Still More Musings

Trump In, No Hope?

The news bites from this pompous ass are getting worse and worse and I believe are only the tip of the iceberg.  As his Russian buddies say, "The Fish Rots From The Head Down"

What is the point? The point is that we as a nation are allowing our values and decisions to be made by Social Media, the Vocal Minority and any group who screams bloody murder about their cause. Trump to me is the unjust Judge of Luke 18:1‐8 Jesus used this illustration with his disciples to show them that they need to pray all the time and never give up. (2) He said, "In a city there was a judge who didn't fear God or respect people. (3) In that city there was also a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Give me justice.' (4) "For a while the judge refused to do anything. But then he thought, 'This widow really annoys me. Although I don't fear God or respect people, (5) I'll have to give her justice. Otherwise, she'll keep coming to me until she wears me out.'" (6) The Lord added, "Pay attention to what the dishonest judge thought. (7) Won't God give his chosen people justice when they cry out to him for help day and night? Is he slow to help them? (8) I can guarantee that he will give them justice quickly. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"  As Pastor Klaus says : If you as a parent, are more concerned about seeing your children in heaven, you might want to share Jesus' salvation story when you are sitting at home or when you're walking by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. In short ‐‐ 24/7 ‐‐ tell your kids that Jesus gave His life so they could have life eternal.

The next 4 years are going to be a time of tribulation and unrest, our President elect is of the same ilk as the President of North Korea and the Philippines. They have no respect for God or their fellow man, they are only concerned with their own power. Thank God our ruler is Christ Jesus. Jesus came to serve and save mankind. Jesus humbled himself in order to be exalted. Jesus took the sins of the entire world unto himself and then went to the cross as our sacrifice to win our salvation.

Christians should live as if Jesus had died this morning, risen this afternoon, and was coming this evening.

Peace be with you!

Pastor Steve

More Musings

Web  Site, Facebook, Blog,  IM, Tweet, Snapchat and Text, we stay connected to the world and our friends so that every waking moment we know and let other people know what we are thinking.  

I don’t want to know what you are thinking every waking moment and you certainly don’t want to know what I am thinking.  The very technology that has enable us to get instant information has also become the best way to get misinformation.  The fact that an angry remark, once only heard by a few can be immortalized and spread around the world is scary at best, stupid to say the least. 

   Blogging has taken away the insightful, thoughtful writings that we would occasionally see because something must be turned out every day if you are to stay on top.  The Facebook ads and pop-ups slant the news give their ideas to people looking at your page and the shaping of thought is funneled into one big idea.  George Orwell never dreamed of this, 1984 on steroids.

   Don’t get me wrong, a web presence is necessary.  I create and mange Web Sites as well as Networks .  I make sure that the Doctors and Chiropractor office has IM so each person can communicate from their computer without leaving their desk or shouting a cross the room.  My wife likes talking and seeing her Brother in Peru  from time to time via Messenger on Facebook  and  when I want information I Google it  and expect the information I need to be there. 

  What I don’t like is the amount of misinformation and slanted views that permeate the Web and the gullibility of people getting that information.  CNN reports that teens spend 9 hours a day using media.  Anything over 30 seconds is to long for the average attention span, the reason you hear two 15 second ads back to back  is you will  tune in to some of both and get the idea.  Make your presence count but keep it fresh.  The people who come across your presence are on the move and will not stop unless something catches their eye.  Your word of mouth is the best way to get people on your sites, expecting a following just because you are on the Web doesn’t work.

   Jesus would not be tweeting, texting, on Facebook or have a Web Page because Jesus communicated one on one, face to face , with real people.  He directed his communication to the people around him and it was recorded by his Disciples and followers.  God directed what would be written and we have it in a timeless book that isn’t updated every 30 days and does not change with every new administration.  I imagine Peter however would be Texting, Tweeting, IM’ing and posting everything going on.

