Tattooing the Word of God

Luther was a teacher and the
the doors acted more like a
bulletin board for announcment

    During the times of the reformation when society was the church and the church was society, life and language revolved around the biggest and most expensive building in town, the Cathedral. The Pope held sway and his bishops sat in their Cathedrals in every large town throughout Europe. In fact there was no church without a Bishop or a chair from which to rule. Cathedra is Latin for chair, hence cathedral.  The church ruled overall and was the source of knowledge which at that time was God's alone. Since training and knowledge was God's and the one He appointed on Earth, then all schools had their source and existence with and through the church. Men and a few women were trained in schools run by the Church universal, HRCC. Those were strict if not intellectually suffocating times.

       Times have changed, thanks in a large part to the God of grace and mercy, penned by Martin Luther on the doors of Wittenberg. But has the pendulum of time swung too far? I mean have we now opened the doors of education to the madness of no authority. Have our schools become institutions without authority, chair less? The overseers thrown out with the church and its restrictive mentality? Have we cut off the source of all knowledge and understanding so that the great quote of the reformer himself in a visionary aspect looking down the ages to the portals of our cathedrals of higher education, when he said,

"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of Hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth" (Klicka, 88). 

      "Engraving them in the heart of the youth."  Engraving them. Can I say Tattooing them? Left to their own devices what will they tattoo and what will it say and where will they tattoo it? Is anyone sitting in the chair anymore? Are parents? Has the "reform" been too complete? Do we really think the youth know what they want? Do we really think we know what we want?  Maybe I need a chair in my own heart for the Bishop of His Holy High Church almighty to sit there.  

      We do not need to wait until Luther's prophecy comes true, it already has. We have great teachers and great kids, but they are learning in a system that has gone to hell, a place devoid of God. His word is stricken from the walls, the doors, the rooms, the mouths of teachers and the hearts of students.  I am not just talking about public school, high school, elementary or colleges and university. We need places that will "engrave" the word in their hearts again. It may hurt. Tattooing hurts. They are going be hurt by something, it should be God. When they heal they will be better for it, not worse.

Tattoo 

     We need to pray that God will return the power of education to those institutions that are engraving the scriptures into the hearts of their students. "Study to show yourself approved, rightly handling the word of truth." Paul's admonition to Timothy is pertinent today as ever before and should be applied to every area of life.  In these Biblical times, we need the Bible. The rapidity of disasters hitting the earth warrants explanation by sound Biblical people. Safe haven and shelter should be offered by Scripturally based institutions. We should not leave people to listen to every foul wind that is blowing, or crack pots spouting nonsense that catch searchers up and lead them to destruction.  We need to know what the Bible is saying to us today. We need the Bible taught and explained with authority. There actually is no better time than now. Now is the time to produce those who will be to the earth what God wants them to be. 
The time is ripe (Rev. 14:15).    

       

