I commend in particular the three missionary biographics:
1) Adoniram Judson: How Few There Are Who Die So Hard! (especially with the new connections we have with Thailand)
2) David Brainerd: May I Never Loiter On My Heavenly Journey!
3) John G. Paton: You Will Be Eaten By Cannibals!

As we saw last week, this calling comes to us because we are made in the image of God. Thus, we are not surprised as we read in the first chapter of Genesis, that God is doing the very thing he commands us to do. As we observed in our exposition of Genesis, the six days of creation describe the way that God forms and fills his creation. During days one through three, God creates realms—heavens, sky, water, earth. During days four through six, he fills those realms—sun, moon, stars, birds, fish, animals, humans). Like God, we form and fill human civilization through our vocations. This is probably why Adam is first presented to us as a gardener, one who works to develop and grow the garden of God.

With this in mind we are now in a place to ask the difficult questions about whether or not our vocation(s) is actually a valid vocation. The way we begin to answer that is by wrestling with the ways that it helps to build human society. Calvin saw it like this: he held that “all callings that serve the common good of human beings are lawful and holy.” The Puritan offered specific examples when he rejected the occupations such as usury, gambling, and maintaining a house of gambling, arguing that “God is the author of lawful callings, and an unlawful calling is really no calling at all.” So a valid vocation or

God does not want merely more individuals of the human species; he also wants the world to be filled with a human society.Tim Keller

And so we ask the hard question: In what ways does my vocation(s) serve to build civilization and to love and serve my neighbors? If at the end of the day we cannot answer this question conclusively, then perhaps it is time for us to seek a new and valid vocation.

 To deny the goodness of work is to deny the goodness of God

As we continue to read we find not only God at work, but we also find God commissioning his human creatures to work. This, too, is not surprising because as human beings we have been made in his image. Like father, like son. It is also important for us to note that this commissioning comes prior to the fall. This is, along with marriage and the Sabbath, a creation ordinance. This means that human beings—Christians and non-Christians alike—do work. In order to affirm that unbelievers were made for work while not conflating their work with the calling that Christians have to work, Luther used two different words to describe what they do. Christians have a calling, unbelievers have a station. But both work. The fact that work appears before the fall also means that it is not a punishment of any kind or a necessary evil. Work is what we were made for. Dorothy Sayers can say things so awesomely. She put it like this: “What is the Christian understanding of work?…It is that work is not, primarily, a thing that one does to live, but the thing that one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties…the medium in which he offers himself to God.”

Sayers’ description of work gives us an insight into why people who don’t have to work often become miserable. God has wired us so that we must work. That doesn’t mean that the Western notion of retirement is bad. Of course not. There are many good reasons for retirement. It just means that after one retires from their calling, they will need to give themselves to their other vocations.

So work is good. It is what God does and it is what he has called us to do. To deny the value of work is to deny our humanness. And to deny the goodness of work is to deny the goodness of God: “Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality; it is not simply medicine but food for our soul” (Keller).

 I will suggest that one of the ways we love our neighbor is by faithfully attending to our God-given vocations.

When it comes to the purpose of work, I think there are at least three approaches to this subject by Christians. The first comes from those within the ecumenical movement. They suggest work is for furthering social justice in the world. The second comes from the bowels of revivalism. Not surprisingly, this movement suggests that the workplace is primarily a place to witness for Jesus. Finally, there is the reformed tradition which views work as a means of loving and serving neighbor. Luther once said, “God doesn’t need our good works, our neighbors do.” Lutherans often referred to our work as the “fingers of God” through which he extends his providential care for the world.

Our day doesn’t foster much thought on or appreciation for the topic of vocation. There are a lot of reasons for that. But mostly it’s because we are so far removed from the mundane processes that allow for life to happen as we know it. Most of us don’t know the man who fed the cow we ate for dinner or the butcher who cut him up or the man who drove the cold truck to the store. The meat was just there and we picked it up. Most of us don’t think of the person who did research all those years and painstakingly put words to paper. No, we think of Amazon. Perhaps, after the next couple of weeks, that will change.

The results of thinking through this could prove absolutely liberating for you. Hopefully you will wake up with a new sense of purpose and meaning for your life. Hopefully you will see that what you are doing in this world really does matter. And hopefully you will begin to view your neighbors with dignity and respect for their callings, no matter what they may be.

~Pastor Brian S. Tallman

Speaking of the ecumenical creeds, there are three of them: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian. They are acknowledged-some places more formally than others-by the Greek, Latin, and Protestant churches; in other words, by all Christians. Only the most sectarian and fanatical groups neglect and reject them (by the way, have you ever noticed that for some reason we only have two of the three ecumenical creeds in our hymnal? Can you guess which one is missing? Good guess. Why did the editors of the Trinity Hymnal leave this one out?).

It is important for us to remember that these creeds did not appear out of thin air. Like most of the NT, these creeds emerged out of great doctrinal conflicts that afflicted the early church. You will notice as you read these documents and reflect upon them that they follow a similar order beginning with God and creation and ending with the resurrection of the body and life everlasting and fill out the key redemptive elements in between.

Back to the the Athanasian creed. It bears the name of the great defender of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ, the bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius (d. 373). Sometimes you will hear him referred to as Athanasius contra mundum (against the world). Pretty interesting, huh? Here’s the bad news. Athanasius didn’t write this creed, at least no credible scholar believes he did. One of the reasons no one believes that he wrote it is because nothing like it was recovered from any of his known writings. Likewise, none of the recent councils after his death (Constantinople, 381; Ephesus 431; Chalcedon 451) make any allusion to it. It was likely labeled with his name after his death so as to pay tribute to him, but also to suggest credibility because of his well-known defense of the Trinity, something the creed focuses on. And since, as we noted above, all of Christendom has adopted it, we can safely say, it worked.

Warning: Shameless plug coming next. During the summer the pastors and interns will be leading a series covering the historical and theological backgrounds of the three ecumenical creeds as well as the confessions of the Lutheran and Anglican churches. In all of this it is our prayer that you will come to love and cherish the faith that has been handed down to us.
~ Pastor Brian Tallman

This Wednesday for our last meeting of the season, we will be having our traditional Ice Cream Social with the ladies of Salt&Light. It will not be at the church, but as usual it will be at Aztec park. Head uphill on Lake Murray for a few lights, turn right on Aztec, and look for the park.

Because it will be outdoors, it will be a little earlier. Meet at 6:30 (or earlier if you want, enjoy the park!), we’ll serve ice cream at 7, and due to darkness, most will probably want to take off by 8. See you there!

Pentecot does not exist apart from the resurrection but because of the resurrection.

As a result of the impulse that many have to think of the Holy Spirit in purely individualistic categories, their approach to the nature of the church is also affected. The church becomes, when regarded too individualistically, something akin to the contract theory of government. The church is a group of individuals who voluntarily meet at a particular time to do some things together that would be difficult to do by themselves. But Pentecost challenges this by reminding us that we are a community that has been created by the Holy Spirit and as a people summoned out of the world to be a part of this new body. As Stookey puts it,

“And we are called as a body of interdependent parts, not as separate individuals. The free-spirited individualism of our age is a manifestation of Babel, not Pentecost, as should be evident from the intransigent divisions and intractable conflicts such individualism fosters. The Risen One, who is present in all times and in all places, seeks to bind together by the action of the Spirit all things that have been wrongly separated. Participation therefore is not something we do on the basis of personal choice or need; participation in the Body of Christ is inherent in being Christian.”

So on this day, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and the truth of the song that we will sing: “We Are God’s People.”

The previously-announced Mountain Bike Day is upon us! Rancho Bernardo Community Park, this Saturday 18th, 9-1, bring a picnic lunch (and a backpack, and a HELMET, and a bike, etc…) check the original announcement for more info, but here are a few more important details:

Here’s a google map with easy directions. Let’s meet in the parking lot next to the basketball courts, which is (a) the easiest parking lot to find, and (b) the largest, so most likely to have spaces on a Saturday morning when we’re competing against soccer, baseball, etc.

