Pastor's Message

Congratulations, YOU are Time's "Person of the Year"!

Every year Time Magazine picks a “Person of the Year.” They scour news stories for a particular year, looking for a person who influenced the course of world events, either for the good of the world, or to the world’s detriment. Time’s practice is based on what they call the "Great Man" theory of history. This theory is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that, "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." Carlyle theorized that it has and always will be a few powerful and/or famous men and women who shape our collective destiny as a species. Time believes that Carlyle’s theory took a serious beating this year.

Lev Grossman, author of the article naming 2006’s person of the year, explains that Time Magazine was apparently not inspired to name even one person as “Person of the Year.” Instead, Grossman declared the big news story for 2006 was the Internet and its impact on our world. Grossman believes that our world is being changed by the information superhighway and the billions of people connected to it. It is for this reason, every person sitting at a computer screen is a “Person of the Year.” If you are connected to the worldwide web, congratulations, you are a “Person of the Year.” Time designed its front page with a crude mirror which permits your image to be on the computer screen which graces the magazine’s cover.

The internet, the worldwide web, what Time Magazine calls the Web 2.0, is a pretty incredible thing. Anyone who has a computer and can hook up to a telephone or cable line or connect wirelessly can be connected to the world. You can find information on any topic from A to Z and everything in between, download it, read it, comment on it, change it and throw it back onto the web. There are self-help sites on almost any topic you can imagine. You can find sites that will help you cook your Christmas turkey. Other sites will help you manage your after-Christmas depression. Still other sites will help you get your after-Christmas finances from the red to the black. Many of these sites are free. Online is the only way you can register at most Canadian universities today. You can order a diet and exercise program on the web that you can follow in your own home and get daily support for your diet by e-mail. You can shop for anything on the web from soup to nuts, airline tickets, hotel rooms and even real estate. You can buy and sell stocks, bonds and futures on stock exchanges around the world. You can buy it all with your credit cards. There are on-line auction sites that permit you to offer almost anything you own to virtually anyone in the world who is interested and has access to a computer. All products purchased are shipped to you by mail or some other delivery service. Some countries are talking about permitting voting to occur on-line.

The Internet has its dark side. First, just because information is on the Internet does not make it true. People can post anything on the web, even blatant lies. There are no real permanent controls or gatekeepers on what is posted on the web. Government authorities go after illegal websites and try to shut them down; but as fast as one illegal site is shut down, two more pop up to take its place. The web is the biggest distributor of all manner of pornography in the world. There are online gambling sites, which permit you to gamble 7 days a week 24 hours a day. You can find sites on how to build an atomic bomb, pipe bombs and any number of small explosive devices. The Internet is littered with hate sites. Sites established by Islamic extremists showed videos of executions of hostages held by them in Iraq.

Grossman believes that we are really only at the very beginning of the Internet revolution. Web 2.0 is changing the world, but it is also changing the way the world changes.

Just think of what might happen as more and more people around the world are able to trade stocks and bonds on the web. The government and big institutional investors may not have the control over the market they once had. Investors from around the globe, big and small, will begin to drive the market more. What if we could vote in civic, provincial and national elections on the web? What would that do for voter turnout? What about the potential for massive voter fraud? It is possible that the Internet will slowly but surely take more and more power away from the traditional sources and place it in the hands of the billions of people who have and will have access to a computer.

What intrigued me about this article are two things. First, that article helped me see that a danger exists that, like Time, the church is drifting away from a “great man” understanding of faith and history to a “consensus of the little persons on topics and issues” understanding of faith and history. At the same time, the mirror on the magazine’s cover inspires me. Upon reflection on the article and its implications, I came to see that God doesn’t want me to be a reflection in a mirror; rather, He wants me to be a mirror; His mirror.

The Web is awash with websites on every topic studied and issue faced by the church universal. There are on-line Bibles in hundreds of languages and translations. There are on-line Bible commentaries, which cover the spectrum from liberal to conservative; evangelical to mainline and orthodox. There are sites which discuss Salvation, Baptism, Holy Communion, the Trinity, Jesus’ divinity, the Holy Spirit, the End Times, the means and methods by which scripture is interpreted, the ordination of women and homosexuals and same gender marriage, to name but a few. You can find a website which champions every stance and interpretation concerning any topic or issue faced by the church. I believe that these websites are a sign and symbol of very deep divisions among Christians on all of these topics and issues.

I believe that these websites reflect more than just the divisions among Christians. I believe they reflect an attitude we find in the church, namely, that if we form a consensus among Christians on a topic or an issue, that somehow this consensus determines how our Triune God works in the world. For example, some Christians believe that if enough people believe in the doctrine of “transubstantiation” (that the bread and wine of “Holy Communion” actually turn into the real flesh and real blood of Jesus, respectively, after they are ingested by a communicant), that is the only way Jesus works in the sacrament. In the same way, if enough Christians believe that the definition of marriage can be changed to include same gender couples, God will bless this new union in the way he blesses heterosexual couples. Is that true? I don’t believe so! God is sovereign. God acts the way God acts and blesses those he blesses. God gave us the Scriptures to help the Church discern His will as we face everyday questions and challenges that arise.

