2 Kings 2: 1-12

Mark 9: 2-9

Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher

When I started as pastor of a small church some time ago, I wanted to kick off with an officer’s retreat that dealt with some of the issues that the congregation had left over from when the previous pastor left. I had a conversation with the Christian educator, who’d been there several years and was quite sharp. He explained to me that people were extremely angry and felt betrayed that the previous pastor had left them. We agreed that a Biblical look at betrayal and abandonment would be a good start.

I put together a Bible study around the Last Supper, where Jesus is with His disciples and announces, “One of you will betray me.” I wanted them to identify with Jesus, to recognize that He, too, felt betrayed and abandoned; but move on from that to recognizing that, also like Christ, they can move on from that and rise up to new life.

So I set the Bible study up and broke them into groups. When they came back, I asked them who they identified with, and one group immediately said, “The disciples.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we feel betrayed.”

I was confused. “But the disciples are betraying Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah, but Jesus is betraying the disciples,” they replied. “Because Jesus is going to leave us alone, Jesus is going to abandon us, just when we thought things were going so well.”

They’d taken the study exactly the opposite direction from what I’d expected. It actually said myriads about their relationship with the previous pastor. They were looking at the pastor as their friend, their teacher, their mentor, their leader, their rabbi—really Jesus on earth. And they didn’t view themselves as capable of being a church without him. Over time, they were able to get past that, and to view themselves as a church again—but it took time.

Elisha fears abandonment in our story about Elijah being taken up into heaven. We sense his fear that he will be left behind by his friend, his teacher, his mentor,, his leader, his rabbi Elijah. “I will not leave you,” he keeps insisting, and it’s almost an accusation.  “I won’t leave you, but you’re going to leave me,” is what he’s saying.

And then Elijah is taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. “Chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” cries his disciple Elisha, and you can feel his sense on the one hand of wonder, at the miracle of seeing this overwhelming manifestation of God; and on the other hand of abandonment as he left behind by his mentor. On the one hand, he felt amazed and honored and humbled; on the other hand, fearful, confused, small and oh so alone because God took away the person who gave his life meaning and made sense of this confusing world.

So let’s talk about our New Testament story. Imagine that you are one of four First Century Palestinian Jews who go up a mountain, and one of them is Jesus. And right before your eyes, God transforms your friend, your teacher, your leader, your mentor, your rabbi, this man you love and who gives meaning to your life, into this heavenly figure; and then Elijah appears, with Moses, another of Israel’s great prophets who legend had taught had been taken up into heaven because of his righteousness.

And you’re thinking, “Oh no. It’s just like Elijah. God is taking Jesus away.”

And your world starts to come crashing down.

The plain fact is that there comes a time for all of us when the training wheels come off and it’s time for us to ride our bikes on our own. It’s time for us to respond as responsible adults to God’s call to us to enter the world and transform it in the name of Christ. We came to Jesus as little children who needed to learn, as patients to a doctor, as victims to their rescuer, or as wounded souls needing to be healed, or as a broken community of sinners in need of redemption. We came passive. But the doctors entire point is to cure you; the parent’s entire point is for us to grow up; the teacher’s entire point is for the student to surpass the teacher. The day comes when Jesus says to us, “You aren’t children anymore, you’re responsible adults. You aren’t passive anymore, you’re actors. You aren’t patients anymore—you’re well.”

That was the moment that came to Elisha when Elijah was taken up in the chariot of God. He was no longer a student, he was a graduate. He had to step up.

Peter, James, and John fear that moment has come to them as they see Moses and Elijah standing there with their transfigured Lord. It was time for Him to go, and it was time for them, like Elisha, to take up their master’s mantle of bringing the Gospel to the needy world. They were terrified. They weren’t nearly ready for Jesus to go.

And Jesus didn’t go. Jesus stayed. The disciples breathed a sigh of relief.

What they didn’t realize was that what lay ahead was infinitely worse. Implied in this powerful scene is a decision that Jesus has made. He will not go up to heaven in a blaze of glory like Elijah. He would not rise above the fray, too good, too important to engage in the bloody battle ahead. He would stay with God’s people. He would suffer as they suffer. He had already, right before the Transfiguration, predicted that He would be crucified. On the Mount of Transfiguration, he could have chosen to go right back up to heaven with Elijah and Moses. He could have chosen to skip the cross and go straight to the crown.

But that wasn’t the way it was going to be for His followers. If they stayed true, they wouldn’t avoid the cross. They’d have to bear the moral cross of resisting temptation. The ethical cross of being unpopular and persecuted for standing up for God when nobody else wanted to hear it; and of speaking up for the voiceless, for the victims of injustice, when everyone else wanted to turn away. If they tried to stand up for the Kingdom of God responsible adults, they would suffer. And even if they weren’t persecuted for their faith, they’d certainly suffer, because they’d see and feel the suffering of a needy world, and they’d have learned to love that world, and the suffering of the world would therefore be their suffering. So one way or another, there was a cross in their future.

Jesus was the Son of God. He could have avoided it.

Instead, He chose it.

It’s not a minor thing. In the early years of the Christian church, a sect of Christians called the Gnostics taught that Christ did not have a physical manifestation, that he was all spirit, and that therefore he not only did not die, but he also didn’t suffer, or eat, or go to the bathroom, or really do anything human. The material world, the flesh and blood reality of being human, was beneath Him. It was beneath the dignity of the true God to be truly human, the Gnostics taught. And they also taught it was beneath the dignity of His disciples. Jesus would give them an ability to transcend reality, to transcend the material world, to be spiritual, to leave this flawed, troubled world of suffering behind.

