How the 1904 Marathon Became One of the Weirdest Olympic Events of All Time

History | Updated: June 27, 2024 | Originally Published: August 7, 2012

How the 1904 Marathon Became One of the Weirdest Olympic Events of All Time

Athletes drank poison, dodged traffic, stole peaches and even hitchhiked during the 24.85-mile race in St. Louis

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America’s first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre. Held in 1904 in St. Louis, the games were tied to that year’s World’s Fair, which celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase while advancing, as did all such turn-of-the-century expositions, the notion of American imperialism.

Although there were moments of surprising and genuine triumph (George Eyser, a gymnast with a wooden leg, earned six medals, including three gold), the games were largely overshadowed by the fair, which offered its own roster of sporting events, including the controversial Anthropology Days, in which a group of “savages” recruited from the fair’s international villages competed in a variety of athletic feats for the amusement of white spectators. 

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The Olympics’ signal event, the marathon, was conceived to honor the classical heritage of Greece and underscore the connection between the ancient and modern. But from the start, the 1904 marathon was less showstopper than sideshow, an absurdist spectacle that seemed more in keeping with the carnival atmosphere of the fair than the reverential mood of the games. After seeing how the event played out, officials nearly abolished it for good.

Some of the athletes competing in the marathon pose for a group photo. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The contenders

A few of the runners were recognized athletes who had either won or placed in the Boston Marathon or in previous Olympic marathons. Americans Sam Mellor, A.L. Newton, John Lordon, Michael Spring and Thomas Hicks, all experienced marathoners, were among the favorites.

But the majority of the field was composed of middle-distance runners and assorted oddball characters. Fred Lorz, an American who trained at night because he worked as a bricklayer by day, earned his spot in the Olympics by placing in a special five-mile race sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union. Other noteworthy contenders included two men from the Tswana tribe of South Africa—the first Black Africans to ever participate in the modern Olympics— who were in St. Louis as part of the South African World’s Fair exhibit. They are fabled to have arrived at the starting line barefoot, though photos show that at least one was wearing shoes.

Len Tau and Jan Mashiani were the first Black Africans to participate in the modern Olympics. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Then there was Félix Carvajal, a Cuban national and former mailman who raised money to come to the United States by demonstrating his running prowess throughout Cuba, once trekking the length of the island. Upon his arrival in New Orleans, he reportedly lost all his money in a dice game and had to walk and hitchhike to St. Louis. A 5-foot-1 man, he presented a slight but striking figure at the starting line, attired in a white, long-sleeved shirt; long, dark pants; a beret; and a pair of street shoes. Legend has it that one fellow Olympian took pity, found a pair of scissors and cut Carvajal’s trousers at the knee.

The main event

On August 30, at precisely 3:03 p.m., David R. Francis, president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, fired the starting pistol, and the men were off. Heat and humidity soared into the low 90s, and the 24.85-mile course—which one fair official called “the most difficult a human being was ever asked to run over”—wound across roads inches deep in dust. The race was slightly shorter than today’s marathons, which are almost always 26.2 miles. “This was more like cooking than civil engineering,” the New York Times wrote in 2012. “Race directors designed their courses by a sense of feel, not by a fastidious recipe.”

The course had seven hills, varying from 100 to 300 feet high, some with brutally long ascents. In many places, cracked stone was strewn across the roadway, creating perilous footing. The men had to constantly dodge crosstown traffic, delivery wagons, railroad trains, trolley cars and people walking their dogs. Cars carrying coaches and physicians motored alongside the runners, kicking the dust up and launching coughing spells.

There was only one spot where athletes could officially secure fresh water, 12 miles from the start of the race. (Carvajal somehow got a drink at a water tower six miles into the course.) James Sullivan, the chief organizer of the games, wanted to minimize fluid intake to test the limits and effects of purposeful dehydration, a common area of research at the time.

Hicks, an experienced runner from Massachusetts, led the 32 starters from the gun. William Garcia of California nearly became the first fatality of an Olympic marathon when he collapsed on the side of the road some eight miles from the finish. The dust had coated his esophagus and ripped his stomach lining, causing serious hemorrhaging. Had he gone unaided an hour longer, he might have bled to death.

Lordon, one of the Americans, suffered a bout of vomiting and gave up. Len Tau, one of the South African participants, was chased a mile off course by a wild dog. Carvajal trotted along in his cumbersome shoes and billowing shirt, making good time even though he paused to chat with spectators in broken English. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s car “passed the little Cuban three miles out, still running at an even gait, and he waved his cap and yelled enthusiastically,” as the paper reported the following day.

Félix Carvajal, a Cuban runner, is rumored to have cut his long pants off at the knee before the race. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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On one occasion, Carvajal stopped at a car, saw that its occupants were eating peaches, and asked for one. When the strangers refused, he playfully snatched two of the fruits and ate them as he ran. A bit further along the course, he stopped at an orchard and snacked on some apples, which turned out to be rotten. Suffering from stomach cramps, he laid down and took a nap. Mellor, now in the lead, also experienced severe cramping. He slowed to a walk and eventually stopped. At the nine-mile mark, cramps also plagued Lorz, who decided to hitch a ride in one of the accompanying automobiles, waving at spectators and fellow runners as he passed.

Sam Mellor, an American runner, experienced severe cramping during the event. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

At the time, the rules of the Olympic marathon “allowed runners to be coached and assisted by race officials,” writes George R. Matthews in America’s First Olympics: The St. Louis Games of 1904. Hicks, one of the early American favorites, “received an inordinate amount of coaching and some extraordinary assistance during the marathon.”

At the ten-mile mark, Hicks came under the care of a two-man support crew, whom he begged for a drink. They refused, instead sponging out his mouth with warm distilled water. Seven miles from the finish, his handlers fed him a concoction of strychnine and egg whites—the first recorded instance of drug use in the modern Olympics, which had no rules about performance-enhancing drugs at the time. Strychnine, in small doses, was commonly used a stimulant at the time; today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes it as a “strong poison” that is “used primarily as a pesticide, particularly to kill rats.” Hicks’ team also carried a flask of French brandy but decided to withhold it until they could gauge the runner’s condition.

Meanwhile, Lorz, recovered from his cramps, emerged from his 11-mile ride in the automobile. One of Hicks’ handlers saw him and ordered him off the course, but Lorz kept running and finished with a time of 3 hours, 13 minutes. The crowd roared. But the cheers quickly turned to boos as the truth came to light. Lorz smiled and claimed that he had never intended to accept the honor; he’d finished only for the sake of a joke.

The brandy-fueled victor

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Hicks, the strychnine coursing through his blood, had grown ashen and limp. When he heard that Lorz had been disqualified, he perked up and forced his legs into a trot. His trainers gave him another dose of strychnine and egg whites, this time with some brandy to wash it down. They fetched warm water and soaked his body and head. After the bathing, he appeared to revive and quickened his pace. Race official Charles Lucas wrote:

Over the last two miles of the road, Hicks was running mechanically—like a well-oiled piece of machinery. His eyes were dull, lusterless; the ashen color of his face and skin had deepened; his arms appeared as weights well tied down; he could scarcely lift his legs, while his knees were almost stiff.

Hicks reaches the 20-mile mark. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The athlete began hallucinating, believing the finish line was still 20 miles away. During the last mile, he begged for something to eat. Then he begged to lie down. He drank more brandy but was refused tea. He swallowed two more egg whites. He walked up the first of the last two hills, then jogged down on the incline. Swinging into the stadium, he tried to run but was reduced to a graceless shuffle. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch described the moments that followed:

There was not a semblance of the elastic spring with which he had started. He must have heard the uproar about him, but he betrayed no sign of it. He was past that. He did look up once when the din was at its height. He was within a few yards of the finish. His lower jaw was hanging as in imbecility, his eyes stared blankly, but his pitiful expression didn’t change.

Hicks’ trainers carried him over the line, holding him aloft while his feet moved back and forth, and he was declared the winner. It took four doctors and one hour for Hicks to feel well enough just to leave the grounds. He declared, “Never in my life have I run such a tough course. The terrific hills simply tear a man to pieces.” Hicks and Lorz would meet again at the Boston Marathon the following year, which Lorz won—this time without the aid of anything but his legs.

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Karen Abbott | | READ MORE

Karen Abbott is a contributing writer for history for SmithsonianMag.com and the author of the books Sin in the Second City and American Rose. Her forthcoming book, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, will be published by HarperCollins in September.

