Our Neighborhood MeetUP viewed a film on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who collaborated with German leaders seeking to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer wrote extensively about the Christian life, including Discipleship and Life Together, a description of daily life at an illegal seminary in Nazi Germany.

Discipleship is primarily an exposition of the Sermon on the Mount.

Bonhoeffer faced an impossible choice: either the defeat of his nation or the destruction of Christian civilization. He found that traditional ethics could not guide him. Therefore, he threw himself on the mercy of God and did what seemed right to him in the situation where he found himself.

Many Christians who lived in countries under the heel of Nazi Germany faced similar dilemmas. The ten Boom family of Holland also compromised traditional Christian values, such as obeying the laws of the state, always telling the truth, and so one— in order to achieve a higher good, resistance to tyranny and rescue of its victims.

In light of such historical events, a lot of Christian discourse today strikes me as irrelevant. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of persons die of preventable causes. Global warming and other ecological issues call the future of the planet into question. People of all faiths have more in common with each other than with people who share language, nationality, and other factors but lack a common worldview.

It’s time to rethink many of the basics. I’m looking forward to reading Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins. I understand Bell tackles many of these questions.

My friends Glen and Julia taught me the tradition of reading the classic every year during Advent, a practice I’ve come to cherish. The original has some spectacular lines that are always omitted.

For example, Scrooge observes that people in the name of religion seek to impose their legalistic views, to the harm of the poor:

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry and selfishness in our name, who are strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if we had never lived.” [Modern Library, 1995, p. 59.]

Given that we all love this story about a miser whose heart was touched on Christmas Eve and who instantaneously became a generous, warm-hearted soul, how come so many of us still live by miserly values and the lack of concern for suffering which prompted Dickens’ novel of social protest?

Also, there’s the specter of death. Scrooge’s turning point climaxed as he looked upon his grave. But, even though he lived an exemplary life thereafter, he still would come to die.

Given the hard truth that all of us die, why aren’t those justified who live by the motto, “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse”?

The answer lies, I think, in something I hesitate to write because narrow legalistic partisans whom I have great difficulty accepting beat this drum: that the only accepted public religion in America, and much of the West, is secular humanism which though it may nod in God’s direction, guts belief of anything substantial—in particular, guts Christmas of Christ.

Jesus spoke of ghostly visits changing lives in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, a destitute man. Both these men died; Lazarus went to Abraham’s bosom, the rich man to hell.

[The rich man in torment] said, “Then, father [Abraham], I beg you to send [the spirit of Lazarus] to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.”He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” ’

Luke 16.27-31.

The gospel says simply that human beings cannot on their own change, even if they want to. It takes the power of God, the power that raised Christ from the dead, to raise mortals from the living death of sin.

He [the Word, the Christ] came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

John 1.11-13

I’ve come more and more to believe that no particular denomination has a monopoly on the Word of which the gospel speaks. The Christ Light shines into the heart; and, people from all faiths, and of no faith, welcome that Light.

I love the atheist doctor Willie Tulloch in Keys of the Kingdom. He thanked Father Chisholm for not bullying him into believing on his deathbed. Father Chisholm said, “God believes in you.” In the honest questions of some atheists there is more commitment to Truth (sometimes another name for God) than in many dogmas.

But humanism makes little of humanity’s potential to do evil. Think of the genocides of the past four hundred years! Think of the millions who perish because the prosperous peoples of the world look away. Think of the damage to the environment done by greed and indifference.

Without God’s grace we all—humanists, Christians, Muslims, Jews—all are doomed. But all who open their hearts to the love of God, all those are saved, Christmas and every other day of the year.

Written in 1941, it tells the story of Father Francis Chisholm, a Scottish Catholic who turns poverty and tragedy into a life of beauty in the service of the poor and of the Chinese people.

Jesus promised Peter the keys of the kingdom (Matthew 16.18). Cronin contrasts the worldly Anselm Nealy, who rose to be bishop of Chisholm’s home, with Chisholm, bent and battered by the rough and tumble of life in the interior of China.

It belongs with other books such as Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Georges Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest.

What makes a good priest? Denominations and Christ answer differently.

Chisholm utterly fails to meet expectations. His conversion rate is lowest in the Mission Society. By the way he refuses to pay “rice Christians,” starving people who profess faith for a stipend. Yet at the end of his tour, the prominent Mr. Chia becomes a Christian, having watched the priest through long decades.

Some of the novel’s clearest preachments espouse pacifism and tolerance. Yet when a war lord threatens the people seeking refuge in his mission, Chisholm arranges for the destruction of his armament, causing the deaths of dozens of his soldiers.