But that’s not true. Jesus, God in human form, chooses to be human, chooses to live a human life, to eat, to drink, to make friends, to be tempted, to be persecuted, to suffer, and to die. Rather than get taken up into heaven and avoid all that pain, Jesus embraces it, and makes the Cross His true transfiguration, His true act of ascendancy—for who ever heard of a God who would abandon His own dignity for the sake of not abandoning mere mortals?

But that’s what Jesus did.

We’ve been studying Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and theology in the Northminster Class. Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who tried to organize the German church and the ecumenical movement to resist Adolph Hitler. In 1939, after repeated failures and disappointments, Bonhoeffer had his own meeting with Moses and Elijah. He met with his friend British Bishop Bell, the great US theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and Dutch world ecumenical leader Willem Visser’t Hooft. They arranged for Bonhoeffer to Germany and go to the United States to teach for one year. But when Bonhoeffer arrived in the US, he discovered his friends had pulled a well-intentioned fast one on him. Rather than a temporary teaching position, they’d arranged for him to take up long-term residence and to coordinate the assimilation of German refugees into the United States on behalf of the US Federal Council of Churches.

Bonhoeffer was faced with a choice. He could become a German expatriate in America. Other German theologians had done it. He could have become an armchair theologian, expounded his theories of how Christians can respond to Hitler from a safe distance. As biographer Edwin Robertson puts it, “had he stayed, he might have lived still, enjoying his eighties with a whole library of books to his credit—to say nothing of honorary doctorates! But he did not.”[1]

No, he didn’t. After agonizing over the decision three months, he chose to return, he said, because he felt that if he did not share in the suffering of his people, then he would also have no right to share in their recovery when the war was over. Bonhoeffer took what ended up being the last passenger ship to sail between the US and Germany before WWII and returned home, where he was eventually arrested and executed for his participation in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.

All of us are tempted to look at our faith as all about God comforting us and training us and loving us. But there comes a time when God calls us to be adults, calls us to be responsible Christians dealing with real-world problems, calls us to comfort, to serve, to stand up for others, to be bold, even to suffer.

God calls us to be adults. God calls us to put on Jesus’ mantle and bear the Gospel into the world with all its hope and all its terrible responsibility. When that time comes, sometimes we become angry or bitter or frightened. “Why have you left us all alone to handle this on our own?” we ask. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, whenever you have those feelings and those questions, that’s exactly what has happened. God has called you to be an adult and to take up Christ’s cross.

But the Good News is that God doesn’t leave us alone. He neither abandons us nor forsakes us. The real heart of our hope is that God is no stranger to human suffering. God is right there with us in the midst of it. In fact, through Jesus we need to realize that God is uniquely found in suffering. That is, after all, the most striking thing we know about Jesus—that He suffered for us, that He died for us. God doesn’t leave us or forsake us. When we take up Jesus’ cross, He’s right there with us to help us bear it.

The challenge is to have the faith to believe it.

Don’t Leave–Transfiguration Sunday

This is the timeline we’ll be using in The Northminster Sunday School Class, Sunday, Feb. 20, when we’re discussing Bonhoeffer’s attempt at Church-Based Resistance.

1931

June: returns from the US after a trip to Mexico with his friend, the French pacifist Christian Jean Lasserre.

July: two weeks in Bonn with Karl Barth.

September 1-5: At the World Alliance Conference in Cambridge, he is elected International Youth Secretary.

1932

July-August, 1932: Takes part in ecumenical conferences in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland.

1933

January 30: Hitler is installed as Chancellor.

Feb. 1: Bonhoeffer’s radio broadcast on “the leadership principle” cut off the air.

Feb. 27: Reichstag Fire—did the Nazis start it?

Feb. 28: Reichstag Fire Edict creates security state situation. 

March 4: The US Federal Council of Churches issues a statement condemning “the persecution of Jews in Germany.”

March 6-10: Ecumenical Meeting in Dassel

April 1: Hitler announces Day of Nazi national boycott of all Jewish Businesses. The same day, the “Aryan Clause” Civil Service legislation bans Jews from public employment.

April 3-4: German Christian Reich Church Conference promotes “synchronization” of Church and State, adoption of Fuhrer principle and Aryan paragraph against “alien” blood in the pulpit. This spurs a counter-movement, “The Young Reformation,” with former U-Boat Captain, now pastor Martin Niemoller involved as a leader, saying: “We confess our faith in the Holy Spirit, and therefore reject, as a matter of principle, the exclusion of non-Aryans from the Church, because it is based on confusion between State and Church. The State is supposed to judge, and the Church is supposed to save.”

Bonhoeffer’s article “The Church and the Jewish Question” undermines traditional “Two Kingdoms” theology, which doesn’t even allow for government to be wrong, and posits three church responses to state action: “question,” “service to victims,” and “direct political action” to “seize the wheel.”

April 25: Meeting to draft constitution of newly united German Evangelical Church. Hitler makes sure his man Ludwig Muller is there.

May 1: Hitler’s May Day speech reassures Protestant Church leaders. He sends ‘movement fighting troops’ in uniform to attend church services, thus making pastors feel that Hitler might be starting a “people’s mission” to make the nation Christian again.

May 25: Draft constitution is published.

May 27: The GEC attempts to elect Bodelschwingh to Reich Bishop. Muller claims that since the constitution isn’t in force, the election doesn’t count.

