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Give Us This Day

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Evangelical

2016-11-15T16:36:53-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Matthew 24:29-41 – Is Christ Already Here?

Last updated on: November 15, 2016 at 4:36 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

****In 2007 a thought-provoking book titled The Black Swan was published. It provides an insightful perspective into seemingly improbable events (i.e., a ‘black swan’) and our thinking that surrounds them. The author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb contends that black swans underlie almost everything within our world but that we usually fail to acknowledge the possibility of a black swan event until after it occurs. According to Taleb, most people focus only on things that we already know – or think we know – and that we generally fail to consider what we don’t know. The result is that most people are not able to look beyond very narrow confines, and these severely limit their horizon. Most people therefore are blind to the possibility of significantly large events.

And yet, as today’s lesson demonstrates, large, unexpected, significant events do happen.

There are three ways we might interpret today’s passage and others like it. For reasons I’ve described (or will describe) in other Give Us This Days, I believe that historically speaking, Jesus is talking to His 1st century disciples about the things that must shortly happen, beginning with His Crucifixion, and continuing with His Resurrection, Ascension, and the destruction of the Temple and the Old Covenant.

Futuristically, this passage could be read in terms of Christ’s Second Coming. Even though I don’t believe that’s what Jesus had in mind, the warnings about Christ appearing and no one knowing the day or hour could be applied to the Second Coming.

But as happens so often in writings on such passages, I don’t necessarily learn much about what such a passage might mean for me today. If I look at what Jesus meant historically, I’m stranded 2000 years ago and reading about events that have already happened a long time ago. On the other hand, if I look at Christ’s Second Coming, I’m looking at something that might not come for a very long time. Millennial cults have been around for at least a millennia and, like the poor, will always be with us. Of course, they’ve all been wrong. And I kind of like the idea that the older Books of Common Prayer have a table that lets you calculate Holy Days until the year 8400! (If you have a 1928 Prayer Book, you’ll find it on page lvii, right before Morning Prayer begins.)

But I am stuck here in the present, and even my discussion about the future in previous paragraphs is now in the past. (Strangely enough, it might be in the present for someone who happens to pick up this Give Us This Day and is just coming to that part!)

May I suggest, in keeping with what I’ve written before, that the cosmic consequences for the work of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago are so powerful that they continue to be felt until the present day and will continue to be felt until the Second Coming? Furthermore, the work of Jesus Christ in creating the New Covenant has a Trinitarian time dimension to it.

What I mean is that the New Covenant, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, has a past, a present, and a future. The work of God in redeeming the world had an initial or definitive beginning 2000 years ago. It certainly continues to have a progressive aspect as it is worked out in history, even as we live it in the present. And it will, one day, have its final consummation in the future. Like any good story, God’s story of redemption has a beginning, middle, and end.

And I’m here in the middle, which is organically connected to both the beginning and end. I know what Jesus has done, and I know what He will do in the end. This means that I should have a pretty good suspicion of what He will do in the present with me now.

And so here’s where today’s lesson applies to you and me. I can’t claim to have figured out that Jesus Christ will return in glory and judgment on Tuesday of the 22nd Sunday in Trinity of the year 2008 (the day I first wrote this particular Give Us This Day). But I do know that Matthew 24 sounds a lot like things that are going on in the world today (and as they have for 2000 years). I do know that people are acting as they did in the days of the Flood. They eat and drink and marry. They grow up and get jobs, and they grow old and die. Life is lived as if one day will be pretty much like the next, even as life gradually changes.

We’re all uniformitarians when it comes to our lives. We pretty much bank on things being the same and their being safe and predictable. And yet we know that life isn’t always like this. We’ve all made important decisions that forever changed our lives. We grow up and move out and go to college. We begin the grand adventure called marriage and undertake the Herculean labor of being parents. We know people who become desperately sick or die, or we have brushes with death ourselves.

At such moments we realize that life will not always continue the same way, day after day. At such moments, I suspect that even the agnostics and atheists have their consciences pricked that maybe there’s more to life, and that this God person just might be real (and worse, might be something like what evangelical Christians say He is!)

Haven’t we all had moments where a foolish driver (maybe yourself!) drove in such a way as to jeopardize your life? I can’t count the number of times when accidents have been averted while I was in a car, either as driver and passenger, and some of them rather serious ones. In those moments, my heart becomes a rocket and tries to escape my ribcage and flee for his life. I snap to attention, and everything else in life goes away for at least a few moments. Whatever problems I thought I had are instantly put into their proper perspective and are demoted to the category “minor”, for just a moment.

But after we turn out to be O.K., we go back to being uniformitarians and go back to life as usual. We go back to the ultimate game of hot potato, the cosmic round of musical chairs, in which we continue to play the game of life, only dimly aware that at any moment that timer might ring and we might be the one with the hot potato in our hands or no chair to sit on.

And today, since you are here in the present, and Jesus is with you, He’s telling you to not go back to the game of life and your uniformitarian ideals. Consider today’s Give Us This Day as a gentle wake up call (and don’t you dare hit the snooze alarm!)

“Watch, therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming” (verse 42).

Actually, I think I do know what hour the Lord is coming. I think He’s coming right now. No – I know that He’s already here. Just because Jesus isn’t coming to finally separate the sheep and the goats and to judge the quick and the dead doesn’t mean that He isn’t coming and has not, in fact, already come today.

Maybe one of the best ways to read today’s passage is not only to fear the Lord because one day He will come in judgment but also to love the Lord who is already here in peace.

Prayer: We beseech thee, Almighty God, to purify our consciences by thy daily visitation, that when thy Son our Lord cometh he may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Points for Meditation:

How strong of a sense do you have of the Lord’s presence here and now? What are some things you could do to strengthen this sense?
How might today’s wake up call change or color your day?

Resolution: I resolve to allow the presence of the Lord change the way I live today.

Black Swan – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Uncategorized

black swans

coming of Christ

destruction of the Temple

2016-11-11T18:27:50-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Matthew 23:24-39 – Under Jesus’ Wings

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 6:27 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

** Hen with Chicks **Sometimes when I read the lesson for the day I feel like I’m in a biblical supermarket: the Lord offers me so many choices for what to meditate on! Other times, it seems as if there’s only one thing to meditate on and for some reason it doesn’t compel my heart. I feel like that today.

Here I am, walking down the aisles of the biblical supermarket, la dee da. What have we here? I pick up a can and it says “Condemnation of the Scribes and Pharisees.” No, I just ate that yesterday, let’s see what the next shelf of cans says. “Stern Judgment against the Scribes and Pharisees.” That seems pretty much the same, even though it does come in different flavors. It seems as if that’s all God has available for me today, so I guess it’s one of those days when I’ll just have to be thankful that I’m getting any spiritual food at all today, even if it’s not what I wanted.

But what’s this? I come to the end of today’s aisle, and what do I see? Still within the walls of Matthew chapter 23, immediately following the lengthy section of woes against the scribes and Pharisees, I find something different. I expect Jesus to continue in the same judgmental tones, but what do I see?

I find one of the most compelling pictures of Jesus in all the New Testament. The one who is stern and judgmental suddenly becomes soft and maternal! I’ve had cases of theological whiplash before, but this is ridiculous! It doesn’t make sense at first.

And then it does. How can Jesus go from perhaps His most withering condemnation to perhaps His most tender compassion in the twinkling of an eye? What unites these two passages is Jesus’ concern for those He loves. What He desires is for His people to come to Him, but what He got, especially from those who should most have known to come to Him, was rejection. Jesus is a man of great passions; the Son is a God of great love.

What motivates Jesus throughout Matthew 23 is not a fundamental desire to judge mankind but a deep longing to gather His people to Himself. What the Lord wants is to gather us, His children, to Him, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings.