The Rise and Fall of Martin Stephan (24')

Taken from https://leben.us/rise-fall-martin-stephan/

The Lutheran religion did not get off to a fast start in America. None of the early explorers were Lutheran. Most of them were Roman Catholic or Anglican. None of the early settlers were Lutheran. In fact, Lutheranism did not come to America until Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden mentioned a planting of a Lutheran colony in 1624, about 125 years after the new land was discovered. His daughter Christina fulfilled this dream by sending over a colony of Lutheran Swedes to settle in Delaware in 1639. While this colony did not last, Lutherans by name have been in the country ever since.
Yet these so-called Lutherans were not always Lutheran. Calvinism, Piet-ism and Rationalism all had an effect on these people. Pastors were uneducated. They fell into trying to reform the rough life of the new land. They would preach both in Reformed and Lutheran pulpits. Even Muhlenburg, the father of Lutheranism in America, was not necessarily always a confessional pastor. This does not mean that there were not any confessional pastors in America. Men, like John Campanius, the Falckners, the Henkels and others stood firmly in their beliefs. On a whole, however, Lutheranism in America suffered.
Then in the early 1800s more and more confessional Lutherans began to come over to this country to escape Rationalism, especially from Germany. Most notably was a Saxon pastor, named Martin Stephan, who brought over a group of immigrants to St. Louis. This group would start what was the most confessional synod in America at that time, the Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod. This synod established confessional Lutheranism in America. Yet when the synod started, they were without their leader. Only a few months after Stephan led this confessional group to America, he was deposed and cast out of the colony for sinful actions. How could this happen? How could a confessional Lutheran pastor, who held so firmly to God’s Word, fall into such evil sins? How could he be disposed so quickly by a people who loved him and had just followed him to the new colony? Were they jealous of him? Were they looking for power? Or was Stephan deserving of this expulsion? These are the questions that we must examine if we are to understand the rise and fall of Martin Stephan.
Martin Stephan was born on August 13, 1777 in Stramberg, Moravia, which is now in the Czech Republic. His parents were originally Roman Catholic but had been converted to Protestantism before Mart-in was born. They raised Martin with a strict training in God’s Word and were teaching him the family trade, as a linen weaver. However Martin’s parents died when he was still young. His pastor, Johann Ephraim Scheibel saw promise in Stephan to be a pastor. So he gave him free access to the church’s library. This reading en-couraged him to become a pastor and gave him his conservative standpoint, which he held throughout his life.1 With the financial help of some Pietists, he was able to go to St. Elizabeth’s Gymnasium in Breslau before attending both the University of Halle and the University of Leipzig.
Stephan, however, did not graduate from either of these universities. Although he was gifted in many ways, Stephan seemed to have little interest in reading the classics, which were required for graduation from a university. Instead he spent much of the time reading the Pietists’s publications.2 He seemed only to be interested in religious affairs.
Upon leaving Leipzig, he served as a pastor in Bohemia for a year. Then in 1810, something happened to Stephan that would change his life forever. He was called to be a pastor at the unique congregation of St. John’s in Dresden.
St. John’s was formed by Bohemian refugees during the Thirty Years’ War. After the war ended, they were granted special rights by the government, even though they were considered part of the state church, because of their nationality. They could have irregular gatherings, which the state church normally prohibited, choose their own elders and pastors, and exercise their own church discipline. All of these privileges are important to understand when examining the rise of Martin Stephan.
Even though Stephan was not qualified to be called as a pastor in the state church because he had not graduated from a university, St. John’s could exercise its freedom and call the Bohemian to be their pastor. They did this at the recommendation of Court Preacher Doring. At first, Stephan did not stir up much interest. However, soon, Stephan’s fame would spread throughout all of Saxony.
Forster reports that in the first ten years that Stephan was there, membership increased six fold. At the end of 1819, St. John’s had over a thousand members.3 There are a couple of reasons for this increase. First, Stephan’s conservative approach to Scripture was in stark contrast to the rationalistic state church of Saxony. People came to see this man, who was preaching something different, and the Holy Spirit was at work through his preaching. Secondly, Stephan had a strong personality and great communication skills. This, humanly speaking, drew people to Stephan and to his church and soon he had many strong supporters.
Thus the fame and power of Stephan spread throughout all of Saxony. “More and more people looked to him for spiritual leadership. When people in trouble came to him for aid and found it, they went away not only, perhaps not even primarily, as converts to orthodoxy, but as personal champions of Stephan.”4 These champions would then in turn tell others about Stephan and soon people would come from all over Germany, from all walks of life to meet this man. He was famous.
One of the men who sought comfort from Stephan was a troubled student named C.F.W. Walther. Walther had sought help from a group of Pietists, but found no comfort. Instead “he was afflicted with serious doubt and suffered the most excruciating pains of spiritual diseases.”5 One of his friends suggested that he write to Pastor Stephan who had a reputation for helping those who could find an-swers to their troubles nowhere else. Walther took this advice and it changed his life.
When Pastor Stephan wrote a letter back to Walther, Walther was so scared that he fervently prayed to God that this letter would not be filled with what he deemed the false comfort of the Pietists.6 Fortunately it was not. Instead of pointing him to his own good works, Stephan pointed Walther to the atoning and universal work of Christ. He set him free from the burden of the law. Through this letter, and many others that were exchanged between these two men, Walther became a convinced Lutheran and an admired follower of Stephan because he had explained the gospel to him.
Despite his growing fame and power, Pastor Stephan’s Bohemian congregation was not completely happy with him. With all the new members that were coming in, they were feeling left out. They did not always welcome the new people that were from a different heritage than they. They liked their little Bohemian congregation with their special privileges and Stephan seemed to be ruining it. They did not think that he was fulfilling his pastoral duties to those who were actually his members.7 He was spending too much time counseling other people.
This led fellow pastors in the area to not be pleased with Stephan as well. It seems as if Stephan had no regard for the so-called “sheep stealing”, meaning taking members from other local congregations without their permission. To accommodate the growing crowds, Stephan had to hold six services every Sunday in both Bohemian (Czech) and German.8
The greatest opposition to Stephan came from his superiors in both the state church and the government. Stephan did not teach the rationalistic beliefs that his superiors in the state church taught. Instead, he held firmly to the truths confessed in the Lutheran confessions. The state church, however, could not depose Stephan because of the right, granted to the Bohemian congregation of St. John’s, that they could choose their own pastor. Instead of removing him, they attacked him in the press.
They attacked Stephan constantly, accusing him of running a sect. They said he was a separatist, who was causing criminal acts by his false, extreme teachings. They made these charges for many years and for the most part Stephan remained silent, letting his followers defend him. A few times, especially before 1823, he responded.
On one occasion in 1821, Stephan decided to defend himself. Writing back to those accusing him, he said, “I am not a member of any sect, old or new;…I am an evangelical Lutheran preacher and I preach the Word of God as recorded in the Bible…I preach the apostolic religion, which Luther preached in its purity with such courage.”9
Yet his accusers continued their attacks. Some would say that they had good reason to do so, not on the basis of what he taught, but on the basis of his actions. Stephan was known for his irregular meetings, especially late at night. These types of meetings were outlawed in Saxony for all people, even for churches, because they feared social riots. However, Stephan was allowed to do them because of the special rights given to his unique congregation. This made the legal authorities suspicious of Stephan.
Stephan claimed that these meetings were open forums, a question and answer session dealing with such things as the Formula of Concord.10 He claimed that he was doing nothing wrong at these meetings. Not everyone believed him. Many people thought that evil sins were being committed during these meetings. These suspicions rose higher and higher throughout the 1830s. No longer was Stephan just meeting with members of his church but he also began going on long walks, late at night with females.
After 1830, Stephan became extremely secretive about what was going on. Often these walks or meetings would be very late at night, going until two or three in the morning and would involve married or unmarried women. Stephan claimed that he needed these long walks to fall asleep and the women were free to come as they chose.11 Coupled with the fact that Stephan and his wife did not have the best marriage and he seemed to give little attention to his eight children, rumors about these meetings arose.
Accusations of sexual misconduct arose, but no matter how hard they tried, the authorities could not prove anything. They had a lot of wild accusations against him but they could not find substantial proof. Newspapers ran stories and cartoons depicting Stephan as a man acting immorally. People began to develop strong feelings and to take sides. Because of this, the authorities tried to dispose him from office. They feared that some sort of a riot would happen.
In November of 1837, the authorities planned a raid on Stephan’s private lodge, where many of these late night meetings took place to try and catch him in the act, but when the police raided the lodge at midnight, they did not find him there. Instead they found only five of his companions deep in conversation. Stephan himself was on a walk with a female companion. When he returned, both he and his companion were questioned for a long time but they would admit to doing nothing wrong.
On the very next day, however, the state was able to gather enough accusations and enough support to suspend Stephan from office. Previously Stephan had been arrested but had always been cleared of accusations. This time, however, was different. This suspension caught both Stephan and his close followers by surprise. They were not prepared for it. They thought that Stephan’s popularity, connected with his unique position at the Bohemian congregation, would save him from suspension. They were wrong. Because of this suspension, Stephan hastened his plans of coming to America.
Already in 1830, Stephan had thrown around the idea of coming to America with some of his closest friends. He had good reason to do so. The state of religious affairs was not very good. There were very few confessional pastors in Saxony. When Stephan tried to unite these pastors around 1830 nothing happened. Plus, the Prussian Union was influencing all those around him. He thought that soon he would be either under their control or under something similar. This led Stephan to say, “Will it not soon come to this that we must leave Babylon and Egypt and emigrate? Where will we turn? In the German states we can find no refuge. Everywhere there is great hatred for the pure Lutheran doctrine…So my eyes are being directed to North America.”12
These plans for emigration really picked up speed after 1836, when more and more accusations were brought against Stephan. Yet this was not the main reason that Stephan gave for his plans. Stephan always blamed the false religions of his day, which were persecuting him. He claimed that these enemies were the ones who were bringing up these false accusations of sexual misconduct so that they could prevent people from flocking to Stephan. There probably was some truth to this. Stephan was being persecuted by his enemies for his sound beliefs. He would never back down from his firm stance on Holy Scripture. By blaming his enemies instead of the accusations, Stephan managed to turn the attention from his actions to his strong confessional stance.13
Stephan was well known throughout the community, and everyone had an opinion on him, either good or ill. All knew of the accusations and his plans to sail to America. Stephan could say, “When my emigration became known, a company of 700 people willingly joined me, even though I had asked no one.”14 This is probably embellished a little by Stephan because it is known that he did ask those close to him in his church to join him.
Those who were close to him, believed that Stephan was such a good man that he would admit it if he did anything wrong.15 They wholeheartedly believed that they were emigrating to America for religious reasons, not to escape allegations of criminal behavior. They believed their pastor when he said, “No hope remains for maintaining the Lutheran Church in our land.”16