Then a procedural error allows the Nazi Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs, Bernhard Rust, to declare that the church had transgressed its legal limits and therefore lost its entitlement to conduct its own legal affairs. He orders August Jager to take over church affairs. Jager allows SA to take over church offices, but a strong backlash causes Hitler to call them off. Bonhoeffer and Hildebrant suggest direct action—since the state has interfered in the church, it is the State that has violated the “Two Kingdoms” ideal, so the Church can respond by refusing to perform any church funerals. The leaders balk at this idea.

July 14: Hitler personally orders elections to be held for the leadership of the new Protestant Church, to be held July 23. That same day Heckel offers Bonhoeffer a pastorate in London.

July 20: The Pope, Pius XI, signs the Concordat, an agreement with the Third Reich not to interfere, in exchange for assurances that Catholic church will not be attacked.

July 22: Hitler makes a radio address saying he expected a vote in the church election ‘in favor of the forces that are exemplified by the German Christians who stand so firmly upon the foundation of the National Socialist State.” He made it the duty of all good Christians who were not Catholics to cast their vote. 

July 23: The German Christians get 70% of the vote. Ludwig Müller is appointed Hitler’s representative for the Protestant churches and installed as Reich Bishop of the first-ever national church of Germany.

August 15-25: Bonhoeffer, Sasse, Vischer, et al., at work on Bethel Confession, intending to contradict the heresies of the German Christians. But Vischer’s strong clause against anti-semitism and the establishment of racial rules in the church is so watered down by the confession’s reviewers that Bonhoeffer withdraws his signature. 

September 5: “The Brown Synod”—Brown-shirted German Christians overwhelm General Synod of the Old Prussian Union Church. Throw out any confessional stand, put in new leaders, install Aryan Paragraph, demand “unconditional support for the National Socialist State and the German Protestant Church’ from all clergy and office holders.

September 15-20: At the World Alliance Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, B confidentially informs prominent participants about what is happening in Germany.

September 21: Bonhoeffer, with Martin Niemöller, organizes Pastors’ Emergency League, which opposes the “Aryan Clause.” 2000 pastors quickly sign on.

September 27: Bonhoeffer and others protest against the Wittenberg ‘National Synod’ of the church, dominated by German Christians. Hitler outfoxes the PEL by not allowing the synod to adopt the Aryan Cause, thus stealing a way the PEL could have used to raise international ire. Once again B is frustrated because a golden opportunity for public protest is resisted by the PEL. 

October 4: Informs Heckel that he will not represent the “Reich Church” in London.

October 17: Begins ministering to two German churches in London.

Oct. 17: Bonhoeffer leaves for England to head a church for Germans. There he develops a strong relationship with Church of England Bishop Bell, one of the leaders of the Ecumenical Movement.

November 27-30: Attends conference of expat pastors in Bradford, England, where he tells his colleagues about the situation in Germany.

1934

February 8-9: Heckel, the Reich Church’s International rep, goes to London but fails to persuade the German pastors in England and Archbishop Bell to stay out of the Church struggle.

February 13: B in Hanover for meeting of PEL Council of Brethren.

March 6-7: Heckel, having been named “Bishop Abroad” summons B and demands he cut off his ecumenical contacts. B refuses.

May 10: Bishop Bell, after detailed consultation with Bonhoeffer, sends his “Ascensiontide Pastoral Letter” on the situation of the German Church to the member churches of the Universal Council for Life and Work.

May 29–31: The Confessing Church is organized at Barmen, Germany, and the Barmen Declaration is adopted, insisting that Christ, not the Fuhrer, is the head of the church.

August 2: German President Paul von Hindenburg dies. Hitler proclaimed as both Chancellor and President.

August 23–30: Bonhoeffer delivers speech on peace to ecumenical conference at Fano, Denmark.

October: At B’s urging, Bishop Bell an Archbishop Lang protest against aggravation of the German Church struggle by church ‘legal administrator’ Jager. Hitler has Jager dismissed.

November: Bonhoeffer leads the expatriate German congregations in England to secede from the Reich Church.

1935

April 29: Bonhoeffer returns from England to direct the seminary for the Confessing Church in Zingsthof on the Baltic Sea.

June 24: seminary relocates to Finkenwalde. Bonhoeffer publishes influential article on “The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement.”

September: the Nuremberg Laws are passed, canceling citizenship for German Jews.

December: Himmler declares all examinations for the Confessing Church invalid, all training there invalid and all participants liable to arrest. 

1936

Declared a “pacifist and enemy of the State,” Bonhoeffer has his authorization to teach at Berlin University terminated. He lectures at Confessing Church program near Olympic stadium.

July: Confessing Church leader and WWI hero Martin Niemöller is arrested.

August: Bonhoeffer’s authorization to teach at Berlin University is withdrawn. Olympic Games in Berlin begin. Hitler is quoted as saying of 4-time gold medal champion Jesse Owens, “The Americans should be ashamed of themselves, letting Negroes win their medals for them.” He refuses to shake Owens’ hand.

1937

February: At ecumenical meeting in London, Bonhoeffer resigns as youth secretary in protest of the World Alliance’s failure to speak out for the Jews.

September: The seminary at Finkenwalde is closed by the Gestapo.

November: 27 pastors and former Finkenwalde students are arrested. Also in November, Bonhoeffer publishes Discipleship.

Pope Pius XI issues “With Burning Anxiety,” protesting Hitler’s infractions of their earlier agreement, the Concordat of 1933.

December: Bonhoeffer leads “collective pastorates” for clandestine training of clergy.

1938

January 11: Bonhoeffer and other Confessing Church teachers are forbidden to live or work in Berlin.

February: Bonhoeffer makes his initial contact with members of the German Resistance, Oster and Sack.

