The Obligitory Election Cycle Non-Sermon

In today's blog:  How you should vote and why you should be concerned about the latest Pew Poll on Religious affiliation.

Its that time again when we are on the cusp of electing a new President, all of our Representatives to the House and 1/3 of our Senators.  Its an anxious, yet at the same time, exciting time to be an American.

In times like these I often get asked, "Pastor, who do you think I should vote for?" or, "What do you think about ...xyz issue?"  Questions which I try my best to dodge, lest my political leanings would obscure the grace of Christ I preach, but more on that later.

As a church we are non-political.  Yet, as Lutherans with an understanding of Luther's Two Kingdoms theology, we believe that each of us is called to be active in the political process.  What does that mean?  Well let me give one example:  As a church we may value all life and we might preach against certain laws which degrade life or put it at risk, but we can not officially endorse specific candidates.

Why not?  Well, the main reason explained to me is that we would risk loosing our tax exempt status as a religious institution.  I haven't checked that out fully, but I would venture to guess that its a protestant dodge to committing to anything controversial.  After all, we often see the Roman Catholic bishops and priests and non-denominational preachers using their bully pulpits for political action and non of them have gotten in trouble with the IRS--yet.

The point is, as Luther explains in his explanation of the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer (in both his small and large catechisms) we are to ask God for our daily bread which includes good government.  We are praying that God would give us leaders who would not molest or harm us and our free exercise of our religion.  In Luther's day there were no elections, so perhaps this prayer was prayed more fervently as kings fell from and ascended to their thrones.

But in 21st century USA, God has placed a great amount of that selection process into the hands of us, the voters--so then, when we pray to God for daily bread, we pray that he would move us, and others, to vote for those who would best serve the people they rule over so that we might obey and follow them as the authorities they have been appointed to be.

This brings us to my next point.  One of our Redeemer members, Bryan Hileman, was reading the KC Star this AM where they had an article about the most recent Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey (you can also click on the title to read it) in which for the first time in its history, Protestants no longer are in the majority.  No big deal, right?  We are a pluralistic society in which all views are tollerated and, even, accepted, right?

Well, yes, but I feel this trend is very disturbing to us a the Church because it convicts us not doing what Christ has called us to do as believers, AND, it also means that we have, potentially, abdicated our influence in providing godly leaders.

"Come on Perry.  Aren't you on a bit dramatic?"  No, and hear me out on this.  As protestants we are defined by the fact that we preach that the grace of God is free in Jesus Christ--that there is nothing man can do to merit eternal life and salvation.  We are the only branch of Christianity which preaches this and Christianity is the only religion which does not center salvation on the works of the self.  We believe that we have the best-option, if you will, of all the flavors of religion at the spiritual soda fountain.  We are the (fill in the name of your favorite ice cream flavor here) and the rest of the choices are like rubarb-onion-sardine slush.  Yet, we are not moving the product.  It sits in the cooler while all the other, clearly inferior, choices are being scooped up like mad.

Why?  We have been hiding our flavor in the back, where no one can see it and where no one can taste it.  We have been so content to sit with our brand of faith, hording its delicious goodness, perhaps even afraid that it will run out (did we forget about the feeding of the 5000?) that we just stopped passing it around.  After all, we were in the overwhelming majority for 200 years, why would we worry about sharing grace when "everyone we know" already has it.  Well, clearly, they don't.  And that has political implications.

If people who truly know and understand grace are no longer in the majority, it will be that much more difficult to elect those who do.  Even now, none of our Supreme Court Justices are protestant and nearly have of them are ready to retire, ready to be replaced.  When someone knows grace, they give grace.  When someone does not know grace, they live under the Law.  And someone who is weighed down by the Law will tend to make others bend and bow to that law that they so loathe themselves.  And that's the kind of rule that our forefathers sought to escape when they fled Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

So the long and short of this little note today is you need to go out and vote this November.  Vote for those who you feel will uphold and support the kind of life that you value and uphold living under the Grace of Christ, rather than the laws of men.  But more importantly, in order to make that choice easier, perhaps we should be more focused on our first calling; to make disciples of Jesus Christ, by sharing that most-important gift of all with everyone we know--the Grace of Jesus.

Blessings on your deliberations and my God bless each one of you with his grace.  And, may God Bless America through your votes.

Is New Really Better? Well, no, and, yes! A comparison of CFL's and Baptism

This might get a little long but, trust me, there is a point.  Skip to the end if you want to preview that point.

I get a newsletter from my electric company every once in a while telling me how wonderfully they supply power to my home and how worthy they are of my $188/mo.  Today's email featured CFL's and the fact that incandescent bulbs have been declared illegal within a couple of years and you can't even get 100 watt versions anymore. 

