Sermon 1.29.12
Texts: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Mark 1:21-28
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It’s no accident that of the four Gospels,
it’s the Gospel of Mark that has been adapted into a comic book.
They call them ‘graphic novels’ now.
But the Gospel of Mark, especially in this first chapter,
really does sound like an action-packed comic book about a superhero.
‘They came to Capernaum,
and when the Sabbath came,
he entered the synagogue and taught…
Just then there was a man who had an unclean spirit…
and he said, “Be silent, and come out of him!”
Jesus, a superhero,
teaching so that the crowd is hanging on his every word,
making evil spirits go away with a command.
All that’s missing is, “ker-pow! ZAP!”
No wonder that in the musical Godspell
Jesus is wearing not a long white robe, but a Superman t-shirt.
But behind the fast-paced story,
the Gospel is making a very important point about Jesus.
We might be impressed by Jesus’ power over evil spirits,
or we might even be fascinated by what the evil spirit actually might be,
but we need to ask,
What’s the point?
What does it mean for us that Jesus is shown here teaching with authority
and casting out an evil spirit?
The people were amazed by Jesus’ words and deeds,
done with such authority and power.
But maybe two or three in the synagogue that day,
the ones who had paid the most attention
to the reading of Scripture over many Sabbaths,
remembered the Word of God to Moses in Deuteronomy:
‘I myself will raise up a prophet like you from among their own people;
I will put the words of my mouth in the prophet,
who shall speak to them everything I command.’
This authoritative interpreter of God’s Word,
this one who with a command casts out an unclean spirit,
could he be the man to finally fulfill the prophecy of Moses?
After all, hadn’t the demon said of Jesus, ‘You are the holy one of God?
Last week we heard Jesus’ message:
‘The kingdom of God has come near.’
Here we see the message put into practice.
Jesus comes to the people,
and it’s not just a religious expert teaching them what the Word might mean
but it’s God’s Word himself teaching what God’s Word does mean.
Jesus comes to a man who is dominated by an unclean spirit,
And he himself dominates that unclean spirit,
he has ‘dominion,’ or ‘lordship’ over that unclean spirit.
Where Jesus goes, this sort of thing always happens.
Where Jesus goes, there God is king.
Now we don’t have Jesus walking around the villages in the valleys
holding teaching sessions and casting out evil spirits.
What do we have?
We have the Church, proclaiming God’s kingdom come near in Jesus Christ.
Maybe we’re not as exciting as ‘Ker-pow! ZAP!’
but Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
the great German theologian who was executed by the Nazis
for his part in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler,
said this:
‘…in its imperfect and modest appearance,
(the Church) is the body of Christ on earth,
for it has his Word.’[i]
If Jesus is the living Word of God,
the people among whom Jesus is preached as Son of God,
the written Word of God is heard,
and the Sacraments are administered,
here Jesus reigns as king.
It’s not yet a perfect kingdom,
for we can yet choose not to trust in his Word.
We can ignore the authority of his presence by the Holy Spirit among us.
We can choose to look at our own imperfections, smallness, frailties, and weakness,
or perhaps the weaknesses of our neighbors,
and not at the Holy One who is in our midst to teach and save all of us.
And all of us, no matter how faithful, fall and have to be picked up again.
But in the Church we have the promise of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name.
When a pastor of the Church stands before you, he or she says,
‘As a called and ordained minister of the church of Christ, and by his authority,
I proclaim to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins…”
We believe it because it comes from Jesus.
In the Church we have this word from Paul’s letter to the Romans,
‘I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’[ii]
By this word we are assured that no evil that befalls us can harm us.
By this word we are assured that death itself cannot harm us.
For the powers of death and evil themselves are broken
by Jesus, who is armed with the authority of his Father.
It may not seem exciting,
but maybe that’s because we don’t see our need
or the power of the Word.
But when we know ourselves to be oppressed by sin, death, and evil,
we cling to the Word spoken among us in Jesus’ name,
we hear it with gladness and joy,
and there’s an excitement,
as if there’s a powerful One among us who is one of us
and yet is greater than us.
And that’s because there is.
By the power of the Word,
we believe he reigns among us with authority.