March 12: Austria is annexed by Germany.

April: All German pastors are ordered to take an oath of allegiance to Hitler in recognition of his 50th birthday.

September: Bonhoeffer writes Life Together. Bonhoeffer’s sister Sabine, her Jewish husband Gerhard Leibholz and two daughters escape to England by way of Switzerland.

November 9: A nation-wide, organized riot called Kristallnacht takes place, bringing the destruction of nearly 300 synagogues across Germany, the looting of 7,500 Jewish-owned shops, and the arrest of 30,000 Jewish men.

1939

March: in London, meets with Bishop Bell, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Dutch ecumenical leader Willem Visser’t Hooft.

June 2: travels to U.S. for lecture tour.

July 8: decides he must return to Germany and suffer with his people.

August: The War begins.Bonhoeffer applies without success to become a chaplain. Instead, he becomes civilian agent of the Abwehr, German military intelligence agency.

August 29: Hans von Dohnanyi appointed ‘Sonderfuhrer’ in the Military Intelligence department of the Abwehr. He is B’s brother-in-law, and for years has been collecting damning legal information against Hitler. It was he who arranged for B to meet Oster and Sack to discuss Resistance.

Sources:

Schlingensiepen, Ferdinand, tr. Isabel Best. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance. London: T&T Clark International, 2010.

Christianity Today Library.com, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christian History Timeline http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/1991/issue32/3226.html 

Bonhoeffer Timeline PBS, http://www.pbs.org/bonhoeffer/timeline.html

Timeline: Bonhoeffer and Church-Based Attempts to Resist Hitler, 1933-39

by Mark Scott, Music Minister

The Lenten season extends over a forty-six day period beginning Ash Wednesday and ending on Saturday evening prior to Easter Day.  However, the six Sundays in Lent are not actually a part of Lent (thus they are styled Sundays IN Lent rather than Sundays OF Lent) making the actual number of days in Lent 40.  The date of Ash Wednesday is determined by the date of Easter.  This year, Ash Wednesday is February 22.

            Lent developed from two primary sources.  The first was a period of fasting which preceded Easter in the early Church.  At first, this period of fasting was held only on the Saturday before Easter Day lasting until 3:00 a.m. Easter morning when the Pascha, followed by the Eucharist was celebrated.  Later this fast was extended to six days and eventually became separated into the events of  Holy Week.  Holy Week is an older season than the entire Lenten season.

The second source for this season was the Baptism of candidates into the faith on the eve of Easter.  Since the early Church was an underground movement, candidates were carefully screened and there was a long period of preparation.  The strictest part of this period came just before the time of Baptism.  A fasting period of forty days was required, the length of which was suggested by Jesus’ fasting in the wilderness, Moses’ fasting at Mt. Sinai and Elijah’s fasting on the way to the Mount of God — each forty days.  Eventually, this period of preparation for Baptism evolved into a general period of preparation for Easter to be observed by all Christians.  The word “Lent” possibly comes from the Anglo-Saxon “lencten,” meaning Spring, and the German “Lenz,” meaning the time when the days lengthen.

Lent is a period of penitence in preparation for the highest and most important festival of the Christian Year, Easter.  Sundays are not part of Lent. They are always celebrations of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is true however, that during these six Sundays, the lections are more introspective than during other seasons but the basic character of Sunday worship remains celebrative.

Passion/Palm Sunday begins the final week of Lent, a week referred to as Holy Week.   The dual name for Passion/Palm Sunday is reminder of both the celebration of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and his impending crucifixion.  Passion/Palm Sunday begins in great triumph but as the service progresses there is an increasing  sense of foreboding about the events that will happen later that week.  Passion/Palm Sunday occurs on April 1^st this year.

Maundy Thursday, (Thursday of Holy Week) is a service commemorating  the last supper of our Lord.  The word Maundy comes from the Latin, mandatum, meaning “mandate.”  It was observed by giving Maundy Money to the poor and by a commemoration of the last supper.  Maundy Thursday occurs on April 5^th this year.

The color used during most of this season is purple (violet, sometimes blue) indicative of the penitential character of the season.  This is also the color of royalty and power.  Black is used on Good Friday representing the horror of the crucifixion.  This year Good Friday occurs on April 6^th .

There are many symbols of the Lenten season.  The Crown of Thorns and Nails (sanctuary tower window), the Crowing Cock (sanctuary tower window), the empty Latin Cross with scroll and sun and inscription INRI, first letters of the Latin phrase, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”(sanctuary tower window), the “Pelican-in-her-Piety” and the cross itself in its many forms.

Ash Wednesday: the beginning of Lent

Former PC(USA) moderator and prolific blogger Bruce Reyes-Chow has started a petition drive called “There is more than one version of Christianity!” His point is that there is a great deal of diversity the Christian family. Christians need to be more tolerant of one another and the media and culture need to recognize Christian diversity, too.

Christianity has always struggled with “orthodoxy,” which means, “right belief.” We do claim, after all, to be “saved by grace through faith, and not by works, lest anyone should boast.”  The other two great monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, are “orthopraxic” religions–the emphasis is on “right practice,” such as obedience to the Law in Judaism or The Five Pillars of Islam. (The rise of Fundamentalism in Islam has made “orthodoxy” a matter of life and death, but most Muslims, whether Sunni or Shi’ite, still consider Islam a matter of “right behavior,” not “right belief.”)

But since Christian focus is on belief, we easily get caught up in “I’m right and you’re wrong” arguments.

