Good Halloween Article

I found this article quite helpful in developing a Reformed Catholic view of Halloween – “Is Halloween a Witches’ Brew?” by Harold L. Myra.

All Saints’ Day/ Reformation Day

Here is something I wrote a few years ago on the subject. 

And here are some more developed thoughts that I didn’t have time to write then!

“Reformation Day Thoughts (09)” - a talk I plan to give to at a church gathering on Oct. 31.

Academic Mission Opportunity

I came across an exciting mission opportunity for academics. This organization sends Christian teachers into other countries, finding positions for them in secular universities. A quote on their home-page says it all:

“The university is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world. Change the university and you change the world,” declared Dr. Charles Malik, former president of the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council.

Ascension and the Lord’s Supper

The Ascension of Christ is essential to our understanding of the Lord’s Supper.  Of course, most of what happens to us at this Table remains a mystery, but we can say a few things, given what we know about Christ.  We know that Christ is in heaven, seated at the Father’s right hand.  We also know that Jesus Christ still has a resurrection body.  Many Christians have never thought about this, but it is true.  John says that we don’t know what the resurrection will be like, but we know that we will be like Jesus (1 Jn. 3:2).  And we know that Jesus had a real body that Thomas could touch and feel.  Jesus ate and drank after his resurrection.  This table prepares us for heaven.  Revelation tells us that heaven will be the wedding feast of the Lamb.  We will eat and drink with Jesus in heaven.  We are eating and drinking with him now, in the Church.  But, we often assume heaven will be less than what we know now.  We think we’ll float around, playing harps.  But, what if heaven is an eternal banquet with tastes and pleasures that would make your mind explode now?  Perhaps, when Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding at Cana, he was bringing a little bit of heaven to earth.  Whatever heaven will be, we must guard against the gnostic heresy, which says our bodies are not important to our salvation.  Christ came to save the world, including our bodies.  In the Ascension, Christ took a human body back up to heaven.  Things have changed at the center of the universe.  We can’t go back.  A grand and glorious party is coming.  Don’t be left behind.  If you’ve been baptized, and are not under church discipline, then you are already wearing the wedding garments, and you need to come to this party.

Ascension Day

Thursday was Ascension Day.  Most of American Evangelicals do not know that.  And this is quite ironic.  We just celebrated Mothers’ Day.  Woe to you if you forgot this Most Holy Day!  Memorial Day is coming up.  Most of America has some exciting plan for Memorial Day.  Maybe a few people will actually visit the graves of our fallen soldiers.  But, Ascension Day?  Isn’t that Roman Catholic?  Well, it also happens to be one of the days the Reformers celebrated.  Ascension Day celebrates the ascension of our Lord and Savior back into heaven.  Jesus Christ was the God-Man.  He was God, who became Man, in order to take mankind back into the heavenly places with him.  You see, Jesus did not ascend alone.  As the Head of the Church, our Head ascended back into heaven.  And the location of the head affects the location of the body.  If the head is under water, the body spazzes for a while, and then dies.  But if the head is above the water, the body can be totally under water.  In the same way, if our head were still submerged in this sinful world, we would soon be shark-food.  But, since our Head is at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, we are filled with life, and we kick sharks in the face.  Where our Head is makes all the difference in this world, and the next.  So, let’s reclaim this wonderful Feast Day of the Church.  Our Lord is risen, Amen!  But the glory doesn’t stop there.  Our Lord is ascended into heaven.  Glory!  Hallelujah!  Because he ascended into heaven, we, too, will ascend into heaven.  Blessed be the name of our risen and ascended Lord.  But, we are not fit for heaven while we cling to this sinful life.  So, let us confess our remaining sins to Almighty God …

Easter Meditation

Excerpt from an Easter Sermon by Gregory Nazianzen (bishop of the Eastern church in the late 300s):

“Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us.  Let us become  God’s for His sake, since He for ours became Man.  He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich; He took upon Him the form of a servant that we might receive back our liberty; He came down that we might be exalted; He was tempted that we might conquer; He was dishonoured that He might glorify us; He died that He might save us; He ascended that He might draw to Himself us, who were lying low in the Fall of sin.  Let us give all, offer all, to Him Who gave Himself a Ransom and a Reconciliation for us.  But one can give nothing like oneself, understanding the Mystery, and becoming for His sake all that He became for ours” (Oration I.5).