   My Ministry involves people, not technology.  I have a website www.MtCalvaryMission.com , a Blog http://mtcalvarymission.blogspot.com/ and I am on Facebook.  I keep information on my Webpage I sometime add  thoughts to my Blog and I never check Facebook, my wife looks at stuff posted my her Sister and Nieces.  I can be found and information is posted but my Ministry is not in the Cloud.

    I deal with people everyday and I minister to people  daily and weekly.  Everything I say and do does not need to be shared, the little that does, is.  I urge you to take advantage of and have a Web presence but just as with the Savior the Real Presence is what counts. Put relevant information and current information on your pages, stay up to date and use the available platform to fit your Ministry.  You can offer Bible Studies, Prayer Requests and the opportunity to answer questions and concerns on your sites.  Search for the information you want to give people and then check out the sites that come up, yours needs to be like them. 

I Love to Tell the Story!

 Pastor steve

This Hits the Bullseye!

Thursday Theology #895
November 10, 2016

Topic: The necessity of Christ for his Christians, post-election

Colleagues,

I foist on you some thoughts that have either screamed or simmered in my head through the hours since Tuesday. If you voted for Mr. Trump, there is much you will not like. Those who voted for Mrs. Clinton may also object along the way. Still, that you’re reading this at all presumes a common loyalty to Christ our Lord, and a common interest in sharing his benefits with fellow sinners. So hang in there if you can with this sinner as I pick my six-step way toward that goal. We will all need to be thinking, praying, and perhaps preaching about this very thing when Sunday rolls around. For the record, I thought long and hard about toning down the rhetoric and emotion that you'll encounter here. I decided not to. It testifies to a reality that all of us are dealing in these hard, tough days. Kyrie eleison.

+  +  +

1. The Morning-After Scream 

He won. My jaw hits the keyboard as I write this. The citizens of my country have just picked a pig to be the next president of the United States. I dare to call this a judicious assessment. It rests on facts that we the people have been witnessing over eighteen terrible months. The man wallows in sin. He does it with glee. There is not a commandment he has failed to violate over the course of his campaign. We have all heard and seen it. i) He doesn’t fear God. ii) He wears the Christian name lightly, gingerly—and mocks what it stands for (e.g. “turn the other cheek”; “love your enemies,” as we heard from Christ himself last Sunday). iii) He ignores the Sabbath. iv) He doesn’t render to Caesar (“because I’m smart!”). v) He foments hatred. vi) He revels in sexual aggression. vii) He cheats the unfortunates who do business with him. vii) He slanders others with relish; he assaults truth as a matter of course. ix) He covets adulation, to say nothing x) of his neighbor’s wife.

He does all this openly, without the slightest hint of shame. That’s what makes him so abhorrent. Shamelessness is the hallmark of the person who fancies himself to be a god, beyond the reach of anything others might have to say about right or wrong, good or evil. The god makes the rules. The god does as the god pleases. The rest of you tiny creatures will bend the knee, or else.

And people I know, people I cherish, voted for this man. Among them are some I preach the Gospel to every Sunday.

2. Our Christian Embarrassment

I don't get these baptized, Christ-confessing people who sided with Trump. I'm pretty sure they don't get me. Even of you, a few, perhaps, will want to write me off as another knee-jerk ELCA liberal, now whining as liberals are wont to whine. I am not that. My loathing of the man began as a visceral and quite conservative reaction to his personality. It festered as I watched his performance in the early debates among the 15 plus Republican candidates. Of all who spoke, none were more devoid of thoughtful substance. None were quicker to insult. None were less respectful of the basic rules that govern decent conversation. No one bragged as Trump bragged. No one matched the brio with which he spouted mean plans and vile promises. He was the worst of middle-school bullies somehow transposed into a 70 year-old body and planted on a platform where only grown-ups belong. The grown-ups I know were embarrassed to see him there. I have yet to meet the Christian parent who would let their seventh-grader evince the attitudes and behavior that we saw on that stage. If I had ever caught one of my boys crowing allusively in public about the size of his penis, I would have sent him to his room for a week. So too with you, I imagine. Yet this man got away with it. And today we are all forced to know him as our president-elect. The American who writes this cringes with embarrassment.