“I’m right and you’re wrong” arguments have been with Christians from the very beginning. One of the gifts of modern scholarship is that it proves that the Bible itself is a “big tent” that intentionally included a diversity of voices.

Most Christians seem to think the Bible dropped out of the sky somehow. But ours is an “Incarnational” faith, by which we mean that God works through the real processes of history and the limitations of human beings. God didn’t speak it to its authors directly, as Islam believes God spoke to Muhammed.  Our Bible came about over a very human process that spanned a thousand years.

And it wasn’t codified as “scripture” all at once either. Though Jews revered the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, for hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, the canon (the officially-recognized orthodox collection of books) was not settled on until about 100 years before Christ. Likewise, the canon of the Christian Bible wasn’t fully settled until the Council of Nicea in 324 AD.

The Torah, traditionally held to be written by Moses, is in reality an amalgam of different documents collected and edited over centuries. Four sources are generally acknowledged. The Yahwist, the earliest source, presents God as more personal and directly engaged in human affairs. God walks in the Garden of Eden and God’s arm closes the door of Noah’s Ark.

The next oldest, the Elohist, represents a later and possibly altogether different tradition about God that was melded with Yahwism. The Elohist considers God more distant; rather than being directly engaged in human affairs, God sends messengers–angels–and speaks through dreams.

These traditions probably both pre-date the founding of the lands of Israel and Judah. The remaining two, the Priestly and the Deuteronomist, post-date the founding of the nation. The Priestly tradition is concerned that holiness codes are observed;  so, for instance, whereas the Yahwist says the animals went onto the ark two-by-two, the Priestly author says “clean” animals came on seven-by-seven, to allow for the possibility of sacrifice. This is an obvious anachronism: in the timeline of Scripture, the rules of “clean and unclean” and the traditions of sacrifice do not arise until long after Noah!

The Deuteronomist represents a return to the ‘traditional’ values of the Mosaic covenant during the 7th Century reign of King Josiah of Judah, who wanted to rebuild his nation after their conquest, exile and return during the “Babylonian Captivity.”

Already enshrined in Torah is a broad diversity of views about God and God’s relationship to God’s people. Rather than pin down a particular theological view or practice, the Torah intentionally bundles them all together. This continues in other parts of the OT. The “liberal” prophets, for instance, have a very different perspective about the causes and solutions to the Babylonian exile than do “conservative” Nehemiah and Ezra. But both views are included as scripture. Likewise the simplistic aphorisms of Proverbs; the deeply personal and complex verses of the Psalms; the troubling questions of Job; and the darkly existential, almost atheological musings of Ecclesiastes, are all lumped together as Wisdom literature.

As Christianity was beginning flourish, it faced a crisis in the middle of the Second Century CE that forced a decision about Scripture. A popular evangelist, Marcion, was winning many converts by preaching and teaching dualism, the belief that there are two conflicting gods. Marcion was a gnostic, who believed that all things fleshly and material were bad and only the spiritual, non-material world was good and eternal. Marcion disliked the Hebrew Bible, saying it was the story of the cruel, clumsy creator God who made the material world; whereas Jesus was the “good” God who would free our spirits from their physical, material prison. As Christianity was becoming far more a Gentile than Jewish religion, Marcion also spoke for the anti-Semitism that was common in the Greco-Roman world after the Bar-Kochba rebellion. Gentile Christianity had become strong enough to stand without the Jews; why be associated with a discredited people?

Marcion was the first Christian to attempt to develop a canon of scripture. He threw out the Old Testament altogether. His canon consisted of redacted versions of the Gospel of Luke and the letters of Paul.

Other church leaders rejected his choices, but it forced them to confront a problem that had bedeviled the church. Christianity had spread throughout the known world, but there was no clear central authority. Written gospel stories abounded and letters from apostles were everywhere; but often the people in one place had no clue that in another community there were other gospel stories or other letters. To top it off, differing sects of Christianity were adopting different texts as the authority for their beliefs, and condemning other points of views as heretical.

The ultimate solution was the Bible you hold in your hand today. That Bible represents a “big tent” that intentionally gathered most, if not all, the conflicting perspectives of Christians under one dust-cover.

No doubt you’ve heard that The Council of Nicea was a political ploy of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, who thought that he could unite the Empire by uniting all Christians under one doctrine. That’s true, but to say something is political is not always to say it is bad. Christian leaders saw in Constantine’s plan the solution to the problem that had long vexed them. They could define once and for all what beliefs Christians held in common. In the process they could unite the divided body of Christ by validating different theologies.

Luke was already highly popular with Gentile Christians, but the other three gospels represent a conscious acknowledgement of some sect of Fourth Century Christianity whose view was considered heretical by the mainstream. (For a more detailed account, see, e.g.,  Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities.)

Mark was valued by a sect of gnostics who believed that when Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it meant that the Christ-spirit was abandoning the dying body of the human Jesus, freed at last from its physical prison.

Matthew, in contrast, represented the very worldly view of the Jewish Christians, or Ebionites. Most Ebionites were Adoptionists–they believed that Jesus was “adopted” as Son of God because He lived a life of perfect obedience. Matthew, of course, presents Jesus as the new Moses, giving the new Law in the Sermon on the Mount.

John, the most obviously Gnostic-influenced gospel, was a favorite of the Valentinians, who believed that Jesus was a spirit who did not have a physical body and therefore did not really die. They were partial to John because in it Jesus says on the cross, “Into thy hands I commend my spirit,” and viewed the resurrection stories as spiritual, not physical manifestations.

