Captain Thin

After a few days offline, we’re back. Here’s the news you might have missed in recent days:

– I’ve got a post considering the work of angels over at A Christian Thing.

If you’re anything like the vast majority of Protestants (and I include myself in this condemnation), you seldom think about angels. If pressed on the matter, most of us could no doubt offer up some fluff on what these beings are. But the idea that they are constantly at work in the Christian’s life—that we are, in fact, constantly in contact with these creatures today and yesterday and all the days of our lives—this is seldom a subject of thought.

– Over at First Thoughts, I discuss the re-election of President Matthew C. Harrison (of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) and what it might mean for Lutherans’ ecumenical relations (in light of ongoing talks with Roman Catholics, the Anglican Church in North America, and the North American Lutheran Church.

If the past few years are anything to go by, this growing interest in strong relationships between the LCMS and other confessing Christian churches is likely to continue into President Harrison’s second term. I for one couldn’t be more pleased.

Update: The First Things post above has also been reprinted at the LCMS’ “Witness, Mercy, Life Together” blog: http://wmltblog.org/2013/07/president-harrison-the-lcms-and-ecumenical-dialogue-first-thoughts-a-first-things-blog/.

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Just a note about a post I wrote for First Things last week that discusses the difficulty facing Christians in the Middle East, in light of recent news of the murder of a Syrian monk. A grim topic, but martyrdom usually is. See it here: “Staying in the Face of Persecution: The Martyrdom of a Syrian Monk.”

My column for the May/June issue of The Canadian Lutheran was entitled “Living life in ordinary time,” and is available to read online here. In this article, I discuss Ordinary Time, that season on the Church Calendar “that comes when there are no real seasons to speak of.” It’s the time between the major festivals and holidays. In my article, I draw the comparisons between Ordinary Time in the Church and Ordinary Time in daily life. A sampling below:

The temptation is to think Ordinary Time in the Church is somehow less important than the big events. You see that reflected in our attendance numbers. We all know members who only seem to show up for Christmas and Easter. But in the middle of July? Not so much.

But Ordinary Time is where real life happens! After all, each of us have more unbirthdays (to borrow a phrase from Alice in Wonderland) than birthdays. So what do you do in “ordinary” life when you’re not celebrating a holiday? You go to work. You study for classes. You eat supper. Maybe you read a book or watch a television program. You play with your kids. These aren’t earth-shattering events, but they’re part and parcel of daily life. Doing these things are important to keep you in good health, both physically and mentally.

The same is true for Christian faith. We have Ordinary Time things to do. We need to go to church regularly, to feed on God’s Word and receive His Holy Supper. We need to spend time studying the Scriptures, growing deeper in the faith. We need to go about our daily work, telling others about the good news of Jesus Christ. And we need fellowship with other Christians, to encourage and pray for one another.

Read it all online here.

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Just a note to say that I’m one of the presenters at the upcoming Reach Out Canada conference. This national outreach conference sponsored by Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC) and Lutheran Hour Ministries (LHM) is taking place July 5-7 in Winnipeg. As the title might suggest, it’s intended to get participants thinking about outreach. To that end, it will feature main speakers, workshops, worship events (including a special 25th Anniversary celebration for LCC, which many of our local congregations will also be attending), and joint events with the National Youth Gathering which is also taking place in Winnipeg at the same time.

I was asked to be one of the workshop presenters at Reach Out Canada. Here’s my blurb as it appears on LHM’s website.

Pop-Culture Today: What’s God got to do with it?

Speaker: Mathew Block
Communications Manager of Lutheran Church–Canada
Editor of The Canadian Lutheran magazine
Description: Christians in North America are inundated with Hollywood movies, internet videos, best-selling books, and countless new songs. Wherever we go, pop-culture is there. It’s on the radio in our cars. It’s our televisions at home and on our computers. It’s on the smartphones we’re carrying in our pockets. As Christians, we’re called to think critically about the culture we’re immersed in. So what’s God got to do with pop-culture? Come and find out—and in the process find out how pop-culture can be a tool for sharing your faith with others.

For more information on Reach Out Canada and to register, click here. Registrations are due at the beginning of July. Hope to see some of you there!

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I’ve mentioned before that I did a radio interview on visiting the Holy Land and wrote a few blog posts during the trip at The Canadian Lutheran. That material was fodder for a larger article I was working on, which appeared in the March/April issue of The Canadian Lutheran. The article is entitled “Where Jesus walked,” and reflects on the experience of visiting the Holy Land as a catalyst for understanding what it means that God became Man. [See the web version here or download the (better version) pdf here.]

