jWinters.com

jWinters.com is in the process of some new developments. I’m going to get it back up in a few, but in the meantime, visit http://universitylutheranchurch.org and see what we’re doing there.

When Jeremiah is writing the prophetic book of his own name, he is doing so with one clear image in mind – the exile of God’s people by Babylon. God has just shown Jeremiah that Hebrew people are going to be taken by Babylon into exile and live there for seventy years. God does promise that after those 70 years (roughly a life time, similar to the way in which the 40 year wilderness wanderings cost the people of Israel a lifetime) the people will return.

Here in chapter 31, Jeremiah is given a vision to tell the people of Israel about their return – their “reverse exile”. One of the striking images of this reverse exile is the inclusion of people who Babylon would likely not have brought along: “among them the blind and the lame, the pregnant woman and she who is in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here.” (Jeremiah 31) God’s inclusion of these people, and even His failure to mention any of the “important” people of Israel is telling. God cares to include the people who would otherwise not be included.

This doesn’t change the fact that the people who are returning are still weeping. There is sin to be confessed and repented of. Inclusion doesn’t keep us from discipline, it dares us to enter into it.

Since this is “Reformation Week” with “Reformation Day” being the 31st, it may be interesting to note that the Reformer-in-Chief, Martin Luther wrote a thesis called “On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” In this thesis, Luther accuses the Roman Catholic church of his day of holding the church hostage like the exiles of the Old Testament. It is clear that has Luther was writing this, he was praying for a day when he would see a “reverse exile” like that mentioned here in Jeremiah 31.

This started as an addition to “Living the Lectionary”, a resource of University Lutheran. You can find more about Living the Lectionary at http://universitylutheranchurch.org/category/living-the-lectionary/

“Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him.” Ecclesiastes 5:18

I was birthed as a pastor into the world of pastors blogging. I had my first “real” blog at the end of my vicarage (internship) year. I used to write a lot. Now I write a little. I’m not sure either is good. I’m not convinced that pastors blogging is a bad thing, nor am I foolhardy enough to look at the words shared to think that the Holy Spirit would have us writing half of what we do.

So when I do blog here lately, it is largely out of concern – sometimes knee-jerk reactions that are more “jerk” than “knee”. And today is no different. I see something being spread all over my social media feeds, and like a concerned CDC employee, I can’t but help to sound the alarm bells as I see what appears to be an especially pernicious pandemic-level sin: justification by blog.

Recently a fancy pastor revealed that he had a problem that disqualified him from ministry. This was especially damaging to people of my tribe (the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) because this pastor was said to be more than an ally — perhaps as far as an adopted child. Either way, we liked him. Sometimes secretly, but we liked him.

We liked him and he went and sinned. Sinned big. Sinned in a “disqualified from ministry” way. 

But here’s the thing. It FELT like WE sinned.

And because it felt like we sinned, we decided to go on a campaign to justify the wrongs. We decided that we needed to do so in order to keep our theology of free grace that can sometimes be abused, even by pastors. We needed to show that we were still in the right.

So we, us blogging pastors of Lutheran and Presbyterian stripes, went to our keyboards. We wrote things like “I’m 99% sure you’ll never read this, Rev. Fancy Pastor,” (really, I’ve seen this phrase in at least 3 posts)….and then we kept on writing. We kept on writing about how the law should be followed, how we were hurt, how sanctification is in order, and our prescriptions for Rev. Fancy Pastor. 

And we sat back. Took a deep breath. Clicked publish. Felt better. Felt righteous.

May our Lord and Savior never do the same to us when we are found in sin ourselves; and may we ever thank Him for HIS method of justification.

Having grown up outside of the culture of the United States, I have always been interested by American idioms. An idiom is a piece of language – a phrase or word – which does not reveal its meaning in its surface level reading. I remember my principal in 7th grade telling my class that he was “teed off”, and being particularly confused about what the misbehavior of my class had to do with his golf game, and why that made him visibly angry. 

In fact, to understand “teed off”, I soon found out that you had to go down a linguistic rabbit hole to find out that what he was *actually* alluding to was the somewhat more vulgar “pissed off”. Again, I couldn’t make much sense out of how urination figured into my class’ misbehavior. I knew what he meant, or at least I thought that I was emotionally intelligent enough to discern that he was meaning that he was angry, but his words baffled me.

Christians are used to employing a great number of idioms in their speech. Even the name of one of our central doctrines, “justification”, is somewhat of an idiom in that it is borrowed courtroom language to explain a theological reality.  Thankfully, those who engage with Christianity are often emotionally intelligent enough to figure out what we are saying, or at least a modicum of the idea —- but what words are we using and why?

I’d love to hear about your “Christian idioms” that you’ve encountered. Please use FB, Twitter, or the comments section below to interact. Thanks!