It is clear that this is the way that those who went with him to America thought of him. They had no problem subjecting themselves to any of his demands, whether they agreed with them or not. One demand was that Stephan required all people to be confessional. He required that they subject themselves to God’s Word and to the Augsburg Confession.17 He wanted everyone in his colony to have the same beliefs. He also demanded that everyone pay 100 thalers as a fee for the journey to the new colony, no matter what their income. Although most of the notable people were professional, a good number of farmers came over on the trip, as well, who were not as rich. Of course, it was necessary that there be some sort of a fee to pay for the journey across the ocean but it hardly seems fair to charge everyone the same price. Plus, although he denied it,18 Stephan had access to the money and Forster claims that Stephan used this to his advantage by buying stuff to make his journey a little more comfortable,19 both before and during the trip. Later on, when he would be expelled from the colony, the colonists charged Stephan with falsely taking their property. But for now they trusted him and paid the money without question.
Finally in October of 1838, all the preparations had been made and Stephan and his group were ready to set sail for St. Louis in America. Stephan chose St. Louis over other Midwest cities because it was safer. The Native Americans were not as hostile there as they were in Wisconsin or the Dakotas. Plus, St. Louis was a developing town and they could buy land for the colony at a good price.
From November 3rd to November 18th, five ships set sail at different times to America carrying Stephan and his followers. Stephan was the unquestionable leader of this group. He was the one who came up with the idea of moving to America, promoted it and organized it. He decided who would go on what ship and who would be in charge of each ship. Of course, all the important people sailed with Stephan on the Olbers. Stephan probably put all these important people on his ship so that he could keep an eye on them just in case they would try and usurp control.
This seemed to have happened. Stephan became very domineering on the ship. His companions noticed that his attitude had changed once he had boarded the ship. No longer were all wholly devoted to him but some leaders were questioning his authority, most notably Marbach and Dr. Vehse, two lay leaders.20 This led Stephan to become stricter, hoping to squash these subtle attacks. On the ship, he was successful. Stephan was able to convince both Marbach and Dr. Vehse that these actions of theirs were sinful because he had been appointed the leader of this colony.
A few days later, after squashing these attacks, Stephan’s leadership was made official. On January 14th, a day after the first colonists reached St. Louis, as the Olbers was in the Gulf of Mexico, the men on Stephan’s ship elected him bishop of the colony, in charge of both the civil and religious affairs. The four prominent pastors, O.H. Walther, G.H. Lober, E.G.W. Keyl and C.F.W. Walther, signed a document which asked Stephan to accept this position of bishop. The document said,
Your reverence has, according to the gracious council of God, remained standing as the last, unshakable pillar on the ruins of the now devastated Lutheran Church in Germany…accordingly you have already for a long time occupied the position of a bishop and performed Episcopal functions among us…we have been instructed by you in many things in accordance with the Word of God…In consequence of all this, therefore we approach you with the reverent urgent plea: Accept Reverend Father the office of bishop among us bestowed on you by God and grant that we may now express our unqualified confidence in your fatherly love and pastoral faithfulness towards us.21
It is amazing to see the power that Stephan still had over these men. Even though they were now sensing that something could be wrong, he was still elected bishop and given complete control over all things in the new colony. In fact, a month later, as they were on the steamboat close to St. Louis, these men confirmed Stephan as bishop. They pledged their complete loyalty to him on February 16th22 saying,
We affirm and testify before the countenance of the omniscient God, in agreement with the truth, that we have complete and firm confidence in the wisdom and fatherly love of our Reverend Bishop; and we abhor all distrustful, suspicious statements and thoughts, in which he is accused of injustice, harshness, selfishness, carelessness in the administration of our temporal goods…Further we pledge ourselves to submit with Christian willingness and sincerity to the decrees and measures of His Reverence in respect to both ecclesiastical and community affairs.23
News about these documents spread rapidly to St. Louis, where the other members of Stephan’s party had already gathered. In fact, this news spread to all who were living in St. Louis so that many people were waiting for Stephan when his steamboat arrived on the shores of the Mississippi. However they were disappointed.
When the ship arrived in the middle of February, Stephan stayed in his luxury cabin, complaining of a sickness rather than going out. Finally in the middle of the night, he made his way into the city, where a room was prepared for him. Stephan would spend most of his time in St. Louis in this room, distant from all his fellow colonists. He would not let anyone come in to visit him without an appointment, except for those who were really close to him and came out mostly to maintain control.24 Truly Stephan’s attitude had changed from the man who would counsel and talk with all who came to him in Dresden. He had become a different man. His fellow colonists would see this soon.
No one knows for sure what had caused this change in Stephan. He was no longer the man with the engaging personality, standing up for the true Word of God, counseling all who came to him. Instead he had become distant. Maybe the years of accusations had finally taken its toll on him. Maybe his ego had been built up by the constant years of praise that he thought of himself so highly. Maybe he was covering up some sins and his conscience was burdening him. Or maybe it was a combination of a couple of these. No one may ever know what caused this change in Stephan. It quickly became apparent in the new land.
On March 3rd, the first service of this new colony was held at Christ’s Church25 in St. Louis. Stephan, of course, was the preacher. There were a large number of people in attendance at this first service, waiting anxiously to hear Stephan. All, who had made the trip over to America, came. Plus many people from the city of St. Louis attended because the newspapers were constantly running stories, updating people on the actions of this famous Bohemian migrating to America. At this service, however, Stephan did not impress anyone. Apparently Stephan, who was preaching in a church for the first time in about a year because of the suspension and the long boat ride over, did not give an engaging sermon. Two days later, the newspaper stories of this service were kind to these new colonists, calling them intelligent and dignified but they made no mention of Stephan.26 Most of his own people, who had followed him to America, were disappointed in his efforts. Stephan, of course, blamed the people for their lack of faith and their doubting. It was not his fault that the people were not impressed with his sermon but theirs. While he had never been the most engaging preacher, his sermons were now lacking substance. From then on Stephan rarely preached.27
Part of the reason was that Stephan was bishop over both ecclesiastical and civil affairs. He had control over all things in the colony and this took up a lot of his time, especially in the beginning. Stephan had very specific ways in which he wanted his colony run. It took him a month to enforce these demands.28 Plus the colonists had purchased land in Perry County, about one hundred miles south of St. Louis, where they would establish their colony. Before they could move down there, many preparations had to be made. Stephan oversaw most of these preparations.
During this time, from February to April, Stephan was ruling with an iron fist. This once again caused his close followers to question his authority, especially Marbach.29 Marbach wanted a separation of a church and state. He thought that Stephan had too much power and later on this turned out to be true. Whenever these small uprisings would occur, he was able to put them down. As long as he was on the scene, the majority of the people would back their bishop.30 By May of 1839, Stephan thought that he had established enough control over his colonists that he could leave them in St. Louis and make preparations in their new land of Perry County. He went to Perry County with about 200 men, leaving 400 still in St. Louis.
Therefore Stephan was in Perry County on May 5th, trying to get things ready so that the colonists could move down there, when Pastor Lober preached a sermon to the colonists in St. Louis that would change Stephan’s life forever. Lober’s sermon was on the 6th Commandment. In it, he must have mentioned some piercing law that had an effect on a couple of women in the congregation. Two women, independently of each other, without each other’s knowledge, came to Lober that afternoon and confessed that Stephan had seduced them. This shocked Lober and he quickly told C.F.W. Walther. Within a few days, all the prominent clergy had been informed of this heinous crime.
This accusation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. These men, who had been shown the great comfort of the gospel by Stephan, who had defended him against all the accusations in Dresden, who had willingly followed him to a new colony in North America, who had a deep love and admiration for their leader, finally realized that Stephan had been living in open sin. They finally had the proof to make charges against Stephan and take away his power as bishop.
It is amazing the change that took place in these men. Only a year earlier, they had defended their beloved bishop against numerous attacks in Dresden, asserting that Stephan had to be innocent because if he was guilty, he would have confessed.31 Only three months earlier they had elected him bishop over ecclesiastical and civil affairs and affirmed their subjection to him. Now they were making plans to depose him from office. The clergy thought even if he was innocent of these charges, he should resign for the good of the colony.32 Truly these men had seen a change in Stephan.
The clergy set into motion a plan that would depose Stephan from his office of bishop. They concluded since they called him to that position on the boat, surely they had the power to remove him from office. Therefore they leaked out the information to the people. When they did, a few other women came forward with similar accusations of sexual misconduct.33 The clergy even decided to send Walther34 to Perry County to inform the people, who were working on this new place with Stephan, of the accusations.35
Since Walther had gone here without Stephan’s authority, he was not welcomed by Stephan. The people, however, readily accepted him and believed the accusations. They quickly turned against their leader. This shows that they too had seen a change in Stephan and were feeling oppressed by his new domineering personality. They even went into the woods to hear Walther preach on Pentecost instead of listening to Stephan’s sermon.36 The people had been turned against their bishop. Stephan’s fate was sealed. Brought before the Council, and refused the opportunity to defend himself, Stephan was quickly found guilty of adultery, misuse of property and false doctrine, and excommunicated.
They wished to forcefully remove him from his house and send him across the Mississippi River to Illinois as punishment. However there were many logs being floated down the river at this time, which made it impossible to cross. Therefore they put him up in a tent for the night, not allowing him the comfort of his own home. Stephan, recounting this miserable night says, “I was very thirsty and begged only for a glass of water but no one gave me anything nor did anyone care about my health.”37
On the next day, May 31st, before they sent him across the Mississippi, they forced Stephan to sign a document, in which he gave up his rights as bishop. The document says, “I, Martin Stephan…do certify by the discussions that took place on this day…to voluntarily cede and give up control of the above mentioned congregation to her trustees.”38 Then Stephan promises never again to come back to the colony. The document says, “I promise never to come back to the territory of the said company and to the state of Missouri.”39
Even though Stephan signed this document, it did not mean that he confessed to any of the accusations. In fact, he maintained his innocence until the day he died. When he boarded the ferry, which would take him across the River to Illinois, he was still protesting his expulsion but to no avail. When he left, they gave him “the necessary clothing, a cloak, linen, 2 beds, 2 chairs, 1 clock, 1 sofa cushion and its frame, books of meditation and 100 dollars in money.”40 Plus they gave him an axe and a spade so that he could do work.41 At 10:30 AM on May 31st, two days after they formally accused him, Stephan left the colony.
Reverend Stephan never admitted to doing anything wrong, yet the constant attacks on him during the latter years of his life, coupled with multiple women on separate occasions accusing him of adultery were enough to convince the colonists and most people. After the Saxons had disposed of Stephan, his maid, Louise Guenther, confessed to having an affair with him, as well.42 Before they could punish her, however, she fled the colony to join Stephan and lived with him until he died.
Reverend Stephan would be called to serve in several congregations, ending his career at Trinity Church in Horse Prairie, Illinois. He died quietly on February 26, 1845. He is buried in Trinity Cemetery. A picket fence surrounds his grave and a ten-foot cross serves as its marker. According to tradition, his casket was carried around the church three times before he was buried, showing the respect they had for this man.43
Even though Martin Stephan had many troubles in this life, and more than likely committed grievous sin, which caused his expulsion from the colony and the church, God nevertheless used him to achieve His purpose here on earth. Though estranged from C.F.W. Walther, Stephan’s influence on the man most associated with the founding of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod was, in retrospect, almost entirely positive. For the broader church, the message is Paul’s message to the Corinthians, “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” (I Cor. 2:5)