Why We Loved JoePa
As the Jerry Sandusky scandal unfolded, there were plenty of people around the nation, and even some in State College, that openly wondered about the sanity of the people of Pennsylvania. Why, given the shocking nature of the Grand Jury presentment, did many Penn State students, former players, Penn State alumni, and people of Pennsylvania immediately leap to Joe Paterno’s defense? The most extreme and reactionary form of that defense came in the destructive behavior of some students on the night when Paterno was fired by the Penn State Board of Trustees. Yet since then, there has been a less violent but no less insistent drumbeat that Paterno, if not innocent of wrongdoing, was at least unjustly tarred and feathered with a broad brush for the alleged crimes of another man.
Now he has died. People are lighting candles at his statue outside Beaver Stadium as if he has been elevated to sainthood, Thousands today and tomorrow will solemnly file by his body. The great and the small laud and lionize him. Some still shake their head and wonder. Not aloud, of course. Not now.
But the accusations are there: Football is God at Penn State. Everything is permitted, even child sexual abuse, as long as Penn State wins. People are so besotted with their idols that they can’t face the truth.
It’s an easy answer and one that doesn’t bear scrutiny. I think I know why the young, the old, and those in between so valued Joe Paterno.
John Hughes’s iconic ‘80s movie ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ tells the story of high-school senior Ferris Bueller and his friends, and of their adversaries. Their parents are self-centered yuppies whether of the avaricious or vacuous type. Their teachers have had their souls long since stripped of anything resembling passion. Their administrators give them slogans bereft of any meaning and their only enjoyment seems to come from tormenting the independent-minded, out of resentment for the people they could have become. Ferris and his friends seek a day off from the mindlessness and soullessness of ‘the institution’ to live life. Even in a cynical, materialistic way, they are seeking a genuine community of meaning.
When Joe Paterno spoke to a crowd at a Pep Rally or at Thon; when he spoke one-on-one with alumni, students, fans, and fellow coaches; when he and his wife Sue brought pizzas to Paternoville; when they donated millions of dollars to build libraries, spiritual centers, and hospitals; when he spoke to his players, the people got the feeling that he was giving himself to them. He gave them the opportunity, even vicariously, to share in something greater than themselves: something that resembled a genuine community of meaning, perhaps the only one they had ever known.
It was the exact opposite of the deadening character of John Hughes’s vision: here was a man who believed in something, who believed in you and in us. The fact that he was still believing in us in his 80s was just still more testimony that he was one of us. He could have been, should have been thinking more of himself. He reportedly didn’t, to the last.
When he was unceremoniously dumped in November, by a Board made up of living people but faceless to most, young and immature people acted how young and immature people will act. But many of the older wiser ones felt the same way: a man who had given himself to them in community was being cast aside like a relic, like an embarrassment, like a stranger. If you’ve ever had a coach, a director, a teacher, a priest or pastor, a parent, who had vision and inspired you with it, you might understand why this felt like a massive betrayal.
It is possible to think that it was the right thing to do. Even had it not been for the practical impossibility of Paterno’s continuing to coach in the maelstrom of the scandal, there was (and perhaps still is) enough doubt about his role in the scandal to warrant a change in leadership. It is possible to think this and still grieve for the way in which it was done. It is possible to still honor the man for his vision and his demonstrated impact on so many lives, including the ones who never met him.
But it should be impossible to think that Penn Staters and those who laud Paterno for his life simply are so football-besotted that they can convince themselves of anything. There is more than football at work here. A man has died who believed in meaning, who believed in community, and who believed that there were genuine things in life. Along the way, he made others believe too.
That’s why we loved JoePa.
Review: Berlin 1961
Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Berlin crisis of 1961 included the East German-inspired erection of the Berlin Wall and the face-off between Soviet T-54 and American Patton tanks at Checkpoint Charlie. Author Frederick Kempe believes the Berlin Crisis was perhaps the defining moment of the Cold War, rather than the Cuban Missile Crisis which occurred the following year. Kempe believes that Kennedy failed in allowing the Wall to be built and in acquiescing to later East German refusal of free access of all four powers to the Soviet zone, the action that provoked the Checkpoint Charlie crisis. Kennedy’s inaction, according to Kempe, stabilized the Iron Curtain for 30 years – until 1989, when the Wall finally fell.
