That is, until light eventually illuminates the road. At that point, one can see whether such is indeed a moral high road, or merely one heck of a good game show… and it does seem to be the case there are lots of game shows.

I ame across the following from Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis. He pretty much nails the guise of purity.

Those who are eager to pursue the worthy status which can be taught to others are obliged to demonstrate in their own life the teaching of still others and present themselves to all as a model of a way of living which is a virtue inspired by God, according to the divine word which says, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” [Mt 5:16], lest perhaps they are eager to chastise, reform, and guide others before they themselves are instructed and purified through working at the divine commandments, having failed to lament their own death, while concerning themselves with the death of another, and fulfill in themselves the truthful saying, so fitting to them, which says, “He who does not do and teach these things will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” [Mt 5:17], and again, “Hypocrite, first take the log out of your eye and then look to take out the speck in your brother’s eye” [Mt 7:5]. For this reason also the wise author of the Acts of the Apostles says thus concerning our great and true God and teacher, “I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach” [Acts 1:1]. For this also Paul, the great vessel of election, wrote rebuking the Romans, saying, “You then who teach others, will you not teach yourselves?” [Rom 2:21] and so forth.[2]

Since therefore I am unable to present instruction and the image and model of virtuous deeds from my own life, carrying with myself everywhere the mark of sin, come, and from the work of others and their sweaty toils, I shall today….

He then proceeds to introduce St Symeon… who practiced a different sort of guise, namely a very pious and holy man in private, who puts on a great show of impurity and craziness in public!

Upon reaching the first church in his public ministry, he came in, disrupted the liturgy, threw nuts at the women, and then rolled the pastry tables.

It was also the saint’s practice, whenever he did something miraculous, to leave that neighborhood immediately, until the deed which he had done was forgotten….

Its a fascinating read… be forewarned, the text is translated from ancient manuscripts, it is not politically correct, it is likely to make conservative leaning folks more than a bit squeamish. A sanitized more pc description of St Symeon can be found at wikipedia.

I dont know that folks of God need to eat strange and/or disgusting food, hang out in the desert… or tie a dead dog to their robes, but certainly such an approach is a whole lot better than a guise of purity. There is only One who is truly pure.

Many folks hold them out to be Kings, and I think such is reasonable if one looks at their visit fullfilling old testament prophecy. The thing is, to simply state they are kings from afar, and that they were astronomers is only part, and realistically only a sanitized part of the story. More so, I think we loose something if the story is just left at that.

The study of the stars is what leads us to think of astronomy, today, a very hard science with an incredible amount of really nasty mathematical equations behind it, albeit extremely visually appealing. Back then, the study of stars was likely a lot more oriented along the lines of astrology, rather than orbital mechanics and spectral analysis.

The word magi is sometimes used to describe the wise men. Magi, were typically followers of Zoroaster, and for all practical purposes were Persian priest astrologers. If we do a bit of digging into the term “wise men”, we find it also refers to Simon the Magician (a believer, albeit an inept one, and for whom the sin of Simony is named) in Acts, yet another connection to astrology and sorcery. We also find Elymas, another sorcerer, albeit one who tried to lead people astry.

Lets look at the gifts they brought… gold, frankincense and myrhh. A vastly different type of offering than sacrificed animals as was the common practice of the day. Some records suggest that Gold, Frankincense and Myrhh were given to the mythical God Apollo hundreds of years prior. In todays world, we think very positively of the gifts… I’m not so sure said combination gifts would be looked at as being very popular amongst those who ascribe to a legalistic point of view back then.

Even more so, imagine the outrage amongst those who didnt like it that Jesus ate with sinners, that the first ones who came to be with him were sorcerers, and were guided by a star. God pretty much condemns folks who practice such in the OT, but yet he used exactly such folks to be the first recorded to see his Son.

What I find really impactful, is despite the practices and lifestyle of the wisemen, they knew of the Messiahs birth, they gave homage to God in his most humblest state, as a mere babe. If one does ascribe them to be Kings, their actions seem even more powerful. They set aside their works, their world, their lives to find what God had illuminated to them… They didnt miss the point, like so many others, who had the right lifestyle, the right actions, the right ancestry… yet got it all wrong.