Geocentrism

Johannes Kepler 1620
Artist unknown

         The belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth has been dying ever since Copernicus, Kelper and Galileo introduced the heliocentric model of the universe. I say dying because lingering still in our language is the shadow of turning of thoughts of geocentrism. After all, do we really think that life does not revolve around us? Think about it. When they say "it's not all about you", they are confused, because it obviously is about you. Really, I guess, it's about me. But the fact they have to say that means there lingers that "center of the universe" thinking.  The proof of all this insanity hit me like a train from behind, just when I thought I had it all straighten out and I was not the center. One of our young men, we will name him Bob, was delivering a word about opportunity. He was drawing his scripture from Joshua 10, you know the one that proves the Earth is the center of the universe. Joshua, to ensure he got the full victory that God ordained, commanded the Sun and the Moon to stand still. JOKE: The country Judge arraigned a local bootlegger before him named Joshua. Noticing how nervous the country boy was, he said to him, "Are you the Joshua that made the Sun stand still?" The country boy answered nervously,"No sir. I am the Joshua that made the moonshine!" (This joke gets more laughs in the South).  Anyway, the very thought that the Sun should "stand still" reveals the confusion. Of course we would say that the author of the book of Joshua lived long before Kelper and did not know that the Sun doesn't move in relationship to Earth. We all know that! But do we? When we read that do we realize the Sun does not move! He couldn't have stopped the Sun in the heavens. What he did stop was Earth's rotation! But doesn't that mean that Joshua and company would go flying off in a easterly direction? That was Bob's response when I told him the truth. His immediate inability to accept that, was a give away. God can stop the Sun and Moon but can't stop Earth's rotation without messing things up. We like things to make sense. After all, our deep belief that the sun does "rise" in the morning and "set" in the evening has order to it. Poets and artists have made their living from that. How romantic is it to say, "Honey, let's take a bottle of wine and go down by the sea shore and watch the horizon rise." Just doesn't have the same feel. It's better that Joshua stopped the Sun than to think he could stop the horizons from moving. It takes less faith. The other demands a greater miracle and if my mind says it can't happen that way, well we know what and who orders my days, my beliefs, my outlook, yeah me. It is all about me, remember. Joshua made the Sun stand still, that's that.

       But the point of the sermon Bob brought was that Joshua took advantage of the opportunity God had given him (Joshua 10) to destroy his enemies and he availed himself of that opportunity. He really did not care about the physics. He was concerned about doing God's will. And maybe that is the real message here. Knowing that the miracles we need to accomplish God's will in our lives should not rely on our understanding. Yes, I admit it. I can't understand it all. God, who can throw stones from heaven and stop time to help Joshua, can affect things in ways I can not comprehend. And that is a good thing. I know if I want to make the most of my time and execute God given opportunities, I will need miracles. And it is good to know our Father is ready and willing to help us, if we do not put our faith in physics or science but in Him.  The opportunities of God in our lives have to be bigger than the miracles needed to accomplish them. Stopping Time was less important and less of a problem for Joshua that fulfilling the will of God. Please help us not have the attitude of an old country saying, "I'll getter done, God willin' and the crek don't rise." God will help us "getter done" regardless of the creek er ah crek. That is what we learn from Joshua 10. Thanks Bob.
Postscript:  We pray for those people caught in the rising waters of the Mississippi. We believe that God will open doors of opportunity for their safety and well being.

The Best Revenge

"Give me... your tired masses,
er...ah revenge"

      Whatever happened to love your enemies? I guess that scripture is of little use to me and should be cut out of my Hole(ly) Bible. May be also "vengence is mine, I will repay, said the Lord" (Rom. 12:18-20 ). Move over God we'll get the job done. As one of my Ethics students said, "Well, we are not a Christian nation." Well said. Score one for the American team. Let's dance in the streets.
      I can remember how disgusted I was when I saw the people of the Arab nations dancing in the streets and shooting off their AK47s after 9/11.  I wanted to puke. They certainly thought they were doing God a favor, the right thing, the nationally approved retaliation for all that America has done, real or perceived. But right is with America and God is with us, and, well, they (Osama) had it coming. All this sentiment is defensible for national merit and security. After all we did rejoice when Hitler died, killed by his own hand. Judas too. When I reach that point in the Bible where he kills himself, I close the book and go shoot off my Ak47 and do a little jig. I have a sign above my kitchen table, "no Judas eats here only those with clean hands and a pure heart."
      Is the sermon on the mount unlivable? Is being alive the last great victory over your enemy? The last one standing. I am asking Christians. I asked my Ethics class of 11 and 12th graders if they believed Matthew 5:45-48? Only two believed that killing was wrong. One of the two felt that loving your enemies and praying for them somehow excluded shooting them. Novel. What about being assaulted? It is covered in Matthew also. I had them picture Stephen being stoned (Acts 7). In America Stephen would be cheered if he died throwing the stones back and "taking with him" as many as possible. Our kids grow up on "Gears of War", "Soldiers of Fortune", "Postal", " Mortal Combat" ect.... What do we expect?  If we were honest we would cut out most of Matthew 5,6 and 7 as we have no intention of trying to fulfill these scriptures. But who can live out these scriptures anyway?
       As odd a lifestyle as the Amish live, in this one area they shine, they try to live the Sermon on the Mount.  They are conscientious objectors and much more.  I remember a few years ago when a gunman named Charles Roberts, not an Amish member, went into an Amish school house and murdered several Amish girls and wounded other children. Within a day the Amish parents of the victims came out and forgave the man. Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. They visited Roberts' widow, set up a charitable fund for his family and went to his funeral. They didn't talk about "Justice" at least not the kind we are used to hearing about. Their just way was to forgive and love.
       I am not saying that we are to become Amish, but I may be saying that we should not act like the rest of America who loves revenge and civil justice. This whole story of Americas' Jehad against Bin Laden has caused me to rethink my elation over the killing of OBL.
      There is a good scene in "An American President" with Michael Douglas as Andrew Shepherd. He is deciding whether to bomb Libya.   Let's listen in.

