Pastor's Notes

Mainline Christians rarely talk about evil. Some Christian groups talk too much about evil. For example, one of many conspiracy theories floating around these days is that “Satan” is now controlling the US government.

There is quite a difference in how Christians talk about evil. Many see a person as either good or evil. Others, like Lutherans, tend to see evil and good within each person. All of us do seem to think some people seem to emit more of one side or the other.

Another difference in addressing evil does have to do with Satan/the devil, Beelzebub, the Evil One…take your pick. Satan as you may know was first mentioned in the Bible in the book of Job (no, the Garden of Eden tempter was simply called a serpent, not a devil or Satan). In Job Satan is actually portrayed as an agent of God. Satan’s task in Job is similar to that of a prosecuting attorney, not someone lurking around the world bringing about destruction.

My point here is there is no one systematic and concise picture in Scripture of an evil being. What is scripturally clear is that evil exists and evil is a power and destructive force with which to be reckoned. How much destruction has been wrought upon the world by evil powers! How much is being wrought now by such powers! Typically evil wears a most beguiling disguise. It comes wearing the camouflage of good.

While we Lutherans tend to see evil more as force than being, I sometimes wish it was a simple as some evil being. We would have an enemy of one. The enemy would be known and we could probe its vulnerabilities until defeat was certain. But alas, if evil is a power, present in all people, and therefore all associations of people (church, government, kids’ sports teams, etc.) then the battlefields are many and scattered around the world. In fact, to quote cartoonist Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and he is us”, a play on the words of Naval officer Oliver Hazzard Perry in the War of 1812 to General, later (briefly) president, William Harrison, “We have met the enemy and he is ours.”

That is the problem with evil. It is everywhere and it has found a home even with us. It bubbles outward in hate. It surfaces in acts petty and large. It is hidden in systems in which we willingly participate. It is there both seen and hidden from us. As a power and force often sold as something good evil is far more difficult to defeat than were it contained to a being who was out simply looking for recruits.

Fortunately we do not struggle with evil alone. There are those in the church struggling with us. Those whom we know, and those around the world whom we shall never know. There is the power of good, constantly renewed and strengthened in faith as we worship, serve, learn, repent, and forgive. This power is none other than the power of Christ, through Christ’s very body, the church. It comes in word, sacrament, as we gather together. That power too is everywhere. That power too is within and through us. So on we struggle, battle by battle; together, with the presence of Christ.

Entitled: “1. a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract. 2 :belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges”. Thus says the internet dictionary. Thus also says my sense of the word and its usage.

However, it seems almost daily some highly acclaimed or greatly educated author writes or otherwise mentions a book and says the book is “entitled” such and such, using the book’s title. Really? Exactly to what is a book entitled? Good exposure at Barnes & Noble and Amazon so it can sell? Proper storage on a bookshelf? A careful reader who won’t spill coffee on its pages?

I’m not sure books are entitled to anything other than someone to read them. But that is not the real question. The real and more important question is this: To what are you and I entitled?

We can answer that question in various ways. We could say we are entitled to nothing except opportunity. However we know in this world not all have equal opportunity. While each year we seem to have a student or two who is the first from their family to attend college and receive a degree, I read a book filled with examples and statistics saying how much harder it is for someone to get into college if no one in their family or close circle had ever gone to college. Forms, loans, scholarships, entrance exams and the very vocabulary of college and admittance are foreign for those who did not grow up hearing and learning about such things. If the very expectation of attending college is not expressed, the incentive to even try is much less. Too often in my ministry I have heard, “We don’t go to college in this family. We work for a living. We are not one of those rich people that can afford college.” They are just unaware of what is out there in terms of loans and scholarships.

Entitled. To what is God entitled? The God who gives us all we have and are….much of which we often mistake as our entitlements….to what is God entitled? The God who shares God’s grace, forgiveness and new life…to what is God entitled? The simple answer is that God is entitled to us returning our best to God by serving God and serving others.

Ah, but you and I do not always give God our best. You and I too often are way too busy serving ourselves and our wants while giving token service to others. The simple answer there is our giving to God what God is entitled falls short of the mark. God does not receive that to which God is entitled. But you and I…..we receive far more than we are entitled.

All of this comes as a reminder both to the one writing this piece and those who read it: To what things in your life do you believe you are entitled? Why do you and I think such? What gives us the notion, not to mention the right, to think we have entitlements in life?

Another question…a very important one at that, is this: “What things do we believe others ought to be entitled?” Equality? Health insurance? Education? Opportunity? Justice? Peace? These are just a few, I know. However, I am convinced like you and I who have had much of the above list during our lives, these are not entitlements because of something we did or who we are. They are entitlements because of who we are. Likewise they are entitlements for others because of who they are: children of God; just like us.

It is God who grants the entitlements. It is you and I and all the people of God who are called to see that such gifts of entitlements are not hoarded among the few but distributed equally to all.