The social gospel, with the power of the Gospel… The social gospel should not be just the doing of good deeds. More so, it should be folks doing good deeds, equipped, ready, and willing to make disciples should the Holy Spirit open the doors to do so. St Stephen was giving the role of helping the widows to allow the others to fully devote their time to prayer and the ministry of the word. While scripture doesnt give us much history as far as how much he did as concerns helping the widows, it fully addresses his sharing the good news of Christ to an audience who was less than receptive.

The synagogue of the Freedmen and their zeal for the law, so much so they completely missed the fact that the law and their scriptures pointed to Christ parallels a some of todays ministries. So many good deeds end up so focused on the deed aspect that Christ ends up being set aside… or in other cases, the tight integration of church and state forces Christ aside. When it comes to government funding of ministries, if someone steps up and fusses, things do not go well. Perhaps we really arent that different than the folks in the Freedman synangogue way back when, albeit it would be unlikely for the messenger to be stoned… but shunned would be a real possibility in some circumstances.

St Stephen’s defense in front of the Sanhedran rocked…

The following final quote from him is pretty powerful

Most of all seek God’s Word for his loving example and the ways that Jesus expressed his love to us. Take a risk, give something up. Stop being so safe and get out there and get your hands dirty for Jesus.

Well, the wonderment continued, especially as I started to dig into “the election controversy” of the 1880′s. I had thought it was just election, until I got talking with an old housemate who had studied such as part of his discernment process. He mentioned in passing that it was not only election, but also high church, low church, slavery, and a host of other items. Guess what, virtually none of that info is online (at least from a ELCA predecessor standpoint, WELS and LCMS do have some info, however, there is a somewhat selective bias), a fair amount of it is only in Norwegian or German, and then throw in some Latin just for good measure.

Thus, its off to the library we go. Thank goodness for interlibrary loan, and a reluctance to remove old books with limited circulation by some libraries. One of the books I picked up used the old rubber date stamp and card thing. The last it was checked out was in 1988, and prior to that 1968! It was written in 1925, and be golly, those pages are old. I’m almost guessing the librarian had to clean the dust off of it, and probably was going ?????? who on earth would request this.

One of the things I found fascinating was the following from UV Koren, and I think there is a lot of wisdom today. Granted he was no fan of historical critical exegesis, but I’ll bold the key part that I think is oh so key, whether it be in matters of unity or doctrine. This is from an online resource and its a English translation of A Lecture Delivered Before the Theological Students at Luther Seminary.

One hears that it is often said that we rest on the shoulders of our fathers and that we should, therefore, have a better insight than they had. Let us see! First of all, we must be careful about whom we accept as our spiritual fathers. These must be the ones who have been obedient to the Word of God. If these are our fathers, then we must learn of them what they have learned from God’s Word. If we have, with their help, learned the same in God’s Word, then we can well climb up on their shoulders, if we desire to do so. We may then perhaps see something or other that escaped their notice. But mark well, we should not be in any great hurry, for we will not see anything that contradicts what they and we, after them, have seen in God’s Word! For this is not yea and nay, but yea and amen. And before we come so far that we have seen more than the fathers, we will find that we have become so old that we have no more time to see and search any further. We will be glad to come down from the shoulders of the elders and sit at their feet and do our best to come as far in knowledge as they. This will be the good fortune for the fewest of us. It is understood that I am here speaking of the chief parts of revelation. There may be many things in resources, archaeology, grammar and other areas of linguistics, etc., where information can be gathered which was not known to the fathers and which may give a better insight into one or another Bible passage. But whatever belongs to the basic truths, the essence of God, His will and deeds, man’s condition and salvation, the means of grace, the way and order of salvation, etc., in these truths nothing new can be uncovered. This would contradict the essence of God’s eternal Word and the essential attributes of revelation. We Christians have no use for the spirit of the age, though we should learn to know our times–the clearer the better–and to make use of this knowledge also in the form of our presentation of eternal truths