The Lutheran Review

Palm Sunday, 2010

Spread Ourselves Before Christ’s Feet.

After the Palm Sunday celebration at the beginning of the service, we transition to the passion of Christ upon which we will concentrate during Holy Week.  The first writing today, from Andrew of Crete comes from the eighth century and reflects upon the palm portion of the day.  The second reading is from the Byzantine Vespers service that calls attention to the transition from the palms to Jesus’ passion.

It is ourselves that we must spread under Christi’s feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours.  But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace, with the whole Christ – “for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” – so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet.

 Passing from one divine feast to another from palms and branches, let us now make haste, O faithful, for the solemn and saving celebration of Christ’s passion.  Let us behold him undergo voluntary suffering for our sake, and let us sing to him with thanksgiving a fitting hymn: Fountain of tender mercy and haven of salvation, o Lord, glory to you.

 (I likely won’t be posting anything for a few days.  We are travel to Wisconsin tomorrow.  Dad’s funeral is on Tuesday morning.  I should be back by Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.  Ron Jansen)

 

A Commemoration; Victor W. Jansen

Victor W. Jansen

Our hymnals, LSB and ELW among others, have a listing of commemorations in the front.  The LSB contains a quote from Augsburg Confession 21, “Our churches teach that the remembrance of the saints is to be commended in order that we may imitate their faith and good works according to our calling.”

There is no one listed for March 24^th; therefore, I am inserting my father Victor W. Jansen who died yesterday at the age of 97+ years.  He was born April 28, 1912 and died March 24, 2010.  If he had been an Old Testament king, it would have been said of him, “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and slept with his fathers,” and they buried him in the Christ Lutheran, Pipe Lake, cemetery.  If anyone was able to go back through his life and interview those who had known him, one would be hard pressed to find anyone who could speak ill of him.  He was a patient, kind and gentle person and gives his three sons and the rest of the family a pattern to imitate.

Dad came of age during the depression at a time few men went beyond the eighth grade.  He attended the same country one room school that my brothers and I attended.  He and my mother married in 1935 and really began with nothing.  After their little house burned down they somehow bought the farm on which he lived and we sons were raised.

Dad had inherited the skill of woodworking and carpentry that is prevalent in the Jansen line and is the reason his great grandparents came over from Holland in 1848.  He was also skilled at counseling people.  He was perfect for the job of township assessor that he held for more than two decades.  My mother would get upset that he might only make three calls in a day.  I went with him a few times and those long conversations with people served both him and those upon whom he called well.  Since he was the one government official who encountered people on their turf, he needed to deal with their upsetness about taxes etc.  One time he was parked along the road eating his lunch when a farmer came down the driveway with rifle in hand.  The neighbor thought Dad was spying on him.

Even when he went into the nursing home he could counsel new arrivals telling them that the care was good and the food wasn’t too bad.

My wife reminded me of the time he accompanied us to Washington DC in 2002, when I was to open the House of Representatives with prayer.  We arrived early and had to stand around for quite a while in a rotunda area.  A black woman who worked as a welcome and watcher, put her arm around Dad and said, “If you’re that important, then you make them give you to thing to eat.”

Psalm 118, a psalm used for both Palm Sunday and Easter, is appropriate. 
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!”

I could have saved all the words I wrote above and simply said, “My brothers and I know what it is to have had a father.”    

 

 

The Annunciation

In the sixth the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin…The virgin’s name was Mary.”

 Early in the history of the church March 25 was designated as the day for the appearance of the angel to Mary announcing that she would be the mother of the Savior.  St. Augustine writes in the fourth century, the Lord is believed to have been conceived on the 25th day of March, upon which day he also suffered.  So the womb of the Virgin in which he was conceived, where no mortal was ever begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein no one was ever laid.

Thomas J. Talley believes that the early Christians began including themes relating to Jesus birth during the celebration of his passion.   “With that, then, the incarnation…came to be understood as the conception of the Lord … and that in itself defined the date of the nativity.”  In other words, early Christians counted ahead from March 25th to determine that December 25th was the date of the nativity.  In the development of the church year Christmas comes relatively late.

March 25th actually had three interconnections for ancient scholars.  Some also believed that God began the creation on that day.

The Annunciation and the Passion fell on the same day in 1608.  John Donne wrote a lengthy poem on the connection.  I will select only a couple of lines.

He begins, Tamely fraile body abstaine today, today
My soul eates twice, Christ hither and away.

Donne will be fasting because it is Good Friday; however, his soul will dine twice as it celebrates the coming of Christ into Mary’s womb and Jesus being laid in the tomb.

A sixteenth century Latin carol carries the message of the day.

Gabriel’s message does away
Satan’s curse and Satan’s sway,
Out of darkness brings our day:
So, behold, all the gates of heaven unfold.

He that comes despised shall reign;
He that cannot die, be slain;
Death by death its death shall gain:
So, behold, all the gates of heaven unfold.

Weakness shall the strong confound;
By the hands in grave clothes wound
Adam’s chains shall be unbound:
So, behold, all the gates of heaven unfold.

 

Smash Mouth Prayer

Psalm 3, v. 8, 3-6 make up the introit for the fifth Sunday in lent.  Verse 8 proclaims that Salvation or rescue belongs to the Lord and that His blessing will be on the psalmist.  In verses 3-6 the writer speaks of God as a shield.  The Lord lifts up his head.  With a lifted head whenever he cries out to the lord, the Lord answers from his temple in Jerusalem.  Therefore, the psalmist is able to lie down and sleep in security and surety that the Lord will sustain him through the night.

But when we put those verses into the context of verses 1-2 & 7, we get quite a different picture.  Verses 1 & 2, “Lord, how many are my foes, many, who rise up against me.  Many, who say of my life: ‘No rescue for him through God.’”  He is surrounded by numerous foes who taunt him telling him that if he thinks God is going to get him out of this predicament, forget it.

Though surrounded by jeering enemies, the Lord lifts up his head and enables him to cry out, for the help that is sure to come. In that context his certainty of getting a good night’s sleep without disturbance is similar to Psalm 23, where the psalmist is sure of God’s presence even in the valley where death looms.  The Lord will prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.  Goodness and mercy will follow him his whole life until he dwells in the Lord’s house forever.

Because of his trust in a trustworthy Lord who rescues his own, (verse 6) “I fear not from the myriads of troops that round about set against me.”

Then comes verse 7, where he cries out to God to take a specific action.  “For you strike all my foes on the cheek, the teeth of the wicked you smash.”  The Psalmist foes have spoken like loud mouthed bullies.  Now he wants God to come his aid fists swinging.  Like a modern super hero, God will appear to rescue with might and violence.

We have likely had times and prayers that asked God to act likewise in our behalf.  “God, get em and get em good.”  But if those are our expectations of God, we are likely to be disappointed.  God came in weakness in Jesus who allowed himself to be smashed, and brutalized and then hung on a cross.  The only teeth God knocked out was sin’s teeth, that sin might no longer get its fangs into us and drag us down to eternal death.  It’s sin, death and the devil that Jesus punches out.

The prayer against those foes he will answer every time, because he already answered that prayer for all time on the cross and in the Resurrection.       

Like Those who Dream

 

I find it helpful to contrast Psalm 126, the psalm for the fifth Sunday in lent, with Psalm 137.

Psalm 137 reflects I Babylon after the inhabitants of Judah were taken there as captives in 586 BC.

By Babylon streams,

There we sat, oh we wept,

When we recalled Zion.

On poplars there we hung up our lyres.

For there our captors had asked of us words of song,

And our plunderers –rejoicing

“Sing us from Zion’s songs.”

How can we sing a song of the Lord

On foreign soil.

The Babylonians want the Jews to sing the songs of Zion, but the songs of Zion are sacred songs to the exiles.  They are songs to be sung to God, not for mere entertainment.  Think of being in their situation and being asked to entertain your captors with a rousing rendition of “Jesus Savior Pilot Me” or Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”

We might attach Psalm 126 to the deliverance from captivity in Babylon in 538.

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

Were like those who dream.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter,

And our tongue with shouts of joy.

When Judah was defeated by Babylon and Jerusalem and the temple destroyed, the Israelites and God was the butt of scorn and taunting.  They had sowed tears in that foreign land.  Now their tears have sprouted and produced a harvest of joy.

Those who sow in tears

Shall reap with shouts of joy!

The scorn of the nations has turned into awestruck wonder at what god has done.

Then they said among the nations,

“The Lord has done great things them.”

The Lord has done great things for us,

We are glad.

Psalm 137 and 126 provide an excellent frame work for our journey through Holy week to Easter.

