Confessing Evangelical

Dick Lucas, in a 1989 lecture on Romans 1:1-17, on the dangers of studying theology at university:

You can't put God in a test-tube and walk round him saying what you think of him without coming into real peril spiritually.

A peril that is not just confined to university theology departments, of course, but which arises whenever we start thinking the gospel can be turned into a matter of detached appraisal and discussion. See also Martyn Lloyd-Jones's comments along similar lines.

About this time last year, I kissed secular dating goodbye - or at least, I found a way of adding "AD" to the dates on this blog, in response to an old Briefing article commending this as "a small, simple way of confessing ... Jesus to be the Lord of history, the Lord of time, and (indeed) the Lord of all".

Well, in this quarter's Churchman editorial, Gerald Bray takes up the cudgels on behalf of the historic "BC/AD" designation, as opposed to the "creeping tendency" to use "BCE/CE" ("CE" standing for "Common Era"). Bray acknowledges that "the usual arguments apply" about the Christian dating system having got the date of Christ's birth wrong, there being nothing about it in the Bible, yada yada yada, before pointing out the great strength of the Christian dating system:

The real beauty of the Christian dating system, however, and one of the main reasons why it has now been adopted universally, is that it provides for an infinite extension backwards. A creation calendar has to have a starting point and can hardly conceive of anything happening before that, and Muslims also have difficulty in reckoning anything that occurred before the birth of Islam in AD622, since it hardly matters to them what went on in those days!

This ability to count backwards from 1 BC is not merely an accidental byproduct of the scheme, either. It is fundamental to the Christian understanding of time and history:

Christians, however, need a BC, because the coming of Christ was not the beginning of our consciousness, but the culmination of a centuries-old development which had been preparing for that great event.

This ability to count backwards into the distant past "makes our calendar more user-friendly than its chief rivals", but:

As Christians, we hold onto it not because of its convenience but because of the word of prophecy which foretold the coming of Christ long before it actually occurred - the whole of earlier history is, in effect, a countdown to that glorious event.

Using the "CE" terminology Completely Eviscerates that meaning and "take[s] away a witness to the most fundamental aspect of our faith as Christians":

The reason we have a "common era" now is that Christ came at that point in time, and his message is one of universal import. Even the atheists and agnostics among us are forced to bow the knee to him at this point and that, too, is a powerful witness to the sovereignty of Christ over all creation.

This in turn should strengthen us to resist attempts to use "neutral" terminology for our festivals ("Happy holidays!") and for our system of dating.

For starters, this concealment of our beliefs is baffling to adherents of other religions, who recognise that "freedom for one religious group means freedom for all", and who "do not want Christianity to disappear from view, because then their own beliefs will also come under attack". But more importantly:

When all is said and done, we believe that Christ is the Saviour of every human being, and to deny people of other religions the opportunity to hear about him and receive him into their lives is an act of cruelty, not of kindness.

On a happier note, it seems good progress is still being made on assembling the "great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" that is going to prove such a surprise to certain members of certain "Christian" councils (see previous post).

SydneyAnglicans.net reports encouraging news of young people in Japan turning to Christ in record numbers:

Previous surveys have suggested that a mere one per cent of Japanese call themselves Christian. However a Gallop Poll asked deeper questions about people’s beliefs, and found that seven per cent of Japanese teenagers have put their faith in Christ.

I'm always a little sceptical about this type of survey, but this is still positive news.

An article by Uwe Siemon-Netto in 2000 suggested that, if there is a revival in Christianity in Japan, then a large part of the credit will, in human terms, belong to JS Bach:

During a recent journey to Japan I discovered that 250 years after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world ...

Although less than 1 percent of the 127 million Japanese belong to a Christian denomination, another 8 to 10 percent sympathize with this "foreign" religion. Tokuzen explained: "Most of those sympathizers are part of the elite, and many have had their first contact with Christianity through the music of Johann Sebastian Bach."

The Japanese organist Masaaki Suzuki explains that:

"What people need in this situation [i.e. the spiritual crisis in Japanese society] is hope in the Christian sense of the word, but hope is an alien idea here. Our language does not even have an appropriate word for hope - we either use ibo, meaning desire, or nozomi, which describes something unattainable."

After every one of the Bach Collegium’s performances Suzuki is crowded on the podium by non-Christian members of the audience who wish to talk to him about topics that are normally taboo in Japanese society - death, for example. "And then they inevitably ask me to explain to them what 'hope' means to Christians."