The book is not the first rank of great literature. Often, Cronin uses characters’ letters or journals to pry open their thoughts, while greater ambiguity and tension might have been created otherwise. His depiction of Chinese characters relies too much on stock images of the simple child-like soul addressing its European Master, or the inscrutable mandarin.

What is first rate, however, is Cronin’s grasp of what makes a great pastor and Christian. Here his instinct is unerring.

If only Keys of the Kingdom were required reading for every member of every pulpit committee!

I wanted to read a biography of Wesley in honor of the church I attend, and am growing to love: Trinity United Methodist, Richmond.

Nobody with an ounce of psychological savvy can read Wesley’s life without realizing the man had an obsessive-compulsive disorder. His relations with women were disordered, and the celebrated sibling relationship with Charles doesn’t stand up well under scrutiny.

All that said, you can only praise Almighty God who worked such a mighty miracle through this life, “a brand plucked from the fire.”

A story my wife’s colleagues tell sums it up. “He was cracked!” someone says. “It doesn’t matter if he was cracked,” comes the reply, “just that light shines through the cracks.”

All of us who belong to denominations that trace heritage back to persons like Luther or Wesley, however, would do well to remember Paul’s caution to the church at Corinth:

¹²What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ ¹³Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

(1 Corinthians 1 NRSV)

The writing is good enough; the story, absorbing.

Sattler, a Benedictine prior at St. Peter’s in the Black Forest monastery, apparently opted out of his vows sometime in 1524/25. Arnold Snyder, Mennonite professor, documents that the invasion of the monastery by German peasants in rebellion may have tipped the scales for Sattler. His influence on the Schleitheim Confession here. Though he left the order and married, he carried with him the determination to follow Christ which lies at the heart of the Rule of Benedict.

I found myself weeping through the final chapter,  Sattler’s martyrdom. He was tortured and burned alive; his wife, drowned in May, 1527, three years at the outside since their conversion to the Anabaptist way of following Christ.

I’m reading Luther, but I keep getting pulled away to these early Anabaptists. I’m finishing Synder’s dissertation on Sattler, available free online here, which sheds light on Sattler’s intellectual and spiritual roots.

Thousands of Anabaptists died for their beliefs in the 1500s. One account is The Martyr’s Mirror here.

What started my delving into these folks was two things:

1. the loss of my own theological home Southern Baptists as they existed before the Church Struggle of the 1970s and 1980s, and the sterile hypocrisy of the Christian Right to which the SBC belonged; and,
2. my finding Early Anabaptist Spirituality in the Classics of Western Spirituality series.

These people were on fire with God’s Spirit, and by the thousands from illiterate peasants to learned former priests gave their lives.

What turned them on—that depth, that 110% uncompromising no holds barred take over of being by the Christ, is still available to us.

The doctrinal quibbling of the 16th century is gone for good, I hope. Maybe all who love the Christ will be one family on earth at last.

But the fires that flared up in those hearts still lights the world today.

Another way in which we blur church/business is in the consumer mentality of  church members who often choose their church on the basis of services received: the youth program for their kids, the worship service to support their emotional health, and the various programs and ministries to meet their needs. How many of us choose a church on the basis of God’s call to be a servant, or beliefs held dear?

Nowhere is the cozy relationship of business and belief more pernicious, however, than at Christmas. Santa Claus and Baby Jesus are marketing logos, as cute as the GEICO gecko. Christmas carols waft even from the parking lots of some super stores. And calendars count down the number of shopping days till Christmas.

Children are taught to ask, “What am I going to get?” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if children (and adults) learned to list what they were going to give for Christmas, instead? And if gifts were of time, craft, and kindness more than plastic widgets or DVDs?

Perhaps one way to keep the marketers out of the manger is to remember another silent, holy night, a night Jesus began by sharing the Passover seder with his beloved friends. Then he warned them of a betrayer and a betrayal that very night.

He went to a Garden. Warning the disciples to watch and pray, that they come not to time of trial, he went a stone’s throw away and began to pray. Luke tells us that his sweat was like great drops of blood. He prayed that he might not drink the cup of torture and death that was less that 24 hours ahead, “yet, not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22.42).

Gethsemane, the name of the olive garden where Jesus prayed, means “oil press.” Messiah (= Christ in Greek) means “anointed one.” The Israelites anointed their prophets, priests, and kings. Yet, the lovely fragrant oil they use is produced by crushing the olives. The salvation of all creation required the literal crushing of the Savior.

As the night waned, the disciples grieved, aware of the Master’s agony, but unable to fathom his mood or minister to him in it. When Judas, the betrayer, came with a mob of thugs to arrest Jesus, the disciples struck out with the sword, only to be rebuked by the Lord they tried to defend.