However, Kempe also asserts that Kennedy understood that the first year of his administration was a failure on the foreign policy front, and learned from it. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy understood that West Berlin could be used by Soviet Premier Kruschschev as either a bargaining chip in negotiations, or would invade West Berlin in the case of an American invasion of Cuba. He therefore took Berlin into consideration in his handling of the crisis. Furthermore, the Missile Crisis taught Kennedy once and for all that only the certain threat of force would deter the Soviets, a lesson he was uncertain of when faced with the specter of nuclear conflict over the status of Berlin. By 1963 and Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech, there was to be no mistake that Kennedy and henceforth the United States regarded the freedom of West Berlin as a vital national interest which would demand all-out war.
While Kempe suggests that the thirty-year imprisonment of East Germans behind the Iron Curtain might have been averted had Kennedy acted more decisively, the larger narrative also grants that the lessons of history, especially considering the new threat of mutual assured destruction, were not obvious at the time and had to be learned. Both hawks and doves will continue to argue over the merits of Kennedy’s handling of the crises of 1961-62, while arguing over the handling of crises in the present day which will call for more judgments based on incomplete information which will affect lives of millions all over the world.
Book Review: Beginning to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
Beginning to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve read this book many times. It is best described as an ‘introduction’ to contemplative prayer. What is contemplative prayer? I doubt that I am the best person to attempt a definition, but it is prayer that seeks a resting in the presence and reality of God, a perception of God with the spirit, as opposed to a simple listing of needs.
The late Metropolitan Anthony Bloom calls himself a ‘beginner,’ with the reader/hearer. He begins by reminding his hearers that prayer is like any relationship; both parties are free. When we do not sense God’s presence and are frustrated, we need to remember that prayer is not a mechanical action to get a desired response from God. If we are approaching prayer in a mechanistic way, we should not be surprised if we do not sense God’s presence. The book is designed to help one begin to approach God in relationship. It’s not a ‘how-to’ manual to achieve desired results.
Bloom’s anecdotes are wonderful gems. I have used many in my sermons: the time a young girl approached him after a sermon and said, “Father, you must be an appallingly evil man.” ‘I am an evil man, but how did you know this?’ “Because you have described our sins so completely that you must have committed them all yourself!” Fr. Bloom uses this anecdote to soften the blow as he describes the presumptuous way we often approach God in prayer. These and many other anecdotes are delightful illustrations of the Christian life.
The only reason I gave this book four stars is that the audiobook does not include the introduction which I had in my printed versions (two of which I’ve given away.) In the introduction, Metropolitan Anthony tells his story, as a child of Russian emigres who ended up in France and then in England, becoming a priest while working as a doctor and becoming the Metropolitan of England. This helps us to understand some of the book: a man steeped in Russian culture using English cultural references to explain his story. The narration is a bit prosaic for the subject matter, as well. Nevertheless, download this book and listen to it in the car, or pick up a copy. It’s for the beginner, from wherever you’re beginning today.
Book Review – Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Eric Metaxas’s biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is not a scholarly work. Hence the negative comments I’ve heard from more scholarly people regarding the book. I understand their concerns, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re also insanely jealous that their books were not New York Times bestsellers.
Yes, the author tries just a bit too hard to bring Bonhoeffer’s experiences to bear on present-day Evangelical concerns. Yes, the author relies far too much on outdated sources such as William Shirer’s ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.’ But by and large, Metaxas lets Bonhoeffer speak for himself. And any book that does this is a positive thing. He also tells Bonhoeffer’s story in an engaging and lively manner. The book is a page-turner. What other German theologian (other than Luther) would find himself the subject of a page-turner? It’s a tribute to Bonhoeffer as well as Metaxas.
I also found myself thinking about how far Evangelicalism has come in this country. Perhaps this is part of not only MLK’s legacy but Bonhoeffer’s. A book marketed to American Evangelicals speaks plainly about Bonhoeffer’s positive experience of the black church and negative experience of segregation and how that affected his understanding of the Church. It should also be noteworthy that Bonhoeffer’s positive experience of Roman Catholicism gets such extensive treatment. Although it gets left behind as the story turns toward the plot to kill Hitler, Metaxas understands and communicates that Bonhoeffer’s early ecclesiological work leads to his question, ‘What is the Church?’ and that the shape of his theological life from ecumenism to anti-war activities even to his resistance activities spring from the answers Bonhoeffer comes up with to this question. In an era where Evangelicals are asking ‘What is the Church?’ a reading of this book is salutary.