By gathering these four Gospels–which, as has been noted from time immemorial, often do not agree on key details–the Nicene leaders were actually gathering together the disparate theologies and regions of the Christian world under one scriptural tent. Obviously, they rejected more extreme theologies; but their goal was to minimize difference and to focus on what Christians held in common.

The Nicene Creed represented the same sort of “Big Tent” thinking. While it defines the boundaries of Christian faith, it uses terms and ideas deliberately borrowed from the diverse views they were attempting to corral together. Hypostasis–the Greek term we translate as “substance” in the Creed–was a Valentinian term. Nods were made in the creed to the other Gnostics and to the Ebionites, as well.

These same church leaders decided without question that the Hebrew Bible was essential to the canon, which no doubt disappointed Marcionites; but their consolation prize was the large number of Paul’s letters. This might have irked some Ebionites; but they would have been pleased to note that Paul’s assertion that we are “saved by grace through faith and not by works” was offset by James’s powerful assertion that “faith without works is nothing.” These are obviously competing (though not irreconcilable) positions, between two people who’d actually been at odds in the early church. Both views are included without commentary.

Christian diversity is nothing new. Compared to the theological issues at stake in the Fourth Century, our doctrinal differences seem pretty tame. You see, Nicea worked: most of us aren’t debating whether there is one God, and if that God is good; or whether Jesus was a spirit or a physical being. And while modern scholarship has raised lots of questions about how we define scriptural authority, most Christians agree that it does have authority, regardless of its sources and history.

I remember my first NT class with the great Dr. Paul Achtemeier. He warned us that we would learn many things in his class that would challenge our faith–things about the very human process both of creating scripture and interpreting it. He then observed that Christians believe that, regardless of how Scripture came to us, the Holy Spirit was active in the process. He was gently throwing down the gauntlet: to deny the validity of historical and literary interpretation of Scripture is a lack of faith.

And now, thanks to historical scriptural interpretation, we can see in the formation of the Bible itself the model for how Christians can live together, acknowledging our diversity, but holding fast to what we believe. So I guess the issue is, do we believe the Bible?

Big Tent?

Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher
February 12, 2012

St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX

Our friend Sharon Curry, who went in December to serve as a missionary in the South Sudan, had to be evacuated almost as soon as she arrived because of ethnic violence. She has been frustrated by this, obviously—not only because she has been interrupted in the mission work she intended to do, but even more because she’s been in her placement in Akobo just long enough to get to know people. Now she is in a major city, Malakal, far from the fighting, hearing second-hand how overwhelmed her friend the local doctor is, and how all the families she’d just gotten to know are experiencing deaths and hiding in the forest, afraid to go to the hospital for fear that they’ll be killed by guerilla fighters.

While she’s stuck in Malakal, she’s finding her own way to do ministry—reaching out to the homeless, as she has done for years here in Fort Worth, and finding a Sudanese church that’s glad to welcome her, scheming with another displaced missionary about other ways they can serve the community. Sharon’s very resourceful that way. She just blooms where she’s planted—rather than get frustrated that her plans have been thwarted, she just figures out what God needs her to do in the place God has put her. My personal suspicion is that Sharon is able to do that because she’s always been quite clear on what’s important: she seeks first the Kingdom of God. She puts being a disciple of Christ before anything else. If that’s what’s important to us, we’ll discover that no matter what happens, there’s always some way to serve Christ in any situation, even the most unpredictable and unexpected.

In our Gospel today, Jesus has big plans. He and his disciples have set out from their base in Capernaum and begun a mission to preach the Gospel to the major cities in Galilee. But just as he’s off on this major mission, it gets interrupted. Jesus is confronted by a leper in the road. The leper begs Jesus to heal him. “If you choose, you can make me clean,” he says.

The Scripture says, Jesus “was filled with compassion.” But take a look at the footnote at the bottom: some texts say Jesus was “angry.”

Whenever translators run across a serious variation in text like that, they have a tough call to make. Which was the original word, angry or compassion? In this case, they’d have several rules of translation to weigh and consider. One would be: how many ancient texts say “compassion” versus “anger”? Another would be: how old are those texts? It’s a general rule that the older the text, the more reliable it is as a source.

But there’s another that comes into play: What’s the most embarrassing translation? That’s actually a very important rule that scholars use. Many of the stories of scripture show the apostles or other heroes of the Bible in an embarrassing light. Scholars generally consider those more authoritative because, Why would the biblical authors tell embarrassing stories about themselves, or about biblical heroes, or about Jesus himself, unless they were true?

Apparently, scholars have decided that the best texts say ‘compassion,’ not ‘anger’—but there’s strong enough evidence in favor of “angry” that it can’t be ruled out, so they leave it as a footnote.

It’s embarrassing to admit that Jesus might have been angry. We don’t like to think of Jesus as angry, or for that matter having any “negative” emotions. But Scripture shows Jesus in an abundance of embarrassing situations. In a couple of cases it takes him a few times to heal someone. We catch him displaying a very prejudiced perspective toward Gentiles when he calls a Syro-Phoenician woman a dog. He is verbally abusive of scribes and Pharisees. He seems fearful about his fate as He prays right before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” while on the cross. So sure, Jesus could be angry.

Why would Jesus have been angry about the leper asking to be cleansed?

Actually, the reason is quite practical. If Jesus cleanses the leper, he has to abort his plan to visit the cities in Galilee. In order to heal the leper, Jesus has to touch him, which will make him ceremonially unclean. If word gets out that He’s touched a leper, then he won’t be allowed to visit the cities. He’ll have to stay out of public places for a set period of time to make sure He has not contracted leprosy. His plan will be thwarted.