No wonder they scattered in terror and bewilderment.

Peter found his way to the courtyard of the high priest, who was interrogating Jesus. Three times this man who had promised even to die with the Lord, three times Peter denied that he even knew Jesus.

Startled, terrified, alone—Peter betrayed not only Jesus, but himself. At that moment Jesus looked at him, and he ran out and wept bitterly.

For that was a dark and bitter night. When we sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” we do well to remember it, too.

Preliminaries:

• Satan recruited Judas to betray Jesus.
• The disciples prepared for the Passover/Unleavened Bread feast. They killed and roasted the lamb, brought the wine and unleavened bread, arranged the room, and so on.

Deliverance from Death

Jesus first connected his ministry/sacrifice with the Exodus. God delivered the people from slavery in Egypt. Exodus 12.1-14; 21-28 describes Passover. They sacrificed a lamb without blemish, and daubed its blood on the door posts. When the Death Angel passed over, and saw the blood, he spared everyone in the house. God brought the people out of Egypt so fast there wasn’t time for the bread to rise. Exodus 12.15-20 describes rituals related to Unleavened Bread.

Covenant

Second, Christ connected his new way with “the new covenant” promised by the prophets. A covenant is a promise, a contract, an agreement between God and people. The old covenant began with the Exodus and included the giving of the Law of Moses at Mt. Sinai. The old covenant reaches a climax when Moses sprinkled the blood of the covenant on the elders in God’s presence on the mountain (Exodus 24.8). Jesus, however, cut a new covenant, based on his life, given that all creation may be redeemed.

Jeremiah promised that God would make a new covenant (Jer. 31.33-34):

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

No longer will we meet God in a temple made of stone; no, we’ll meet God in our heart, from the least to the greatest, all will have equal access to God’s Spirit.

A Suffering Messiah

Luke 22.37 records that, quoting Isaiah 53.12, Jesus said,

For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, “And he was counted among the lawless.”

Here Jesus connects his ministry to a third Old Testament tradition, pointing to Isaiah 52.13-53.12, the fourth in a series of poems about an innocent person who chooses to suffer on behalf of others. This process comes to a climax in these words:

He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

Who did the prophet have in mind? Scholars suggest the prophet himself, or perhaps the nation Israel. Jesus  found in the Servant Songs of Isaiah a vision of who the Messiah was to be: not a conquering general-king like David of old, but a gentle Savior who took on himself the sins of the world.

On this night Jesus may have used non-verbal methods of teaching, ritual and tradition, because these reach deeper into the spirit than words alone, and because the night of betrayal and violence that lay ahead would seek to destroy everything Jesus hoped to teach and to begin.

“Do this in remembrance of me,” he said. I often pair “re-member” with “dis-member.” To dismember is to cut into pieces, but to remember is to join what has been separated into one whole. When we take part in the Lord’s Supper, we become one with him and with each other.

Luther gave a three point process for doing theology:

• Oratio (Prayer)
• Meditato (Meditation)
• Tentatio (Anfechtung) A terrific article here in Concordia Theological Quarterly 47:1, pp. 15-30.

(See ML’s Basic Theological Works, ed. Lull, p. 72) In just a couple searches I’ve found websites, articles, and much more on Luther’s outline of the theological process (above). Although new to me, it’s well known to Lutherans, I guess.

Luther experienced Anfechtungen all his life, and reflected on what these periods of severe angst meant to him as a Christian. Evidently, he was occasionally terrified that he was not one of the elect, those chosen before the foundation of the world to be saved.

Luther believed theology is struggle.

A CPE Supervisor had taught pastoral counseling in Manila; during the People’s Revolution against dictator Marcos in 1973, the Supervisor held his seminars in the streets. For one Clinical Case Conference, he discussed working with a client,  born to wealth and privilege, but imprisoned and tortured for siding with the poor and advocating reform.

He said: We don’t call it “liberation theology” because that implies  achieving the goal. In fact, we have no guarantee of success. So we speak of “the theology of struggle.”

Struggle (here meaning becoming a servant, being imprisoned, tortured, and exiled) is a good translation of Anfechtung. “The theology of struggle” is a good way to think of Luther’s outline.

A biblical struggler was Jacob/Israel. Having become a wealthy man through shrewd business dealings with his crafty uncle Laban, Jacob took flight with his flocks and herds, his goods, his wives and children. But he was running toward his brother Esau, whom he had cheated and who was coming to meet him with 400 armed men. You can read the story here (Genesis 32).

Jacob (Hebrew for “he grasps the heel, he deceives”) sent all that was his ahead across the River Jabbok, and spent the night alone. A “man” wrestled with him until daybreak.