President Andrew Shepherd: What I did tonight was not about political gain. 
Leon Kodak: Yes sir. But it can be, sir. What you did tonight was very presidential. 
President Andrew Shepherd: Leon, somewhere in Libya right now, a janitor's working the night shift at Libyan Intelligence headquarters. He's going about doing his job... because he has no idea, in about an hour he's going to die in a massive explosion. He's just going about his job, because he has no idea that about an hour ago I gave an order to have him killed. You've just seen me do the least presidential thing I do."
     We shouldn't get all enamored with killing, its not the highlight of being a Christian or even being human.

Easter Mood

      Easter is a wonderful time of the year with crowded churches, well larger crowds than usual, pretty hats (comparable only to Kate & William's wedding:), dressings, great music, I mean Bing singing "Easter Bonnet" and messages on the resurrection of Christ. The only trouble is that it is a bit confusing (dyed Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies?). What are we celebrating? Some old anniversary of Christ's removal form the grave? Or that we too are going to be resurrected "oh beautiful someday"? The truth is that Jesus' conversation with Martha is probably the one we should be thinking about on this glorious Sunday (John 11:20-27). When it comes to speaking about the resurrection, like Martha and most of us, the translators have had a hard time nailing down what Jesus was saying. Most of us tend to put the resurrection off in the future, like Martha or in the past like the women of Hebrews 11 who received back their dead. But isn't resurrection life available now? May be we should look closer at the language that talks about the Resurrection.
      The koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, has several different moods, like you and I :-).  The indicative mood is the resounding favorite and dominates the verbal landscape of the NT. But there are others such as the infinitive mood,  the imperative mood and the one I want to talk about, the subjunctive mood.
     The subjunctive mood has two aspects to it. It is used when the author wants to talk about the realm of possibility and when the time is undetermined. It can be used in conditional sentences, for instance; a writer may say, "If you go to the store, get me some milk." We see that there is a possibility that this person may or may not go to the store. At least one person is hoping they will go as they are running out of milk, "got milk"? This possibility is shown in the way the verb tense is made. Not to get too technical, but the Greek verbs have different suffixes and prefixes that can show; the person(s), active or passive voice, mood, and time.