Bibliography
Bekenntis der Louis Guenther. June 3, 1839. Manuscript from Concordia Historical Institute.
Forster, Walter O., Zion on the Mississippi, Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis, MO. 1953.
Pastor Stephan Stephan, Manuscript from Trinity Lutheran Church in Horse Prairie, IL.
Pledge of Subjection to Stephan Feb. 16, 1839. Manuscript from Concordia Historical Institute
Rast, Lawrence R. Jr., Demagoguery or Democracy? The Saxon Emigration and American Culture. Concordia Theological Quarterly 63.4 (1999), 247-268. Available from http://www.ctsfw.edu/library/files/pb/1767
Sentence of Disposition Pronounced Upon Stephan. May 30, 1839. Manuscript from Concordia Historical Institute
Spitz, Lewis The Life of Dr. C.F.W. Walther. Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis, MO. 1961.
Stephan’s Investiture, January 14, 1839. Manuscript from Concordia Historical Institute
Stephan to Flugal. Oct. 12, 1841. Manuscript from Concordia Historical Institute
Stephan’s Renunciation of the Claims on the Gesellschaft. May 31, 1839. Manuscript from Concordia Historical Institute

ENDNOTES
1 Forster, Walter Zion on the Mississippi. Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis MO 1953. p. 27
2 Ibid., 28
3 Forster, 33
4 Forster, 61
5 Spitz, Lewis. The Life of C.F.W. Walther. Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis MO. 1961. p. 17
6 Ibid., 21
7 Ibid., 32
8 Ibid., 33
9 This is a letter to the paper that is quoted in Forster p. 35
10 Forster, 69
11 Forster, 73
12 Stephan to Kurtz in March of 1833. Quoted by Forster, 87
13 Forster, 107-112
14 Stephan to Flugal. Oct 12, 1841 CHI MSS
15 A quote from Keyl quoted by Forster, 70
16 Protocol of the emigration, May 18, 1838. Quoted by Forester, 137
17 Forster states this on both p. 90 and p. 151
18 Stephan to Flugel 1841. Stephan says, “I had nothing to do with this cash. I did not know, even today, the cash flow or their gifts.”
19 Forster, 167
20 Forster, 282
21 Stephan’s Investiture. January 14, 1839. CHI
22 This is only three months before they would expel him from the colony.
23 Pledge of Subjection to Stephan Feb. 16, 1839. CHI
24 Forster, 325, 353
25 Christ’s Church was an Episcopal Church, which served as the colonist’s church for the first three and a half years they were in the new land, until they could afford to build a place of their own. The colonists would worship either on Sat afternoon or most of the time on Sunday afternoons.
26 Daily Evening Gazette ran an article on March 5th two days after this sermon expressing this. This article is found in Forster, 322-323
27 Forster, 323. Forster references a couple of first hand accounts in support of these statements. He references Winter to Guericke on April 28, 1841 and Hohne to his brother on Sept. 26, 1840.
28 Ibid., 355
29 Stephan to Flugal, 1841
30 Forster, 390
31 Keyl said this quoted by Forster, 70 (see footnote 17)
32 Forster, 394-395
33 Forster, 395-398
34 This was really the first time that Walther is seen as a leader of the colonists. By stepping up during this controversy, Walther was now perceived by the people as the leader.
35 Forster, 403-405
36 Ibid., 409
37 Stephan to Flugal, 1841
38 Stephan’s Renunciation of the Claims on the Gesellschaft CHI MSS Also in Forester, 421
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ephan to Flugal, 1841
42 Bekenntnis der Louise Guenther. MS CHI
43 Pastor Stephan Stephan. MSS from Trinity Lutheran Church in Horse Prairie, IL

Luxury Theologies

LUXURY THEOLOGIES

Twenty-First Century Theologies of Glory

BRYAN J.

Orginal Article from Mbird Luxury Theologies - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

A few months back, the writer and scholar Rob Henderson published a memoir about his life’s journey from foster care to the Ivy League. It’s a harrowing journey, starting in impoverished and drug-riddled rural California and ending with degrees from Yale and Cambridge. It’s a journey, however, that led him to see the highest world of elite education from an outsider’s perspective.

What Henderson repeatedly noticed in these institutions is that his well-off Ivy league peers often advocated for political policies that had little impact on their upper-class life, but he knew firsthand would do harm to the poor communities he grew up in. He identifies a few examples, such as the defund-the-police movement, drug legalization, and the recent fad of polyamory, as upper-class opinions about life disconnected from the realities of poverty he experienced growing up. He called these beliefs “luxury beliefs,” which he defines as “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.” In Henderson’s eyes, signals of wealth from generations past, like fancy cars and designer clothes, have been replaced by a certain set of unquestioned political assumptions, assumptions that would make problems worse for the poor rather than better.

I’ve noticed a similar pattern within many religious circles. We might call them “luxury theologies”: Christian beliefs that are widely held by a certain social class of Christian that ultimately harm or alienate those from lower socioeconomic classes, as well as those who are new to (or outside of) the church.[1] Beliefs that confer a degree of status, while making faith more difficult to those whose have poor credit scores. Here are a few stabs at rooting out these luxury theologies, with an explanation of why they qualify for the label:

God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.

This one isn’t Christian orthodoxy — it is, in fact, a heresy — but that still doesn’t mean it isn’t a luxury theology. Generally speaking, this assertion exists among those who see Christianity as a form of self-optimization, where God is more of a coach than a savior. Instead of good news, you have lists of steps to achieve wholeness, a #blessed family life, a prosperous career, or the fulfillment of living in God’s mission. Whether explicitly or implicitly, God’s blessing is reserved for those faithful few who measure up. Those who aren’t blessed by God are lacking the right attitudes and motivations. In this way, this “God helps those …” theology is really just another form of legalism, a set of rules one must follow in order to get right with God.

While the perils of legalism and subsequent burnout are noted often enough, what is often overlooked is the class element behind legalism. Legalism is often the heresy of the ruling class. Those who make the rules, after all, usually make rules that are easy for them to follow. Those who are not part of the ruling class don’t get a say in whether it really is God’s will that they attend that 7am Bible study after working the night shift, or have childcare to volunteer at the soup kitchen. When fidelity to God means “more,” those with less get squeezed.

The belief that God is a divine life coach is a hallmark of a luxury theology. It confers status on those who have achieved enough worldly success to try harder. It’s also a recipe for psychosis for the poor, a word of constant condemnation leading to burnout, anxiety, or an exit from the religion altogether out of resignation for never measuring up.

The Political Gospel

The overlap between Christian values and the political realm is nothing new. Our culture wars in modern America, however, are nothing compared to the long history of violence done in Jesus’s name throughout the centuries, by both Catholics and Protestants alike, and by both left-leaning and right-leaning perspectives within the church. While it is appropriate to ask how faith and citizenship align, it is a reductionistic, luxury theology to reduce the Christian faith to the political dimension alone.

Many from both sides of the theological spectrum see government policy as the primary way to enact their preferred interpretation of Christian values. The religious right is well known for justifying stances on social matters like marriage, capital punishment, and private property on biblical principles. The liberal Protestant tradition, of course, does the same for matters of immigration, environmentalism, and social justice. While they differ in kind, they agree in strategy: the ideal way to usher in some sort of godly kingdom is to do so through political activity.

There’s no doubt that political ideas are vehicles for class and status, but what makes the political gospel a luxury theology is that it assumes that the ills of the world are structural in nature. Fix the institution, the hierarchy, the language, or the policy, and that will lead to the flourishing of the people. When it comes to its actual impact on the lower classes, however, this political gospel overplays its hand. Neither end of this political spectrum has specific good news for the woman whose son died from fentanyl overdose, the middle aged man in arrested development because he was sexually assaulted as a child, or the boy whose father ran off when he was nine years old. As Todd Brewer outlined at the recent conference in New York City, the incredible ambivalence that Jesus has for the political structures of his day is a testimony to his belief that the fallen human heart is the origin of the world’s faults and failures.