Practical Help for Keeping the Sabbath

Get serious (and joyful!) about keeping the Sabbath: Abondante Living.

Exhortation – 1st Sunday in Advent

Today is the first Sunday in Advent, and marks the beginning of the Western Church Year.  The Church has traditionally taken the four weeks before Christmas to meditate on the coming of Christ, and to pray that he would come again.   As we seek further reformation in the CREC, many of us want to celebrate the Church Year at least as much as we celebrate the civil calendar, if not more.  It is a question of basic allegiance: whose calendar is more important, the State’s or God’s?    But this makes many people nervous.  Is this not a return to Roman Catholicism?  Does celebrating Advent make us Episcopalian? 

Black Friday

 If this weren’t so ridiculous, I’d cry.

Supreme Irony: on the day that we are supposed to give thanks, Americans were showing what they really worship.  Instead of feasting with their families, they were lining up in a consumer feeding-frenzy.  Of course, as Romans 1 shows us, the atheist begins as one who will not say “Thank You.”  Holidays replace Holy Days, and American holidays reveal what we consider holy.  The Christmas rush is too easy a target to shoot down here, but consider how most Americans spend their Sundays: lying prostrate before their household god, worshipping the idol of professional sports.  What we do on Holy Days reveals what we really worship.

All Hallow’s Eve

I don’t have time to defend celebrating Halloween in a distinctly Christian or Reformational way.  We had our “traditional” pot pie and German beer, followed by a rousing liturgy of children chanting the 5 Solas (while banging toy hammers), Bible readings, and hymns.  Perhaps I’ll post that liturgy later.

I was struck, however, by the attempt of local churches to provide an alternative to Halloween.  I drove past one church which had set up inflatable jump-houses and various other fun, exciting things for kids to do.  All in the name of an “Old-Fashioned Fall Fesitval”.  Yes, jump around like your grandpappy used to! 

But, why celebrate Fall?  What Biblical reason do we have to celebrate the seasons?  Sounds like ancient paganism to me … Our family has a long way to go, but we are trying to celebrate the Church Year with more feasting and more candy, not less.  Last night, we celebrate the Communion of the Saints and God’s mighty acts in history, as well as his providence over the seasons. 

So much of the Christian reaction to what the world has done to Church holidays is still too worldly.  Like contemporary Christian music, or some “Christian” curricula, we just copy the world’s way of doing things without stopping to think about deeper meanings. 

Belated Pentecost Musings

We had a wonderful Pentecost, complete with presents, multi-cultural cuisine and wines from various continents (thanks to Gregg Strawbrigde up at All Saints’ for the food ideas). In our liturgy, we had fun mis-pronouncing various languages, all reveling in the gift of the Holy Spirit. I’ve posted further thoughts on Protestants celebrating the Church Holydays at Wittenberg Hall. I also included our Pentecost liturgy there, hoping that others might find it useful, and perhaps spur on others to improve upon it.

Feminine Christmas

Recently, I mused about why the Church celebrates Christmas more than Easter, and got good feedback which suggested that this is a modern aberration. Leon Podles confirms this:

“A woman relates erotically to a man not only as a husband and lover but also as a son and child. If the Christian should be feminine, as the Aristotelians maintained, he (or much more often, she) can relate as a mother to Christ. From this comes the devotion to the Christ child, and the importance of Christmas, which long ago eclipsed Easter as the greatest Christian feast in the Western church” (The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, 119).