Bonhoeffer’s commentary on American Christianity is useful as well and should prompt reflection. In America, both success-and-wealth evangelicals and social-Gospel liberals subscribe to a Christianity which has vacated its doctrine of sin and redemption, a trend that Bonhoeffer commented on extensively in 1930. The question is, do we recognize in ourselves the vacating of that theology, or only recognize it in our very useful foils?
Hours of unused interview footage from Martin Doblmeier’s 2003 film ‘Bonhoeffer’ form a unique body of source material in Metaxas’s work. The film and the book would go together quite well in a study group.
I am more than willing to overlook the faults in Metaxas’s book for its strong points. Frankly, Lutherans and scholars should be glad there is a popular and generally good biography of Bonhoeffer out there. Bethge’s work is still definitive, but if Metaxas gets people to Bethge, and even to Bonhoeffer, he will have done his job and done it well. As for me, reading this book has whetted my appetite to get into the more obscure volumes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works that I recently obtained for Christmas.
The verse from yesterday…
…that I am reflecting upon most is ‘You were bought with a price…therefore glorify God in your body.’ I think St Paul means more than just the sexuality of our bodies. Obviously he means the whole body – the temple of the Holy Spirit should be animated by the Holy Spirit in all things. The failure to strive for this drives alienation from the church – when we worship in a Gnostic fashion, thinking that what really matters is the thoughts we think while letting our bodies indulge in all sorts of behaviors that hurt other bodies and our own, others rightly view us as hypocrites. James might have had a different view of St. Paul had he read 1 Cor. 6 more closely.
The Unexpected God – Sermon 1.15.12
The Rev. Maurice C. Frontz, III, STS
Salona Lutheran Church; St John Lutheran Church, Booneville
2nd Sunday after the Epiphany
January 15, 2012
Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What I like about all three of today’s readings from the Bible
is the way that we find God doing unexpected things in unexpected places.
If you think about it, that’s what we should find God doing, isn’t it?
We’ve just been through Christmas, after all.
A baby is born to a virgin and laid in a feeding trough;
three Magi follow a star and give him gifts fit for a king;
God is always doing the unexpected thing in the unexpected place.
Eli and Samuel
In the first reading,
we hear of God’s call of Samuel to become priest over the temple,
while Samuel is still the servant of the current priestly family of Eli.
This is an unexpected call,
because the people and even the family of the priest Eli
had long since stopped expecting calls from God.
‘The Word of the Lord was rare in those days,’
we read in the 3rd chapter of 1st Samuel.
It’s not that the Word of God is ever rare.
It more often that people rarely listen to it.
If you go back to the beginning of 1st Samuel,
it was Hannah, Samuel’s mother, who was seeking a Word from God,
a Word of divine triumph over her shame,
and God granted her a son whom he gave to the Lord.
That boy who heard God’s call
would grow to be the man who would be the last and greatest judge,
who would prophesy to the people
and anoint the first kings of Israel.
In the Gospel reading, we have Nathaniel,
who is, to put it mildly, quite surprised to hear
that the Messiah, the long-expected King of Israel,
hails from the hick town of Nazareth in Galilee.
This is like if a person from Lock Haven
had been told that the Messiah was some dude from Avis.
No offense to anyone who’s from Avis.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t just come from Nazareth – that is, originally.
He does not just come from Bethlehem either.
He comes from God; and Bethlehem, and Nazareth,
and he makes Bethlehem and Nazareth holy by his coming –
he makes holy the places to which he comes –
Lock Haven, and Avis, and Salona, and Booneville.
He makes holy the people to which he comes –
Nathaniel and Andrew and Peter and you and I.
But the second lesson is perhaps the most surprising.
It doesn’t seem so at first.
At first glance it is a straightforward moralistic instruction from St. Paul –
an instruction to avoid consorting with prostitutes.
It’s the kind of thing you expect from St. Paul.
I always get a chuckle out of this passage, and not for the reason you might think.
My wife Annette is Roman Catholic, and before we had children,
we would go to Mass on Saturday evening,
because on Sunday mornings I was the choir director at a UCC church.
And we were in church on a Saturday evening when this passage was being read.
Where our translation of 1st Corinthians reads ‘Shun fornication!’
the New American Bible the Catholics use
translates it a much more genteel way ‘Avoid immorality.’
Except the lay reader got it wrong.