And those dear Christian people, the ones I know and cherish, abetted this shame when they voted for him. I ache to spill with anger about that. What holds me back is the fact of knowing them as I do. They are good. They are decent. They are generous. When together we break bread. We crack jokes. We pray and sing in unison. I like them a lot. Still, they voted for Trump. For the life of me, I just don't get it. I think I am more embarrassed about that today than anything else. How do you love your neighbor well when you can’t begin to understand her?

For the record, I suspect that my embarrassment is shared by lots of these dear people, only in reverse. They can't begin to guess how, as they intuit, their friend or pastor could have voted for Hillary. For my part, that only increases the mortification. I don't get Hillary hatred. I fail to see how anybody could have thought that Mrs. Clinton, for all her reported flaws, was the worse choice. If nothing else, the woman is capable of compassion. There are clear, bright streaks of it in her record as a public servant. In the other guy's record as a businessmen and entertainer, there is none of it at all.

But isn't compassion among the highest of traits that God requires of any human being, to say nothing of a leader? Holy Writ is clear on this. So now the floodgate cracks and the sinner's anger starts to spill—not so much at the dear ones I know as at the Christian scoundrels I do not know: the Graham, the Dobson, the Falwell, Jr., the Ralph Reed. The host of self-righteous big name pastors waving Bibles in the air to urge a vote for the vindictive adulterer. Had they no shame as they desecrated the name of Christ? They have certainly tarred the rest of us with shame, obliging us to cringe in the company of secular friends. "Oh, you're a Christian? One of those people?" End of conversation. End of opportunity to speak of God as one for others to trust and hope in. Thank God, I say, for those voices in that conservative, evangelical bloc who dared to demur. But they too are writhing with embarrassment today, or so I should think. And so embarrassing, also for them, is to find our Christian selves so profoundly at odds, so unable to fathom how the other could have voted the way he or she did.

3. Of Whom Shall We Be Afraid? (Part A)

So is God embarrassed by God's Christians today? If so, God isn't saying. He never does. What we ought to imagine is something more fearful, that God is somehow driving our present embarrassment. Jeremiah would remind us of his record for doing such things. If Nebuchadnezzar does not pop up from nowhere, then neither does Trump. Neither does Hillary, for those of you loathe her.

We will spend the next two years reading analyses of what happened on Tuesday. Most all of it will be guesswork, in some cases intelligent, in others not so much. The mere speck I've caught so far—in my grief I've avoided the news these past two days—comes from the left, with a tale about angry, racist, working-class white men as the culprits in chief. I'm not buying that. It doesn't square with those dear ones I know and cherish. Something else was driving their votes. Of my Facebook friends, the ones most eager to tout Trump in recent months have been women. Aside from their politics, I tend to respect them.

The right will have its own interpretive tropes, equally simplistic, equally wrong. What these are I don't plan quickly to find out. Doubtless I should. Wise ones urge us to know our enemies. Wiser ones will tell us to know ourselves. None of us, of course, is eager to do that.

So let's suppose that God is using this election to force that knowledge on us, increasing our shame in the process. I will hazard two weak and wild guesses as to how that might happen. One aims at the right, the other at the left. Pretensions to divinity are the target in both cases.

Two years ago a billionaire named Nick Hanauer published an online article entitled "The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats." He warned that the obscene concentration of wealth in the hands of a few over lo these many years is bound to spark a reaction. Who can doubt that the sparks have been flying in recent months? Indebted students flocked to Bernie Sanders' campaign, indebted parents to Donald Trump's. That the latter picked a greedy plutocrat as champion is ironic in the extreme. Might it also be deliberate where the hand of God is concerned? When tax rates on the wealthy and support for the poor are both slashed, will the sparks not fly that much thicker? Might this be how the mighty get their long-deserved comeuppance? Those of us who know God's ways will want to stay tuned, with fear and trembling. My pension is at stake. Yours too, I'll bet. Both with and after that comes judgment.