Here it gets interesting. Who is this man? The story fits the pattern of a folk tale about a demon guarding the fords of a river. The man is anxious to leave before sunrise; he dislocates Jacob’s hip socket, but cannot overpower the fierce patriarch.

Many interpret this man as a demonic figure. Luther believed that struggle, Anfechtung, was the attack of Satan and his hordes. Satan used every weapon against Luther: even the Word, by misinterpreting it, by emphasizing Law and God’s wrath.

The mystery man at the river doesn’t fit neatly into that pattern, however. He blessed Jacob:

Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with human beings and have overcome.”

(Genesis 32.28 TNIV)

The name probably means “he struggles with God.” (See TNIV note f.) And Jacob said, “I saw God face to face, and yet was spared.”

I’m intimately acquainted with Anfechtung. It’s my personality type, I’m like Puddleglum, the marshwiggle in C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair. He expected the adventure to turn out badly; nevertheless, he would not give up. The other wiggles wanted him to learn that life is more than fricasseed frogs and eel pie.”

I met a dear saint, age 103, waiting for the elevator at a retirement center. “How are you?” I asked. She answered, “This old house is pretty run down, but I’m doing fine.”  The house I live in is a wreck. Anfechtung is a frequent guest.

Paul said, “We have this treasure in clay jars” (v.7). He described how the apostles were hard-pressed, perplexed, persecuted, struck down  —but not destroyed. (2 Cor 4). He said:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

2 Corinthians 4.16

more…

If, however, you feel and are inclined to think you have made it, flattering yourself with your own little books, teaching or writing, because you have done it beautifully and preached excellently; if you are highly pleased when someone praises you in the presence of others; if you would perhaps look for praise, and would sulk or quit what you are doing if you do not get it—if you are of that stripe, dear friend, then take yourself by the ears, and if you do this in the right way you will find a beautiful pair of big, long shaggy donkey ears. Then do not spare any expense! Decorate them with golden bells, so that people will be able to hear you wherever you go, point their fingers at you and say, “See, see! There goes that clever beast, who can write such exquisite books and preach so remarkably well.” That very moment you will be blessed and blessed beyond measure in the kingdom of heaven. Yes, in that heaven where hellfire is ready for the devil and his angels.

Preface to the Wittenberg edition of Luther’s German Writings (1539) in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull, 2^nd ed.(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), p. 73.

Don Francisco is a great singer of Scripture-based ballads. I had the high privilege of studying Biblical Hebrew with Don’s father Dr. Clyde Francisco. One of my favorites of Don’s songs  tells the story of Balaam’s ass. When the prophet set off on a junket God did not highly approve of, the donkey spoke a word of warning.  You can read the original story in Numbers 22.21-41. The clincher:

The Lord’s the one who makes the choice of the instrument He’s usin’
We don’t know the reasons and the plans behind His choosin’
So when the Lord starts usin’ you don’t you pay it any mind
He ‘could have used the dog next door if He’d been so inclined.

If you need a set of bells for personal use, I’ll be happy to lend you some of mine. I have a fine collection.

At age 37, he was martyred in 1527 by torture and burning. Two days later his wife Margareta was drowned. Drowning, or ”third baptism,” appealed to many authorities as punishment for Anabaptists or re-baptizers, so nicknamed because they rejected infant, and practiced adult, baptism.

One of the most articulate, pure, and shining representatives of the Radical Reformation—unlike the major Reformers Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, he and many others insisted upon total freedom of the Christian from the power of the state.

Luther argued infant baptism was valid because salvation is pure gift. The Radicals argued that only an adult could choose to follow Christ, and thus began rebaptizing converts. At about age 29 in 1527, Felix Manz, the first adult to be baptized two years before, was drowned by authorities.

Sattler was a former monk, who married Margareta, a woman of the religious order of Beguines. He was well educated. He preached in the forests, and in many clandestine places. Acting for a gathering of like-minded believers, he probably wrote the Schleithem Confession in 1527, titled in German Brüderlich Vereinigung “Brotherly Union.” The first Anabaptist confession of faith, its chief significance may be that it demonstrates that these unruly radicals could come to an agreement.

You can read the Schleithem Confession here.

So what?

The document and the people, based on readong the Bible, stood for:

• absolute freedom in Christ of the believer from the power of the state in matters of faith
• refusal to swear oaths or bear the sword
• enforcement of church order by shunning (the ban) rather than drowning, burning, etc.

As I read Martin Luther, I keep in mind the people he opposed in violent language—the papists, the Jews, the Turks, the sectarians. I pray God to help me stand for righteousness not as Luther, but as Sattler did.