This was an intriguing book, filled with statistics you can’t argue with and provocative theories of why women feel more at home in church (at least in the Western church). Essential reading for all men who want to lead their families in the Way of the Cross. (Podles points out continually that male strength and leadership are primarily for the purpose of self-sacrifice. More men who beat their chests about “headship” should ponder this…)

Resurrection Day Bash

We had abouth half our church over for a Resurrection Day Bash. Feasting, psalm-singing, egg-tossing, pin-the-body-on-the-Docetist, and the 1st Annual Westminster Shorter Catechism Obstacle Course made it a truly festive day. We hope the rest of the neighborhood noticed how much fun the Christians were having on this holiest of holy days. He is risen indeed!

Easter Traditions

For a good introduction to why we have easter eggs and such, see Easter Eggs, Easter and Pretty Good Incarnational Theology. I shared this article with my 8th graders after we had a discussion about why we do what we do on Easter. They had no idea, but made up some creative justifications for easter eggs and candy. Good thing we don’t have any man-made taditions in the Bible Belt!

Resurrection Day vs. Christmas?

1 Peter 1:3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Why doesn’t the Church make as big a deal over Easter as it does over Christmas?

Our hope depends entirely on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, if all this is just a myth or a profound story, our faith is vain and empty (1 Cor. 15:13-20). If Christ did not rise from the dead, you are still in your sins.

We should celebrate Easter in the same way we celebrate Christmas, if not more! If all Jesus did was become man, live a good life, and then die like every other man, we would be without hope in the world. Lots of men have lived good lives, but their obedience does not profit us at all. Our hope of redemption is not a cute little babe laying in a manger. Christ came to us while we were still enslaved in Egypt. Christ came to us in the dark night of sin. We need to hear more about sin and depravity at Christmas, and we need to have more resurrection-feasting and resurrection-celebration at Easter.

This is not simply a question of how to celebrate non-Biblical holidays. Liberals love the baby Jesus, but they hate the Son of God reigning at God’s right hand. They don’t have to submit and bow the knee to a baby, though wise men do. I don’t think it’s coincidence that our culture loves Christmas and neglects Easter and Ascension Day. We want peace, love, and joy to all the earth, but we suppress the fact that peace and love can only be found through the crucifixion. Joy only comes when we are crucified with Christ—and crucifixion involves pain, to say the least.

Confessional Harmony & Catholicity

The “Harmonia confessionum fidei” of 1581 was produced by Protestants in Geneva and Zurich in order to present a united front against Roman Catholicism. Jean-Francois Salvard was the chief assembler (though Beza and Deneau had a hand) of this harmony of Reformed confessions. It was, according to Schaff, the “first attempt at comparative Dogmatics or Symbolics.”

The preface should be posted on every theological web-forum, especially the ones run by us Reformed folks:

“Magnificently says Ambrosius somewhere: ‘There shall not be discord but concored among the servants of Christ.’ Since such an indolence, especially in godly matters, reigns in the human heart, that we do not understand things, which are by the way completely clear, it is not possible to deny, that we may gain a great deal of light on the basis of join inquiry and of amicable and brotherly deliberation. And above all, that seems useful and necessary, that the sense of each other may be sharpened, in order that (the gifts) given by the Lord to particular members of the Church, shall be communicated for the best of the whole body, and that all bad passion shall be put aside in order to listen to Christ, who is the Wisdom of the Father, as the only master and doctor of the Church, in order that he, being the prince of peace, shall unite our hearts through his spirit, so as to, if possible, we all share in the Lord one and the same mind” (quoted in Fritz Busser, “Freedom in reformed confessions of the 16th Century,” Zwingliana, 1984/2).

New Year Scriptures

Scripture we read during our Sabbath morning meal on New Year’s Day (a little overview of redemptive history):

“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah … I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people,” (Jer. 31-31-33).

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new,” (2 Cor. 5:17)

“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation,” (Rev. 5:9)

“And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new …” (Rev. 21:5)