This touching picture of the Master’s love for those He came to redeem is sandwiched between two terrible, catastrophic passages. Before it is the rest of Matthew 23 and the woes He pronounces upon the scribes and Pharisees. He calls them sons of Hell and pronounces seven woes upon them! They are guilty (verse 32), serpents, and a brood of vipers (verse 33). How can they escape the condemnation of Hell? On them will come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah (verse 35)! All of these things will come upon this generation (verse 36).

On the other side of Jesus as the mother hen lies Matthew 24 and Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Temple, the sign of the end of the Old Covenant age, and the coming persecution of Jesus’ disciples. All of the things that Jesus warned the scribes and Pharisees about will come soon, to the generation to whom Jesus is speaking!

And yet in the middle of these two chapters of doom is the picture of Jesus the mothering hen. Matthew is a master of dark and light as great as Rembrandt. His use of chiaroscuro reminds me of another painting to which I’ve referred before: Geertgen tot Sint Jans’ Nativity (which may be seen here: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/geertgen-tot-sint-jans-the-nativity-at-night).

The dark regions of Matthew’s picture, chapter 23 verses 1-36 and chapter 24, make the miniature but bright region of verse 37 of chapter 23 shine with unsurpassed brilliance. Verse 37, however obscured in these chapters, is the harbinger of Matthew 26: the Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. In this one small verse we see the hope of glory, even when things are beginning to look very dark.

Ever since Matthew 16 Jesus has been talking about His own death. Back then things still looked pretty bright, and Jesus’ talk of a time of darkness seemed out of place. By Matthew 23, things look very dark indeed and will only grow darker, and this one verse of light is very welcome indeed. It is the Christ child of Geertgen’s Nativity.

And yet in a way that only God, the Master Artist, could have arranged and executed, the darkness and the light mingle. In this one verse, in which the Son as Judge is transfigured into the Son as Compassionate Lover, we experience a foretaste of the mystery to come. For the one who is Judge will soon become the one who takes upon Himself the judgment of the world. The one who pronounced woes upon the scribes and Pharisees and condemned them to Hell will soon experience Hell for them. And the ones upon whom doom and damnation ought to come are offered protection under His wing.

It’s all right there in verse 37. And it all hangs upon one small phrase. All of this could be avoided. The doom of both chapters 23 and 24 could be reversed, If. Jesus would gather us under His wings and protect us If.

If what? If only we were willing. If only we were willing, Jesus would take upon Him the curse that is rightfully ours. If only we were willing, Jesus would keep us safe.

The strange thing is that as Christians we all know this in an ultimate sense but miss it so often in more proximate senses. We know how willing Jesus was to protect us as a mother hen: He proved it on the Cross. But what’s strange is how often we forget that Jesus wants to gather us under His wing on a daily, momentary basis.

If only I were willing, what blessing might God have in store for me and for others? If only I were willing, what peace of mind I might find in Him. If only I were willing, what delight and rapture I might find in Him!

If only I were willing.

So there it is. I know what Jesus wants from me today. He wants me to live in Matthew chapter 23, verse 37, right there, under His wing. He wants me to learn from the grave mistake of the scribes and Pharisees and to humbly come to Him once again.

You know what? That’s exactly what I’m going to do!

Prayer:

Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,

Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,

Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,

Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,

In obedience of angels,

In the service of archangels,

In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

In prayers of patriarchs,

In predictions of prophets,

In preaching of apostles,

In faith of confessors,

In innocence of holy virgins,

In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven:

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

I arise today

Through God’s strength to pilot me:

God’s might to uphold me,

God’s wisdom to guide me,

God’s eye to look before me,

God’s ear to hear me,

God’s word to speak for me,

God’s hand to guard me,

God’s way to lie before me,

God’s shield to protect me,

God’s host to save me

From snares of devils,

From temptations of vices,

From everyone who shall wish me ill,

Afar and anear,

Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,

Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,

Against incantations of false prophets,

Against black laws of pagandom

Against false laws of heretics,

Against craft of idolatry,

Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,

Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

Christ to shield me today

Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wounding,

So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness,

Of the Creator of Creation. Amen.

(St. Patrick’s Breastplate. Also see hymn #268 in the 1940 Episcopal hymnal)

Points for Meditation:

In what areas of your life do you need to come under Jesus’ wing?
What image of God’s protective love might help you remember to come to God for help?

Resolution: I resolve to come under Jesus’ wing today, consciously choosing to come to Him for safety and peace.

Hen with Chicks – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

St. Patrick’s Breastplate

under Jesus' wing

woe on Pharisees

2016-11-09T18:17:51-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Matthew 23:1-12 – Humility

Last updated on: November 9, 2016 at 6:17 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Crucifixion - Grunewald Why does Jesus use such scalding words towards the scribes and Pharisees? His words are so caustic that I feel the sting of them 2000 years later – and they weren’t even aimed towards me!

I think it’s because Jesus’ kingdom is a kingdom of love and humility (which are so closely related it’s difficult if not impossible to separate them). But the scribes and Pharisees, as leaders who lead with pride and not humility, are opposed to His kingdom. I think this may also be the reason Jesus is so harsh towards hypocrites. All men are hypocrites in that we don’t live up to what we say is right and good. So why such harshness towards hypocrites? It’s not all hypocrites that Jesus thrashes but the religious leaders who are hypocrites, those who should be leaders and teachers in love and humility but instead teach pride by their actions.

It’s a good thing I like humility. Jesus teaches about humility so much that one is faced with three choices:

reject the teaching of Jesus, and therefore Jesus, and do things your way
say what Jesus says about humility, but don’t do what He does
accept the teaching of Jesus and make it your ambition to be humble

Sometimes Jesus teaches with such crystalline clarity and tornadic force that one is reduced to the most elemental things in life. Nothing that Jesus teaches is clearer than His teaching on humility and self-exaltation, and nothing is more fundamental.

In Matthew’s Gospel alone, here is what Jesus teaches about humility:

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me’” (16:24).

“Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (18:3-4).

“Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:26-28).

“But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (23:11-12).

This is an amazingly consistent and persistent constellation of teachings on humility and how humility is at the center of Jesus’ Kingdom. In fact, once you see that Jesus’ Kingdom is the Kingdom of Humility, you see exactly what the problem is and has been for thousands of years. For most of humanity, a Kingdom of Humility is an oxymoron, a logical impossibility. It’s almost like saying the Pleasure of Pain or the Darkness of Light.

And yet, in spite of what the rest of the world teaches, Jesus insists that His Kingdom is a kingdom of humility. Actually, Jesus’ life began, continued, and ended with humility: Jesus is no hypocrite. What He taught was what He lived. Jesus says and Jesus does: we should do both what He says and what He did. And so He was born in a manger in a stable, of two ordinary people. He who was God was born a human baby.

He began His teaching ministry by teaching about humility. Isn’t that what the Beatitudes are ultimately about? “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Isn’t “poor in spirit” simply another way of saying “humble”? Notice what the blessing of the humble is: the kingdom of heaven, Jesus’ kingdom. All of the other blessed conditions that Jesus mentions in the Beatitudes are related in some way to humility.

So Jesus begins His teaching by talking about humility, and then, in chapter 16, when He takes His disciples to a new level of understanding, after Peter’s confession, He begins to teach them about the way of the Cross and the need to deny oneself in order to be His disciple.

And there is our definition of humility: to deny oneself. Again, Jesus is no hypocrite but a man of perfect integrity, for what He teaches about crosses is what He chose to do. No sooner does He begin to teach His disciples about their finite crosses than He Himself begins His march to His own infinite Cross.

Jesus taught humility throughout His entire public ministry, but He taught humility most intensely by the events beginning with Maundy Thursday and extending until Easter morning.

“But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

That’s your lesson for today. We all have many competing images of ourselves, and we’ve become fairly adept at employing them to suit our different tastes and needs. We think of ourselves as our jobs or our roles in families or our roles in social networks. We pick from some of our more salient characteristics and say that this is who we are. I was listening in my car recently to a Confidence Course on tape that I bought at Half Price Records. The author was saying that people who are shy often see their shyness as being who they are and as being a much larger part of who they are than do the people around them.