“Avoid immortality,”
she said in such a serious voice
that it took all the restraint we had not to burst out laughing,
and when she said ‘The Word of the Lord,’
it was all I could do not to respond, “Well, sort of.”
What’s so unexpected about St. Paul’s counsel to avoid prostitutes?
It may not be unexpected to us,
but for first-century Corinthians it was.
They didn’t believe the body was important.
The physical life and the spiritual life were separate.
One could worship God and yet eat and drink and be merry in many ways.
Whereas St. Paul knew better –
soul and body are not separate,
but we are embodied souls.
What we do with our body has a spiritual meaning.
This is why Christians have historically reserved sex for marriage,
because the giving of our bodies is the giving of the whole self.
People live more like the Corinthians than we think these days,
for many people give and take from bodies what they like,
but hold back their whole selves.
But Paul knew that God was concerned with what is done in the body.
He knew that a man and a woman who join bodily
must be prepared to join their whole selves.
And he says something even more unexpected in the second-to-last verse.
‘Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
which you have from God, and that you are not your own?’
God always does the unexpected.
He calls the boy Samuel,
His Son, the Messiah, is laid in an animal’s feeding trough
and comes from the hick town of Nazareth,
and he sends his Spirit to dwell in our bodies and the bodies of all the baptized.
Are we that important?
God thinks so.
We are important enough to him that the Son bought us
with the price of his own body and blood.
Therefore our bodies now belong to him in Baptism,
our ears to hear him in the Scriptures;
our mouths to receive him in the Eucharist and to proclaim his Good News.
our hands and feet to serve him in the neighbor,
our eyes to see him in the universe:
so that in whatever we do, we bring glory to him.
God is always the unexpected God.
We may think that the Word of the Lord is rare in these days,
but he is always calling us,
and if you hear him calling,
this unexpected God,
commanding you to follow him,
promising you the joy and peace of the Kingdom,
simply say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
Amen
Bible Study: Mark 1:1-15
Notes on Mark 1:1-15
The following are my notes on Mark 1:1-15 based on what I presented for United Lutheran’s Bible Study. I am using the King James Version because that’s in the public domain. Questions and corrections are welcome. I will probably edit and hopefully cite sources as I go along.
1The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;
The gospel or the ‘good news,’ the euangelion in Greek, from which we get the word ‘evangelical’ in English.
Jesus translates to ‘God saves’; Christ is Greek for Messiah, or ‘anointed one:’ the hoped for return of the Davidic King of Israel. Some people refer to ‘Jesus the Christ,’ thus avoiding the misconception that Christ is Jesus’ last name, but confusing a lot of other folks in the process. Jesus would have been referred to as ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ or even ‘Jesus son-of-Joseph.’
‘Son of God’ was a title used by the Roman emperors of the time. In the very first verse of the Gospel, the claim is that Jesus is King and Emperor, not Caesar.
2As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
3The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
These verses remember Isaiah 40 and the preaching of Isaiah to the Jewish exiles in Babylon. In that time, they were being encouraged to return to Jerusalem by a ‘way’ that God would make through the desert. God was doing something new and restoring his people to his land. In this case, John the Baptist is preparing the way for people to receive Jesus, who will make all things new.
4John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.
5And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.
Water-baptism was not an uncommon ceremony of the time. It sometimes was used as a part of a Gentile’s conversion to Judaism. The uniqueness of John’s baptism lay in the idea of ‘repentance’ and the location. To ‘repent’ is to turn around – from sin, towards God – and the location of the Jordan River represented a recapitulation of the return from exile. Again, God was about to restore his land to his chosen people, and those who came for baptism wanted to be in on it.
6And John was clothed with camels hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;
John is reminiscent of the prophet Elijah, who was independent of the court prophets of his day. John’s call came directly from God – he was not a prophet whose words were for sale. It was an expectation that Elijah’s return would precede the coming of the Messiah.
7And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
8I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.
Here John makes it clear that he is not the Messiah and that his role is, again, one of preparation for the Messiah.
9And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan.
10And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:
11And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
‘Thou art my beloved Son,’ comes from Ps. 2 and Ps. 110, royal psalms. ‘In whom I am well pleased,’ comes from Isaiah 42:1, one of Isaiah’s songs of the suffering servant. The king is a servant who will give everything for his people, and the servant is a king who will defeat the people’s enemies: sin, death, and the evil one.