I’m still looking for a ride for a couple boys; if you can take two boys and two bikes, let me know (or if you can loan a pickup for somebody else to drive).

In the book, The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story & Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family, Shanks and Witherington discuss the archaeological discovery of an ossuary (bone box) dating back to the first century with the following inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”. James, a monumental figure in the first centuries of Christianity, was the first head of the church in Jerusalem and he was a faithful, Torah-observing Jew.

The data we have for James is not as much as we have for Paul but we have enough to come to some significant conclusions. First, in the Gospels it is reported that Jesus’ brothers, including James, were unbelievers (Mk. 3:21, 31; 6:3-4; Jn. 7:5). “Here it is quite plain that Jesus’ brothers did not fully believe in or follow him before his death.” (Witherington, 1621 Kindle)
Second, 1 Corinthians 15:7 reads “Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.” Listing more than likely in chronological order who Jesus appeared to, Paul recites a list that has been handed down (1 Cor. 15:3). Witherington takes interest that in this list, the only names given are Cephas and James. (Witherington, 1765 Kindle) Witherington suggests that this is because James was not part of any group early on. James is then described by Paul as a “pillar of the church” in Galatians (Acts 15:12-21; Gal 1:19; 2:9). James’ death as a martyr is recorded by Josephus, Hegesippus, and Clement of Alexandria as preserved in the writings of Eusebius (Christian and non-Christian sources).

Witherington concludes,
“Something dramatic must have happened to James after the death of Jesus to account for his being included in Acts among the disciples and later named as leader of the Jerusalem church. It seems clear that it was Jesus’ appearance to him that mainly accounts for his conversion to the movement and his rise to prominence.”

The other fact is the empty tomb. Habermas has discovered that roughly 75% of scholars on the subject accept that the tomb is empty. (The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 70) There are three basic arguments for the empty tomb. First, the Jerusalem factor. Jesus had a public execution in Jerusalem. His resurrection appearances were claimed to have happened in Jerusalem. To refute the claim, authorities would only need to show the corpse. Second, enemy attestation. Early critics accused the disciples of stealing the body. They admit the empty tomb. Third, testimony of women. Women were not credible sources of testimony in the first century. To invoke women would weaken the story. The empty tomb, together with the appearances and skeptic conversions is loud. An answer to account for all these facts is the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
~ Pastor Trey Jasso

Not much time left in the cadet year; two more regular Wednesdays (May 8 & 15) before our traditional closing Ice Cream Social on Wed May 22, but before that, on Sat May 18, we’re going to have a Mountain Bike Day!

The details:

• Saturday May 18, 9-1
• Rancho Bernardo Community Park (I-15 at West Bernardo)

What to bring:

• A bike! Multi-gear mountain bike, or BMX-style is OK too.
• HELMET!!
• Water; in a backpack if necessary. (Park has fountains to refill, trails do not)
• Sun protection if necessary
• Sack or picnic lunch
• A friend!

I’m sorry the location is so far north for most of you, but as you can see from the image below, it’s really close to the freeway, and there are lots of trails from easy to moderate difficulty to ride on. Everybody should be able to ride around the trails nearest the park in area 1; after a few hours of that, those that aren’t tired out will be able to cross the bridge and make it to the creek on the path marked 2. Maybe we can bring our lunches and eat in the shade by the creek. Only those with multi-gear bikes will be able to take route 3, starting up the rocky hill from the creek and up and down to the Lake Hodges boat dock parking lot (and back, of course). For kids that get tired of biking, it’s a great park with lots of space to other things, including of course a playground.

Because the park is pretty far from New Life, we are going to want to carpool as much as possible, maybe meeting at New Life at 8:30? It would be great if one good sized pickup truck could haul a bunch of bikes.

So drop a comment below, or send me an email if you are coming, or want to come, or need a ride, or can give a ride, or haul a bike, or whatever. See you there!