Roman Graffiti, ~200 AD: “Alexamenos worships [his] god”

Status and class for those advocating for their side of the political aisle during church. High promises that underdeliver for the lower class. This has all the features of a luxury theology.

Non-Violent Views of the Cross

Over the past half-century, the theory of substitutionary atonement has come under fire by many Christians, principally due to abuses in its teaching. Most especially the idea of penal substitution — that Jesus takes upon himself the punishments of the wicked people he saves at the cross — has been rejected by those who see the arrangement as a dubious execution of justice and a smear on a loving God’s character. Does God really demand “satisfaction” for his wrath? Why is it that human blood is required to achieve it? This doesn’t sound like a God of mercy and love! The result is a number of alternative “nonviolent” atonement theories that have come to prominence, whether it be Rene Girard’s “scapegoat” theory of atonement, Gustav Aulen’s “Christus Victor” theory of atonement, or more mystical, participationist views.

I’m indebted to Richard Beck and his Experimental Theology substack for this insight. Beck, initially sympathetic to this non-violent way of thinking, came to shift his belief as a result of volunteering with a prison ministry. Working through these non-violent theories of the cross with incarcerated criminals, Beck realized that these men were actually desperate and grateful to hear about penal substitution. It made emotional and intuitive sense to them, as grievous offenders, that something great and cosmic and costly needed to be done about their sin so they could be right with God again.

These non-violent ways of thinking about Jesus’s work on the cross only made sense to people with seminary educations or the free time to read heady theology books, the kind of people either insulated from genuine suffering or blissfully (willfully?) ignorant of their own guilt. They confer a sort of secular-liberal adjacent, post-evangelical-enlightenment status on those who believe them, a way to sneer at the unenlightened masses. A bloody man on the cross dying for one’s sins is less welcome in upper class society than an abstract conversation about “mimetic desires.” These atonement alternatives, however, lack the power to address real sins committed by real people in real dire straits. To those affected by guilt, who have suffered more than they can bear, the man of sorrows is the only balm.

Non-Bodily Resurrection Theories

Perhaps no other theology can be labeled as a “luxury” than explanations of the resurrection that don’t involve the physical body. From the very beginning of the Christianity, the emphasis on “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting” was key in the church’s growth among the poor and helpless. To those who had nothing on this earth, the promise of a heavenly rest was great comfort. Modern conversations surrounding the resurrection, however, offer very little hope to the poor, or anyone else for that matter, except the status seeking upper classes.

On the left, for example, the rejection of the bodily resurrection confers secular social status to those who believe it. Jesus’s resurrection is, they say, “spiritual,” or the teachings of Jesus are resurrected after his death in the lives of the apostles. The body of Jesus, and the body of anyone who follows him, remains inanimate. The result is that these left-leaning church-goers can mingle with other cultural elites outside of the Christian faith who find the resurrection implausible. It’s a spirituality that’s passable in a world where the cultural cache belongs to the secular and materialist.

On the right, of course, the resurrection of the dead is a bedrock belief, but it is frequently blamed for religious laziness or lukewarm spirituality. “Yes the resurrection is true, but …” is usually how those sentences start, and they end with some sort of moral injunction. If the doctrine of penal substitution is written off as “divine child abuse” by the left, then the doctrines of the resurrection of the body and heaven and the life of the world to come are written off by the right as “fire insurance” or “get-out-of-hell-free.” Instead of resurrection hope, the shift for many turns toward “kingdom” work — building the kingdom, living the kingdom, etc. Forget about actual heaven and focus instead on trying to build heaven on earth!

The idea that this world is somehow more important than the next, or that the next doesn’t exist at all, can only be spoken by those insulated from the sting of death. Death, properly understood, renders everyone poor in spirit, regardless of income or life circumstance. This may be one of the advantages that the lower classes have over their prosperous peers: like the lesson of the widow’s mite, they are better prepared to see through the trappings of this world and look to the world to come.

When you put these four theologies together, there’s a common thread. Each one is an exercise by an upper class to deny the intractable realities of suffering and death, an attempt to rise above the everyday hardships of life that all humans experience. In other words, they are what Martin Luther called theologies of glory.

For Luther, a theologian of glory cannot imagine God at work in suffering, loss, and hardship, which is exactly the sort of thing that enlivened the first Christians, many of whom were from the lower classes of Roman society. These early believers were all too familiar with theologies of glory from the Roman pantheon of Gods and the history of the empire itself. They knew there was no good news for them in that religious milieu. What was new, compelling, life changing, and ultimately world-changing, was that the God of the cross meant grace and life to those who couldn’t earn it and didn’t deserve it. Here was a God who could be found in the lowness of life, in the valley of the shadow of death, and in the blood of a cross. The kind of God that many in the higher social classes of the time found distasteful, idiotic, and gauche.

Christianity, at its best, casts a wide net. Its vision, even as articulated in the Bible some two thousand years ago, is universal, transcending gender, race, caste, and socioeconomic differences. The story of Jesus, the skilled-laborer-turned-rabbi triumphing over the elites of his day through righteous suffering and forgiving his enemies, is a powerful vision, in that time and in ours. This God found in the low places is a God for everyone, rich and poor alike.

A Survival Guide to the Great Exhaustion

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a gift to receive.

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Welcome to The Great Exhaustion. That’s how our modern era has recently been christined. With 47 million people voluntarily quitting their jobs last year, the cracks in our broke and burned out generation are beginning to show more and more. From family life, to the housing crisis, to global stressors, it feels like we are more exhausted than ever before. “People are feeling a strain on more than just their work calendars,” Emily Ballesteros wrote in Time last week. “They’re feeling it on their spirits.” From stay-at-home moms to tech executives, there is plenty of weariness to go around…………………………………………….

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Legalism - The Elephant in the Room

Legalism - The Elephant in the Room (1517.org)

There is no AA for legalists. At least not officially. But there ought to be, and it should be called your local church.

Legalism doesn’t always appear as rule-heavy fundamentalism or hell-fire and brimstone. That kind of legalism is obvious and portrayed in Netflix documentaries. The vast majority of Christians can avoid this kind of craziness because it is so easy to identify. However, a more subtle and common legalism is far more difficult to recognize because, sadly, for much of Christianity, it is the thrust of the message being preached, the theology being handed down, and the direction we are being led. 

Legalism is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in Christian circles to the point that it loses all meaning and power because of its ubiquity. Too often, everyone who does not belong to our preferred flavor of Christianity becomes a “legalist.” When everyone can be labeled something, no one recognizes the proclivity in themselves. 

Have you ever noticed that no one ever admits to being a legalist? You never hear someone say, “I am a legalist” or “I go to a legalistic church.” There is no AA for legalists. At least not officially. But there ought to be, and it should be called your local church. Because whether we like to admit it or not, we are all law-loving legalists. ………………………

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Getting Sober ...... Again

I begged Jesus to turn this wine back into water, but my prayers went unanswered.

---

You have heard the story before. You know how it goes. Once upon a time, a sad and lonely agnostic boy from a broken and abusive home turned to drinking and drugging to comfort his heart and mind. And then on his 19th birthday, with a belly full of booze and a brain full of chemicals, God spoke to him: “If you keep doing this, you are going to die. If you follow me, you will live.” Miraculously, he quit partying, became a committed Christian, and within a short amount of time, a Youth Minister (obviously).

At no point in this transformation did I think that I had an addiction, disease, or allergy to alcohol that compelled me to drink. Rather, the real problem was that I was spiritually dead and needed a Savior. I stopped drinking because a spiritual transformation had been accomplished by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I was not one of those self-righteous straightedge kids who showed up at the hardcore shows with a freshly scrawled X on his hands to flaunt his inner strength and determination to remain out of step with the world by avoiding the crutches of drugs and alcohol. I was the humble Christian kid with infused righteousness who showed up at the hardcore shows with an oversized ><> sharpied on his hands to proclaim his dependence on the Savior and commitment to following him. And I was now extra-friendly in the pit, even to (most of) the tough guys.

I wasn’t counting the length of time I had been sober; I was counting the length of time I had been a Christian…………..

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The Glories of Being a Nobody

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Thank God that you don’t know me. I don’t mean that I’m some sort of monster, and you shouldn’t know me. But if you’re reading this, you likely saw the name “Alex Sosler” and thought, “Huh, never heard of him.” I am largely an unknown nobody.

I used to think that my obscurity was some sort of burden to overcome. I had aspirations, after all. My ambition saw my privacy as an obstacle to conquer in order to be known in the wider world. It’s primal, this ambition. Ever since the Greeks and Romans, honor and glory have been the great achievement of life. Immortality came through having a lasting name and legacy. Surely, the Sosler name could live on by being known. Maybe not through my heroic acts but I have something to offer. Right?

If I was known, if I wasn………………………………………………………

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Epiphany as the Other Christmas

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https://www.1517.org/articles/epiphany-as-the-other-christmas

Epiphany is an extension of Christmas, a sort of Christmas 2.0. It’s conspicuous place following the nativity narrative in Matthew’s Gospel presents it as the “other Christmas,” the “Christmas of the Gentiles.” At the first Christmas we find a swaddled baby in a manger visited by shepherds from the fields summoned by angels. In the “other Christmas” we find a toddler at his mother’s feet in a house visited by “Magi,” wise men from the East guided by a star. The first Christmas was announced to Israel, the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham; the second Christmas was for the world, the nations, the Gentiles, the fulfillment of God’s promise to Adam.

“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising,” God said through Isaiah (Isaiah 60:3).