Speaking of judgment, seats on the Supreme Court are suddenly at stake, and with it the haughtiness of the cultural elite. Christians on the left seem often unaware of their participation in that. I'm still sufficiently in the middle to sense how it can sting. There is something obnoxious and altogether unneighborly in the assumption that once a narrow Court majority has weighed in on an issue, however controversial, the yahoos on the losing side should shut up and get over it. That will not and cannot happen when the yahoos turn out instead to be thoughtful people with large hearts and deep convictions that the will of God is at stake in the issue at hand. Those dear ones of mine who voted for the other guy are surely among them. Again, how they could imagine that someone of this man's character and habits would drive a "pro-life" agenda, I cannot fathom. Still, when I watched the third debate and heard Mrs. Clinton robustly defend a woman's "right to choose" for the entire length of a pregnancy, I had an inkling that she had just lost a ton of votes. I may well be wrong about that. My friends on the left are even more wrong if they imagine that abortion either has or should have gone away as an issue that spurs people to vote Republican. So too with "marriage equality," to use the current euphemism. Quite aside from the merits of the arguments themselves, to speak with Olympian condescension about honest opponents of these things is another way of calling in the pitchforks; and where such condescension is in play, one should always assume that the hand on the biggest pitchfork of them all belongs to God. God loathes Olympian pretenders, as he time and again makes plain. One of his favored ways of dealing with them is to ramp up their embarrassment. Yes, let us tremble.

4. Of Whom Shall We Be Afraid? (Part B)

Still, in the middle of all this we in the Church have Gospel to hear, tell and share. God grant in these days that each of us will do it well.

We might, for example, start talking this Sunday about the strange and embarrassing God who has inexplicably voted for us, not once, but over and over and over again. Tellingly, the theologians' fancy word for this great Biblical theme is "election."

God picks people. Embarrassed and embarrassing people. Of immoral pigs, who is the greater, Jacob or David? Yet both are key bearers of the promise. The promise is this, that once God latches onto a pig in love, he will not let it go. So too with the other denizens of the sty. Judah may be a mess, with fat cats lounging on their beds of ivory as the economy crashes and the poor starve. That doesn't keep God from comforting these people with the great visions of Isaiah. We who dwell in the American sty will also get to hear these things in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile this Sunday we will all meet Christ in Word and Sacrament. "Behold the Embarrassment," to crib from Pilate. Here is the One dispatched by God to enact the story we heard him spin some weeks ago, about the wretch of a son who heads for the far country to squander the father's wealth with human pigs, and to land in the sty where all pigs belong. In his case the sty has a cruciform shape. There hangs our God, draped in our shame and choking to death on our own consternation. Nowhere to be seen are disciples who, as we've been hearing in our current tour of Luke, have been embarrassing him every step of the way from Galilee to Jerusalem with their quarrels and their odious questions (cf. Lk. 9:54). Still, for their sake Jesus dies. That becomes plain in the astonishment of Easter, when God casts his final vote on the proposition of Christ-for-us by raising Jesus from the dead. The first people to hear the news are those embarrassing disciples. The first thing Jesus says to them is "Peace be with you." He also says, "Don't be afraid." After that he thrusts them into the enduring embarrassment of touting him as God's Gift and Hope for all people, in all circumstances, not least the ones that prevail in America today. He also gives them the Holy Spirit so they can tout with shameless joy.

5. Toward Christian Shamelessness

Come to think of it, shameless joy is the very thing I need most right now. So do those dear ones of mine, however they voted. So do you, including any of you who may have been badly scraped by things you waded through in the paragraphs above.

There is one place and one place only to find this otherwise impossible gift. Christ Jesus is his name.

"Peace be with you." He says it again, and, in this moment, he says it directly to all of us who constitute this reading-and-writing community. On Sunday I will hear him say it again as I stand with all those dear ones who will constitute the assemblies I will serve as pastor.

I don't expect that those dear ones will be talking politics this Sunday; or if they do, it will be in corners, sotto voce, with a wary eye cast for any within earshot who might disagree with their views. Conversations like this are always tainted with a whiff of embarrassment. We live in fear of the other's critique, or worse, of his anger.

But this, of course, is the very point at which Christ emerges as the Best Gift Ever. The constant challenge is to use this gift—to grasp it by faith, as the old, familiar language has it. I look at you, you look at me, and what we get to see in each other is a person God voted for when he raised Jesus from the dead. This will be, at first blush, an embarrassing idea. I bumble, stumble, and grope my way as badly as anyone. So do you. I think thoughts and make the kind of choices that leave you speechless. You do it in turn. You will not appear to me at times to be the kind of person a righteous God could get behind. You'll want to mutter similar thoughts about me when cornered with your friends. Yet here is Christ for both of us. And if Christ, then why not me for you and you for me, each bearing the burden of the other's sins and follies, and not once, but over and over, on a patiently enduring basis? Who knows, we might even learn how to be open and honest with the other about our political views without expecting, as sinners do, that the other will spin on her heel and stomp away.

Will Christians in America ever get around to embracing this faith in their relations with each other? The track record is not at all promising. What abides is the Promising One who refuses to give up on his dear ones, pigs though they be in their relations with each other. It has got be so very embarrassing for him, that we are like this. Still, he's used to it. Dealing with embarrassment, his own as well as ours, is the very thing he lives for.

6. The Enduring Comfort

 I don't mean in any of this to underplay the challenges I expect our country to face in the presidency of Donald Trump. His character is bound to shape not only the decisions he makes, but also the people he leads; and having no respect for his character, I can't begin to welcome what comes next. I can only pray that the God who works through sinners to conjure up huge and happy surprises will somehow surprise us all in these next four years.

Meanwhile we step into these years with the words of Christ ringing in our ears: "Don't be afraid." I tend often to focus too much on the eschatological dimension of those words. I could use some help in concentrating for now on their immediate import. Don't be afraid to love each other as I have loved you. Don’t be afraid to let your light shine in a world that has a deep abiding thing for darkness. Don’t be afraid to turn that cheek or to love that enemy, and to do it especially when things like these are out of fashion.

Don't be afraid to poke the haughty, or to succor the lowly. The legend of Lawrence the Deacon comes suddenly to mind. He's the fellow who, when commanded by the prefect of Rome to hand over the church's treasure, distributed them instead to the poor, the lame, the blind, who he then ushered into the prefect's presence. "Here is the church's treasure," he said, whereupon he was promptly fried on a griddle. It is said that he died cracking a joke.

I will sing the praises of God this Sunday in the company of people who know their Lord and honor his love for every human being. Yes, they do that imperfectly. Why some of them will have voted for the other guy, I still do not get. But I will see them in action. They will love each other quietly. They will welcome strangers who wander in. They will pitch in with generosity to speed along whatever project we're working on to address the needs of neighbors. Some will write letters to congressional representatives. Others will pray for the welfare of the city and the nation. All will struggle to keep the faith we share in Christ, and to let it shape their lives. They will often rejoice in the Gospel. When they do, all embarrassment is gone.

I take it for granted it that scenes like this will keep playing out all over our country, wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus' name, with Christ himself in their midst. Let this be enough for me to say of the years we face: "Bring them on!"

God plant such faith in all our hearts.

Peace and Joy,
Jerry Burce

________________________________________________

Thursday Theology: that the benefits of Christ be put to use 

Published by the Crossings Community 

For more information on Crossings, or to support Crossings financially, visit www.crossings.org

---

To unsubscribe from the SABBATHEOLOGY list, click the following link:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-HOME.exe?SUBED1=SABBATHEOLOGY&A=1

More Musings.....

We seem to have two pathological liars  running for president. Neither seems qualified to be president.

God however uses the most unlikely to do His work. 

A summary of Biblical 'candidates'...