To see some young Japanese students who have discovered what "hope" means, see this video diary by an Australian mission worker in Kobe, in southern Japan.

There are times I think it's a shame that the apostles were unable to register the word "Christian" as a trade mark. It would have been a useful tool for countering the hijacking of the word by the British National Party, who are reported to have set up a front organisation calling itself the "Christian Council of Britain". The "group" is apparently led by someone called "the Revd Robert West", who states in a BNP video that:

[A multiracial society] is a transgression of God’s will ... Adam and his descendants were commanded by God to fill the earth, not to come to one part of it, namely England. The refusal of Adam’s surviving descendants through Noah to spread out led to God’s judgement at Babel, and his confusing of the tongues..."

The BNP has also been claiming to represent Christian opinion in its campaigning for the May local elections, with one leaflet reading as follows:

"Are you concerned about the growth of Islam in Britain? Make Thursday 4 May Referendum Day ... We owe it to our children to defend our Christian culture."

Unsurprisingly, there has been a stampede of churches and Christian organisations rushing to dissociate themselves from this pernicious nonsense. The Barnabas Fund is one organisation that has endorsed a Methodist condemnation of the CCB:

The CCB has claimed that the Bible justifies its support for the BNP’s repatriation policy ... But ... this was a way of interpreting scripture that was used to justify apartheid in South Africa, the banning of mixed-race marriages and the setting up of homelands ... In Acts (sic) Paul writes ‘In Christ there is no Jew or Gentile,’ and this makes it clear that there is no Christian basis for racial discrimination or separation.

Quite. And the point is made even more clearly when one actually quotes St Paul correctly:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
- Galatians 3:28

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
- Colossians 3:11

And what these verses also show is the only way the church can counteract organisations such as the BNP/CCB - by pointing people to Christ. As Dick Lucas points out in his sermon on Psalm 90 that I've been blogging this week, all of us who are baptised into Christ share a common home: Christ. Once we grasp that, it is nonsensical to then say that those of us who share a common home in Christ should then segregate ourselves within the temporary accommodation we currently inhabit - a point that St Paul made rather forcibly to St Peter in Galatia.

On the plus side, I look forward with some eagerness to reading a testimony in a few year's time from a former BNP thug who was converted to Christ by reading biblical texts as part of his preparations for this campaign. It's the sort of thing that the Holy Spirit has an uncanny habit of bringing about, and it's certainly something worth praying for.

The Dick Lucas sermon I mentioned on Monday turned out to be every bit as good as I'd expected.

The core text for the sermon was Psalm 90:12 - Dick fervently denied any suggestion that v.10 might have influenced his choice of text for his eightieth-birthday sermon! - but the sermon covers the whole of the psalm, demonstrating how that psalm summarises "the core of the gospel". It was powerful stuff - not least because of the strong Law and Gospel dynamic of Psalm 90, verses 3 to 12 crushing us with the Law's demands, and verses 13 to 17 then lifting us back onto our feet, which Dick's preaching brought out very strongly.

Here is a brief(ish) summary of the sermon's main points. Also, a reminder that the sermon is available for free download (free registration required).

First, some observations on the psalm as a whole:

1. Psalm 90 is a psalm for the living, not for the dead

Psalm 90's inclusion in the Book of Common Prayer's order for the burial of the dead means that, for English speakers at least, it has become associated with death. (Incidentally, isn't Cranmer's title, "The Order for the Burial of the Dead" one of the English language's finest moments? TS Eliot would certainly agree.)

But this is to misunderstand the psalm, and indeed to misunderstand Cranmer's service - which was emphatically not a "funeral" service in the medieval sense, but one that focused on reminding the mourners of their own mortality, and of their hope in Christ. As Dick points out, verse 14 could only really be applicable to a young person still facing "all [his] days", not to an eighty-year old - or a corpse.

2. Psalm 90 is a psalm for those who are willing to submit their minds and their lives to the revelation of God in the Bible

In particular, Dick had in mind the revelation in verses 3-12 of God's righteous indignation at human wrongdoing - especially the rhetorical question in verse 11, "Who considers the power of your anger?"

Dick argued that the denial of God's righteous indignation has been disastrous for the church and for our society. One of its consequences is to render incomprehensible the brokenness of our world: while Luke 13 teaches us that we should not assume that suffering is linked to wrongdoing in a direct one-to-one correspondence, the suffering of a broken world can only really be understood at all if we see it as a consequence of God's righteous anger against sin.