      Usually a verb will express the time of its action which is called "tense" in the past, present, or future tenses. This occurs in the indicative mood. The past indicative mood is often denoted by the "aorist" tense of the verb which is usually a definite past action. However in the subjunctive mood time is not the important thing.  In the subjunctive mood the aorist is undefined time.  That means the aorist subjunctive may take place in the past, present or future,  it really is determined by context. A great example is in Mark 12:25. In Mark's narrative Jesus is being questioned by the unbelieving Sadducees about the resurrection. Jesus' replies to their trickery by saying, "For when they rise form the dead, they neither marry or are given in marriage..."(NASB). The KJV has "For when they shall rise from the dead...." Why did the KJV pick the future tense? Because the aorist subjunctive can be past, present or future depending on the perception of the translator. 
      The subjunctive mood is hard to translate. The word anastosin (Mark 12:25) is in the "aorist subjunctive" mood which leaves it open for translation. Translators who get the subjunctive mood still have trouble nailing it down. Another scripture about the resurrection that is a good example is found in Romans 6:4. "Therefore we have been buried with Him by baptism into death, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (NASB).
       In Romans 6:4  we can see this confusion in different translations. The NIV says, "we too may live a new life." The KJV translates it, " we should also walk....", and the NASB writes, we too might walk in ...."  These are attempts to define the undefined.  The question is "When is this resurrection available for us to walk in newness of life with God?" To answer this question and try to translate these texts it may do well for us to see how Christ felt about it. Let us return again to Martha.
      Martha had basically the same problem we have. You remember the story. Jesus came to raise Lazarus from the grave (John 11). Martha rebukes him for being late. Not offended, Christ responds to Martha with a question. "Do you believe in the resurrection?"  "Of course", She responds, "the resurrection will come in the future, at the last trumpet." But Martha's problem is now. Lazarus is dead now!  And I guess that is all our problems. The great "already, but not yet" theological dilemma. We, like Martha, know there will be a resurrection. Jesus knows we know that. He also knows that He IS the resurrection. Not past, not future, but present. He responds to Martha in the great YHWHian response to Moses, ego eimi, "I am the resurrection!" The proof that we don't know this reveals it self in our translations. The aorist subjunctive, in these scriptures,  should be translated in the present with its possibilities in tack. 

Road to Emmaus

       Remember Mark 12:25?  If we apply what Jesus was trying to tell Martha, we should translate that aorist subjunctive as the present tense, may rise and the Romans 6:4 passage as we may walk in newness of  (resurrection) life.  Christianity is for the present. It is not an Easter remembrance of bonnets, lace and a chance to wear white, but a present realization that the resurrection is for the living. It brings reality to baptism and it is the newness of life that we are to walk in daily. Religion's proponents will put it off till the end thereby not bowing to the responsibility of walking in the Good News today. The subjunctive allows or permits this interpretation. Ultimately, the undefined aorist subjunctive leaves it up to us to define it as something in the past, like a good Easter parade, or in the future like some joyful funeral eulogy, or should we man up and say truthfully "Lord I believe, help my unbelief" and walk in Christ's resurrection today?
        
For a great Easter Morning Sermon listen to The First Fruits Resurrection, by Gary Hargrave.  

Country Strong

    The movie Country Strong with Gwyneth Paltrow and Garrett Hadlund illustrates the old Biblical principle, "you can not serve two masters". The South has had its share of being a master and serving masters. Nashville being the country counter part of tinsel town, seat of one of the dueling lords, has seen its slaves come and go. As much as it wants to remain family it dishes out the poison of fame and glory gone bad as well as any of Binsfield's Princes of Hell.  Its latest story of a star being driven to her death down highway 31 sings the too familiar song of the price paid for "choosing poorly". The story is less about the strength of country than its weakness. Of course this echoes the warning of the Book that taught the South how to sing and gave to it the Christian audience for launching nearly all of its singers before most have taken the wrong road cruising in the blue caddy down the highway of honky-tonks, bars and the Opry.
    The warning so blatantly broadcasted by Christ the true country singer is found in Matthew 6:24. "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (KJV). I love this rendition of the ancient wisdom, handed down from the Syrians, because Christ breaks out the reason you can not serve two masters, "he will hold to one and despise the other...." 