Who do you see yourself to be? What characteristics define you?

Among the images you have for yourself, Jesus is telling you to take on one special image and role, and that is the role of humble servant: this is the image of Christ Himself. If you see yourself as a teacher, then you might set out as I once did to become a better teacher. You practice teaching and communicating ideas and motivating people. If you see yourself as a mother, then you dedicate yourself to mothering your children and training and shaping and loving and encouraging them. And if you see yourself as a humble servant, then you will set out today to learn how to be more humble and to serve more faithfully.

There are so many ways that our Father and our Teacher teach us to be humble, and often they use different means on different people. You could choose to learn humility today by seeking to love those around you or to serve them. You could choose to learn humility by praying or by praying and fasting, or by doing many other things.

But I’ve got another suggestion today, at least partially because it’s what I think I need today. What if you practiced humility today by accepting whatever the Lord decides to give you today? Instead of seeing life as being out to get you, instead of becoming angry or upset every time something doesn’t go your way, and instead of resenting the difficult things in your life that you can’t change, what if you accepted each of them as instruction from the Lord in humility?

What if each disappointment, burden, or undesired event were seen as a means to God and His grace, instead of as a threat to your sovereign desires? I believe that every day is densely packed with opportunities to humble oneself before the Lord.

And therefore, every day is also densely packed with opportunities to be exalted by the Lord – if only you would humble yourself before the one who has taught us how to humble ourselves.

Prayer: Almighty God, take from me all vainglorious minds, all appetites of mine own praise, all envy, coveting, gluttony, sloth, and lechery, all wrathful affections, all appetite of revenging, all desire or delight of other folks’ harm, all pleasure in provoking any person to wrath and anger, all delight of exprobation or insultation against any person in their affliction and calamity.

And give me, good Lord, an humble, lowly, quiet, peaceable, patient, charitable, kind, tender, and pitiful mind, with all my works, and all my words, and all my thoughts, to have a taste of thy holy, blessed Spirit. Amen. (Sir Thomas More)

Points for Meditation:

In what ways are you still proud, exerting your self over God and others?
What are some humbling things the Lord has brought your way recently that you might have seen as annoyances or occasions for anger or worry, rather than opportunities to learn humility?

Resolution: I resolve to accept the things Jesus gives me today as my daily bread, that I might learn humility from Him.

Crucifixion of Christ, Matthias Grunewald – in U.S. Public Domain

Scribes and Pharisees

servanthood

2016-11-01T18:33:39-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Matthew 20:17-34 – Greatness

Last updated on: November 1, 2016 at 6:33 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Tomorrow is for No One intro Have you ever wanted to be great?

That’s been a dream of mine ever since I was little. One of my earliest ways of obtaining glory for myself was to become a great football player. As kids, we used to play football at a strip of field at Kenwood Elementary School in Champaign, Illinois, only a block away from our house. I used to be very fast and quick (Mr. Outside), while my twin, Danny, was good at bulling his way through defenders twice his size (Mr. Inside).

Because I was fast, especially in long distances compared to my peers, I also wanted to be the world’s record holder in the mile. Jim Ryun was my hero, and he held the world record in the mile from 1966 until 1975, at 3 minutes 51.1 seconds (I’m doing this from a 35-40 year old memory – I wonder if I’m right!) But every year I ran, more of my peers seemed to be as fast, and I knew it was all over in 7th grade when a stupid sprinter almost caught me in the mile during P.E. class. The best mile I ever ran in my life was a 5:26.

I’ll spare you my foray into politics but feel I must make mention of my desire to obtain glory by becoming a famous writer. I’ve always wanted to write, ever since I was in second grade. In fifth grade I started on a novel about a fictitious family that sounded suspiciously like my own, except that the twins were not named Danny and Charlie but Danny and Danny (this way, there was comedic material in the confusion of names, as well as a way for me to exempt myself from the stupid things the kids in novel did). Somehow, my first novel, Tomorrow is for No One, never found a publisher, much less make me a famous novelist.

There’s a part of me that still wants to be great. But if not as a football player, miler, politician, or writer – then as what? Maybe there’s another way to think about human greatness.

Who are the great men and women of history?

Most naturally, we might think of people like Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Charlemagne, Napoleon, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. Some might more naturally think of people like Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur, William Shakespeare, Beethoven, or Picasso. We might think of world leaders or even some of the heroes of the Bible.

But Jesus’ teaching on greatness calls into question the standard by which we measure greatness. Greatness, in our common understanding of greatness, comes in a number of different varieties. We call some great simply because of the magnitude of their accomplishments. Julius Caesar and Napoleon are generally considered to be “great,” based on the magnitude of their dreams and successes. As grand as their achievements are by certain standards, there’s a part of us that realizes that world conquest and domination is not a good measure of greatness. We know this because we would stop short of calling Adolph Hitler great, in spite of his incredible achievements.

Some are great because they have nearly superhuman powers: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Usain Bolt, and a host of other athletes we idolize. Others are great because they’re excellent at what they do: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and the scientists, writers, composers, and artists such as those I listed above.

All of these are great in their own way. And all of them will pass away with this earth.

But today Jesus offers wannabe great men like me a way to achieve true and permanent greatness. The funny thing is that it’s 180 degrees away from the normal paths to human greatness. Normally, greatness begins and ends with me. I’m great because I’ve done this. It’s all about me and what I’ve done and the attention that people pay to me.

Not so in Jesus’ kingdom. “Whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave.” As many times as I’ve read, heard, and meditated on this passage, it still jars me. Not as much as it used to, but it jars me, because it’s so contrary to everything the world tries to teach me. In fact, to most people it will probably sound nonsensical. How can being a servant – or slave – be a path to greatness?

It all depends on how you measure greatness. If your goal is to have everyone bow before you and serve you, then serving is a lousy path to greatness. But if your goal is to be like God and to share in His far greater glory, then this is the path to glory.

I find great encouragement in this passage. I completely acknowledge how difficult this path is. There are times when I silently serve and almost begin to think to myself, “What a waste of my gifts and talents!” There are times when it seems as if no one recognizes the many sacrifices I make to serve others. I’m taken for granted, ignored, overlooked, and underappreciated.

I’m still not too crazy about it when the Lord asks me to serve in a capacity in which I know I’m not very good, but the truth is that I’ve sort of grown to like it. There’s something contagious about serving, something more mysterious and profound than mere human glory.

In fact, in my more lucid moments I realize just how joyful and glorious serving is because I realize that by serving I am being like my Master. And that’s what I really want, after all. What I really want is for the invisible audience of One to notice me and feel as if I’m pleasing to Him. For what seems like slavery and thankless drudgery here on earth is perfect freedom and laudable worship in heaven.

The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. If I want Jesus, all of Jesus, then I must come to serve Him as He first served me. Everything about His life – from the way He was born, to the beginning of His public ministry and His teaching and healing, to His washing His disciples feet, to His praying for the disciples, to His Passion, to His Crucifixion – screams out SERVICE AND SACRIFICE!

If that is how the King of Glory came to us, then that is how we must go to Him, where we will find greatness. The amazing thing is that He who is glory is willing to share that glory and greatness with me. I can have no true greatness and glory of my own, but because of the humility of God who became man and the sacrifice of the Cross, I have been offered true greatness and glory. But I have to share it, which in this case, is just fine with me.

Do you want the greatest glory and greatness of all? Then learn to be the servant of all. The greatest glory and most glorious greatness you could ever hope for is the glory and greatness of Jesus Christ. By serving Him, as He first served, and by serving Him by serving others, you are united to Jesus Himself. And where is He? In the glory of the Father, at His right hand in heaven.

That’s what serving does, you know. Heaven and earth are usually invisible to each other, and sometimes this clouds our minds. On earth, serving in humility looks like an invisible and thankless way to Nowheresville, while in heaven it is a visible and glorious sharing in the life of the Son. On earth, human greatness and success look great, but in heaven, it is often an invisible and insignificant thing. Human greatness is often invisible in heaven because often it has more in common with the Other Place than it does with Heaven.

