Some readers of this blog do not receive the St. Stephen newsletter, so here's the column I wrote for the month of April. (In months to come, you can read it by going to the St. Stephen home page (www.saintstephenlutheran.net), clicking on "Our Church" and then "Quill newsletter"!

Are You Radical Enough To Be Living The Christian Life?

In Luke’s version of the Easter story, on that morning, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women tell the fearful, disbelieving (male) apostles that Jesus has been raised from the dead! That Easter witness begins the Christian faith.

When you look for it then, you see that the rest of the New Testament is full of stories and teachings, revealing how the ancient Church worked out what it means to live as followers of the risen Christ.

Simply put, it’s a life that is radical in the extreme. It’s a life of embodying God who is love, of praying for your enemies, of turning the other cheek when someone hits you, of giving special attention and care to the poor and those who are oppressed, of humility, of withholding judgment, and on and on. The New Testament is full of stories and teachings that call us to live according to values counter to our American culture. To illustrate, here is one of my favorite teachings. It’s a quite obscure verse from James: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness.” This does not mean that a Christian should not get angry! There certainly is justifiable anger. It is just that acting on anger almost never produces God’s righteousness. “Quick to listen!” “Slow to speak.”

Contrast that, for instance, to media that encourages anger! When I lived in Delaware, I sometimes listened to a Philadelphia all-talk sports radio station whose on-air personalities provoked controversy 24 hours a day, because that caused listeners to call in to rant and rave. (To me, it was comical because the intent to provoke anger was so transparent. But it was sad to see how easily people became angered.) I am convinced that the Virginia Gazette tries its best to stir up controversy in its “news” coverage – so lots of people will write or call in to the “Last Word” -- which sells newspapers because people want to read the juicy comments in the “Last Word.” It’s all very destructive to our community here in Williamsburg. On the national stage, political commentators such as Bill O’Reilly and Al Franken and Ann Coulter try their best to be as insulting as possible to those they disagree with. Politics is so poisoned that Republicans and Democrats who work too much with the other party run the danger of being punished in the next election by “true believer” voters.

How sad it is when those who call themselves Christians turn away from following the risen Christ, and allow themselves to be formed by the anger in our culture. It is a very radical thing to live the Christian life. Listen to another description of this, from Luther’s explanation, in the Small Catechism, of the Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Luther explains: “We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”

Read that second sentence again. Wow! How would that have changed the controversy, for instance, over the Wren Chapel cross?

We are nearing the end of our Lenten journey. We are pointing towards Easter. I pray our openness to the Spirit’s formation through the stories and teachings in the New Testament, the ancient Church’s witness of what it means to live as followers of the risen Christ.

Are you radical enough to be living the Christian life?