Dick deplored the fact that there are no church leaders today who are willing to warn people of the righteous indignation of God, and of the pains of hell - warnings that Jesus gave very clearly in his own ministry. Indeed, even "some church leaders who know their Bibles" - a reference, I suspect, to Steve Chalke - are now starting to deny substitutionary atonement, a denial whose roots lie in this downgrading of the Bible's message of God's anger against sin.

3. Psalm 90 enables us to grasp the absolutely central core of the Christian gospel

In particular, this core message is summed up in "that marvellous word", grace.

To expand on this last point, Dick then went on to look at the psalm in more detail, splitting it (in true preaching fashion) into three sections:

1. God the Creator (vv.1,2)

Dick pointed out that one of the most important themes of the psalms, but one that is easily misunderstood, is that the God of Israel is the Creator of the world. See, for example, Psalm 121:1 - the God of the hills of Israel is the one "who made heaven and earth".

Jeremiah 10:11 provides another example of this, and indeed God's promise in that verse has come to pass. Who now remembers the gods of the nations around Israel? They have "perish[ed] from the earth", as will all false gods.

Verse 1 also points forward to a key NT theme. God is our home. The NT talks much more about us being in Christ than about Christ being in our hearts. Christ is our home, our dwelling-place, and as Dick put it, "home is the place where you are loved the most".

2. God the Judge (vv.3-12)

The indignation of God is shown in three things:

i. The humiliation of death and decay (v.3)

ii. The frustrations and transience of life (vv.5,6)

Dick pointed out that there is no sentimentality in the Bible about this second point. We easily become sentimental about these things, and Dick gave the example of the Queen Mother's funeral, at which the Archbishop of York read Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 - a beautiful and moving passage, but the Archbishop stopped at verse 7 and did not go on to verse 8:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.

After all, he could scarcely have done that, could he? People might have thought he was talking about the Queen Mother. But millions were listening to those words, many of whom would have found that verse resonating with their own hearts, their own experience of life's futility. As Dick put it, "If you let the Bible speak, it speaks today".

iii. The terrifying reality of guilt (vv.7,8)

Verses 3 to 12 don't go beyond death. For the Old Testament, life beyond death was a shadow. But the New Testament frequently takes us beyond death, and the anger of God is still there. Think of the rich man in the parable, referring to "this place of torment", this place his brothers would need an angelic messenger to warn them about, since no-one in the synagogues had told them about it.

3. God's loyal love (vv.13-17)

Dick's first point on these verses was that the NIV's "unfailing love" can be misleading, giving false comfort where people have rejected God. The ESV's "steadfast love" is a better translation of the Hebrew word hesed, a word that the psalms only use to describe God's love for us, never our love for God.

What this word says is this: God is loyal. Loyalty is at the heart of true love - think of how important it is in marriage.

This loyal love of God will never let us go, and this leads on to the two prayers which Dick exhorted us to make our own from this psalm, the two things for which we should ask God.

First, we should ask for a true walk with God (v.14), that we may rejoice in him all our days. This is the only secret of true happiness.

And second, we should ask that whatever we do, we will have a true work for God (vv.15-17). But the order is WALK and then WORK: my walk with God is more important than my work for God.

As a closing observation of my own, this conclusion, despite saying there is something we should "do" ("walk" and "work"), shouldn't be mistaken for one that throws us back on the Law. That was not the tone of Dick's message at all. The point is that, after we have been crushed by the Law in verses 3 to 11, God's grace - his steadfast, loyal love towards his people - lifts us up and makes us able to walk with him and work for him joyfully, "that we may rejoice and be glad all our days".

Dick Lucas - who has cropped up on this site before - celebrated his 80th birthday last year with what sounds to have been quite a shindig at Proclamation Trust, the organisation he co-founded to promote biblical preaching. (As their website puts it, "The fundamental conviction underlying the work of The Proclamation Trust is that when the Bible is taught God himself speaks, and his voice is heard clearly today".)

As part of the celebrations, Dick preached on the highly appropriate text, "Teach us to number our days" (from Psalm 90). This is now available as a free download (free registration required) from the St Helen's Bishopsgate website. I've not had chance to listen to it yet, but a friend who has heard it (I suspect at first-hand) described it as "first rate" - and my previous encounters with Dick Lucas preaching on the psalms are an encouraging omen.