Divisions are nothing new in the church. In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul warned the congregation about the effect of divisions on the life of that congregation. Paul was told that the church in Corinth was split based on personality and theology and he pleaded with them to seek unity, not diversity. I believe he pleaded with them to see that they had traded their “great man” view of faith and history for a “consensus of little men on issues” view.

I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ." (1 Corinthians 1:10-12)

Paul lamented this state of affairs in the Corinthian congregation. The Holy Spirit gave Paul a keen insight into the cause of the divisions.

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. (1 Corinthians 3:5-9)

Paul blamed these divisions on the focus of the congregants. The members of the Corinthian congregation focused on and placed great reliance on the person and theology of the one through whom they came to faith in Jesus, not Jesus, the source and foundation of the church in which the people came to faith.

Each person who created a group must have possessed a different view on some topic or issue facing the growing Corinthian congregation. In addition to factions forming around people in each congregation, Paul had to deal with people from outside the congregation who came in claiming knowledge superior to Paul’s on a host of topics and issues. You can see how these divisions on topics and issues could cause congregational paralysis.

Paul pointed out the mistake the members of the church in Corinth made; namely, it was to see their spiritual mentors as more than mere servants of God with a job, namely, to communicate the Gospel in its purity. Like Christians today, the members of the Corinthian congregation began to believe that their opinions, and the opinions of their spiritual mentors, actually represented how God worked in the world.

Paul sets us - and them - straight. Paul reminds us - and reminded them - that the Holy Christian Church has and always will believe in the “great man” theory of faith and history. The church has and will always confess:

• Jesus Christ, is the eternal Son of God, through whom the universe was created, and who, for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit, He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.

• Jesus has shaped and continues to shape the destiny of the entire world, and everything and everybody in it, by His birth, miracles, teaching, arrest, trial, innocent suffering, crucifixion, death, resurrection on the third day, ascension into heaven, His promise to be with us through this age, His promise to return to earth to resurrect all the dead, judge between them, and confer eternal life in heaven on all who believe in Him and eternal life in Hell for all who do not.

Paul reminded them - and reminds us - that the church is the body of Christ. When we are baptized, we are baptized into the body of Christ, we die to sin and become a new creation. (Romans 6:3-5, 12:5 1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Paul reminds us that it is through this body that God works in the world.

Paul reminded the Corinthian congregation that by Jesus’ death on the cross for our sin and His resurrection, God was reconciling Himself to the world. The church is God’s agent of reconciliation by announcing the good news of the Gospel. (2 Corinthians 5:17-19). For Paul, the mission of the church is to preach Christ crucified.

Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

(1 Corinthians 1:22-24)

In his first letter to the Philippians, Paul declared that he had devoted his life to one thing.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. (Philippians 3:10-12)

When Paul made the statement, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me”, he was speaking of the great change Jesus had worked in his life. Before encountering Jesus, Paul believed that what made him special and gave his life meaning was his identity as a Jew and his efforts at following the Old Testament legal code (Philippians 3:4-6). Paul declared that in his mind, he had followed the Jewish ceremonial legal code faultlessly. He was sure the followers of Jesus were heretics and asked for permission to persecute the sect of Judaism who believed Jesus was God’s Messiah. He had persecuted the fledgling church with great zeal. However, Jesus came into his life and changed it forever. Paul went from being a persecutor of the church to what Jesus had “taken hold of Paul for”, namely, to become a builder of Jesus’ church on earth.

Paul had no illusions as to his purpose and the purpose of the church. He was to bring people to Jesus through the proclamation of the Gospel of reconciliation. Baptize them in the name of the Triune God, so their sins were forgiven by God, they received the Holy Spirit, and they were added to the body of Christ. Paul knew that with reconciliation with God, a process of transformation had begun in them, which would culminate in the resurrection to eternal life. Paul believed that some of this transformation began in this life through the agency of the Holy Spirit. To the extent that the believer permitted the Holy Spirit to work in his or her life, the believer would experience a renewal of his or her mind and the use of spiritual gifts, (Romans 12:2-21) and would bear fruit; that is, would experience and share with others love, faithfulness, patience, kindness, peace, joy, goodness, gentleness, and self control. (Galatians 5:22-23).

Finally, Paul encouraged the church to be who they are meant to be, namely, Christ’s mirrors. “ And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” A renewed mind and the manifestation of the fruit of the spirit permits us to act as mirrors and reflect Jesus to the world. As if that was not good enough, Paul proclaims that, in addition to being mirrors that reflect Jesus, we are also being transformed into His likeness. When I see the mirror on the Time Magazine that says “you”, I see in that picture Jesus’ call for me to be a mirror, which reflects His glory in 2007. Do you experience that call too?

In Christ,

Pastor Ed

© Grace Lutheran Church Kelowna 2006
Grace Lutheran Church is a member congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada