Heaven: A Graduation Party

Congradulations, graduate!

This is graduation season and we just held a hum-dinger of a graduation party for my high school graduate daughter. Great going, girl!

It reminded me of what it will be like when we get to Heaven. Let us rejoice and be glad, the scriptures tell us. For we will have come through great tribulation to stand before his throne and to celebrate with him in that great party God will throw -- the wedding feast of the Lamb of God. We will have made it through!

And the Lord tells us that, having passed through that school we know as earthly life, he will assign us new duties -- some five cities, some ten cities -- according to our "GPA" in life (Luke 19:11-27)

And that is when REAL life will begin...

Grace and peace!
Serapion

Culture vs. Scripture

Go back and read your Bible.
What does it say about....? pick your topic.
I want to challenge you that many of the things you think of as the way things should be within the church or among Christians simply have no basis in the Bible. Many do not even have a long history within the church.

If we are serious about reaching the people of OUR world in THIS century, we must be radical. We have to go back to the root -- what God says in his Word. And you must be prepared to face the fact that what he says in his word may not be what you expected.

So much of the way we do things as American Christians is dictated not by God, but by culture. That does not in itself mean it is wrong. It may be "indifferent" (that means, it doesn't matter). But perhaps this way needs to be changed in order to make us effective in what God has us here to do.

Angels Ain't Cute!

....Or why angels may not be the best decorative accent.

The first time we see angels in the Bible is in Genesis 3. Were they hovering around lovingly watchin over their little lambs Adam and Eve? NO! They were brandishing swords to make sure Adam didn't sneak back into Eden! How cute!

Next we see an angel visiting Abraham. Abraham obviously regards him with respect and immediately offers him hospitality. The angel calls down fire from heaven and consumes the meal Abraham provided and converts it into a crispy critter. How cute!

Fast forward to the end of the book - Revelation. Angels are all over the place. They are soldiers in the army of God, they wield scythes to harvest the people of the earth, they set the tone of heaven by calling to one another "Holy, Holy, Holy!". I don't know about you but I just don't see cute here.

Meek and Mild -- NOT

Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild.
This picture and others like it grace the walls of many a Sunday School in our land.

Was Jesus a bearded lady?








This is a typical image of Jesus from a Byzantine church ceiling. Here it is clear that Jesus is anything but meek and mild.
He is the ruler of the universe and is sitting upon the throne of heaven.
Nothing escapes his notice. Nothing catches him with his pants down.
He created the universe from the smallest quark to the largest galaxy complex in seven days and he didn't even break a sweat when he did it!
Oh, and that guy kneeling and kissing his feet - that would be one of the kings of the earth. One day Tony Blair and George Bush will kneel before him along with King Faisal, Indira Ghandi, Ayatollah Khomeini and every other ruler you can think of, and will kiss His feet.

Beat that!

Role Models

Young men long for role models.
Who are the good Christian role models that we can look up to and admire?

Men don't really admire other men who are "nice", or "tolerant", or "easy-going".
We admire men who are tough but fair.
Smart but not pompous or a smart-aleck.
Strong but not tyrannical - who know how to use their strength for doing what is right.

Here are some examples we could draw on:

Here is a fine Presbyterian Christian man. He was a fine role model for children to look up to. I personally admire him for presenting a positive world to children, and in many ways he was a man of conviction and a trail-blazer. However I suppose he is not quite what most adult men are looking for. Curiously he did come across in a manner similar to some pastors.

Perhaps we could look to someone like Mother Theresa. She was a magnificent Christian woman. Oops, that would make it hard for her to be a role model for men, wouldn't it?

Seriously William Wilberforce would be an excellent candidate. Unformtunately the recent movie about his life does not do him justice. He led a Christian group called the Clapham Sect in England in the early 1800's and campaigned tirelessly for the abolition of the evil slave trade that aided in placing thousands of black slaves on American soil. He worked for 20 years of his life as a member of the British Parliament to accomplish his goal. Happily he succeeded, just days before he breathed his last.

Adam and Eve

God honored and respected Adam as a man. He gave Adam his first project, naming the animals. God also gave him his first job, tending the garden. Then he gave Adam his wife.

God made sure to spend time fathering Adam by meeting with him in the cool of the day. it was something The Father clearly looked forward to.

But one day while Adam and Eve were spending time together, Eve heard the voice of the serpent. The scripture says that Eve gave some of the fruit to her husband who was with her!

In other words, Adam heard the conversation between his wife and the evil one. Eve was deceived, but Adam knew better. But he chose to be passive and do nothing.


Worse - he ultimately decided to choose his wife over his Father (who gave him the wife).


(Above is Michelangelo's rendering of the scene on the ceiling of the Sisteen Chapel. The careful viewer will gain insight into his view of why Adam may have chosen his wife over God -- or at least was not paying attention. Need a hint? What was Eve doing just before she turned to take the fruit?)

Ah, men, brothers, how like our father Adam we are! We feign passivity instead of bringing our considerable strength to bear. We falsely think we have no strength. And we choose the Beauty that God gave us thinking that in her, bone of our bones, flesh of our flesh, we will finally find our completion and fulfillment. We make that lovely person into an idol -- and one destined to disappoint because she is not able to be our God.


Still God honored the man as a man by holding him responsible, he who tried to avoid responsibility to the end -- "it was the woman You gave me!" But there were real consequences for his actions. This was not a game. Now we're playing for real.

