What We Believe

WHAT WE BELIEVE

We Believe that . . . 

• Jesus Christ is the Word of God, the divine Logos, the organizing, structural principle of the Cosmos.
• Jesus is God’s Word made flesh for us and for our salvation. Jesus is proof that God loves us, because God became one of us: was born, lived, and died as one of us, and was resurrected, as we trust we will be, on his account.
• Jesus is the perfect icon of God. If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus.
• The Bible is a complicated library, written, edited, and compiled over time, through various human circumstances, put into words by human beings in languages that are difficult to translate into English, but through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, miraculously it still bears witness to God’s work on our behalf through Christ. The Bible is authoritative in the life of a Jesus-follower.
• Jesus calls people to follow him – to imitate his way of living, as he imitates his Abba. This way of life is called “discipleship.” Discipleship includes studying the Master’s teaching, and going and doing likewise. This is not a pre-condition of “salvation,” but a direct consequence of it. “We do BECAUSE OF, not IN ORDER TO.” “God doesn’t need your good works (to save you), but your neighbor does.”
• A person is justified (saved), not through merit, but only by God’s grace, through faith. 
• The church is the gathered and scattered assembly of Jesus-followers. It’s our job to tell the world that God loves and blesses them, and it is through our loving example that we will show people the joy we have found in Christ. There is no better evangelism.
• There are two sacraments: Baptism, which is a one-time event with ongoing consequences, is the dying of the old, false self and the rising of the new, true self in Christ; and the Eucharist, the giving by Christ of his very self to his friends in recognition that, while they have denied and betrayed him, he forgives them and entrusts them to remember his self-sacrifice on their behalf.
• The three historical creeds of the faith are statements about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We confess these creeds as a matter of trust, even if they sometimes remain a mystery to us. , not additions to the Bible. They summarize the Bible’s teachings. 
• Religion and science are not in conflict. Religion talks about the “who,” the creator; science talks about the “how.” 
• A Christian’s unity with fellow Christians is rooted in Christ as God and Savior.

We recognize that not all of the people in our community believe all of the above things in exactly the same way all of the time, there is a core group who holds them as central. If you find yourself struggling with one or more of these statements, you’re probably not alone, but you are welcome to the fellowship.

Title Page

Welcome to First Lutheran Church
Located at the intersection of Downtown and Midtown Tulsa and serving as a bridge between north and South Tulsa, First Lutheran is a small but vibrant congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

First Lutheran Church strives to inspire hope for a wounded world
through worship that both uplifts and challenges
and by building life-affirming relationships inside and outside the walls of our building.

Contact info
First Evangelical Lutheran Church
1244 S. Utica Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74104
(918)
office@felctulsa.org
[map]

Regular Schedule

Office Hours:
M-F 9:30 – 2
Pastoral Visits by appointment:
please email pastor@felctulsa.org
or text 918-924-5217

Worship times
Sunday 9:30 a.m.
(Adult Forum 10:45 – noon)
Wednesday 10 a.m.

Worship is currently happening only online via First Lutheran’s Facebook page.

here’s that banjer

This won’t make sense if you’re a regular reader, so just feel free to ignore. If you’re here from BHO, click the pics for larger view and contact me via BHO. 10% of sale goes to BHO.

Here’s my profile page:
Thanks for lookin’. Spammers, eat dirt.

link to a poem

Morality in atheism.

Trinity link

A new catechesis.

Why?

What in the very fresh hell is going on here? See, this is one of the reasons that seminaries are necessary: it’s only got to do in part with education, but in a very real way the goal of the seminary process is to make sure that guys like this don’t wind up as preachers. As they say down south, bless his heart.

Bonhoeffer

Rembembering Dietrich Bonhoeffer

spirituality vs. religion again

Zoinks! Steve, you have taken up residence in my skull! This post on spirituality v. religion actually covers (more eloquently than I could express it) many of the things that have been rolling around in my brain over the last few days.

Mea culpa: The devil didn’t actually make me do it.

I was just reading this post, the second half of which I pretty much agree with. I have some disagreements with much of the first half, though. I don’t have anything against Christopher Hitchens. We live in a free society, and he is welcome to believe what he wants, and even to teach what he wants. It makes me mad sometimes, but it’s his right, so I won’t attack him for it. As far as I’m concerned, he’s neither here nor there.

My real point of contention is with the idea that Satan – a personified evil – is the cause of all the troubles in the world. I’m a Lutheran, and I know Luther believed in a literal Satan. (Wasn’t it Luther who said, “Well, Pete, there are all manners of imps and demons, but the great Satan hisself is red, scaly, has a bifurcated tail and carries a hayfork”? No? Maybe that was George Clooney. Hmph.)