Jesus is baptized because he shares everything with us; our flesh, the repentance needed for sin, our life, our death, so that we can share all that he has – his divine life and intimacy with the Father through the Spirit. He is attested as the Father’s Son by nature at Baptism – we are adopted as the Father’s children when we are baptized into him, and we share by grace in the Spirit shared by the Father and the Son.
12And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness.
13And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.
The One on whom the Holy Spirit has descended immediately shares in our temptation. We tend to think that the ‘holier’ you are, the fewer problems you will have. ‘Godliness’ is supposed to be a ticket to success: see Joel Osteen and other hawkers of religious self-help. Here we have the antidote to such claptrap: the One in whom God is well-pleased must live by faith even in the midst of suffering and temptation.
14Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,
15And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
The arrest of John is a sign for Jesus; he returns to Galilee and proclaims ‘The kingdom of God is at hand,’ a Messianic claim. A bold claim, considering that nothing has really changed, and that Caesar still claims to be king. We might look around and say it’s equally bold today: the kingdom of God seems as far away as ever. What gives Jesus the authority to make such a claim: the kingdom of God is here? Stay tuned…
Tim Tebow, Faith, and Football
Tim Tebow
It was a tough Sunday for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Orthodox Church.
Tim Tebow is the quarterback of the Denver Broncos and the most visible evangelical Christian among NFL players. He’s been known to jog onto the field from the sideline singing the worship chorus, “Lord, I Lift Your Name On High.” Troy Polamalu is a safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers and perhaps the most visible Orthodox Christian in the NFL. He makes the sign of the cross after every play. On Sunday, January 8, Tim Tebow made an 80-yard pass play on the first snap of overtime, leading his Broncos to an incredibly dramatic victory over Polamalu and the Steelers.
So what are we to take from this? Should all Orthodox convert to evangelical Protestantism? Does Tim simply pray better than Troy? Is God punishing Troy for publicly attributing his incredibly Samson-like voluminous hair to Head and Shoulders shampoo product instead of giving the glory to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?
Simply put, does faith help Tim Tebow, or anyone else, win football games?
My answer is twofold. Firstly and most importantly, definitely not. Secondly, yeah, kinda.
It all depends on how you define faith. Most Americans believe that if you believe hard enough, good things are bound to happen to you. For example, if you believe hard enough that such-and-such a number is destined to win the lottery, it will. If it doesn’t, you didn’t believe hard enough or something else was wrong. Such people continue to waste hard-earned dollars on the lottery and/or sleep with the textbook under their pillow the night before the test, or even pray for a snowstorm or a credit-card offer to show up in the mail.
However, faith in the biblical sense is most succinctly defined as ‘trust in God’s promises.’ Hebrews 11:1 says ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen.” However the writer of Hebrews was not thinking of a football win, or even for everything to go well in his life – rather, the hope the writer had in mind was the victory of Jesus Christ over the powers of evil, sin, and death. At least in my translation of the Bible, God never promised the Broncos would win the Super Bowl (or even make it through Foxboro next week).
God did, however, promise that human beings are justified or made righteous before God as a free gift through Jesus Christ (Augsburg Confession, Article IV), and that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ (Romans 8). We can only grasp that promise by faith. That’s a biblical faith, which clings to God’s Word.
So faith doesn’t help Tim Tebow, or Troy Polamalu (who is the proud owner of two Super Bowl rings, by the way) win football games. Their faith grasps the promises of God in Jesus. Alternately, we can put our faith in other promising agents who may be more or less trustworthy.
Troy Polamalu (on left). Troy, repeat after me: "For my hair, I want to give all the glory to my Lord and Savior."
That’s the “definitely not” answer. Now, what about the “yeah, kinda?” Well, both Tim and Troy are team players in both football and life (both are heavily involved in their communities and in charities). They strive to develop their abilities to the fullest. They lift up the people around them by their attitudes. They have confidence in their own abilities and act out of that confidence. This helps them to succeed at football and in life.
Now presumably all that comes from their faith. But it’s important to note that this by itself does not win football games. The other guy might just simply play a better game. Furthermore, one can have all of these attitudes and behaviors with a different religious faith or no faith at all.
