from Germany to America on that very same ship after the Great War. His people had been allowed to come into the country and live; these other poor wretches had been callously turned away and most of them had perished.

 

To those people who would turn away refugees Rev. Dr. Johnson explained that he’d like to sit down at the kitchen table with them and, “I’ll read it [the story of the St. Louis] again, and I’ll read it again, until their heart is opened and their conscience awakes” (Johnson, 2015).

 

There is something to be learned from the story of the MS St. Louis and we should apply that knowledge to our situation today.

 

The sad tale of the St. Louis is not, however analogous to the refugee situation which Europe and America is facing today with those coming out of Syria and Iraq. Whether we wanted to admit it to ourselves or not, sending the Jews on the St. Louis back to Germany was a death sentence. They had no safe place in Europe to which they could flee, at least for very long. We knew that the Nazis wanted to purge the Jews from their midst; Hitler had written of his intentions, and his hatred for the Jews in Mein Kampf over a decade previous.

 

There was no real danger that these Jews were a threat to the United States. There were no Jewish Nazis, and the Nazi propaganda regarding who the passengers aboard the St. Louis were was, most likely, designed to play on the anti-semitic feelings of those in power at the time. The reports from Germany that those Jews seeking asylum were Communists and subversives gave the excuse needed in order to turn the ship away.

 

Today, the tens of thousands of Muslims fleeing war-torn Syria and Iraq seeking refuge in Europe and America have a different story. They are fleeing the horrors of war, but they do not face genocide. Unlike the Jews of the St. Louis, they do have other Muslim countries to go to where they would not be forced to live under Islamic State.

 

Unlike the Jews of the St. Louis, the fear that terrorists could be hidden among the asylum-seekers is legitimate. While there were no Jewish Nazis, there are most certainly Arab Muslim terrorists. So, while it may take some time to check out the backgrounds of Syrian and Iraqi Muslims seeking entry to the United States, they have other safe places to wait in the interim.

 

The real analogy to the Jews aboard the St. Louis would be to the Syrian and Iraqi Christians, the people whom our government has largely been ignoring (Shea, 2015). These people have been targeted by the Islamic State for death. They face persecution and genocide. There is no safe haven for these Christians in the Middle East. Despite their desperate situation the U.S. has refused to allow the Syrian and Iraqi Christians entry in favor of Muslim refugees, so as not to appear Islamophobic. And, like their Jewish refugee counterparts from 70 years ago, there are no Christian members of the Islamic State. It would be much simpler to investigate the backgrounds of these people than it is proving to do with the Muslim refugees, and their situation is far more urgent.

 

Instead, for political reasons, we choose the latter over the former.

 

We should absolutely learn the lesson of the “Voyage of the Damned” - but we are repeating this sad episode all over again, this time with Arab Christians paying the price.

 

God cares for men spiritually through the church; He cares for them temporally through family and government, all of which have been established by him. Part of the job of the government (what we Lutherans refer to as the “left-hand” kingdom) is to protect its citizens and administer justice.

 

“Civil rulers,” it is explained in the Augsburg Confession, “do not defend minds, but bodies and bodily things against obvious injuries. They restrain people with the sword and physical punishment in order to preserve civil justice and peace” (AC XXVIII 11).

 

It isn’t wrong for the government to protect its citizens by being careful when admitting refugees, immigrants, and asylum-seekers into the country. To the contrary, a ruler thus engaged is serving his citizens faithfully according to his vocation.

 

This brings me to the right-hand kingdom issue. During the course of this homily “god” was mentioned only a handful of times. Jesus was totally absent. Holy Scripture was not read at all. What a curious way for a “church” to celebrate the First Sunday of Christmas. Of course, I am well aware that the Unitarian Universalist Church is not Christian, and it does not surprise me. This is what they have to say of themselves:

 

“In Unitarian Universalism, you can bring your whole self: your full identity, your questioning mind, your expansive heart. Together, we create a force more powerful than one person or one belief system. As Unitarian Universalists, we do not have to check our personal background and beliefs at the door: we join together on a journey that honors everywhere we’ve been before. Our beliefs are diverse and inclusive. We have no shared creed. Our shared covenant (our seven Principles) supports “the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Though Unitarianism and Universalism were both liberal Christian traditions, this responsible search has led us to embrace diverse teachings from Eastern and Western religions and philosophies…We are united in our broad and inclusive outlook, and in our values, as expressed in our seven Principles. We are united in shared experience: our open and stirring worship services, religious education, and rites of passage; our work for social justice; our quest to include the marginalized; our expressions of love” (Unitarian Universalist Association, 2015).

 

War, bigotry, lawlessness, racism, and all the other things commonly referred to as “ills of society,” are the consequences of sin. Sin originated from our first father Adam who, by his disobedience in the Garden, made all men subject to sin and death.

 

“This hereditary sin,” Luther writes in the Smalcald Articles, “is such a deep corruption of nature that no reason can understand it. Rather it must be believed from the revelation of Scripture” (SA III I 3).

 

The Rev. Dr. Johnson said near the beginning of his message that he would sit down at the table with someone who was opposed to immigration, and read the account of the St. Louis to them over and over until their consciences awoke. When I heard those words I was saddened to think that this man would trade the God-breathed words we have been given in Holy Scripture, which are useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness - the means of God’s grace, his living and active Word - for the words of men which have no power.

 

Wouldn’t it have been nice for the people listening to the Rev. Dr. Johnson to hear about their sin? No doctor can cure a disease which hasn’t been properly diagnosed, and the Rev. Dr. Johnson is no exception. He is attempting to cure the ills of society by applying a social gospel, which is really no gospel at all. These people, as do we all, need to hear how wicked they are. They, as do we, need to be called to repent of their sins. They, as do we, need to hear the good news that this sin of theirs has been paid for by the babe born in Bethlehem, Jesus, who was God in human flesh; that Jesus died on the cross in our place, and that he rose from the dead, and the gates of life eternal are opened to us by the grace of God through faith in him.

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

“Home.” Unitarian Universalist Church of Evansville. Accessed December 27, 2015. http://www.uuevansville.org.

 

Johnson, Rev. Dr. Matthew. “A Migration Story.” the UU Church-Rockford, IL. November 22, 2015. Accessed December 26, 2015. http://uurockford.podbean.com/e/11222015-a-migration-story/?token=085a764164a18148d872f961afb5fa7c.

 

McCain, Paul T, ed. Et. Al. Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord. 2nd ed. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2006.

 

Shea, Nina. “The State Department Turns Its Back on Syrian Christians and Other Non-Muslim Refugees.” National Review Online. November 2, 2015. Accessed December 27, 2015. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426419/christian-refugees-syria-religious-minorities-united-states-resettlement-policy.

 

“The Voyage of the St. Louis.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. August 18, 2015. Accessed December 27, 2015. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/mobile/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267.

 

“What We Believe.” Unitarian Universalist Association. February 9, 2015. Accessed December 27, 2015. http://www.uua.org/beliefs/welcome/index.shtml.