Fans of Dick Lucas will find a number of other free downloads on the same site. Also, the Proc Trust website has started putting a number of Dick's sermons online as PDFs, which I'm greatly looking forward to exploring. Biblical exposition at its best (the occasional point of disagreement with Lutheran teachings notwithstanding).

I've just started reading NT Wright's Mark For Everyone, and reading the section on Jesus' Baptism (Mark 1:9-13) I was particularly struck by his comments on the words spoken from heaven, translated by Wright as "You are my wonderful son; you make me very glad":

The whole Christian gospel could be summed up in this point: that when the living God looks at us, at every baptized and believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day.

He sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ. It sometimes seems impossible, especially to people who have never had this kind of support from their earthly parents, but it's true: God looks at us, and says "You are my dear, dear child; I'm delighted with you"

Wright invites his readers to "reflect quietly on God saying that to you, both at your baptism and every day since", and argues that this declaration by God "is what the Christian gospel is all about":

It is true for one simple but very profound reason: Jesus is the Messiah, and the Messiah represents his people. What is true of him is true of them ... It was because Jesus was and is Messiah that God said to [the early Christians], as he does to us today, what he said to Jesus at his baptism.

What's more, this identification with Jesus is particularly tied in with our own baptism:

Any early Christian reading this passage would also, of course, believe that their own baptism into Jesus the Messiah was the moment when, for them, the curtain had been drawn back and these words had been spoken to them. We need to find ways, in today's church, of bringing this to life with our own practice of baptism and teaching about it.

This is NT Wright at his most Lutheran-sounding - ironic, given that he has devoted a large part of his career to the contention that, as a WSJ profile put it last year, "the leaders of the Protestant Reformation - Martin Luther especially - misread St. Paul on the subject of justification by faith". But as I've argued before, I think Wright has misunderstood the Lutheran Reformers, and is in fact "more Lutheran than he thinks he is". For example, apparently Wright thinks Luther overemphasised the individual's decision, and we need to correct this by reemphasising the objective declarations of God's grace in the Word and Sacraments. Erm, whatever you say, Tom.

Indeed, if Wright is looking for ways of bringing the contemporary church's "own practice of baptism and teaching about it" into line with the understanding of Scripture and the early church, then he could do a lot worse than look more closely at Lutheran teachings and practices. One of the most striking feature of Lutheran teachings for me, as compared with those I've encountered in other churches, is not Law/Gospel, not the Real Presence, but the continual emphasis on baptism.

This isn't just about the way in which the Lutheran Church takes Scriptural statements about the power and efficacy of baptism so seriously, which is radical enough for someone coming from a non-Augsburg evangelical background. It's the emphasis on baptism not only as the start of the Christian life, but as the daily reality of the Christian life, one to which we return every time we make the sign of the cross, every time our pastor pronounces the absolution to us, as a theme that crops up in almost every sermon, and every time we try to live out Luther's words in the Small Catechism:

[Baptism] indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Two letters to the Guardian in the same week. Today's is particularly edifying, I feel, being a one-liner written in response to an article that celebrated the 100th anniversary of the perm by printing a number of photos of (in)famous examples of the "style" (such as Glenn Close, Jon Bon Jovi and - the horror, the horror - Michael Bolton).

(Note for non-UK readers: Deidre Barlow is a character in the soap opera "Coronation Street", notorious for the ultra-tight "helmet perm" she sported for many years - and which remained suspiciously unchanging week-by-week, seemingly never "growing out". For some reason. The actress who plays her must have taken out an injunction or something, because I can't find a picture of That Perm anywhere on the web.) (Update: Hats off to Pr Joel Humann, who found the picture now adorning this post.)

(Second note for non-UK readers: those puzzled by the Keith Flett reference should click here.)

The Guardian letters page has recently featured an ongoing correspondence on the question of whether punctuation matters anymore. This follows a news report on plans to penalise GCSE students for poor punctuation and a ludicrous op-ed piece describing attempts to teach proper punctuation as "a discreet bourgeois fascism". (Or perhaps I only think it was ludicrous because I'm a discreet bourgeois fascist. Whatever.)

I sent in a contribution to this discussion last week which didn't get published, and I thought that was that. But it turns out they were obviously waiting for a quiet letters day before resuming this particular thread, and so my letter has appeared today:

Re punctuation (Letters, passim), Richard Brinsley Sheridan, when asked to apologise for calling a fellow MP a liar, replied: "Mr Speaker, I said the honourable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honourable member may place the punctuation where he pleases."