What’s a messiah to do?

This is hardly a rare situation for Jesus, by the way. We often find him in the middle of attempting to do something, only to be interrupted by some particular person needing a miraculous intervention. Jesus has to make a choice, and note how important Jesus’ ability to choose is to this story. The leper says, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Jesus replies, “I do choose. Be made clean!” In all the situations in which Jesus is interrupted, no matter how he may feel either about the interruption, the person who interrupts, or the importance of what He has been doing, Jesus almost always chooses to help the person in need, even if it means that his other plans are thwarted. Why is that?

Ultimately, because Jesus has a secret agenda. His secret agenda is to display God’s compassionate love so that the wounded and the sick may be healed and the lost may be rescued. Because of that, he has chosen never turn away anyone who is in need, no matter how much it frustrates his own plans or personal needs. So Jesus may be frustrated or angry; he may have had an exhausting day; he may feel sidetracked by the need of someone who comes to him out of the blue while he’s doing something else. Certainly we have the impression his entourage of disciples felt like there were people who were wasting Jesus’ time, like beggars who demand his attention, or parents bringing their children for a blessing, or the Samaritan woman at the well. These are all people who his disciples try to turn away. But Jesus chooses to welcomes them. He chooses to reach out to them. He chooses to show God’s love for them.

This is, I suspect, one reason the translators chose “compassion” over “anger” for this passage. Because sometimes Jesus was angry, frustrated, tired, or impatient with the people who constantly demanded his attention and caused him to put aside all his best-laid plans. But he didn’t choose to act out of his anger, frustration, exhaustion, or impatience. He chose to act out of compassion. Jesus was just like all of us—he had needs, he had personal problems, he had strong emotions. He didn’t like to get sidetracked. But He knew what was important. What mattered most was serving the Kingdom of God, showing God’s love and compassion. He could put aside his personal agenda because he knew what was important: He sought first the Kingdom of God. No matter what the situation, Jesus could choose the Kingdom of God.

And so can we.

There’s a lesson here for all of us Christians about knowing what’s important. Most of us are pretty ambivalent about our feelings. Sometimes we feel like emotions are bad and need to be controlled. Other times we say, “Hey, I can’t control how I feel!” and so we just act out of whatever we’re feeling.

Jesus felt how He felt. He’d sometimes even say it out loud, much to the embarrassment of His disciples. But He never let his feelings control Him. He knew what was important, and He always chose that over all the other things that He was tempted to choose instead. He knew that what came first was his calling to serve God, and to serve the Kingdom of God. He knew His calling was to “seek and save the Lost, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” With that clear priority, Jesus could rise above His own personal feelings, which might just as easily be the result of what he ate for breakfast or a bad night’s sleep, as anything else.

But here’s what’s really amazing. Here is a guy with an even bigger secret agenda: he is the messiah, the Son of God, sent to save the world! Jesus is “the Most Important Man in the World”! Here’s the one person who apparently has a completely justified messiah complex! He could easily justify saying to the leper, “Listen, buddy, sorry, my first priority is to save the world! If I save you, I won’t be able to save all the people in those cities I’m planning to visit! So, sorry, man, but my plans are too important–I’m too important for this!”

He doesn’t.

It’s a witness to all of us who believe our great plans are all-important. This is a personality trait to which those who feel called by God are especially prone: we feel like God’s anointment has made us all-important, and that our plans are therefore God’s plans. We become impatient, emphatic, narrow-minded, and insistent on our own way.

Really, if the Son of God was willing to allow His plans to be thwarted by a nameless homeless leper, who do we think we are?

What it finally came down to for Jesus—and for us all—is our willingness to trust that God is present in the unpredictable and the uncontrollable–that, as Scripture says, Our ways are not God’s ways, and our plans are not God’s plans. God has a secret agenda, a big plan to which we are not privy. We can plan as best we can, and as faithfully as we can; but things can change at the drop of a hat.

And when they do, the important thing is to have it clear what’s important: Christ’s compassion, love and healing.

Christ’s mission: seek and save the lost.

Christ’s top priority: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.

If that’s what’s important to us, we’ll discover that no matter what happens, there’s always some way to serve Christ in any situation, even the most unpredictable and unexpected.

Secret Agenda: Mark 1: 40-45

Ash Wednesday, Family Friendly Service & Supper

Wednesday, February 22, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.

The church staff and the Worship Committee invite all parents and children to attend the “child-friendly” and multi-sensory Ash Wednesday Service  for Children & Families, Wednesday, February 22.  Participants will gather in the sanctuary narthex (front hall) and the service will take place in the sanctuary. Ash Wednesday marks the start of the Lenten Season, where we prepare ourselves and our families for the life, miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This service includes a child-friendly Lord’s Supper and the Application of Ashes. 

By attending this service, children and parents will enter into the Lenten Season knowing the purpose of  Lent and the meaning of the symbols used in the Lenten and Easter seasons.  It is both joyful and  spiritually responsible  to involve your children in the great seasons of the church. After all, Jesus taught, “Let the children come to me, for of such is made the Kingdom of Heaven.”