 Evelyn Morgan

     What defines "despising"? John Stevens in his teaching on Prophecy, quoted Paul who tells us  "do not  despise prophecy". How does one despise prophecy, by not doing it. How does one despise God? Ignoring Him, not "doing" what he asks. It is very simple. A slave is present for the biding of his master. To say you are a servant (less repugnant than slave) of Christ and not do his bidding is to despise Christ. "You can not serve God and mammon." 
      What is country strong? In the end, a classic "like a statue on his pinto" Hutton  (Hadlund) sits in his rusting pickup truck. He reads a parting letter left by the overdosed hand of Kelly Canter (Paltrow), she says " If you want my advice, if you have a chance to choose between love and fame, choose love". Sad but true. The same song second verse, we are told again, and again modeled out by lives many live and die, "you can not serve God and mammon." In these days of the god of mammon showing us his weakness its best we not despise our Lord and Master and learn to do his biding. The swan song of Passover is obedience, let us sing it loud and clear and not have that whine of country music! 
     I tip my hat to Hank Williams Jr. who summed it up so nicely for his family (and that is "Country Music's" royal family) namely his daddy when he sang about this Family Tradition and the choices that are made. 

Verbs to Nouns or vice versa

      A noun is often turned into a verb or vice versa. Many times with similar structure. This is particularly true in English since we rely on the placing of the word in a sentence for its contextual clues and not necessarily on its inflection. When one catches fish he may be called a fisherman. The fisherman may say "I fish for a living."  We have become very adept at this in modern times. Twitter, twittering, twittered, or twatted? No its twittered. I twittered yesterday and I will twitter today. I am following you on twitter. Can a bird like Tweedy twitter on twitter or do birds twitter? I thought they were the first to do so.

Applying the Blood

     The same morphing of words from nouns to verbs also takes place in Greek. The word lithos meaning stone can become lithos + ballw (to cast) and you get the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:59). The stoners' activity is related to what they do and who they are. So Greek carries on the same way other languages do because language is an out growth of life. What we are doing we want to express to others and they want to talk about us, so they connect the activity to the person, "the stoner dude". Hopefully you are getting the idea.
     The word Passover in English, pesach in Hebrew, and pascha in Greek, has had the same etymology. Originally it was used as a verb in which case the Hebrew would be pasach meaning the death angel passed over (vb) the Children of Israel. The verb, the doing, became the noun the institution. The angel "passing over" became the institution, Passover. Now we write "Passover" with capital letters and explain the noun by using it as a verb. "Passover is the celebration of when the death angel passed over the COI." Originally it was the other way around. The verb created the noun. A little different perspective if you get what I am saying. Here finally is the point.

    I was looking at the Greek word pascha as I was reading about the Passover. Remembering for Christians the Passover is about the Lamb's suffering, being slain for our salvation. The word for suffering in Greek is, you might guess this if I haven't confused you completely, pascho. The word for Passover in Greek comes from the Septuagint's translation of the Hebrew. I am not sure how they got this word, but since the words are so similar, it may be that the suffering of the lamb in preparation of the feast was tied in originally with the COI. The death of the lamb and its blood may be more central to the Hebrew story and pasach became the noun Pesach, the result of the suffering lamb. The same may be said of  the etymology of the word in the  Greek for Passover. It may not be a transliteration as some assume. I think the Seventy -odd, that wrote the Septuagint were looking for the right verb as well as the nuance for the feast. Whether that is the case or not, God certainly worked this word in the Greek Pascha, to carry the connotation of Suffering. Jesus said "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover before I suffer"(Luke 22:155).  The connection is undeniable. The lamb slain since the foundation of the world is our suffering servant Jesus Christ. His greatest suffering pascho came during the Pascha. At this time of year our remembrance of His suffering will allow the angel of death to Passover us.
   A parting shot: The "last supper" may have been the preparation of the lamb dinner not the seder.

Sinfonia Sirenum

        Since we are in the Passover/Easter season, we sung the song, "The Strife is Over",  in our church on Sunday and it gave me a moment or two of  "pause".  Hearing this old song brought back a memory of another Sunday from my youth. I was sitting in the den of my family's country home with my dad who was finally letting down after a morning and a half of preaching and ministering. We had just finished a large Sunday dinner (outside the South this would be called lunch) and it was taking its toll on dad.  I had been talking with him about his war years and he was reminiscing about General George Patton's funeral. He was falling asleep on the couch in the warm sunlight of that sleepy summer afternoon as he told me this story.