I don’t need anything else today. I can still keep my dreams, if I want to, but I’ve now got all I need. All I need is to figure out where the Lord wants me to serve today, for if I do this, then He shall call me great. And great I shall be!

Prayer: O Father, whose service is perfect freedom, help me to seek not to be served but to serve; help me to know the joy of laying down my life for You that You may raise me up. Show me where it is that I should serve today, and help me to serve with joy and gladness. May I serve with diligence and devotion, remembering that it is You I serve in all I do. Unite my service to Jesus my Lord’s that I may share in His greatness today. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

How much do you desire greatness? What are the ways that you’ve been trying to achieve it? Are they God’s ways?
How has God served you today? Perform your daily tasks today as if you are serving God, and remember the greatness He promises you!
Do you go to church more to serve or be served?

Resolution: I resolve to eat my daily bread today, serving however the Lord asks me to serve, that I may share in His greatness.

Tomorrow is for No One

2016-10-21T17:56:13-05:00

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Matthew 17:1-13 – Transfiguration

Last updated on: October 21, 2016 at 5:56 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Transfiguration of Christ All of the life of Christ is one piece, like the tunic which He wore to His death and for which the soldiers cast lots. His Transfiguration is therefore of a piece with His Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.

In the Incarnation, when God was made man, the glory of the Lord, the glory of Jesus, was revealed. We saw it with the angels and the shepherds and, later, the wise men. The glory of the Lord shone through Jesus’ entire public ministry, in his preaching, teaching, and healing, and here in the Transfiguration, for one brief moment, we see Him in all His glory.

And then it’s back on the road to Calvary and the Cross. The Transfiguration is a foretaste of the glory to come, but that glory will come more fully only after the Cross. At the Cross, the glory of the Father in redeeming mankind was revealed; it was made even more clear and glorious to all by the Resurrection.

In the Transfiguration, we (along with Peter, James, and John) see, however briefly, the glory of Jesus. This is who He really is, and we are privileged to see it for this brief, shining moment.

What strikes me today, like a brief but brilliant bolt of lightning, is that the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ is also my own transfiguration and the transfiguration of the human race and, indeed, of the cosmos! God is all-glorious, whether I see Him or not. His glory is simply who He is: I AM. And yet He’s invited me to be a witness to, and even a participant in, His glory.

It would be all fine and good that God has revealed Himself in all His glory, but what good would that be if we were still in our sins? What good would it be to see the true God in an unmistakable, almost blinding way, only to have Him return to heaven and strand us, still rotting and decaying in our sins?

This is why the Transfiguration must lead to the Cross and the Cross to the Resurrection. And we participate in each of these through Jesus Christ.

This means that we, like Jesus, must also be transfigured. The Greek word used for transfiguration is “metamorphao,” from which we get our word “metamorphosis.” The change God effects in us is indeed a metamorphosis, only a much greater one than that of a caterpillar to a butterfly. In fact, the metamorphosis in us is, as it was for Christ, only a completed revelation of what God has already done for us.

The exact nature of this Transfiguration which God takes us through is often misunderstood. Sometimes, for example, our conception of heaven is seriously messed up! We view it as something totally different from earth, something superhuman to the point of incomprehensibility. Therefore, we can’t think much about it, and it doesn’t penetrate into our earthly lives. Because it’s entirely future, it has little relevance to us or little impact on our lives.

But in Matthew 16:28, the verse right before the passage about the Transfiguration, Jesus says that some of the disciples will see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. His kingdom, therefore, must be present now.

The Transfiguration follows immediately after this; it is the demonstration that the Kingdom of Heaven is here now. I find hope in this, and glory. It cures me of my malaise that is induced by thinking sometimes that Jesus is here with me less now than at the Transfiguration.

Jesus is here more than ever before: His kingdom is growing progressively and steadily, and it is progressively being revealed to all men. The Kingdom of Heaven is here now, and it is within each one of us because Christ is in us and His rule extends to us, who are His body.

So this process of Transfiguration in men has already begun, and we are already in the process of being revealed to be who we truly are.

But glory doesn’t come to us totally and at once. First, there is the suffering of this earth. We see through a glass darkly the fullness of things to come. But as with Jesus (and we must always look to Him for our example) we know that after the suffering there is glory to come: the glory which Jesus displayed at the Mount of Transfiguration is the same glory He is progressively displaying in us.

We too will be manifested as sons and daughters of the light: slowly and partially here in this present life, but finally and dramatically in the life to come. “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

The trick is in looking for those moments of transfiguration in this life, in which God reveals Himself to us as He will in heaven. The trick is in looking for those moments in which we are transfigured, however, briefly, into what we shall one day be.

When you look at yourself, what do you see? Do you see a weak or aging, a balding or an expanding body? Do you see a terrible sinner or merely an average, ordinary human? Or do you see a new creature, redeemed and being transformed into the likeness of the Son of God?

Is your daily life a random collection of moments of experience that just seem to happen one day after another, or are your moments infused with the anticipation of seeing and being with God in whatever you’re doing at this very second?

When you look at the Church, what do you see? Do you see only the shallowness or faddishness or sad divisions that mark parts of the Church? Or do you see the Body of Christ filled with the glory of God, the New Jerusalem that has descended from heaven?

In this life, we can’t live on the Mount of Transfiguration 24/7. It just isn’t going to happen. But you may be amazed where you might find this Mount in this life, if you seek the One who dwells there. And when you do find yourself there, in the presence of Moses and Elijah, and Peter, James, and John, remember who you really are: you are one transfigured by Jesus Christ!

Prayer: Father, thank You for making me one of your children and translating me from the kingdom of darkness into Your glorious kingdom of light! Show Yourself to me today that I might behold Your glory, and in Your light see myself. Protect me from the Evil One and the false images of Your holy ones that he seeks to plant inside me. Today, let me see You as you are that I may be like You. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

What moments of transfiguration have you experienced before?
Close your eyes and probe your heart. How do you see yourself? How should you see yourself?

Resolution: I resolve today to meditate on who Jesus Christ has made me to be and to look for moments of transfiguration.

Transfiguration of Christ by Alexandr Ivanov in U.S. Public Domain

Uncategorized

life of Christ

metamorphosis

the glory of the Lord

the Kingdom of Heaven

The Transfiguration

2016-10-20T18:37:54-05:00

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Matthew 16:13-28

Last updated on: October 20, 2016 at 6:37 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Batmobile One thing’s for sure: contrary to what atheists would have you believe, heaven will definitely not be boring!

I say this because even in this life God constantly desires to show us new things and take us to the next level. I’ve discovered that I went through three phases of watching the Batman TV show made in the 60s. When I was a little kid, I wanted to be Batman. I had a Batman cowl, a Batman TV shirt, the coolest electronic Batman game, and once I even had a bowl of Batman ice cream that I remember as being different psychedelic colors. I liked Batman because he was a hero. When I was a little older, I thought Batman was a show for little kids and not nearly as good. And when I became a young adult, I saw all sorts of campy things that made the show enjoyable again.

I’m constantly discovering new levels of reading the Bible, and one of my not so secret missions in writing Give Us This Day is to learn to see things I haven’t seen before.

We do get bored, even with God, in this life. But contrary to this life, in heaven we’ll give up ourselves and complacency and toys, and we’ll want to go to the next level that God is willing to take us to.

As a teacher, I always want to take my students to the next level that they are ready for and desire. Jesus, being the perfect Teacher, takes His disciples, particularly Peter, to a dramatically new level today, not once, not twice, but four times.

In His first teaching, Jesus tests His disciples to see what they already know. It’s not clear in the Gospels exactly how clearly He had taught His disciples the answer to the all-important question He’s about to ask. Often, He seems to prefer teaching by example and by leading His disciples with parables. He begins by asking an easier, warm up question that establishes a context for the all-important question and implies a distinction between those who answer this question in different ways.

“Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”

They tell Him that some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

And then Jesus asks part two of the question: “But who do you say that I am?”

It’s interesting that Jesus asks all of the disciples, but it’s Peter who answers. Peter’s justly famous answer is: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus immediately calls Peter blessed, but not in exactly the way we might expect. Why does Peter answer, and not the others? It could be because he’s always the impetuous one. But Jesus has a different answer. He calls Peter blessed because flesh and blood has not revealed this to him but the Father in heaven.

Peter gets an ‘A’ on this assignment. This was not merely a test of Peter’s ability to memorize: he had to demonstrate some original (even if it did come from God) thinking about who Jesus was. He made explicit what had been implicit: he had internalized what Jesus had been teaching.

Most of us teachers would have been overjoyed and stopped there. But not Jesus. He pushes Peter further, and in his second teaching plants some seeds. Continuing with His theme that revelation and salvation are from God, Jesus announces to Peter that he now has a new name: Peter, or “Rock” (maybe better: “Rocky.”) On this Rock, Jesus will build His church. Furthermore, Jesus will give him the keys to the kingdom.

But these are things that hadn’t happened yet to Peter. The same God who revealed that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God must also have foretold these things about Peter. Jesus was greater than Peter first imagined Him to be, and now Peter is told that he will also be greater than he imagines himself to be.

We know how Peter’s story turns out and who he turns out to be. But take a look at the very next story of Peter, and imagine that it is this person about whom Jesus says He will build His church.

The third lesson Jesus teaches is when His teaching takes a dramatic new turn. Now that the disciples, led by Peter, understand that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Jesus wants to take them further. “From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day” (verse 21).

Now that the disciples have understood that Jesus is the Messiah, He must show them who the Messiah really is, and so He begins to teach about the Suffering Servant. It was difficult enough to get the disciples to understand that He really was the Messiah, the Son of God, but now He has more to teach.

But this teaching doesn’t seem to fit with what the students have just learned. Say it ain’t so! Peter, the star pupil, gets up and takes Jesus aside and rebukes the Master! “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!”

Peter’s feeling was understandable. If Jesus were the Messiah, why would He have to suffer many things, and then be killed (Peter probably never even heard the part about being raised on the third day!)? It just doesn’t seem fair. Don’t you think Jesus was maybe a little hard on Peter? Couldn’t He have corrected Peter more gently? Why is He suddenly such a hothead?

“Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men” (verse 23). He sounds like me to my kids sometimes. I hope for and envision great things for them; I love them and teach them and pray for them. But when they act in ungodly ways, I sometimes let them have it!

It’s hard to feel exactly what Jesus must have felt and know exactly how Jesus said these scathing words. But, surely without knowing it, Peter was speaking the Satanic line. Jesus knows Satan. He’s wrestled with Him before, in the temptation in the wilderness, and here He sees him again. Maybe He knows that an even greater temptation will come when the hour comes for Him to be betrayed and delivered to the Jews. Maybe, for a moment, He’s genuinely tempted to take the easy path to messianic glory, and He knows He must resist, even if the words come from his own familiar friend in whom He trusted. Peter, in spite of his profession of Jesus, is still following the things of men, and not the things of God.

Jesus uses this temptation to continue His dramatic new teaching, and so He now presents his fourth teaching for today. Not only will the Messiah suffer many things and be killed, but His disciples also must be willing to suffer for Him. Usually, we read this astounding verse, verse 24, knowing that Jesus will die on the cross and be raised from the dead. But how must it have sounded to the disciples before they had seen the Crucifixion and Resurrection?

Not only will this Messiah suffer and die, but those who want to be His disciples and follow Him must deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him. But He’s just told us that He will suffer and then die. This Jesus is not only greater than any of the disciples imagined; He will also suffer more and appear defeated. Peter, who heard such blessed pronunciations of who God had called him to be, now heard about his own need to suffer.

As with Peter, Jesus is calling you to the next level of faith in and commitment to Him. He’s asking you to come to the next level of love in your relationship with Him. While still in this life, this next level will require that you give yet more of yourself to Him, and this will be a painful process. Neither you nor I have completely denied ourselves that we might follow our Lord. We are all still too mindful of the things of men.

But by taking up your cross, Jesus is calling you to the same blessings He offered Peter. Come, sit at the Master’s feet a while today. Listen to Him as He tells you what He wants you to learn and to do next.

And stay tuned: you ought to be here for tomorrow’s lesson! Same Bat time, same Bat channel.

Prayer: O Lord Jesus Christ, draw me by Thy love that I may deny myself, and, taking up my cross daily, may follow after Thee, until I am like Thee and with Thee where Thou art. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

What is the next lesson that the Master is trying to teach you?
In what ways have you been acting like Peter, as God’s adversary? In what ways are you resisting the Lord’s teaching and leading?

Resolution: I resolve to listen to my Master today until I have heard His next lesson. Having heard it, I resolve to put it into action in one way today.

Batmobile licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Uncategorized

Jesus the teacher

Jesus’ teaching

listening to the Master

Peter’s confession

who is Jesus

2016-08-31T23:58:50-05:00

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How to enjoy biblical genealogies! Matthew 1:1-17

Last updated on: August 31, 2016 at 11:58 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Matthew Genealogy1 Host: Hello, I’m your host, Guy Smiley. And now it’s time to play Fun with Genealogies, that wacky Bible trivia game in which our contestants try to see who can come up with the most creative way to stay awake while reading biblical genealogies. Last week we had a woman who stapled her eyelids open and a man who installed an IV drip of Starbucks into his body.

Our contestant this week is Father Charles Erlandson who has a unique method for staying awake while reading a biblical genealogy. Father Charles, some have called you a fanatic or a space cadet. Would you tell us about your novel approach?

Fr. Charles: Sure, Guy. I’m going to attempt to read the first genealogy in the New Testament, from Matthew chapter 1. I plan to actually read every word and study the names, looking for special significance.

Host: Father Charles, if I may. Hasn’t that method been tried before and been shown to induce extreme states of somnolence?

Fr. Charles: That depends.

Host: Depends on what?

Fr. Charles: On what somnolence means. Actually, most people just skip over the genealogy of Jesus Christ. But I’m going in. Here I go!

It’s strange, isn’t it, that the first words of the New Testament would be some of the least read of the words of the New Testament? Doesn’t it seem unseemly for God to have begun things like this? Now if He had started with John 1, I could understand. The majesty of John 1 matches the majesty of Genesis 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

But to start with this: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, yada, yada, yada . . . “

Actually, there are a lot of stimulating things I find in Matthew’s genealogy of Christ. It’s different from Luke’s and appears to give Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph’s line, while Luke gives it through Mary’s. Then there’s the fact that Matthew divides up Jesus’ ancestors into three groups of 14 names. I could speak about why genealogies were important to the Jews and how important it is.

But I want to focus instead on four simple names: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Uriah’s wife. There’s something unusual about these four people in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. In the first place, in case you hadn’t noticed, they’re all women. Women! Look up any of the Old Testament genealogies, and what do you see? The names of a bunch of men. Since men are biblically the head of the family covenant and tribes of Israel, it makes sense for the genealogies to be traced through the father. When Paul traces our genealogy in Romans and Corinthians, he traces our sin back not to Eve but to Adam.

The fact that Matthew chooses to put four women in his genealogy is already significant and is in keeping with what we will soon learn about this Jesus who is to be born. If you remember Jesus as we see Him in the Gospels, you’ll remember that He went to the outcasts and those of low degree: tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, and women. You’ll remember the sudden prominence that women have in the Gospel story, after the Crucifixion, when all the men have left, from fatigue or fear or confusion. Isn’t it just like God to color outside the lines and reach down and put women into the genealogy of the Son as a permanent part of His inspired Word?