While the service begins at 5:30, we’ll gather at 5:00 to make Lenten t-shirts that emphasis the meaning of the season. You will be invited to dinner, following the service, at 6 p.m. in Parish Hall, provided by the Fellowship Committee. The regular service is at 7:00 pm in the sanctuary’s west transept.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge God, and God will make straight your paths.”   Proverbs 3:5 – 6   NRSV Bible

Ash Wednesday, Family Friendly Service & Meal

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945

In April 1945, weeks before the fall of the third Reich, German Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in Flossenburg, a Nazi prison camp. Bonhoeffer was a highly respected theologian and author of The Cost of Discipleship, which taught that the Sermon on the Mount was a practical call to extraordinary ethics and advocated pacifism. A few years later he was arrested for espionage along with a number of members of the Abwehr (the German Intelligence Agency) because of their ongoing secret strategy to undermine and overthrow Hitler. A few months later, when the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler and seize control of Germany failed, it became evident that Bonhoeffer had been involved in that, as well.

How did this deeply spiritual, highly intellectual, and profoundly faithful Christian pastor journey from avowed and sincere pacifism to involvement in espionage and assassination? Bonhoeffer’s life and death raise questions about how Christians are called to live their faith in the real world of politics, war, injustice, and sin.

St. Stephen member Richard Parr is a well-read student of Bonhoeffer’s life and theology. He recently taught a Northminster Sunday school class on the Beatitudes using The Cost of Discipleship as a guide. Dr. Ritsch was a friend of Dr. John Godsey, who introduced Bonhoeffer to the US, and has studied with Victoria Barnett, the staff director of the Committee for Church Relations at the US Holocaust Museum. She is one of the editors of the the new series Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, the first time all of Bonhoeffer’s writings have been collected, edited, and published.

The class begins February 5 at 9:40 a.m. in the Northminster Room, which is located at the top of the stairs near the sanctuary-side entrance to the Education Building. It will run for seven weeks. Come at 9:30 to get breakfast in the Fellowship Hall (located at the South end of the Education Building) and then bring it upstairs.

Bonhoeffer Class Co-Taught by Rev. Ritsch and Richard Parr Starts Feb. 5

The Second “NEXT Church” Conference will be held at First Pres, Dallas, February 27-28. As the PCUSA experiences change generated both from within and without, this group of faithful Presbyterians are gathering to discover the ways the Spirit is leading us in the 21st Century. This conference is not for pastors–it is for leaders, and that means YOU! It’s in Dallas–it’s cheap–($60!)–and it’s about discovering what God is up to. Rev. Ritsch is going; you’re welcome to contact him if you want more info. Here is the link:

http://nextchurch2012.org/

“NEXT” Church Con in Dallas Explores the Future of the PCUSA–You Should Go!

Our unofficial church historian, Cathy Corder, has unearthed some fascinating documents from the early days of St. Stephen. Most interesting are those that detail the process our predecessor church, Broadway Presbyterian, went through in deciding to move from its location across from present Broadway Baptist to this site.

Broadway’s pastor in the ‘forties, was James F. Hardie. It was under his leadership, and the leadership of a visionary session, that Broadway acquired this property in May of 1944. The impetus was need. Broadway’s old building was only 25 years old, but already it was showing serious wear-and-tear. And it was far too small for the numbers that were attending. Sunday schools classes took place in every corner, including the pastor’s study, and a dilapidated building that many considered a health threat. That part of town, devastated by the Fort Worth fire of 1909, had never seen the growth people had imagined; but a survey of church members indicated that many lived on this side of town.Fort Worth Itself was a growing metropolis, but Broadway was landlocked, unable to acquire more property in its area. It was time to move.

It was Dr. Hardie and Broadway’s session that conceived the notion of a Gothic-style Presbyterian cathedral on a hill. The earliest plans for what would become our present sanctuary were first drawn in those years. Dr. Hardie broke the ground for the new building on Feb. 22, 1948. The first building on the site was the Boy Scout Hut. I think you need to be ready for this: The full name of the Boy Scout Hut is “The Harry R. Male Boy Scout Lodge,” after one of Troop 17’s founding leaders.

The new sanctuary and building—the present Parish Hall andEducationBuilding—held their first worship service June 4, 1950.  By then, Dr. Hardie had resigned, and the new pastor, a certain Rev. R. W. Jablonowski, had been installed. But “The Final Report of Building Committee to the Congregation of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church” in October, 1950, concludes with Dr. Hardie’s words written in 1944. In retrospect, they are prophetic, and furthermore apply as much to our present capital campaign as they did then:

“As I have thought these last few weeks of the long and stately step which Broadway is contemplating, the words of the Psalmist have been in my mind: ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made: we will rejoice and be glad in it.’ I rejoice in the vision of our officers, who are willing to compliment us by planning great things for us, as servants of the King. They are thinking of us; of the newcomers who are crowding into our City; of the entire City of Fort Worth, and above all, of the generations which are to follow us. They are planning for the religious life of their children, and of their children’s children. I rejoice in their spirit of daring, and am comforted in the thought that our people, following their leadership, are capable yet of manifesting the spirit of the pioneers who built such lasting monuments of their best selves, in the generation which was theirs. We must not do less than they, but being heirs of such a past, and of such a heritage, we must go in their spirit, to yet greater things.

“Fort Worth needs what our leaders are planning, and in the days to come, our reward will be those whose spiritual lives have been deepened and enriched, who are rising up to call us blessed.  ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.’ The Lord is trying to do something grand through us… Let us hear again the words of Nehemiah: ‘The God of Heaven, He will prosper us: therefore we His servants arise and build.’”

“The Lord is Trying to Do Something Grand Through Us…Therefore We, God’s Servants, Arise and Build”

Dr. Cathy Corder has arranged the history of Capital Campaigns of the St. Stephen Presbyterian Church buildings present and past along the bulletin board outside of Parish Hall.  Come view the past in pamphlet and photos as the churches, both Broadway Presbyterian (former name) and St. Stephen came about.

Raising the Roof: 1884 – 2012