Good to have the opportunity to give that story - taken from Matthew Parris' entertaining book Scorn - an outing. Though my favourite letter in this series, which prompted my own contribution, is one from earlier last week:

Kingsley Amis, challenged to produce a sentence whose meaning depended on an apostrophe, came up with: "Those things over there are my husbands."

Our pastor took an interesting approach to this morning's sermon on Mark 8:31-38, particularly our Lord's words in verse 34:

"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

He explained what it meant to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus - the level of sacrifice it involves for every aspect of our lives, seeking to put Christ first in everything. He concluded something along the lines of the following (I confess to being a bit distracted by our two-year old at that precise moment):

So that is the call to us this morning, brothers and sisters: our Lord Jesus Christ calls all of us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.

Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

And then we all stood up and said the Creed, as usual.

As I said, I was a bit distracted at that moment, so didn't fully take in what our pastor was saying, but I couldn't help but feel the sermon had come to something of an abrupt end. Had I been paying attention, I might have felt the peroration was a bit Law-heavy, too.

And that was precisely our pastor's point. Immediately after the Creed, he came back to the lectern and pointed out that his sermon had ended by dumping the whole weight of responsibility on us: "Take up your cross, deny yourselves, follow Jesus, have a great week". And that is how that passage tends to be preached - not least since, on the face of it, that verse is very much Law rather than Gospel.

But then he continued by resuming his sermon and reminding us that, while this verse sounds like very bad news for us (since we find ourselves unable to meet its standard of self-sacrifice and devotion to Christ) the good news is that Christ took up the cross for us. It is that gospel message that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, changes us and enables us to start to live in the way to which Christ calls us here.

Our inbuilt human tendency is to ask "how much do we have to do?" - or rather, "how little can we get away with?": "How much do I have to read the Bible, how often do I have to pray, how often do I have to come to church, how much do I have to tell people about Jesus?" But faith takes a different approach. Faith says, "I believe God's promises, so I want to read this book, because that's where God's promises are set out. As for prayer, why would I not want to talk to my Saviour? And I will take every opportunity to go to church, because that is where I hear God's promises declared in the Word, that is where I receive the sacraments. And how can I be ashamed of the Saviour who has done all this for me?"

And it's that last point that really hit home for me. Ever since returning to the faith at university, I've struggled with this problem of being embarrassed about my Christian faith. But I do think this has started to change a little (though, I must confess, only a little) over the past couple of years. Certainly I get the impression that my colleagues at work, say, are more aware that I am a Christian than was maybe previously the case.

And it struck me as I listened to my pastor's "second" sermon - the Gospel one :-) - that two years of leaving church with the gospel ringing in my ears had done far more good than the previous ten years of being exhorted, shamed, cajoled into making more of an effort with cross-bearing and being a "good witness".

Which is exactly what our pastor was talking about. While the Law, and the "third use" of the Law, have an important place in our lives as Christians, it is by means of the Gospel that God does most to change and transform us.

Some might regard our pastor's first sermon this morning as truer to the text, and his second one as squeezing Gospel blood out of a Law stone. But to leave us just with the Law would be to leave us flat on our backs, and our pastor this morning not only refused to do this to us, but also found a vivid way of showing how important it is that he pick us up again, week by week, with the Gospel.

And that's how he was able to end the second part of his sermon with the same prayer with which he'd closed the first part, only this time with a heavy emphasis on the first word:

Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Our church's Lent devotions series covers only the 40 non-Sundays of Lent, so to avoid "page not found" errors on the Sundays I'm putting up appropriate images based on that day's readings.

And though I say so myself, today's image is pretty gorgeous: William Blake's image of Jacob's Ladder. Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size version.

Marty Sweeney at Couldn't Help Noticing voices a common objection of non-Augsburg evangelicals to the practice of Lent, and Ash Wednesday in particular:

On Wednesday evening, dozens of Protestant churches in my area held Ash Wednesday services. I’ve always been uncomfortable with this practice. A quick research of Ash Wednesday on the internet yields much information on its connections not only with the Catholic Church but also with a sacramentalism that Protestants broke away from after the Reformation.

He also points out (and I'm in more agreement with him on this one) that the way many people mark Lent "in the most trivial of ways" (giving up chocolate etc.) rather than as "a time of inner cleansing and introspection in preparation for the celebration of what Christ did on our behalf" - not that I could lay any great claims to being Good At Lent myself.