But there’s more. These aren’t just any women that God has chosen to record as part of the genealogy of His Son. It’s important that Matthew chose to include these particular women, while he has clearly left out other names.

First, we find Tamar. Who’s she? Her life is a sordid, sensational tale that I don’t have time to tell. Moses tells it better in Genesis 38 anyway. Suffice it say that Judah, the patriarch from whom the Christ would come, was a fool. He was a man who didn’t keep his vow to his daughter-in-law Tamar and ended up sleeping with. It’s O.K., though. He didn’t know that she was his daughter-in-law: he thought she was a prostitute! Tamar took such desperate measures (go read Genesis 38) because Judah had treated her evilly, and even he acknowledged she was more righteous than he was. Still, she’s not exactly the kind of person you would put into the genealogy of Christ, unless you had a very important point to make. And unless you had the authority and audacity of God!

Second, there’s Rahab. You know Rahab: Rahab, the prostitute. What is it with Jesus and prostitutes? He not only talked to them, in violation of the social customs of his day, but also dared to have two as his ancestresses. There’s no getting around the fact that Rahab was a prostitute, and not just a woman driven to pretend to be one. Worse yet, she was a Canaanite, that accursed race that God was determined to destroy and drive out of the Promised Land. But you’ll remember that she acted favorably toward the people of God and hid the spies. Further, she is put into the famous Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith” because of her faithful actions. Still, she’s a pretty shady character to put into the genealogy of the Son of God.

Third, we have Ruth. Another non-Israelite. Ruth was a Moabitess, but one who left her home and her people to follow the true God. She sounds a lot like the first disciples Jesus called, who left families and jobs to follow Him. For her faithfulness, she was not only rewarded by getting to marry Mr. Right, Boaz, but was also privileged to become David’s great-grandmother, and therefore an ancestor of Jesus.

And then there is the wife of Uriah. Who was this mysterious wife of Uriah? Matthew’s modesty conceals the fact that she was none other than Bathsheba. Yes, Bathsheba, another woman in another sex scandal, this time adultery and not prostitution. We know the consequences for her and David because of their sin: Uriah was murdered and David and Bathsheba’s firstborn son together died. But out of that union came Solomon, the wisest of men.

Why are these women in the genealogy of Jesus Christ? If the Bible were heavily edited by those who wanted to tidy things up and make the story look better, don’t you think they’d have thought to get rid of these scandalous women? Just what did Matthew think he was gaining for his Master’s cause by including them?

In these women, I see the good news of Jesus Christ. I see a God who reaches down to the poor, the humble, the fallen, and the sinful, and out of love chooses them to be a part of His people. I see a holy God who, out of love, dares to associate with those who would defile Him and who have blatantly chosen to disobey Him.

In the blood of Jesus Christ was the blood of these sinful, scandalous women, taken from among the people who were not God’s people. In Jesus’ DNA were remnants of the DNA of Tamar and Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba.

How scandalous! How shocking!

Most shocking of all: I see myself in these women. For I am the outcast, the poor, the humble, the fallen, and the sinful one. I am the one who rightfully stands outside of God and His people. But I am also the one who God adopted and made a part of His family.

You and I have also now been grafted into the genealogy of Jesus Christ, not as ancestors and not as descendants, but as His brothers and sisters. Like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, we have found favor with God, in spite of ourselves.

In the story of these four women, incarnated in the “boring” genealogy of Matthew 1 (the very first thing we read in the New Testament), I find the gospel of Jesus Christ. In their stories, I find His story, which is now also my story.

Prayer: Abba, Father! Thank You for adopting me as Your child and making me Your heir. Thank You for accepting me, in spite of my sinfulness, because of the perfect righteousness of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Help me to walk today as a child of light that I may give You all glory and honor and praise. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

How does it make you feel to know that, though sinful, you have been made a child of God?
How does it illuminate your life to remember that you are a brother or sister of Jesus Christ?

Resolution: I resolve to meditate on the mystery of being reclaimed as a child of God and to offer God appropriate thanks, praise, and obedience.

Uncategorized

and Uriah’s wife

Fr. Charles Erlandson

2016-08-21T12:32:44-05:00

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Monday of Trinity 13, 2016 – Matthew 1

Last updated on: August 21, 2016 at 12:32 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Matthew 1

“Hello, I’m your host, Guy Smiley. And now it’s time to play Fun with Genealogies, that wacky Bible trivia game in which our contestants try to see who can come up with the most creative way to stay awake while reading biblical genealogies. Last week we had a woman who stapled her eyelids open and a man who installed an IV drip of Starbucks into his body.

“Sure, Guy. I’m going to attempt to read the first genealogy in the New Testament, from Matthew chapter 1. I plan to actually read every word and study the names, looking for special significance.”

“Father Charles, if I may. Hasn’t that method been tried before and been shown to induce extreme states of somnolence?”

“That depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“What does somnolence mean? Actually, most people just skip over the genealogy of Jesus Christ. But I’m going in. Here I go.”

It’s strange, isn’t it, that the first words of the New Testament would be some of the least read of the words of the New Testament? Doesn’t it seem unseemly for God to have begun things like this? Now if He had started with John, I could understand. The majesty of John 1 matches the majesty of Genesis 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

But to start with this: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, yada, yada, yada . . . “

Actually, there are a lot of stimulating things I find in Matthew’s genealogy of Christ. It’s different from Luke’s and appears to give Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph, while Luke gives it through Mary. Then there’s the fact that Matthew divides up Jesus’ ancestors into three groups of 14 names. I could speak about why genealogies were important to the Jews and how important it is

But I want to focus instead on 4 simple names: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Uriah’s wife. There’s something unusual about these 4 people in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. In the first place, in case you hadn’t noticed, they’re all women. Women! Look up any of the Old Testament genealogies, and what do you see? The names of a bunch of men. Since men are biblically the head of the family covenant and household, it makes sense for the genealogies to be traced through the father. When Paul traces our genealogy in Romans and Corinthians, he traces our sin back not to Eve but to Adam.

This in itself tells us something significant. It shouldn’t surprise us, however. If you remember Jesus as we see Him in the Gospels, you’ll remember that He went to the outcasts and those of low degree: tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, and women. You’ll remember the sudden prominence that women have in the Gospel story, after the Crucifixion, when all the men have left, from fatigue or fear or confusion. Isn’t it just like God to color outside the lines and reach down and put women into the genealogy of the Son as a permanent part of His inspired Word?

But there’s more. These aren’t just any women that God has chosen to record as part of the genealogy of Christ. It’s important that Matthew chose to include these particular women, while he has clearly left out other names.

First, we find Tamar. Who’s she? It’s a sordid, sensational tale that I don’t have time to tell. Moses tells it better in Genesis 38 anyway. Suffice it say that Judah, the patriarch from whom the Christ would come, was a fool. He was a man who didn’t keep his vow to his daughter in law Tamar and slept with Tamar. It’s O.K., though. He didn’t know that she was his daughter in law: he thought she was a prostitute! Tamar took such desperate measures (go read Genesis 38) because Judah had treated her evilly, and even he acknowledged she was more righteous than he was. Still, she’s not exactly the kind of person you would put into the genealogy of Christ, unless you had a very important point to make.

Second, there’s Rahab. You know Rahab: Rahab, the prostitute. What is it with Jesus and prostitutes? He not only talked to them, in violation of the social customs of his day: He also dares to have 2 as his ancestresses. There’s no getting around the fact that Rahab was a prostitute, and not just a woman driven to pretend to be one once. Worse yet, she was a Canaanite, that accursed race that God was determined to destroy and drive out of the Promised Land. But you’ll remember that she acted favorably toward the people of God and hid the spies. Further, she is put into the famous Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith because of her faithful actions. Still, she’s a pretty shady character to put into the genealogy of the Son of God.