The Greek word “epiphany” means “appearing,” and in ancient times it was used usually about the appearing of a god or a great king. Lutheran theologian Charles Cortright notes that some kings thought they were gods. For example, Antiochus IV, an ancient Syrian king, took the name “Epiphanes” after he defeated the Egyptians to placard his divine prowess. But his mortality was soon exposed as the Maccabean Revolt in Jerusalem evidenced his all-too-human vulnerabilities. Notwithstanding, there were divinely-inspired biblical prophesies and imaginative pagan mythologies that set expectations for a miraculous appearing of a God-king.

The Magi had come from the east to Jerusalem guided…………………….

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https://www.1517.org/articles/epiphany-as-the-other-christmas

A Different Kind of New Year

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If you were to ask me what my least favorite holiday is — and trust me, I am a children’s minister and mother of three, this is not the weirdest question I’ve been asked this week— I would most likely reply New Year’s (both Eve and Day, to be specific). Part of it feels overly celebratory for a simple turn of a calendar page. Some of it is that I am expected to stay up past ten p.m. and not be grumpy. A large part of it is that somehow, with the flip of the page and the tick of the clock, I am supposed to be a newer, fresher, better version of myself at midnight. Expecting anything of me after midnight is ridiculous.

I am supposed to have more energy and interest in self-improvement. Things are supposed to get better not worse. This year will be different because this is the year, after forty others just like it, that I will finally have more self-control. I will have learned from all of my previous mistakes, errors, failures, flops and non-wins. Nothing will be left as it was. This year, I will have it all together.

The Holy Mess of a Christmas Tree

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I really don’t like messy things, and I have been a “neat freak” since I was a child. In college, Sunday night I’d vacuum and dust and sweep my dorm room, my roommate would laugh as I adamantly cleaned, determined not to start our week messy. I’m a perpetual tidier and dislike having too much stuff on my counters. I love to vacuum and sweep, and feel chaotic if a space is too messy. But there’s one mess that I insist on bringing into my home, year after year, and that is a beloved Christmas tree. 

I come from a family that has two real Christmas trees, because twinkle lights and the smell of pine are important and why not bring them into as many rooms as possible? So small wonder I’m like this. In all my years in DC my roommates knew I was going to walk to the local market and begin my bartering for a tree, and then would give them a call to help haul it home. Being car-less in DC leads to creativity and relying on helpful friends who will help you carry a tree. So three years of hauling a monstrosity of a tree into our monstrosity of a house. Then two more years of a short, squat little tree taking up prime real estate in our living room, but there was a boyfriend (now my husband) with a truck to help haul the trees. 

Now in a long distance marriage for the next few months, I thought about if I even should get a tree this year. I was always determined to make sure we had a tree in the past, but I had the excuse of roommates and that multiple people would get to enjoy it. “My family has two trees, I’ll see a tree when I’m home, do I really need to get one for myself? It’s just me, is it worth the trouble of doing this by myself?” 

Yes, it was, I drove myself in the red truck, paid for the long, skinny, and last tree at Whole Foods, in the back of the truck it went, hauled up stairs, and after some wrestling with the tree stand it stood up on its own. ……………………………..

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When Perfection Isn't Enough

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By now, I am sure you’ve seen it. It went viral almost immediately. Sunday, December 3rd, 2023, the Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles were left out of the College Football Playoff (CFP). The video of the team’s reaction while watching the results found its way to screens all over the nation in a matter of minutes. See for yourself here.

Dejected. Shocked. Deflated. Angry. Frustrated. Speechless. Rage. Mistreated.

Why? Well, FSU had just won the Championship for their conference (ACC) the night before. They had completed a perfect season, winning 13 games and losing none. The week prior, they found themselves ranked number 4 in the CFP rankings. Win the ACC Championship, it was assumed, and you’re one of the 4 teams playing for a National Championship.

Wrong.

Leap-frogging the Seminoles into the coveted top 4 were two one loss teams: Alabama and Texas. The perfect, undefeated team moved to number 5. FSU would be on the outside looking in. No Natty for the ‘Noles……………

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He Who Comes

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Our text is an advent text, the announcement of the coming of the Lord by John the Baptist. The announcement, it seems, threw people into considerable consternation. So much so that they were led to cry out, “What then shall we do?” And John’s answer is direct and unequivocal: “Bear fruits that befit repentance...He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.” (Luke 3:8,11) “Right now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9). That’s the way it is when the Lord comes. 

In our day, when some seem to be alarmed about the apparent rebirth of nasty things like “the social gospel,” and similar movements, I suppose there might be some nervousness about the manner in which John the Baptist moves so immediately from the coming of the Lord to giving away your coat and sharing your food. We would much rather, I suppose, that he had spent more time in transition, explaining how the coming of the Lord means first of all that we should devote ourselves to the cultivation of our piety, or pointing out that the gospel really has to do only with man's relationship to God. 

When Politics Predominates

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Among the many great insights of C. F. W. Walther’s The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel is his counsel to preachers that the gospel must predominate in every sermon. Scripture is the manger that holds Christ. We can’t forget to preach the law because it’s the thing that leads us to him. The law’s work of judgment and condemnation hands us over to the Christ, who saves us from sin and death. The work of the law is not the last and final thing but is always penultimate – awaiting its end and fulfillment in the gospel.

Politics is provisional. It belongs in the old world in which sin, death, and the devil reign.

The gospel must predominate because it is the destination, endpoint, and conclusion of the story of Scripture.

What, Me Worry – A Sermon For Thanksgiving

Read the whole article here https://mbird.com/bible/what-me-worry-a-sermon-for-thanksgiving/

If there is one thing most human beings are good at, it’s worrying. Even a day set aside to give thanks can become a day set aside for extra worry. Every year, our family has a Wednesday Thanksgiving dinner with another family. It started out as a kind of Friendsgiving before there was such a term. This year we were to be in charge of the hors d’oeuvre and cocktail side of things. So last Sunday, after 4 church services, I began to worry about where to buy the oysters and when to get to the ABC store during a short and busy week.

A certain person I live with suggested that I have a propensity to take something fun and turn it into a burden, draining the joy out of what is supposed to be a nice, relaxed time. As you might imagine, I received this bit of “constructive criticism” less than cheerfully, but as usual, the person I live with was right on the money.

Had I taken to heart the gospel appointed for this Thanksgiving, I might not have needed the “truth spoken in love.” Employing his ability to speak directly to our deepest selves, Jesus says, “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food?”

Is not life more than food? The answer to that question is debatable on Thanksgiving Day, especially when there are oysters, turkeys and martinis involved. (Now I’ve got you thinking about your own Thanksgiving menu, which is clearly not the intent of Jesus’ question.) His question is eerily prescient, for in the absence of God food has become the great new religion, with celebrity chefs our new great high priests. Foodies are the new disciples and hot restaurants the new cathedrals.

In the absence of God, there is a tremendous amount of sense in making life about food. After all, King Solomon and the prophet Isaiah said as much. So did Dave Matthews in his song Tripping Billies. Summarizing the wisdom of the kings and prophets he sang, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” At least the first half of that injunction is on everyone’s agenda this Thanksgiving Day.

To be honest, hedonism isn’t a bad start. However, a hedonistic emphasis on living life hasn’t done anything to solve the worry problem. So, Jesus says something different. “Do not worry about your life.” Some 2000 years later the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea said, “The entire world is worried.” He was talking about the fallout from the bickering between the US and China, but it also serves as a pretty good blanket statement of the human condition in all times and all places.

The entire world is worried. What kind of help is there for our worry? I used to read Mad Magazine growing up. Do you remember the iconic cover of Alfred E. Neuman, a redheaded, gap-toothed boy whose motto was, “What, Me Worry?” Al Feldstein, Mad’s editor, talks about his famous cover boy. “I want a definitive portrait of this kid. I don’t want him to look like an idiot—I want him to be lovable and have an intelligence behind his eyes. But I want him to have this devil-may-care attitude, someone who can maintain a sense of humor while the world is collapsing around him.”

What — me worry? There is great wisdom in maintaining a sense of humor while the world is collapsing around us. I highly recommend it. Not only will having a sense of humor help you when you are seated next to angry Uncle Ralph later today, but humor will be an essential coping mechanism when the deeper problems of life come knocking. The problem is that most of us can’t pull it off, especially when we are bogged down in worry.

Humor is closer to the heart of Jesus’ teaching than hedonism, but we still need more help. So Jesus tells us to become birdwatchers. Birds don’t gather food, he says, and yet our Heavenly Father feeds them. In actual fact, Jesus is a better theologian than ornithologist, because chickadees, nuthatches, jays, and crows can store thousands of seeds per year. Maybe he was just thinking about doves and sparrows — birds that don’t store food. His point, of course, is that, the only real counterpunch to worry is knowing — I mean really knowing — that God will provide all that we need.

Jesus says that the world is worried because the world (i.e. “Gentiles”) needlessly strives after all the things that God is going to give to us anyway. “Indeed, your Heavenly Father knows you need all these things.” To stop striving sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Striving and worry are birds of a feather. The cessation of striving might land you peacefully and happily at a place where you can open your eyes and see the kingdom of God. And as Jesus says, why not have a look around there first? You know the song: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.”

The kingdom of God is a place to eat and drink and be merry. It is a place where humor is high on the list of virtues. And most of all, it is a place to give thanks to God who has already given us everything we need. Most of all — His Son. For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, so that all who believe in him may not perish but have everlasting life.

Amen.

Whose Land Is It?

“This article is from the LCMS Publication the Lutheran Witness. It was originally written in Fall of 2006. It is out side of the current world events and I think is very informative. May we have humblness in this conflict as we say together, Lord have mercy. ”

— Pastor Cris Escher

Whose Land Is It?