Serapion Brothers

In 1922 a group of young writers inspired by the work of Yevgeni Zamyatin, founded the Serapion Brothers. The group took their name from the story by E. T. Hoffmann, the Serapion Brothers, about an individualist who vows to devote himself to a free, imaginative and non-conformist art. Members included Nickolai Tikhonov, Mikhail Slonimski, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Victor Shklovsky, Vsevolod Ivanov and Konstantin Fedin. Russia's most important writer of the period, Maxim Gorky, also sympathized with the group's views.
The Serapions insisted on the right to create a literature that was independent of political ideology. This brought them into conflict with the Soviet government and resulted in them having difficulty getting their work published.
Most members of the group gradually conformed to the idea of socialist realism. Some refused, including Yevgeni Zamyatin, who, with the help of Maxim Gorky, managed to leave the Soviet Union in 1931.

SERAPION the Scholastic

Also known as Sarapion of Thmuis
Memorial
21 March
Profile
Egyptian monk. Ran the famous catechetical school of Alexandria, Egypt. Resigned to spend more time in prayer and penitence. Disciple of Saint Anthony in the desert. Friend of Saint Athanasius. Bishop of Thmuis, near Diospolis in the Nile delta in 339. Fought Arianism. Supporter of Athanasius, and spoke for him in the council of Sardis in 347. Banished by Emperor Constantius II for his opposition to Arianism. Named a Confessor of the Faith by Saint Jerome. Fought Macedonianism, which denies the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Wrote against Manichaeism, showing that our bodies can be instruments of good or evil, that it is our choice, and that just and wicked men often change; it's therefore a lie to think our souls are of God, our bodies of the devil. Wrote several learned letters, a treatise on the titles of the Psalms, and a sacramentary called the Euchologium, a collection of liturgical prayers. Athanasius wrote several works against Arians at Serapion's request, but thought so much of Sarapion that he told him to revise them as he saw fit. "The mind is purified by spiritual knowledge (or by holy meditation and prayer), the spiritual passions of the soul by charity, and the irregular appetites by abstinence and penance." -Serapion's little rule
Died
c.365-370 of natural causes while in exile in Egypt

(from http://www.catholic-forum.com/saintS/saints12.htm )

St.Serapion of Antioch

(Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Serapion was Patriarch of Antioch (191 - 211). He is known primarily through his theological writings. Eusebius refers to three works of Serapion in his history, but admits that others probably existed: first is a private letter addressed to Caricus and Pontius against Montanism, from which Eusebius quotes an extract (Historia ecclesiastica V, 19), as well as ascriptions showing that it was circulated amongst bishops in Asia and Thrace; next is a work addressed to a certain Domninus, who in time of persecution abandoned Christianity for the error of "Jewish will-worship" (Hist. Eccles, VI, 12). He was the largest Serapion in Antioch.
Lastly, Eusebius quotes (vi.12.2) from a pamphlet Serapion wrote concerning the Docetic Gospel of Peter, in which Serapion presents an argument to the Christian community of Rhossus in Syria against this gospel and condemns it:
"We, brethren, receive Peter and the other Apostles even as Christ; but the writings that go falsely by their names we, in our experience, reject, knowing that such things as these we never received. When I was with you I supposed you all to be attached to the right faith; and so without going through the gospel put forward under Peter's name, I said, `If this is all that makes your petty quarrel, why then let it be read.' But now that I have learned from information given me that their mind was lurking in some hole of heresy, I will make a point of coming to you again: so, brethren, expect me speedily. Knowing then, brethren, of what kind of heresy was Marcion... From others who used this very gospel— I mean from the successors of those who started it, whom we call Docetae, for most of its ideas are of their school— from them, I say, I borrowed it, and was able to go through it, and to find that most of it belonged to the right teaching of the Saviour, but some things were additions."
Eusebius also alludes to a number of personal letters Serapion wrote to Pontius, Caricus, and others about this Gospel of Peter.
Serapion also acted against the influence of Gnosticism in Osroene by consecrating Palut as bishop of Edessa, where Palut addressed the increasingly Gnostic tendencies that the churchman Bardesanes was introducing to its Christian community.

O that Men would Praise His Name!

The conventional wisdom is that the church is a male-dominated patriarchal organization. It's hard to know whether that ever was true, but it certainly is NOT true now. In most Christian endeavors, the clear majority population is female. A typical statistic is 60 - 70 % female, 40-30% male.

My wife is attending a class in the Gospel of Luke at our local community college. The class is taught by a feminist who is trying to make the point that Jesus is on the side of the feminist against the male oppressor. As my wife shares with me what the professor is teaching, we can't help thinking that she is fighting an old battle. A battle that doesn't need to be fought anymore. The women have (largely) won. Now the problem is, where does that leave the men? Defeated and effeminate.

God made men, just as he made women. They are not the same. The church in its current manifestation in the United States, in most church groups and denominations really caters to women, and women are the clear majority. Why?

God calls Men to worship him and respect him and serve him.
O that Men would praise His name to the ends of the earth!

...and having spoken, what does he say?

And who is Serapion anyway? Why should we listen to him if he speaks?
What does he want?

"I too will have my say; I too will tell what I know.
For I am full of words, and the spirit within me compels me;
inside I am like bottled-up wine,
like new wineskins ready to burst.
I must speak and find relief;
I must open my lips and reply.
I will show partiality to no one,
nor will I flatter any man;
for if I were skilled in flattery,
my Maker would soon take me away."
- Job 32:17-22 (NIV)