Third, we have Ruth. Another non-Israelite. Ruth was a Moabitess, but one who left her home and her people to follow the true God. She sounds a lot like the first disciples Jesus called, who left family and jobs to follow Him. For her faithfulness, she was not only rewarded by getting to marry Mr. Right, Boaz, but was also privileged to become David’s great-grandmother, and therefore an ancestor of Jesus.

And then there is the wife of Uriah. Who was this mysterious wife of Uriah? Matthew’s modesty conceals the fact that she was none other than Bathsheba. Yes, Bathsheba, another woman in another sex scandal, this time adultery and not prostitution. We know the consequences for her and David because of their sin: Uriah was murdered and their firstborn son together died. But out of that union came Solomon, the wisest of men.

Why are these women in the genealogy of Jesus Christ? If the Bible were heavily edited by those who wanted to tidy things up and make the story look better, dontcha think they’d have thought to get rid of these scandalous women? Just what did Matthew think he was gaining for his Master’s cause by including them?

How scandalous! How shocking!

Most shocking of all: I see myself in these women. For I am the outcast, the poor, the humble, the fallen, the sinful one. I am the one who rightfully stands outside of God and His people. But I am also the one who God adopted and made a part of His family.

In the story of these 4 women, incarnated in the “boring” genealogy of Matthew 1, the very first thing we read in the New Testament, I find the gospel of Jesus Christ. In their stories, I find His story, which is now also my story.

Points for Meditation:

How does it make you feel to know that, though sinful, you have been made a child of God?
How does it illuminate your life to remember that you are a brother or sister of Jesus Christ?

Resolution: I resolve to meditate on the mystery of being reclaimed as a child of God and to offer God appropriate thanks, praise, and obedience.

Give Us This Day

and Uriah’s wife

Fr. Charles Erlandson

2017-11-09T12:27:40-05:00

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What is Theogathy?

Last updated on: November 9, 2017 at 12:27 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Romans 9

Theodicy is perhaps the number one intellectual reason given why people will not accept the One True God. Theodicy, which comes from Greek for “God” and “justice,” is a term coined by the philosopher Leibniz (who concluded that in spite of the evil in it, this is “the best of all possible worlds”) and is usually used to mean an attempt to justify the goodness of God in a world of evil, or the so-called problem of evil.

Romans is the classic discussion of theodicy in the Bible – and I’m not going to talk about it. Being the contrarian that I am, I want to talk about theogathy, or the goodness of God, from the Greek for “God” and “good” (agathos). (By the way – don’t bother to look theogathy up: I just made it up!) You’ve all heard of Rabbi Kushner’s Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, I’m sure. Well, someday there may be a book by Father Erlandson called Why Good Things Happen to Bad People. I confess that I haven’t read Rabbi Kushner’s book, but I can tell you that what Why Good Things Happen to Bad People would say, if it were ever written: it would be the gospel, the Good News, of Jesus Christ!

A lot of ink and tears have been spilled agonizing over theodicy. I’m glad that others smarter than me have addressed the issue in detail. If theodicy’s a demon you have to exorcize, then by all means have it exorcized. But I find that often it’s a distraction and an excuse. For those who choose not to believe in the Holy Trinity and God as He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ and in His Word, the Bible, it may seem a legitimate stumbling block. But behind it is a heart that would not bow to God even if the problem of evil were entirely resolved to satisfaction for the person. Then, a person is left naked before God with only his unbelief and pride to cover him.

For the believer, it’s a distraction. I’m not saying believers shouldn’t think about the problem of evil, but I am saying that they better not let it distract them from who God truly is and what their response should truly be.

The real problem for mankind to understand is not the problem of evil or God’s justice but the problem of good or God’s justice. Why does God judge those who do evil? Let me see . . . don’t rush me. Is it because they’re evil and don’t love the God who made them and loved them and will serve only themselves? That’s the easy part to understand, and I think the vast majority of people have a pretty good idea that they have done a lot of things wrong in their lives that produce guilt, true guilt.

But why does God do good to those who hate Him? Why did He save some of us when we all deserved to die? I could give the theologically obvious answer and say because He loved us, and, of course, that would be exactly right. But I don’t want to glibly accept this answer, as profoundly correct as it is. That love came at a terrible price which you all know. It was not free: you were bought with a price, the price of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Why do toddlers lie and then try to hide their sin? Why do we have wars, and why do people get divorced? Why is there so much human suffering? The reason for all of these things and more isn’t very hard to find because it’s right there in the heart of each one of us.

The reason why there are still random acts of kindness and, much more importantly, purposeful acts of love, is the love and mercy of God. The reason we are given second and third and umpteenth chances is because of the love and mercy of God. I smell the foul, biting air which is the land of Mordor we all live in, and sometimes, I, too, find it incomprehensible. Why must the land reek so? It reminds me of the time someone put a cherry bomb in the toilet in the boys bathroom in junior high (which is a Mordor all its own!), and the floor of the boys locker room flooded with a sulfurous, acidic stench that dissolved its way even through a nose whose breath was being held and which was hidden under a sweaty tee shirt.

But that evil air you smell is only the noxious additive to an air that still gives life. The fact is that we still all breathe and live and have good things happen to us, even though each of us is a Mordor of our own, or as Satan says in Milton’s Paradise Lost: “myself am Hell.” We live and breathe and have our being in a gracious atmosphere, but we don’t care: all we can see is the Pandemoniums we build and when they smell like Hell we blame God!

We blow it coming and going. When we look at the justice of God and His judgment on the wicked, we are often tempted to question the goodness and justice and power and glory of God. We become like lesser Jobs and ask, “Why have You made me like this?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to your Creator, who made all things good and you He made very good?

And then, when God proves His goodness and power through His mercy and love, resulting in His glory, we yawn. We take grace for granted, as we take air and water and oil for granted, as if they were not daily gifts from our good Creator. We gasp for grace because we lack it, and then when we’ve filled our lungs enough, we go diving in the sewers again until the next time we need to come up for some more grace.

We’re like malevolent teachers who take out our red pens and mark wrong everything we don’t like, instead of rejoicing in the vast majority of things that are good and right.

We look at the evil and suffering and denials of our wills in our lives and blame God, who has given us nothing but the good things in our lives, and these we claim as our own. We therefore blame God for the evil and credit ourselves with the righteousness: hence the bestselling status of books like Why Bad Things Happen to Good People and I’m O.K. and You’re O.K. A little more truth in advertising would produce a book with a title like Myself am Hell, but God is Heaven.

So shut your mouths with me and open your ears and hear what the Good One has to say:

I raised up Pharaoh so that I could show my power and my Name declared in all the earth, and I’ve raised you up for the same purposes (verse 17).
Who are you to talk back to me? (verse 20.)
I have endured your sins and wickedness that I might make known the riches of my glory through you (verses 22-23).
I have prepared and appointed and elected you for glory, My glory (verses 23-24).
I have called you a people, who were not My people: I have called you my sons and daughters, the sons and daughters of the living God, who were sons and daughters of perdition (verses 25-26).
If I had not left you my Seed, you would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah (verse 29).

Regardless of who you are and where you are today, God is good. He is all glorious and deserving of all glory and praise and honor. He is Beauty beyond beautiful and the Truth that makes truth. None of us deserve Him, none of us are good enough for Him. Yet He loves us and gives Himself to us, preparing and anointing and electing us for glory.

What will you do today with theogathy, the problem of good?

Prayer: O most merciful and gracious God, Thou Fountain of all mercy and blessing, Thou has opened the hand of Thy mercy to fill me with blessings, and the sweet effects of Thy loving-kindness. Thou feedest us like a Shepherd, Thou lovest us as a Friend, and thinkest on us perpetually, as a careful mother on her helpless babe, and art exceeding merciful to all that fear Thee. As Thou has spread Thy hand upon me for a covering, so also enlarge my heart with thankfulness; and let Thy gracious favors and loving-kindness endure for ever and ever upon Thy servant; and grant that what Thou has sown in mercy, may spring up in duty; and let Thy grace so strengthen my purposes that I may sin no more, but walk in the paths of Thy commandments; that I, living here to the glory of Thy name, may at last enter into the glory of my Lord, to spend a whole eternity in giving praise to Thy ever-glorious name. Amen. (Jeremy Taylor)

Points for Meditation:

Practice remembering today the many ways God has been good to you – and give thanks!
Practice noticing today all of the good things that happen, and not the bad.

Resolution: I resolve to rejoice and give thanks throughout the day today for God’s grace and goodness to me.

Cruxifixion – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Generic 2.0 license

2017-11-08T16:58:38-05:00

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Love is God’s Unbreakable Law of Gravity

Last updated on: November 8, 2017 at 4:58 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Romans 8:28-39

This God is a strange person, unlike any human we’ve ever met. It’s not just that He’s God and the Maker of the Universe and Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omnitemporal, and Omniscient – those are scary and strange enough. It’s also that He’s so perfect and simple. All that He Is, is also what He does. He is Love, and so He loves. He is Holy, and so He does holy.

I have been privileged above others in the degree of human love with which God has surrounded me. I have 2 loving parents, 3 loving siblings, a loving wife, and 6 loving kids. But the love of every one of them has failed me from time to time, and as much as I love each of them, my love has also failed them at times.

But God’s love is perfect: it cannot and therefore it will not fail. More than this: because the God who is love is also almighty, there is nothing in the world that can separate me from the love of God. I think there may be one exception, which I’ll get out of the way now. I won’t argue for it or for its implications, but it seems as if the one thing that can separate me from the love of God is, well, me. All things work together for good for those who love God, but what if I don’t love Him? What if He loves me, and I don’t love back?

Sin is the Separator: beware of it. At its heart it is the will to walk apart from God and to choose independence from Him. Sin is the Separator.

But I’m persuaded of better things, and so I’ll now speak of them.

What if it were really true that nothing could separate you from the love of God? Let’s talk first about the kinds of things that might be strong enough to separate us from God, and then the implications of such a vast love.

Who shall separate us from the love of God? Can death, which He has conquered by the power of the Resurrection? Can life, which is His creation and gift? But life is made up of other things. Can angels or principalities or powers separate us from His love? But they are only His creatures as well. The godly ones are there to help and encourage us. The wicked ones will surely try to separate us from His love, but how can they when met by the One who is love? Are they stronger than His love, if the two should meet?

Can the things that are present separate us from His love? But what are these mysterious things that are the present? Aren’t they simply a matter of death or life or angels or humans and our experiences? The future may be scarier, but it does not really differ from the present in terms of what is at play. Is there a place high enough or low enough to escape from God’s love? Is there any created thing – animal, vegetable, or mineral, human or angelic – who is strong enough to break God’s loving arm?

I’ve left perhaps the thorniest potential separator for last. There is one last category of earthly things that we feel are strong: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and the sword. All of these are fearful and fearsome things. Each is stronger than any of us, and each is a threat to our very existence. The truth is that we probably all know people who have allowed these things to separate them from the love of God. It’s not that God stopped loving: it’s that we stopped loving back. Our love can grow cold: there are Laodiceans in the world.

It may seem as if God has stopped loving us when we suffer any kind of tribulation or pain. But is that the case? Too easily, we equate feeling good with God’s blessing. We assume that God means all pain for punishment and that all pleasure is good. But sin has destroyed all such simple equations so that pleasure sought without God is a curse and suffering unasked for but received with faith is a blessing.

I know that suffering can be the greatest source of blessing because I know that the Father didn’t spare His own Son. The suffering of the Son is my blessing, and I would never wish it undone. True, killing the Son of God was the worst thing men have ever done, but God transformed it into the best thing He has ever done.

You, in your pain, may assume that God has abandoned you or just doesn’t care. But He does! If the suffering and agony of the Son was His means of saving the world, what makes you so sure that your own suffering, as a participation in His, isn’t the means of your glorification? Just because it doesn’t feel good doesn’t mean God isn’t there with you! God is God and God is good, whether we believe Him or not, or whether we even exist or not.

I also know that God is good and that suffering can be a source of blessing because of my own life. As some of you know, 19 years ago we had a daughter named Veronica Marguerite Erlandson who died of SIDS when she was 5½ weeks old. It was the most painful thing Jackie and I have yet experienced. And yet God confirmed to me that He was good and that He intended to work good through Veronica’s death.

It’s oh so easy to say in the abstract and when things are good, “I believe” and “All things work together for good to those who love God.” But it’s a different thing altogether in the concrete and when something terrible has happened. But when we persevere in faith and affirm that God is good in spite of the pain, the glory and blessing of God is on the other side. The chief of these blessings is, of course, that such pain is intended by God (but not by the Separator or Seducer) to bring us closer to Him.

The day after Veronica died, everyone told me to lay low, that this was a time to be ministered to and not to minister. But God wouldn’t let me lay low: He had given me something to say, something Jackie and I now believed not only with our lips but with our lives. I asked to speak at Veronica’s funeral because I wanted to tell people that God was good and that we believed this and could not be shaken from it, in spite of what had happened. The morning after Veronica had died, I secretly went up to school before it started and wrote this verse on the blackboard for my students to see throughout the day when I was gone: “All things work together for good to those who love God.”

God’s love is all around you today. It is the air you breathe and the bread of life you eat and the living water you drink. It is your father and your mother and your brothers and your sisters and your children and your friends. It is the leaping greenly trees and the true blue dream of sky. If you don’t feel it, it’s not because He is not there but because you are still looking at and trusting in your self and how you think and feel.

Nothing can separate those who love God from the love of God: it is God’s law of gravity, and it cannot be broken. There is no rational choice to be made, there is only doing. God’s love is with you because God is with you: go and seek Him today, in good and in bad, in sickness and in health, in riches and in poverty. In all things, seek the one who loves you by returning His love to Him.

Prayer: O Lord, Thou Lover of souls, open our eyes to see Thy love for us. Grant that we may face all difficult and lonely places in our lives, strong in the knowledge of that love. May the divine fire of Thy understanding, inspiring, unweariable love enkindle our hearts, till every detail of our daily lives shall be so warmed and gladdened thereby that it may become the work of our lives to obey Thee, and the joy of our souls to please Thee. Amen. (L.H.M. Soulsby

Point for Meditation: Meditate on the words of “St. Patrick’s Breastplate.” As you read (or better – sing!) through the words, see each phrase as one way God binds His love to you so that you can bind yourself to Him.

I bind unto myself today

The strong Name of the Trinity,

By invocation of the same

The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this today to me forever

By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;

His baptism in Jordan river,

His death on Cross for my salvation;

His bursting from the spicèd tomb,

His riding up the heavenly way,

His coming at the day of doom

I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power

Of the great love of cherubim;

The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour,

The service of the seraphim,

Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,

The Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,

All good deeds done unto the Lord

And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today

The virtues of the star lit heaven,

The glorious sun’s life giving ray,

The whiteness of the moon at even,

The flashing of the lightning free,

The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,

The stable earth, the deep salt sea

Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today

The power of God to hold and lead,

His eye to watch, His might to stay,

His ear to hearken to my need.

The wisdom of my God to teach,

His hand to guide, His shield to ward;

The word of God to give me speech,

His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,

The vice that gives temptation force,

The natural lusts that war within,

The hostile men that mar my course;

Or few or many, far or nigh,

In every place and in all hours,

Against their fierce hostility

I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,

Against false words of heresy,

Against the knowledge that defiles,

Against the heart’s idolatry,

Against the wizard’s evil craft,

Against the death wound and the burning,

The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,

Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,

The strong Name of the Trinity,

By invocation of the same,

The Three in One and One in Three.

By Whom all nature hath creation,

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation,

Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Resolution: I resolve to seek and receive the love of God throughout the day today, in each circumstance of my day.

Crucifixion of Christ, Matthias Grunewald – in U.S. Public Domain

St. Patrick’s Breastplate

suffering

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