Jesus is surrounded by tears, Peter in the courtyard and the women as he carried his cross to Calvary.  His body is sown in the tomb amid tears on Good Friday.  His resurrection on Sunday was like a dream to those who heard of it.  Yet it is not a dream.  Jesus’ resurrection is the joyous news that fills our mouths with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy.  For when we meet our hour of death, we pass from this vail of tears, to abide forever in the joy of being in God’s presence.  One day Jesus will return to free us from our graves and unite us around His throne.

 

Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer played a leading role in both the history of England and in the Church of England.  He was born on July 1489 and died on March 21, 1556.

Cranmer was instrumental in building a favorable case for Henry VIII to divorce his first wife Catherine of Aragon.  Henry’s divorce was a central event leading to a separation of the English Church from Rome.  Cranmer also supported making the English Monarch the sovereign head of the Church of England.

He served as an emissary of Henry VIII to Emperor Charles V from about 1531-1532.  He task was to follow the Emperor as he moved about Europe.  In the course of his travels he came into closer contact with Lutherans.  He stayed at the home of Andrea Osiander, a Lutheran pastor and reformer in Nuremberg.  That led to his marriage to Osiander’s wife’s niece.

He was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1532.  Following Henry’s death he served Edward VI.  When Mary, Queen of Scots came to the throne he ran a fowl of her efforts to return the church to Rome.  He, with many others, was arrested.  He spent two years in prison.

After an series of maneuvers and delays he was burned at the stake, on March 21, 1556.

He is also note worthy as the leading spirit of the commission which prepared the Book of Common Prayer.   Luther D. Reed in his book, The Lutheran Liturgy, places Cranmer in the company of other 16^thand 17^th writers, Shakespeare Milton and the translators of the King James Bible.  The writers of the Book of Common Prayer were influenced by the German Lutherans with whom they had much contact.  When German Lutherans came to the New World, they were influenced by the English worship materials when they moved from the German language to English.

The first Book of Common Prayer was introduced on Whitsunday (Trinity Sunday) June 9, 1549.

Winter to Spring

Yesterday I was outside pulling Creeping Charley (that’s my term for these plants that invade lawn and garden).  I was also trimming the crab apples, pulling dead leaves from the day lilies, gouging out Wild Ginger and keeping some ivy at bay that grows between our yard and the neighbor’s, lest these take over the world.  My wife said, our son was on the phone. So I came in and began to converse.

 “What smells?” said Mrs. Jansen.  “I was pulling weeds.” replied the pastor emeritus Ron while still on the phone.  “I can’t breathe.” she responded.  “Are you pungent?” asked son on the phone from Maryland.  “I do believe I am. I can even smell myself.” said the Father Ron to his son.  “Take your clothes off and wash them immediately,” commanded my partner of 42 years.  “I think I had better go,” said the father to the Maryland son. In order to be partners into our 43^rd year, the Right Reverend, obeyed and took a shower besides.

This morning I came across a poem by Phyllis McGinley that seems apt, though it comes from an earlier era.

Now green the larch; the hedges green,

And early jonquils go a-begging.

The thoughtful man repairs his screen,

The child emerges from his legging.

By daylight now, commuters come

Homeward.  The grackle, unimpeded,

Forsakes his charitable crumb

To loot the lawn that’s newly seeded.

Tulips are mocked for their display

By periwinkles’ self-effacement,

And benedicts on ladders sway,

Fetching the storm sash to the basement.

Still slumbers the lethargic bee,

The rosebush keeps its winter tag on,

But hatless to the A & P

The shopper rides in station wagon.

Once more Good Humor’s wheedling bell

Brings out the spendthrift in the miser,

And everywhere’s the lovely smell

Of showers and soil and fertilizer.

   

Joseph, Guardian of Jesus

 

Only in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke do we hear of Joseph. Mark and John don’t mention him. Even in Matthew and Luke he gets no lines to speak. Nor does he get to sing a song. Zechariah sings, Mary sings, the heavenly host praise God at Jesus birth and Simeon sings of the salvation he is holding in his arms. In more than one way, Joseph is an unsung hero.

A verse that might sum up his life is Matthew 1:24a, When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. I see Joseph as one of those behind the scenes doers that every congregation needs. If something goes haywire at church, a toilet won’t flush, the furnace needs looking at or a door is malfunctioning, we know who to call. Joseph was one of those people. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty.

Thus in the story of birth of God into flesh he went ahead and married Mary despite her questionable pregnancy. If he was dutiful to the Lord, he was also dutiful to the civil authorities. In returning to Bethlehem at the behest of Caesar he satisfied the plans of both God and government. He was present at the birth of Jesus for whom he would act as guardian. He saw to Jesus circumcision at 8 days of age and the sacrifices ordained for the first male child born into a family. Joseph protected his family by fleeing with them to Egypt until it was safe tom return. The last we hear of Joseph is when he and Mary find Jesus in the temple after a three day search.

Psalm 89:1 certainly applies to Joseph on the day aside to remember him, Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!

Almighty God, from the house of Your servant David You raised up Joseph to be the guardian of Your incarnate Son and the husband of His mother, Mary. Grant us grace to follow the example of this faithful workman in heeding Your counsel and obeying Your commands; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives, and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Reconciliation

 

“Reconciliation” is a term being bantered about in congress and on the talk shows.  Perhaps, “bantered” isn’t the right term either.  “Battered” is more apt.  “Reconciliation” has to do with bringing two people or groups together who are estranged from one another.  However, in our Capital, “reconciliation” is more apt to bring about greater estrangement.  That is what often happens when we humans get hold of a perfectly good word and use it to accomplish our own interests.

The epistle lesson from last Sunday (2 Corinthians 5:16-21) speaks of reconciliation between humans and God.  Our trespasses, that is, our crossing into areas of activity that God has forewarned us to avoid have caused estrangement from God.  In Greek thinking, divinity was estranged from the human being and man needed to make amends in order to win back the divinity’s good will.

Paul follows the Jewish way of thinking.  Our misdeeds cause us to be estranged from God.  Paul writes in verses 18 and 19, that reconciliation is from God, “who through Christ reconciled us to himself…that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself…”  Notice, first Paul writes that in Christ God was reconciling US to himself, meaning him and his companions and those Christians reading his letter in Corinth.  Then Paul mentions that what God has done for us in Christ he has done for the world.  God’s will is that the world believes that God has reconciled it to himself through Christ.  Jesus death on the cross and resurrection is the means by which God has reconciled the world to himself.  The end that everyone come to hear and believe in this reconciliation, God has made us ministers of reconciliation.  Through trust in God’s reconciliation in Christ, God doesn’t count our trespasses against us.

We are in the world as Christ’s ambassadors and it is through us that he makes his appeal to the world to be reconciled to God.  Jesus made abundantly clear in his ministry that he wants us to also be reconciled with one another.  Because if God could reconcile us to himself despite the infinite number of our trespasses, then certainly we ought to, with Christ’s help, be able to strive for reconciliation with one another.

Might it be possible for us to help our legislators recapture the true meaning of reconciliation through our ministry in behalf of God’s goal for the world?  Then reconciliation would be a word neither bantered about nor battered about, but applied as Christ would have us apply it. 

 

 

Controlled by Christ

Whenever I see someone in an orange jumpsuit, hands connected to chains around the waist and feet shackled, I am repelled by the sight.  I don’t like to be confined.  That’s true for most if not all of us.  When a pregnant woman is confined to bed rest to protect the unborn child and her own health, we don’t consider her lucky because she is now free from the usual chores that ordinarily would be her’s to do.  We think being controlled, confined, and restrained in negative terms.  In the winter we call it getting cabin fever.

So when we come upon Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 5:14, “for the love of Christ controls us,” we may have to stop and think about that.  For instance, I know that there is numerous times in my life that the love of Christ doesn’t control me.  I know that my sinful self controls many of the thoughts, words and deeds that emerge on a daily basis.

However, Paul is saying in reality, since Christ lived and died, sin does not control us.  The love of Christ controls us.  How so?  The love of Christ is more than promised rewards in eternal life.  It also has an effect on our lives today.  The love of Christ has a confining and restraining effect upon our sinful self.  We are not hapless and helpless victims of the power of sin in our lives.  Christ is also alive in us curbing our passions, reminding us that he died for us and so we have died to sin.  Paul puts it this way in 2 Cor. 5:14b-15 “We have concluded this (that the love of Christ controls us because) “one has died for all, therefore all have died; he (Christ) died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

You see, when we live for ourselves, without the fetters of Christ’s love turning us away from rebellion against God, then we are headed in the direction of dying without a resurrection to follow.  However, because we have died in Christ’s death we will also participate in his resurrection.  We can say, “Go to hell sin. I don’t need to serve you anymore.  Christ’s love is controlling my life and actions.  Sin, though you will one day bring me to the grave, I won’t stay there.  Christ will bust me out.”