You can title your book or entitle it if you like. Just remember who ultimately is the one who grants life’s entitlements.

Pastors are one of the last breed of generalists. That is we are the proverbial “Jack of all trades, masters of none”. While we may have our own individual forte’s, pastoral job descriptions for parish pastors are all very similar. Preach, teach, baptize, lead worship, bury the dead, visit the sick and wounded, and drink a lot of coffee.

One thing we all do is write. We write newsletter articles, columns, letters, thank you notes, teaching outlines and sermons. We all seem to have our own style in doing these writings, but we all seem to do them.

I couldn’t begin to tell you if I have a “style.” When call committees have asked about my preaching style, I just respond that I actually have several styles. Perhaps that is my style.

One thing I have experienced over the years in sitting down before a paper with pen in hand, or later at a typewriter, and, more recently, sitting down at a computer, is that I so often begin with a sentence or two of introduction, but have absolutely no idea where I am going with whatever I am writing. (Perhaps you agree that far too often such lack of direction shows).

After that sentence or two, somehow a third sentence flows out…then a fourth, then a fifth…soon I have a paragraph or two and away I go. Sometimes it seems words appear on the computer’s monitor before I even think them. I’m not talking about that annoying autocorrect, I mean the words appear seemingly before I consciously think them.

Before long I am struggling with some kind of summary….what did I say? What point(s) were made? What is the writing about? Generally I never write something, then send it to the printer or email to the intended recipient. Usually there are rewrites. Sometimes interminable rewrites. Sometimes what I wrote a few days ago is torn up or deleted and off I go again with other words appearing from nowhere it seems. Eventually I am satisfied enough or a deadline occurs and I must be satisfied as there is no longer time to be otherwise. It is not unheard of that as folks are settling into their chairs for worship, I am typing the final Amen on yet one more rewrite.

What a great parable for life! We all start somewhere and often end up in a place not at all like our plans, hopes, or dreams. Life comes at us and drags us along. Experiences appear and we have no idea how they got there. More importantly, we often have little idea how we got there. A small town Pennsylvania boy living most of his adult life 2,000 miles from home in and around cities and major metropolitan areas. Students who are often the first in their family to attend college, Many who have a college degree no longer working in any field close to their area of study….so many unpredictable things that happen to us in life. Good things, difficult things. Unforeseen things and unforeseen people crossing our life’s path often changing its very direction.

Coincidence? Happenstance? Subliminal choices? Overt choices and decisions? Could be. Maybe even a mixture of some of these. Yet through it all there sometimes seems to be a force at work greater than these and greater than ourselves.

Maybe ours is not to figure this out, but to run and go with it. Let those words appear before we think or type them. Let events and people speak to us. Let us be both ourselves and changed. Let us trust in all we belong to God.

“Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”

Rabbi Abraham Heschel (1907-1972) wrote the above words many decades ago. Yet still they seem to hit home much too closely today. To sum up Rabbi Heschel’s quote from my perspective, it would seem we too often see being a person of faith as primarily a state of identity. We are Christians (or Jews or Muslims, or whomever). We are. Christian is a form of identity. It is a noun.

Certainly Christianity is a form of identity as is Judaism, Islam, and other faiths. Christian can be either a noun or adjective. I am a Christian. I try to live a Christian lifestyle. Noun and adjective.

Yet being a Christian seems to also require that Christian faith be turned into a verb; that is, into doing, into action. While many might agree and see Christian as primarily a verb, an action, that too is insufficient. From where, from whom does our action spring?

These are important questions. It matters greatly in what kind of God we believe and what kind of God motivates our deeds. There is a reason Christians have different thoughts about the hot topics of today and the hot topics of days past. Christians have differing views of who God is. Too often the God we see reflects too much of ourselves and too little of God. Most Christians, for example, agree God can be angry. However we disagree over what and over whom God is angry.

This is where creeds, worship, and the discipline of the faith are useful. This is where the past can at times be instructive both in a good and not good way. This is where a faith community is helpful, in fact necessary, if the God who continues to be revealed to us is to be more than a God who is like ourselves in our current state of life. People of faith need to rub shoulders with others in the faith. People of faith need to rub shoulders with those outside the faith. Notice how you may have found agreement in the quote above, yet that quote comes from someone outside the Christian faith.

God does reveal a bit of God’s self in creeds and worship, the rituals and routines of faith. God does reveal a bit of God’s self through those around us, inside and outside the church. God also reveals God’s self as we turn our Christian identity into a verb and serve and do. How often have we jumped in to help in some instance only to discover we got more out of the service than we put into it?

Faith identity, ritual, belief, present, past, and future all have their place. But that is the point, isn’t it? They have their place. They are not alone definitive of what it means to be a Christian, to be a follower (follower is a word implying following, doing). The Christian faith is not merely to be believed. It is to be lived. It is to be a part of all our life. In living that faith belief and faith itself often are strengthened. Yet God doesn’t save our spirit or our faith. God saves us.