1. Adam - Good man but has wife trouble.

2. Noah - former pastorate of 120 years with no converts, problem with the bottle, and a wayward son morals problem.

3. Abraham - Scandal ridden, offered wife to another man, child abuse

4. Joseph - dreamer, prison record

5. Moses - poor communicator, stutters, unanswered murder charge

6. David - affair with neighbor's wife, hired a hit man to kill husband

7. Solomon - husband of more than one wife, in fact parsonage too small

8. Elijah - prone to depression and nervous break downs

9. Elisha - reported to have live with a single widow at former church

10. Hosea - our congregation could not handle his wife's occupation

11. Jeremiah - emotionally unstable, alarmist, negative, lamenter, reported to have buried underwear on a foreign river bank, claims to have a set of recreated originals

12. Isaiah - language problems, on the fringe, claims to see angels

13. Jonah - refuses to preach to the lost unless forced to by God

14. Amos - backward and unpolished, does not like the rich

15. John - does not dress like a Baptist, weird diet, provokes higher powers

16. Peter - bad temper, curses, hypocrite in racial matters, loose cannon

17. Paul - uses racial epitaphs, preaches all night

18. Timothy - too young and single

19. Jesus - dwindled church of 5,000 down to 12 or 120, offends folks

20. Judas - His references are solid. Good connections. Knows how to handle money, has compassion for poor. He is preaching for us Sunday. Possibilities here.

I leave you with this prayer.

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve:

I was made weak that I might obey.

I asked for health that I might do greater things:

I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy:

I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men:

I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life:

I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I received nothing that I asked for, but all I had hoped for.

My prayer was answered, I am most richly blessed.

written by an unknown Confederate soldier

Pastor Steve

Doublespeak

This week I was reading the headlines which is always enough to give me indigestion. 

I read where the Pope said that Christianity and the Jihad of the Muslim were basically the same thing.  I also read where the Pope also told a group of Muslims that he was washing the feet of, that we all worship the same God!  I don’t think so!  I see where Donald Trump “will save Christianity once and for all” ,  and then how African Methodists worry about the church that brought them Christianity.

This is truly a Maalox Moment.  Doublespeak is the new language and the more you spin the truth the better it is.  Time to throw out that outdated Bible, I don’t think so.  Time  to sit down, take a deep breath and open that Bible?  You bet!

Galatians 1:1-12  From Paul-an apostle chosen not by any group or individual but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who brought him back to life-  (2)  and all the believers who are with me. To the churches in Galatia.  (3)  Good will and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ are yours!  (4)  In order to free us from this present evil world, Christ took the punishment for our sins, because that was what our God and Father wanted.  (5)  Glory belongs to our God and Father forever! Amen.  (6)  I'm surprised that you're so quickly deserting Christ, who called you in his kindness, to follow a different kind of good news.  (7)  But what some people are calling good news is not really good news at all. They are confusing you. They want to distort the Good News about Christ.  (8)  Whoever tells you good news that is different from the Good News we gave you should be condemned to hell, even if he is one of us or an angel from heaven.  (9)  I'm now telling you again what we've told you in the past: If anyone tells you good news that is different from the Good News you received, that person should be condemned to hell.  (10)  Am I saying this now to win the approval of people or God? Am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be Christ's servant.  (11)  I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Good News I have spread is not a human message.  (12)  I didn't receive it from any person. I wasn't taught it, but Jesus Christ revealed it to me.

This could have been written yesterday.  It is as relevant today as it was then and will be a thousand years from now.

As much as the world and the “Big Thinkers” in it would have you believe that everything changes, the more we need to stand fast on the Rock that NEVER changes.

Here is the real party line: 

John 3:16 (KJV)  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Want it updated?  

John 3:16 (GNB)    For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.

John 3:16 (GW)  God loved the world this way: He gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not die but will have eternal life.

Three Bible translations, one message.  God’s Word does not change!

If anyone tells you different they are lying to you, I don’t care if it is the Pope or Donald Trump. 

The Good News of Jesus Christ is the same Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

Everything else may change but not God’s Word.

Believe it, trust it, repeat it!

Pastor Steve