November 1, 2006

Editor’s Note: This article by Reed Lessing originally appeared in the November 2006 issue of The Lutheran Witness. Due to increased interest in Dispensationalism resulting from the conflict in Israel, we’re making it available as an online resource.

Please note that Dr. Lessing does not address the political situation in Israel. Rather, he seeks to address the theological issues related to claims about the land of Israel.

by Reed Lessing

As a parent who survived the toddler years with three children, I still clearly recall the “Toddler Property Laws”: If I like it, it’s mine. If it’s in my hand, it’s mine. If I can take it from you, it’s mine. If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine. It must never appear to be yours in any way; it’s always and forevermore mine!

Over the millennia, numerous rulers, governments, and nations have looked at the land of Israel and said, “Forevermore, mine!”

The land once belonged to the Amorites, as we learn in Genesis 15. Then it was possessed by the Israelites. The Assyrians (2 Kings 17:6), Babylonians (2 Kings 25:22), Persians (2 Chron. 36:23), Greeks (Dan. 11:1–5), and Romans (Luke 3:1) all claimed ownership at times during Old Testament history. And since the end of the New Testament period, the Byzantine, Ottoman, and British empires have looked at this land and said “Mine!”

So whose land is it?

Politically or theologically?

Generally speaking, the question of who owned Palestine was answered politically from 70 A.D., when the Roman army crushed the Jewish rebellion and dismantled Jerusalem, until the 1840s. Whoever had the military might and diplomatic ability owned the land.

In the 1840s, John Nelson Darby, a Plymouth Brethren minister from England, began teaching that the question of Palestine’s ownership needed to be answered theologically.

By introducing the method of biblical interpretation called Premillennial-Dispensationalism, Darby heralded the idea that biblical history is divided into seven “dispensations” or periods of time. The end of the sixth dispensation, he stated, would be triggered by Israel’s return to the land.

Picking up where Darby left off, Cyrus Scofield propagated Premillennial-Dispensationalism in his influential Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909. The Scofield Reference Bible is the single most important document espousing the teaching that God permanently gave the land of Palestine to the Jews.

Prior to these teachings of Darby and Scofield, most Christians (including Lutherans) understood the ownership of Palestine to be a political issue, not a theological issue.

All of that has changed. It is estimated that 40 million Christians in the United States now embrace the idea that the present-day state of Israel created by the United Nations in 1948 is by divine decree and is a sign that we live in “the last days.”

The ‘Left Behind’ effect

Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye have taken Scofield’s ideas and disseminated them via their “Left Behind” series of novels. The authors believe the fuse that ignited “the last days” was ethnic Israel’s return to the land of Palestine in 1948. They call this “the super sign of biblical prophecy” because they believe this event will trigger the rapture of the Church, which could occur at any moment.

The rapture will be followed by seven years of suffering and destruction, called the tribulation. After this, Christ will visibly return as Judge and usher in the seventh dispensation, His 1,000-year reign on earth. During this time, unbelievers will increase in numbers. Christ will return (again) and bring all evil to an end. He will usher in the new heavens and new earth. The key to the unfolding of these events, they believe, is that the land of Palestine forever belongs to the Jews.

What does the Bible say?

The Old Testament declares that the land of Canaan (approximately present-day Israel and Palestine, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Lebanon and Syria) belongs to the Lord (cf. Ps. 24:1); He is the one who gave it to Israel (Deut. 6:10–11), and He is the One who can take it away (Lev. 26:33). Land could not be permanently bought or sold (cf. 1 Kings 21:1–16); it could not be given away, let alone stolen or confiscated. The land in the Old Testament was always a means for a greater end, the coming of Jesus Christ in the fullness of time (Gen. 17:1–7; Gal. 3:14, 29; 4:4). To a large extent, however, it was Israel’s belief that it—not the Lord—owned the land that led to the Northern Kingdom’s exile of 721 B.C. to Assyria and the Southern Kingdom’s exile of 587 B.C. to Babylon.

When Jesus speaks about the land in Luke 19:41–44, He makes no reference to it ever being restored to the Jews. Rather, He taught His disciples to look forward — not to a Jewish return to the land — but to the coming of the Son of Man in His glory on the Last Day (Matt. 24:30–31; Luke 21:25–28; Dan. 7:13–14).

Jesus makes only several explicit references to the land in the Gospels. The strongest is in the Beatitudes. In Matt. 5:5, the Savior quotes from Ps. 37:11, where the blessing of the meek is the inheritance of the land. Yet, it is not the land of Israel, but the entire earth that the meek will inherit (cf. Rom. 4:13). And, in light of the strong eschatological dimensions of the Sermon on the Mount, this earth is the “new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13).

Until the Day of Pentecost, the disciples shared the same nationalistic understanding of the land as the other Jews of the first century (cf. Luke 24:21; Acts 1:6). But after the coming of the Holy Spirit, they began to use Old Testament language concerning the land in new ways. One example comes from Peter, who speaks of our inheritance that, unlike the land of Palestine, “can never perish, spoil, or fade” (1 Peter 1:4).

The book of Hebrews is filled with examples of how the New Testament reinterprets “the land.” Christians have the land, described as the rest into which they have entered through Christ (Heb. 4:1–11). In Heb. 11:13–16, the central Gospel motif is the land. The pilgrimage of faith is set in three scenes: a land from which they set out in faith, the present context of wandering, and the hoped-for homeland that is a “better,” indeed a “heavenly” city.

Shadows or reality?

“The hope of the baptized is not
placed on current events in the
Middle East. Rather we are called
to fix our eyes on Jesus.”

Premillennial-Dispensationalists believe that Israel’s resettlement of the land in 1948 is the key to a correct understanding of the end times. They contend that Old Testament prophecies regarding not only the land, but also such promises as the rebuilding of the Temple and the reinstitution of its sacrifices, must be literally fulfilled.

It is clear from Scripture, however, that these Old Testament promises are to be read in light of the New Testament. The Old Testament revelation of God’s acts in the history of Israel consists of shadows, images, forms, and prophecies. The New Testament announces the reality, substance, and final fulfillment of these promises in the person and work of Jesus Christ (John 5:39; Luke 24:44).

The question, then, is not whether the land-promises of the Old Testament are to be understood literally or spiritually. Rather, it’s a question of whether they should be understood in terms of Old Testament shadows or in terms of New Testament realities.

When the New Testament is allowed to interpret the Old Testament, it follows that the 1948 state of Israel is not a prophetic realization of the Messianic kingdom of Jesus Christ. His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). Furthermore, a day should not be anticipated in which Christ’s kingdom will manifest Jewish distinctives, whether by its location in the land of Palestine, its capital in Jerusalem, its constituency, or its ceremonial institutions and practices. The Old Testament needs to be viewed in light of Jesus Christ.

The land-promises that God gave to Abraham were made effective through Christ, Abraham’s true Seed (Gal. 3:16). All spiritual benefits are derived from Jesus, and apart from Him there is no participation in the promises made to Abraham (Gal. 3:26–29). These promises are not directed toward any particular ethnic group. The Church — not Jews or the Israelis — is the true Israel of God, and the baptized are the children of Abraham.

When Premillennial-Dispensationalists point to the modern state of Israel as a concrete manifestation of God’s presence, they overlook the fact that God has left visible and tangible signs indicating that He is with His people. First John 5:7–8 states: “For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” God testifies to being present with His Church right now by means of the Spirit-inspired and Christ-centered Old and New Testament Scriptures, the water of Baptism, and the true body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion.

The assurance of God working in the world is therefore not based on the return of the Jews to their ancestral land, but rather on the sure Word of promise of forgiveness of sins imparted in the means of grace, the Gospel and the Sacraments.

There is no suggestion that Jesus or the apostles believed the Jewish people still have a divine right to the land, or that the Jewish possession of the land would be an important — let alone central aspect of God’s plan for the world. The land was promised to Abraham, taken possession of under Joshua, lost in the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles, regained by Judah upon Cyrus’ decree in 538 B.C., and reinterpreted by Jesus, Paul, and others as a new heaven and new earth.

The hope of the baptized, therefore, is not placed on current events in the Middle East. Rather, we are called to fix our eyes on Jesus as we long and pray for His Second and Final Advent. On that day, He will raise us from the dead and usher us into the new heavens and the new earth. Then Jesus will lovingly gaze upon all the baptized and say, “I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are always and forevermore mine!” (cf. Is. 43:1).

Photo: LCMS Communications/Erik M. Lunsford

A Quick History of the Holy Land

Before Christ

Some scholars use Bible lineages to date Abraham around this time. Commanded by God, he leaves Ur, a wealthy, corrupt city in today’s southern Iraq, and later, leaves Haran in today’s southern Turkey. He receives God’s word to “give you this land.”

1450: Egypt’s pharaohs subjugate the Canaanites, including Abraham’s descendants.

1250–1200: A probably period when the Israelites enter the Holy Land after their Exodus from Egypt and reclaim the land from diverse Canaanites.

980–935: Kings David and Solomon build a rich Israel empire. Solomon’s Temple is built.

930: Shortly after Solomon’s death, the Kingdom is divided between North (Israel) and South (Judah).

722–721: The Assyrians conquer the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The 10 tribes are deported and disappear from history.

606–581: King Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian army conquers Judah, destroys Jerusalem, including the Temple. Judeans are taken to Babylon.

539: The Medes and Persians (from modern-day Iran) capture Babylon. God induces King Cyrus to allow the Jews to return to their land. They rebuild the Temple.

332: Alexander the Great’s Greek army sweeps across the Holy Land.

323: After Alexander’s death, his generals, Ptolemy in Egypt and Seleucid in Syria battle for the land.