A person without the first kind of biblical faith might win more football games, but might not see a deeper meaning in life than football. There are also those athletes who truly believe that their success is due to God and others fail because they don’t give God the glory. That almost sounds more like a faith in the ancient Greek gods (Athena, grant me victory over my enemies).
But I don’t think that Tim and Troy are these kinds of athletes. I believe that they do see a deeper meaning in life, that they are living out of that biblical faith. For them football, win or lose, is part of life, but a part that allows them a contribution that is greater than football to the lives of others.
In the same NFL ‘Sound FX’ show where I heard Tebow singing “Lord, I Lift Your Name On High,” the mic also caught him praying something like, “Lord, win or lose, may your name be glorified.” That to me is not a selfish prayer for simple victory, but an integration of faith and life.
The Baptism of our Lord – Sermon 1/8/2012
“Today the Source of all the graces of baptism comes himself to be baptized in the river Jordan, there to make himself known to the world.”
The Rev. Maurice C. Frontz, III, STS
United Lutheran Church, Lock Haven; St John Lutheran Church, Booneville
The Baptism of our Lord
8 January 2012
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Those words stand forth boldly inside this worship space
and now on the outside of this building.
In a world that worships many gods,
we have these words as a proclamation of the God we worship.
We worship the God who is Trinity,
God in three persons,
and yet there is perfect harmony between these three equal persons,
which is why we can say still that there is one God.
In the first lesson from Genesis,
we see God’s Spirit hovering over the face of the waters.
God speaks his Word,
and the universe is brought into being.
We have the Trinity at the creation:
God the Father, the Creator,
God the Son, the Word through whom all things are made,
And God the Spirit, the life-giver, the one who breathes life into the world.
When Jesus, the Word made flesh, came for Baptism,
He heard the voice of his Father,
And he saw the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.
We have the Trinity at Jesus’ baptism.
The Father’s voice, the Son in flesh, the Spirit as a dove.
And when we were baptized,
when we were washed with ordinary water
made holy by God’s Word,
The Trinity was there too.
The Father, adopting us as his very own son or daughter.
Just as Jesus is the son of God by nature,
so in Baptism we become sons and daughters of God by adoption.
When we were baptized,
we became brothers or sisters of the King, Jesus.
That makes us royalty, no matter where we came from or what we’ve done.
The Father looks at us as if we were Jesus, his own beloved.
He forgives our sins for the sake of Jesus
and gives us victory over death and the evil one.
When we were baptized, the Spirit was given to us
as a pledge of our inheritance in the heavenly kingdom.
When we hear the Word, when we remember our baptism,
when we come to the Lord’s table,
the Spirit is stirred up in us, calling us to be like our elder brother Jesus,
to live his life in the world.
Baptism is a gift,
but it is also a calling.
When we come to Lent,
we will hear that immediately after he was baptized,
Jesus was driven out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
To have oneself named God’s child
is to identify with God,
and in case you have not noticed,
God is not welcome in the world he created.
Instead, anger, fear, anxiety, hatred, greed, desire, pride, envy, gossip,
and a whole host of other destructive powers
threaten to choke off relationship and keep us from God and our neighbor.
It’s always a question for us every new day.
Today, this day, do we want to live our own life,
Separate from God and our neighbor,
Free to do what we want to do and say what we want to say
without having to answer to anyone or listen to anyone
or serve anyone or sacrifice for anyone?
Or do we wish to live in the relationship that God has given us in baptism,
Relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Which is always a relationship of love for the Triune God
and for the people and world he created?
Baptism is not simply a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
Rather it’s the start of your personal participation
in the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
I mentioned before that if we are the brothers and sisters of the King,
we are royalty: princesses and princes.
I think of that show ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’
where young girls are taught that their worth is defined
by being cuter, more attractive, and more talented than other girls.
They want to be adored, they want to be served, they want to be flattered.
It’s a sickening display of the self-centeredness that dominates our culture.
But if any of you took The Divine Drama with Pastor Shipman,
you’ll remember that Jesus is always symbolized as a crowned kneeling figure.
Now kings do not kneel to anyone,
But this one did.
This king knelt before his disciples to serve them.
This king gave all that he had for his beloved.
That’s the kind of princesses and princes God’s calling us to be.
That’s the life we are invited to in baptism.
When we know the joy of humble service in Christ’s name,
we will know the joy of his presence
and the promise of everlasting life in his Kingdom.