This really bummed me out.  I recently got a pretty good deal on some CFL bulbs and now I know why.  They are terrible.  I bought two types; 13 watt (replaces 60 watt standard bulbs) and replacements for the spot-lights in my kitchen and bath.  I think the worst part is that they don't work right away.  When I flick the switch there is now this 1/2 second delay between power to the bulb and its lighting up.  Mind you, a 1/2 second won't kill anyone.  But then when they finally fire up, they aren't really working either.  They cast such a dim light that you can actually look up at them and see the coiled inner bulb inside the reflector housing of the spotlight.  It takes 1 to 2 minutes for them to finally create enough heat or whatever is needed to get them to shine at their fullest potential luminosity.

And then there is disposal--nothing lasts forever, you know.  Did you know that these things have mercury in them and that you cannot, legally, dispose of them in the trash in many states?  And even if it is legal where you live, would you want to knowing the horrible things it does to the environment and your health?  (read more about it here and here).

But as I read further, there were more problems.  How many times have we been changing a bulb when it slips out of our fingers and breaks on the tile/wood floor?  Well, if this happens to you with a CFL bulb, you might as well call in a Haz-mat team and declare your home a Superfund Cleanup site.  Here is the nonchelant way in which they instruct you to do your own cleanup.  Note, they come from the EPA!!   That's right, the Environmental PROTECTION Agency.

It would seem that in our human quest to be better, cleaner, more efficient, whatever, that we are willing as a society to overlook some very sobering facts.  Facts that could be quite deadly if not taken seriously, yet, it would seem to me that they haven't been taken seriously.  After all, how many Americans are going to add a third bin in the Garage?  TRASH-check, RECYCLE-check, TOXIC WASTE-what?!?!?!  I know our trash service doesn't pick that up, so who is really going to dispose of those things properly.  I suspect we will all do what we always to.  Feign ignorance and just hide our dirty little secrets in the trash.

We do this spiritually as well.  We  say we're sorry, but do we really mean it.  We pretend that we didn't mean to cheat on our taxes or that we were only going "5 or 10 over" the speed limit as if its a fluid or relative guideline which slides depending upon  our personal wants or needs.  We do this will all of the Law.  We don't put God first, and we seldom love our neighbors as ourselves.

But God offers the greatest clean-up plan out there--its called grace.  What's that?  Its the free gift of forgiveness available to all people because of what Jesus did on the cross in our place.  He paid for our sin.  He is the haz-mat containment unit which mitigates our sin.  He allows us to enter God's presence and his kingdom without us stinking up the place, because the stench of sin has been removed from us.  Of particular help in understanding this is the beautiful act of Baptism whereby all sin that we inherited from our fore-bearers, all the way back to Adam and Eve, is literally washed away from us.  The one toxin which could keep us out of heaven, is mitigated forever.  No sticky tape, no wet paper towels, no evacuations of the house.  Just pure, unadulterated love and forgiveness.

That kind of mercy is not only refreshing, but powerful--trans-formative even.  Having been transformed, then, you now look for a way to live in that new state of Grace.  You ask questions like, "How can I show God how much I appreciate what he has done for me?" and, "who can I share this wonderful feeling with?" and, "who do I know who doesn't have this grace?  How can I share God's mercy with them?"

Each of us who has been baptized is this new creation--we have been born again.

Don't feel it?  Don't worry, that doesn't mean you aren't forgiven or that you are not a new being, but perhaps its just been awhile since you spent time considering it.  Each of us moves through life at such a fast pace, that perhaps we have feigned ignorance about just how far from the depths of hell we have been snatched.  Maybe we haven't truly prepared ourselves before confession and absolution?  Maybe we haven't really considered what it took to place the body and blood of Christ in that bread and wine?  But, maybe, the next time we replace that old light bulb with the new one, we will.  And when we put things in perspective, the grace and mercy we receive in Absolution and Holy Communion is just that much sweeter.

Peace today.
Perry

Lutheran Theology in the New York Times

I found this on the "Lutheran Confessions" blog today.   I basically makes the argument that the German ethos of Austerity is a Lutheran value whereby we do with less so that we can help others help themselves.  You can read it here or click through to the Times by clicking on the underlined title below. 

By STEVEN OZMENT

Published: August 11, 2012

German Austerity's Lutheran Core

IF there’s one nationality the rest of the world thinks it readily and totally understands, it is the Germans. Combine their deep involvement with Nazism and anti-Semitism and, voilà! — 2,000 years of gripping, complex history vanishes.

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Illustration by Miles Donovan, images by Lucas Cranach/Hulton Archive — Getty Images, and Markus Schreiber/Associated Press

Since the beginning of the euro crisis, this reductionism, which can be found inside Germany as much as outside it, has come in the form of sifting through the fatal legacy of the Weimar era, the years of promising democracy that began in the defeat and humiliation of World War I and ended with the Nazi takeover in 1933. 

¶ On the one hand, we’re told, the 1920s legacy of destabilizing inflation explains Germany’s staunch aversion to expansionary monetary and fiscal policies today; on the other hand, the Nazi taint on the interwar years seems to prove for some that, even in 2012, the intentions of democratic Germany can’t be trusted when it comes to Europe’s well-being.

