The Secret Wireless

What did you do last Sunday? We...           ...watched an old man drown in a puddle of water.           ...witnessed a fresh man's resurrection.           ...heard the Almighty Voice.           ...experienced the power of the Divine.           ...received healing for our souls.           ...petitioned the Ultimate Power.           ...sang with the archangels.           ...feasted on the flesh and blood of God. If your church did anything less it's time to think about trading up.

In his most recent Issues Etc Journal Todd Wilken has this to say about our Sunday morning worship services: What if, when that Sunday morning visitor wandered into church, we made it clear to him that this is the Lord's Day and the Lord's house because the Lord Himself-Jesus-is there?  What if everything we said and did while he was visiting our church-every word, gesture, action, song and prayer-clearly confessed this?  What if, instead of reengineering the day to fit his expectations, we taught him to expect nothing less than Jesus, in person, forgiving sins? Wilken's line of questioning is right on the money.  What is missing from Christian worship is not the right style of music or the right kind of decorations.  What is often missing is Jesus.  Many churches fail to preach anything resembling the Gospel, and settle for self-help instructions for better living. Yet even among those churches where Christ is proclaimed regularly and the Lord's Supper...

The Lutheran Confessions at times speak of the Sacraments as "signs".  Philip Melanchthon writes in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, " The sacraments are not only signs among men, but signs of God's will toward us; so it is correct to define the New Testament sacraments as signs of grace.  There are two parts to a sacrament the sign and the Word. " (Apol. XXIV) I think Melanchthon is saying that in a sacrament we must distinguish between two things: the sign and the Word.  So what is the sign, and what is the Word? In baptism water is the sign.  In the Lord's Supper the sign is the bread and wine.  What does it mean to say that the water in baptism is a "sign"?  In what way can we call the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper a sign? This is difficult and fraught with danger since in the United States of America the most popular view of the sacraments comes out of the Reformed tradition of the Church.  Especially prevalent in ...

Have you heard that joke? One Sunday a Sunday School teacher asked her class, "What is small, has a bushy tale, climbs trees, and eats nuts?" A bright student raised her hand and answered, "It sounds an awful lot like a squirrel, but this is Sunday School so the answer must be 'Jesus'." It has become a thing lately to beat up on Sunday School and the answers we learn there.  The good old, tried and true lessons of the Sunday School teacher are downgraded, laughed at, even mocked. People don't want the Sunday School answers.  They want what they perceive to be the deeper, more satisfying reasons.  And above all they want to be able to struggle and doubt without judgment. Those who struggle and doubt are seen as "real", while those who stick to what they learned in Sunday School are looked down upon as "simple" or even "fake". But there is nothing simple or fake about holding on to that good, old fashioned Sund...

Philosophers have measur’d mountains, Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings, Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains: But there are two vast, spacious things, The which to measure it doth more behove: Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love. Who would know Sinne, let him repair Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair, His skinne, his garments bloudie be. Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein. Who knows not Love, let him assay And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike Did set again abroach; then let him say If ever he did taste the like. Love in that liquour sweet and most divine, Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine. --George Herbert ++++++++++++++++++++++