63: Roman armies under Pompey overrun the land and begin a 600-year rule. Herod the Great becomes ruler of Judea.

After Christ

4 B.C.–A.D. 27: Christ’s life and ministry in Israel.

A.D. 30–300: The new faith reaches out vigorously to Gentiles, answering Christ’s call to “teach all nations, baptizing them.”

330: The Christian Byzantine Empire begins when Emperor Constantine is converted to Christianity.

By 640: Muslim armies drive Byzantine Christians from the Holy Land; they rule for a while from Baghdad. Jerusalem is recognized as a holy city in Islam and the Temple Mount as the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven.

1099–1291: European crusaders establish the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

1516: Ottoman Turks overwhelm the Holy Land. It remains in Muslim control until World War II.

1920: Britain installs monarchies in Iraq and Transjordan. The latter governs Palestine. Fleeing Europe and Russia, Jews flood into Palestine from 1920 on.

1947: The United Nations divides Palestine into two states, one Jewish, one Arab. Jerusalem to be administered by the UN to avoid conflict.

1948: Israel, populated by Jewish refugees from Europe, Africa, and Asia, proclaims itself a nation. Open warfare between the New Israel and its Arab neighbors makes refugees of Palestinians.

Some Important Definitions:

Amillenialism: This is the historic teaching of the Church that there will not be a literal, 1,000-year earthly kingdom of Jesus. This view is better termed “realized millennialism” because it embraces the idea that Christ is reigning now. The “thousand years” of Rev. 20:1–10 is intended to be understood figuratively as a reference to the time of Christ’s reign as King from the day of His Ascension until the Last Day. Hence, the millennium is a present reality (Christ’s heavenly reign), not a future hope (Christ’s rule on earth after His return).

Dispensationalism: This is a system of biblical interpretations that distinguishes seven distinct periods or “dispensations” in biblical history:

1. Innocence (before the Fall);

2. Conscience (from the Fall to Noah);

3. Human Government (from Noah to Abraham);

4. Promise (from Abraham to Moses);

5. Law (from Moses to Christ);

6. Grace (the church age);

7. the Kingdom (the millennium).

Last Days: The phrase “the last days” appears 27 times in the New Testament. Premillennial-Dispensationalists teach that with the creation of the 1948 state of Israel, the world has entered the last days. However, in most biblical instances, it is used of the eschatological epoch, which began with the coming of Jesus Christ.

Millennium: Derived from the Latin for 1,000 years. Premillennial-Dispensationalists understand the 1,000 years of Revelation 20 as literal. But the Bible teaches that Christ is reigning now, and that His gracious rule that began on the day of His Ascension will continue until the Last day, when He will hand “over the kingdom to God the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power” (1 Cor. 15:24).

Premillennialism: The belief that the Second Advent will occur before the millennium. This view holds that Scripture is to be interpreted in a “literalistic” manner; the Church and Israel are two distinct groups for whom God has a divine plan; the Church is a mystery, unrevealed in the Old Testament; and the “age of the Church” must be completed before God can resume His main program.

Rapture: This refers to the events described in 1 Thes. 4:14–17, when believers will be “raptured” or “caught up” (Latin: rapiemur) in the clouds to meet Christ in the air at His Second Coming. When used by Premillennial-Dispensationalists the term refers to Christ’s secret coming, when all believers and all children who have not reached the age of accountability are suddenly removed from the earth before the seven-year tribulation.

Premillennial-Dispensationalists understand these four terms to be synonymous: Israelite, Hebrew, Jew, and Israeli. In this way, they are able to apply God’s land-promises to the Israelites of the Old Testament to modern-day Jews, and especially with the 1948 state of Israel. But these four terms have different definitions:

Israelite: An Old Testament believer in Yahweh (the Lord), the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Hebrew: Used by Israelites in the Old Testament to identify themselves to non-Israelites.

Jew: This term means either an ethnicity or an adherent to “Judaism,” which is not the Christ-centered faith of the Old Testament.

Israeli: A citizen of the 1948 state of Israel, which is not the same Israel of the Old Testament. Israelis are sometimes called “secular Jews.”

For a more comprehensive response to the Premillennial-Dispensational theology that undergirds the “Left Behind” series, read the document from the LCMS Committee on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) titled, The End Times: A Study on Eschatology and Millennialism and the 2004 CTCR document titled, A Lutheran Response to the Left Behind Series, along with its accompanying Bible Study.

Hug A Telemarketer Today

Read Whole article at Hug a Telemarketer Today - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

Continuing in the series of Things You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else (But Church), an in-person version of which I presented as a class at Christ Church Charlottesville on Sunday mornings this fall. Click here to read the intro and many caveats.

Who are the most acceptable cultural villains these days? I’m not talking about archetypal bad guys like Nazis or Klan members. I’m talking about people we universally despise — and don’t feel bad for doing so. An individual example would be Dan Snyder, the erstwhile owner of the Washington Commanders football team, about whom I’ve never heard a kind word. Which is saying something; it’s not easy to garner genuine bi-partisan disdain in the DC metro area, but that guy seems to have pulled it off.

But what are the groups that function this way today? ‘Stage parents’ strike me as a demographic that’s pretty hard to love. Maybe that’s more of a personal peeve, though. A generous soul might say their only crime is loving their kid too much. Same goes, I guess, for those awful guys that get in fistfights on the sidelines of their kid’s little league games.

A couple years ago the Internet decided that Karens and Kyles were the worst. Yet there’s a generational element to those resentments that keeps them from being universal. Plus, I know some wonderful ladies named Karen.

Then it hit me: Telemarketers. No one is more casually hate-able.

To be clear, I’m not talking about folks who volunteer their time to make calls for a cause they believe in. Nor really, those who want us to switch our insurance companies (in the middle of dinner). I’m talking about a specific type of tele- or e…………………………………….

Read Whole article at Hug a Telemarketer Today - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

Are You The Keymaker

Read the entire article at Are You the Key Master? - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

Ghostbusters, Gozer, and Jesus

When I was a kid, a young kid, say five years old, my dad was approached by one of our neighbors, who wanted to know if everything was OK in our house. My dad was perplexed because, on our quiet cul-de-sac, everything was always OK. Nothing exciting ever happened and that was how the residents on the quiet cul-de-sac liked things………………………

The Best Boss You'll Ever Have

Read the article at The Best Boss You'll Ever Have - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

THE BEST BOSS YOU’LL EVER HAVE

I was told I was beloved and worthy and so I began to believe it and act accordingly.

SARAH CONDON / 8.23.23

The following excerpt comes from Churchy: The Real Life Adventures of a Wife, Mom, and Priest:

In 2013 the Harvard Business Review published a study called “If Your Boss Thinks You’re Awesome, You Will Become More Awesome.” Their research proved what every low (wo)man on the totem pole already knew: If your boss treats you like a great employee, it will make you less likely to be a bad one. Results showed the quality of peoples’ leadership within a company being vastly better if their boss believed that they were, in fact, awesome. Conversely, the harder your bosses are on you, the less effective your work and leadership were in the eyes of your peers. In other words, if your boss speaks a word of worthiness over you, you begin to believe you are worthy.

Most of us have work experience that speaks to this dichotomy. In my first grown-up job, I had a boss who would stand at the door every day and tell me if I was late. Most mornings I was not. And so she would begrudgingly grumble out a “Good morning, Sarah.” However, when I was running behind she would bark out, “TWO MINUTES LATE!” to me at the door followed by a “You’re lucky we are so forgiving!”

Forgiving indeed…………………………..

NT Wright on Easter Atonement and the Message of the Cross

Read the entire article at N.T. Wright on Easter, Atonement and the Message of the Cross - RELEVANT (relevantmagazine.com)

Whether you’ve been around Christianity for years or are new to faith, you probably know the Easter story. It goes something like this: Humans are sinners; Jesus died as a sacrifice, paying for our sins; and then three days later, Jesus came to life again — the result of which is that His followers can go to heaven when they die. But what if we’re getting it all wrong?

“Many people have grown up assuming that is what the cross is all about,” says world-renowned theologian, scholar and author of The Day the Revolution Began, N.T. Wright. “And the awful thing is that this message about an angry God and an innocent victim has a lot more in common with ancient Pagan thought than with ancient Jewish or Christian thought.”……………………

Are Aliens Saved by the Blood of the Lamb Too?

Read the whole article here Are Aliens Saved by the Blood of the Lamb Too? - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

If you haven’t been following the news coming out of the congressional hearings on UFOs, the (possible) revelations from the whistleblower last week are pretty wild stuff. As if stolen from the X-files, we’ve heard allegations of aircraft of “non-human” origin, “a multi-decade [UFO] crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program,” and the discovery of “non-human biologics.” These come on top of the decades of mysterious footage of floating vessels and hypersonic fly-bys. For some, the question isn’t whether aliens exist, but how far down the conspiracy-theory rabbit hole goes. The truth is not only “out there,” but has occasionally come for a visit.

Given the seemingly infinite number of galaxies we can now observe, courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope, the possibility of intelligent alien life can feel more probable than impossible. Or at the very least, the niche extraterrestrial fandom that has long found themselves as the butt of jokes — only the mentally ill wear tinfoil hats — have more reason to feel their suspicions vindicated.

If aliens showed up tomorrow on the White House lawn, how would their possible existence shift Christian theology? Which beliefs would now appear implausible and what would be left after the dust settled?

This thought experiment isn’t merely hypothetical. As silly as it is for me to even be writing an article about extraterrestrials, recent polls have found that 65% of Americans now believe that aliens exist, only a smidge lower than the 81% who believe in God. To say nothing of the decades of movies, TV, books, or comics depicting alien encounters. One can ponder why most now think there is extraterrestrial ………………….