But the main objection to Ash Wednesday and Lent seems to be that it's "a bit Catholic". But just because something is done in the Roman Catholic Church doesn't mean it should be cast aside by evangelicals (whether of the Augsburg or non-Augsburg variety). The English and Lutheran Reformers all retained the practice of Lent, and Ash Wednesday in particular. Possibly the greatest of all Lent prayers comes from the Book of Common Prayer, after all:

Almighty and everlasting God,
who hatest nothing that thou hast made
and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent;
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts,
that we, worthily lamenting our sins,
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Ash Wednesday and Lent have a fine evangelical, Reformational heritage. Certainly we should, as Mr Sweeney points out, take "Christ seriously all year long", and this includes daily penitence 365 days a year, not just for 40 days - as Luther points out in the fourth section on Holy Baptism in the Small Catechism. But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to have a particular focus at this time of year, just as we focus on the Incarnation at Christmas without ignoring it the rest of the year.

I used to share many of Mr Sweeney's concerns about Lent, for pretty well the same reasons. But I now think I was mistaken - that I was focusing overly on external actions that seemed "a bit too 'Catholic'", like the imposition of ashes. Over the past couple of years, I've found the following words from the Swedish Lutheran bishop Bo Giertz particularly helpful in setting out what truly distinguishes evangelical Christianity from Roman Catholicism:

He who cannot distinguish between a cow and a horse ought never to discuss questions of farming. He who cannot distinguish between evangelical and Roman Christianity better than that he believes that a man who makes the sign of the cross or bends his knees or makes confession must be a Roman Catholic, that man ought never to discuss matters that pertain to Christianity.

Such external things as confession, bowing our knees, making the sign of the cross mark no distinction between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Luther himself went often to confession, he bended his knees both at home and in the church, and in his little catechism he suggests that a Christian should make the sign of the cross both morning and evening. In such matters there is no difference between the pope and ourselves except that we consciously remove all ceremonies that are unscriptural, but make use of all others in evangelical freedom, when they serve the edification of believers.

The deciding factor is something entirely different. It is the doctrine of justification by faith. He alone is an evangelical Christian who possesses the secret of faith in his heart, so that he believes in the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ’s atonement and through that faith is united with his Saviour. That faith is found only where God through His Spirit and His Word teaches us the poverty of the spirit and daily leads us to the cross of Christ.

Evangelical Christianity stands or falls with justification through faith. When men live in God’s justification, then all of life, both worship and daily living, falls into a specific pattern.

(Bo Giertz, Messages for the Church in Times of Crisis, page 14, via Pr Brondos.)

Ash Wednesday and Lent are matters of "evangelical freedom", but they "serve the edification of believers", not least since they provide a particular opportunity to focus our minds on "the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ’s atonement", the heart of our evangelical faith.

And speaking of Lent for evangelicals, a reminder of the Lent devotional series currently underway on our church's website. The current devotion can be accessed through the introductory page.

Today's devotion is a real corker, looking at the Divine Benediction, from our retired pastor Revd Arnold Rakow. Another highlight was the devotion for Ash Wednesday, which reminded us that "when God’s Word is preached, it is not mere utterance, but the power of God dynamically working ... [and] directed at salvation."

I hate to admit this, but Microsoft have managed to outdo my favourite website ever, Google Maps. Their new preview site features "immersive city navigation": not only do you get the satellite photos a la Google Maps, but you also get a ground-level shot as if you were driving a car. As you move the car around on the map, the view out of the car windows (front, left and right) changes accordingly. (Best viewed in full screen.)

It only covers Seattle and San Francisco so far, but this could be pretty awesome if they roll it out to other cities (London? Soon? Please?).

Our church website is featuring a series of 40 Lenten devotions written by members of our congregation (and diligently collected, edited, typed, copied and, in the case of the dead-tree version, printed and bound by, my wife).

As our pastor puts it in his introduction, "we trust you to be forgiving of the imperfections which will inevitably arise when fallible human beings attempt to communicate the things of God" - these are devotions prepared (mainly) by ordinary lay members of the congregation for the benefit of their fellow members of Christ Lutheran Church, and for those who are not members of our immediate church family there may be the occasional devotion which calls for a particularly diligent application of the eighth commandment. But some of them (like today's) really are pretty good.

To read the devotion for today, Ash Wednesday, please click here. For future days' devotions, click the link on our home page, at least until I figure out an easy way to make each current day appear on a static page (eg "http://www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk/pages/lent2006/today" or whatever).

Who knows, I may even figure out a way to set it up as an RSS feed by the end of Lent...