Wife, Beatrice Patton
(my father pictured immediately
over Beatrice's left shoulder)

         Dad was a Chaplain during WWII. He got several field promotions and by the end of the war became the head chaplain in the European Theater. He had formed a choral group that traveled throughout Europe singing for the soldiers. At the end of the War General Patton died in Germany. Mrs. Beatrice Patton called my dad and asked him if his "chapeleers" would sing at her husband's funeral in Heidelberg. The only song that 'Old Blood and Guts' requested was  "The Strive Is Over... the battle done". Dad, like most of the people in our church last Sunday, did not know the song. He and his choir learned it in the back of a troop carrier as they drove the autobahn to the funeral. He said that his group sang great and the funeral was amazing, brass was everywhere. Heidelberg's Christ Church had a huge pipe organ and the song "The Strife is Over" was made for it. Dad said it was majestic.
      Good story, huh, but I wonder about that song. To this day it bothers me. How much of the battle is really over, even when you die?  May be it's the battle that is over but not the war. My Bible tells me there is still spiritual warfare going on. It took an archangel 21 days to break through to Daniel fasting and praying in Babylon. Sounds like tough resistance to me. Patton had to battle nearly as long to break through to liberate Bastogne (he may have been a god but he was no Archangel). And the war was not over when he arrived at the gates of the city,  at head of the 4th Armored. Neither was it over when he arrived at door of heaven, probably to his delight, he was a warrior.

"Hang In Tough, Bastogne 1944"
by John Shaw 

       We are warriors as Christians. We win our battles. And we want to go to heaven and rest but a restful heaven seems odd to me at times. Is Christ resting in heaven? Are the saints resting with Him? Christ ever lives (and never sleeps) to make intercession for the saints. If He is doing that and some saints under the altar are crying out , "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you not judge and avenge (from dike - to return harm for harm) our blood on them that dwell on the earth (Rev. 6:10)?" Avenge? That sounds like a war cry to me.  If all that is happening then what the hell are people doing taking R and R by the pearlie gates?  Granted the battle is suppose to be over for us who pass to the other side, but the war still rages and creation is waiting for the manifestations of the sons of God. Hurrah! (that's suppose to be the sound the Marines make?). John Stevens put it this way in his sermon "Earnest Expectation":


"God’s people are in an end-time spiritual battle against the satanic spirits that are warring to prevent the revealing of the sons of God. The very first breakthrough into the revealing of the sons of God will be like pushing over the first domino. After that a whole string of events and breakthroughs will start happening. The whole Kingdom will come forth. We do not realize the importance of the focus that the Lord wants us to have in spiritual warfare. As we aim at a target, focusing on it, the Lord will bless us.... Once the Lord truly reveals this to us, we will never stop interceding and pressing the battle because we will see what we are in", p.113. 

Josiah and the Passover Reading

      So I guess Passover/Easter is awesome with the Victory over death but the enforcement of it is left to the sons, and that is still in play. The sons must be obedient to what the Lord asks, just as Christ was during His great Passover experience. This could be like the Passover of Josiah in Kings (2Kings 23:23-24) where he battles against the evil forces of his day and the people pledged themselves to the covenant of the Lord.  Deliverance even for Israel from Egypt on that first Passover was not without much battle. In battle you always assign someone to pick up the Flag if the carrier is shot. So it is for the sons to raise the standard (mental flash to Iwo Jima), because there is definitely no "Peace in the Valley".  I feel more like one of those grunts freezing in Bastogne waiting for deliverance. They call my Dad's generation the "greatest" generation and it was awesome. But I think the Greatest Generation is going to be the generation that shows up as the "Sons of God" and liberates this tired old earth, then I"ll  "live and sing to thee" with faith "The Strife Is Over".