Lent Midweek One 2022
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The larger catechism of the Lutheran church exposits the first article of the creed as such:
The Book of Concord The First Article
If you were to ask a young child, “My dear, what kind of God do you have? What do you know about him?” he or she could say: “First, my God is the Father, who made heaven and earth. Aside from this one alone I regard nothing as God, for there is no one else who could create heaven and earth.”
This is to say, asking someone how they came to be, they have to point to their maker, chiefly - their parents. To deny the existence of a parent is to deny the existence of oneself. To deny God as maker is to live without roots.
St. Paul in His writing to the Church in Corinth exhorts the church to embrace the freedom that comes from worshipping the God that gives life when He says
Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.”
To worship the God that we have, the God over all that lives and breaths and moves and all that lies dormant or fallow is to have permission.
Here’s what I mean: If I find my existence and identity solely out of my relationship with my parents then I find myself always lurking against some sort of boundary.
My Father, is an electrical engineer, Lord have mercy. Now to try and shore my core identity, If I look to my father’s existence as proof of my own existence and worth then I want to emulate him. This is a very real thing, whether we like it or not we very much are like our parents and our children are very much like us.
Hence I have a weird obsession with wiring and a minor fascination with getting things as technically correct as possible. If I find my identity and worth solely in my father or mother then I do not want to stray from their identities.
I don’t want to become foreign to them. Because if I am tied up in their existence then when they cease to live or I cease to magnify them- then… I am also no longer sustainable or purposeful.
This cuts the other way too. If you have good parents then you want to please them but if you have bad parents then you have things, I believe known as triggers, that set you off in the wrong direction. For some just the smell of a cigarette can remind them of decades of abuse under an oppressive parent and send them back into deep wounds.
This is what Paul is getting at in First Corinthians 8: there are some who have a weak conscience and still hold that the idols they formerly worshipped had power. In order to fully worship their new God they HAVE to cut off significant portions of their life.
However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.
I have a friend who when she came out as queer had to quit eating at Chick fil A because she didn’t want the confusion in her own identity. She has mentioned repeatedly that she LOVES chick-fil-a but doesn’t need the conflict of eating food from a guy that donates money to traditional marriage organizations.
Compare that to our understanding of existence and identity. What has the Lord made? Everything. I believe in God the Father almighty who made heaven and earth.
Thus you and I are free to enjoy chicken, beef, and the other white meat- halibut. We eat and sleep wherever because He is almighty.
We are free to enjoy mountains and plains, trees, and rocks and Starbucks. We as Christians should be the most zealous of natural scientists because all of it tells us about our creator. Budweiser or Bale Breaker - your God has provided it.
Church, I pray that you see the goodness of our God in His world and that you are endeared to Him by all that He gives to you. He is very good, and through His son, your brother. You too - are very good. Amen.