Visiting the Holy Land drives home for us the mystery of the Incarnation—not just because this is where Jesus was born, but rather because this is where Jesus lived. We go to Nazareth, where He grew up. We go to Nazareth, where He grew up. We see Capernaum, the village He moved to once He began His ministry. We travel by boat on the Sea of Galilee, the place where He once walked upon the waters, where He calmed storms and granted faith to a doubting heart. We see the land in which He walked, in which He taught, in which He lived and interacted with family, friends, strangers, and enemies… This is the place God became Man—where “the Word became flesh,” as John writes, “and made His dwelling among us” (John 1:14).

Note carefully that last word: us. We too are part of this story. Though we did not live when Jesus walked the hills of Galilee, we too are the people with whom He made His dwelling.

I go on to explain just how exactly we are part of Christ’s story. Along the way, I discuss the Herod the Great’s beneficence in Caesarea and maleficence in Bethlehem; the relationship between God-acting-then and God-acting-now; Zeus and the crumbled Gates of Hell; the presence of God at the Mercy Seat in the Temple; and the empty tomb.

As you can tell, the article is as more theological/devotional than news reporting. But I also wrote something for First Things recently where I discuss current events in relation to the Holy Land. Specifically, I look at the plight of Christians Israel and Palestine—a situation which is surprisingly more fragile than many Christians seem to realize.

A few months ago when I traveled to Israel with the Canadian Church Press, I visited the Western Wall only to learn the area had been the scene of violence earlier that morning. The Jerusalem Post reports that a number of Muslims gathered for afternoon prayer at the Temple Mount March 8 began throwing rocks at Israeli officers on the bridge which leads to the Western Wall plaza. The event ended with Israeli police entering the Muslim area, using stun grenades to disperse the rioters who were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. When we arrived at the nearby Western Wall later in the day, a very large number of police officers were still on site.

That is often the way the rest of the world views disagreement in the Holy Land: as conflict between Jews and Muslims. Less often remembered are the Christians of Israel and Palestine.

I go on to discuss the difficulty Christians face in both Israel and Palestine as a result of extremist Jewish and extremist Muslim groups—which range from psychological intimidation, to arson, to physical violence. “Christian visitors to the Holy Land have little reason to fear for their own safety; their security is well-established, as I write in my conclusion, “but the situation for indigenous Christians is another matter. How to reverse anti-Christian sentiments among extremist groups in both Israel and Palestine is not clear; what is clear is that the Christians of the Holy Land need our prayers. They also need us to speak for them, to petition Israel and Palestine to ensure the safety and freedom of Christians within their borders.”

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Last week Statistics Canada released the new numbers on faith in Canada. See my article at First Things discussing the changes here. The big news? From 2001 to 2011, the percentage of the Canadian population identifying as Christian dropped ten percent—from 77% to 67.3%.

Read more here.

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I’m late to the party on this one, but I still want to take the time to note the important discussion of sanctification that took place last month on “Strange Herring,” a blog by Lutheran writer Anthony Sacramone. His question (and one too many of us are left sharing) is why so much of contemporary Lutheranism seems soft on discipleship. It’s certainly not Scripture’s fault; Christians are clearly called to live life differently as a result of their salvation through Christ. It’s certainly not something we can blame on Luther either; he’s the one who first named the heresy of antinomianism, after all. Nor is it the fault of our confessions; there’s that whole “third use of the law” thing. And the early Lutheran fathers were similarly clear on the importance of holy living. (See more on all this here and here.

And yet, some contemporary Lutherans seem to have abandoned any discussion about what the “inner man” accomplishes as the Holy Spirit works in us to kill the “outer man” (ie, “the Old Adam”). Too many influential works seem infected with an almost antinomian strain. One prominent example: Gerhard Forde’s On being a Theologian of the Cross. While good in many ways, this book explicitly contradicts the Lutheran confessions by denying the Third Use of the Law. It worries me, therefore, that so many quote-unquote “confessional” Lutherans recommend it so unreservedly.

I recently discussed Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian over at First Things, focusing on the subject of good works in the Christian’s life. I’ve also broached the subject of modern-day Lutherans being slack on sanctification on this blog in the past too. But I’m glad to see it under discussion in the wider Lutheran blogosphere. The impetus for the most recent sanctification-debate was Anthony Sacramone’s reading of a Gospel Coalition review of Rev. Jonathan Fisk’s recent book Broken: 7 “Christian” Rules that Every Christian Ought to Break. That led to Sacramone’s important post “Is Lutheranism Broken?” Go read it. The next day, he put up his own review of Broken. It’s likewise insightful and worth reading. While you’re at it, read his 2012 post on “Lutherans and Sanctification” too.\

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