¶ But rather than scour tarnished Weimar, we should read much deeper into Germany’s incomparably rich history, and in particular the indelible mark left by Martin Luther and the “mighty fortress” he built with his strain of Protestantism. Even today Germany, though religiously diverse and politically secular, defines itself and its mission through the writings and actions of the 16th century reformer, who left a succinct definition of Lutheran society in his treatise “The Freedom of a Christian,” which he summarized in two sentences: “A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none, and a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all.”

¶ Consider Luther’s view on charity and the poor. He made the care of the poor an organized, civic obligation by proposing that a common chest be put in every German town; rather than skimp along with the traditional practice of almsgiving to the needy and deserving native poor, Luther proposed that they receive grants, or loans, from the chest. Each recipient would pledge to repay the borrowed amount after a timely recovery and return to self-sufficiency, thereby taking responsibility for both his neighbors and himself. This was love of one’s neighbor through shared civic responsibility, what the Lutherans still call “faith begetting charity.”

¶ How little has changed in 500 years. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, a born-and-baptized daughter of an East German Lutheran pastor, clearly believes the age-old moral virtues and remedies are the best medicine for the euro crisis. She has no desire to press a secular ideology, let alone an institutional religious faith, on her country, but her politics draws unmistakably from an austere and self-sacrificing, yet charitable and fair, Protestantism.

¶ If Ms. Merkel refuses to support so-called euro bonds, it is not because it would be like giving free money to the undeserving poor but because it would not help the redeemed poor take responsibility for their own houses and grow strong for both themselves and their needy neighbors. He who receives, recovers and profits from society in a time of need has a moral responsibility to pay society back by acting in turn as a strong citizen who can help fill the common chests and sacrifice for his now needy neighbors, who had once helped him. Such is the sacrificial Lutheran society.

¶ For this point of view Ms. Merkel has been derided as the “austerity queen,” and worse. But she is undeterred. She admits that austerity is the toughest road home but hastens to add that it is also the surest and quickest way to recover the economy and gain full emancipation from the crisis. Luther would agree.

¶ According to polls, so do Ms. Merkel’s fellow Germans. They hold tight to their belief, born of staunch Lutheran teachings, that human life cannot thrive in deadbeat towns and profligate lands. They know that money is a scarce commodity that has to be systematically processed, recorded and safeguarded before being put out to new borrowers and petitioners.

¶ And they take comfort in the fact that, unlike what they consider the disenchanted, spendthrift countries of Greece and Italy, those living in model German lands have obeyed the chancellor’s austerity laws and other survival programs designed for a fair, shared recovery.

¶ But if their Lutheran heritage of sacrificing for their neighbors makes Germans choose austerity, it also leads them to social engagement. In classic Lutheran teaching, the salvation of the believer “by faith alone” does not curtail the need for constant charitable good works, as ill-informed critics allege. Faith, rather, empowers the believer to act in the world by taking the worry out of his present and future religious life.

¶ It is true that Lutheranism, as a faith, has declined in Germany in recent decades, as the forces of multiculturalism and secularism have washed over the country. And yet witness the warmth with which Germans of all backgrounds embraced their new president, Joachim Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor.

¶ And it is true that Lutheranism is hardly the only social force alive in Germany today. Yet it is of a piece with the country’s two millenniums of history, filled as it is with redemptive self-sacrifice and bootstrapping. In the fourth century A.D., German warriors controlled virtually every senior military post in the Roman army. Later, Germans turned the wilds of northern Central Europe into a bountiful breadbasket — and, most recently, an industrial machine.

¶ What’s more, Lutheranism survived both right-wing Nazism and left-wing Communism, both of which tried to replace its values with their own. If anything, its resilience comes to the fore when challenged by change.

¶ With the steady advance of Islam into Europe over the last two decades and in the face of unrelenting economic pressure from their neighbors, it is no surprise that Germans of all backgrounds have now again quietly found “a mighty fortress” for themselves in their own Judeo-Christian heritage.

¶Steven Ozment is a professor of history at Harvard and the author of “The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 12, 2012, on page SR10 of the New York edition with the headline: German Austerity’s Lutheran Core.

Corporate Generosity???

$314 Bonus

August 1, 2012 by faithandworkinitiative

I read countless journals, papers, websites, newsletters, and blogs about business, ethics, and faith. Yet if it weren’t for the keen eyes of Jonathan, my research assistant, I’d have missed this story. It takes place in China. It is a story about an unusual act of marketplace generosity. It took place at Lenovo, the world’s second-largest PC vendor, known to many as the company who acquired IBM’s former Personal Computer Division in 2005.  Here’s the upshot:

Click on the link in the title to read more about the Chinese CEO who gave away 60% of his year-end bonus to lower level workers to thank them for enabling the company to have  70% increase in profits.  David Miller then puts this story in perspective of the Parable of the vineyard owner who pays all the workers equally, no matter when they got to the job-site.  An interesting study in generosity.