I’m undecided on that point. I don’t discount the possibility, but I think there’s a problem with attributing evil to a figure like Satan. It’s the Geraldine Effect (Flip Wilson’s “The Devil Made Me Do It” argument) that takes our responsibility for evil out of the equation. I also have a problem with the implicit dualism in the Satan excuse. God is God, Satan (if he exists) is a creature. As a creature, he is inherently less powerful than the creator. To use a figure like Satan as a scapegoat on whom we can blame our less-than-desirable impulses (especially including the ones we act on) fails to take seriously our culpability for sin, and worse, I think it undermines the Gospel message. If sin comes from “out there” somewhere, how can we say that Christ died “for us and for our salvation?”

(Incidentally, I like some of the scriptural stories about Satan – How he’s an adversary and an accuser of humans. It’s interesting to think about the Life of Adam and Eve, for example, which paints the Satan-like figure as so zealous for God’s honor that he winds up rebelling against God out of contempt for the creation of humans. He then spends all of his time trying to prove to God how stupid it was to create humans, who do nothing but defile the image of God. Fascinating stuff and well worth thinking about!)

Sorry. Back on track. So, the author of the original post writes, “The truth is, sin [not religion] is bad for society. [P]eople fight and kill in the name of God, or of their religion….Did God initiate any of this?” I would have to say that, well, in a way, yes. While I don’t hold to a literalistic belief in the Adam and Eve story, I do believe that God created humanity, and in doing so gave us a certain amount of freedom. Had such freedom not existed, we would have been created as automatons, not as humans, and what kind of life would that have been? In such a scenario God would have been a “celestial dictator!” Anyway, within this freedom, we fall away (a continual action – not an action that happened to an Adam and an Eve, but to all of us adam to this day) from God’s intention that we be in relationship with God and with one another. This is a constant rebirthing of sin in the world, and from this brokenness comes evil. So, in God’s freedom, God created at least partially-free humans; we humans sin and do evil. Ultimately, you’d have to admit, God bears some responsibility in this.

Please don’t misread me. As I’ve now said, sin and evil run counter to God’s intentions, but in granting us freedom to say “no” to [him], on some level God allows it. That’s the bad news. The good news is the “happy exchange”: in the incarnation of the eternal Son in Jesus of Nazareth, God and sinners are reunited. As a bridegroom and a bride share everything, we share Christ’s righteousness and he shares our brokenness. The culmination of this exchange is Christ’s death on the cross. He bears the weight of our sinfulness and leaves us free for restored union with God and with others.

Don’t get me wrong here, either. We still live in a world where sin, suffering and death are part of our experience of reality. This can’t be underscored enough. But on the other hand, the God who identifies with us to the point of death on the cross is the same God who offers us hope of resurrection. This goes for all of us sinners: you, me, Christopher Hitchens, the ones whom we don’t count as “real Christians.” The offer is universal.

But it’s hard to take this offer very seriously if we don’t recognize our role in sin. If we place it on some cosmic, demonic scapegoat, then did Christ really die “for us?” Something to ponder.

Rambling thoughts on same-sex marriage & stuff.

Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.  This news, of course, has the blogs abuzz – both with high praise in some quarters and massive condemnation in others.  Politically, I have a hard time justifying a ban on stuff that consenting adults do, including how they choose to express their love for one another.    I realize that the issue is more complicated than that, but I think its unjust for the majority of citizens to enjoy civil rights “more equally” than the minority.  Feel free to disagree – it won’t hurt my feelings – but I don’t care to argue about it.

I guess the reason I feel somewhat compelled to write here has more to do with the moral question of homosexuality.  Before I began scribbling here today (when I really ought to be working on 4 different papers!), I ran across several (Christian) blogs condemning the SC’s decision, calling for homosexuals (i.e. sinners) to “repent, for judgment is coming.”

I understand that the folks who are writing these blogs (most of them, at least) are doing so out of a genuine sense of concern for the well-being of gay folks.  (I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here.)  On the other hand, I have some issues with their argument.  Many of them argue that homosexuality is a sin.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.  My view on sin is perhaps different from theirs.

As I have come to understand it, Sin (capital “s”) comes down to idolatry.  Name a sin, eventually it leads back to idolatry.  Sin is a state of unrighteousness.  It’s opposite is, obviously, righteousness.  To be righteous means to have faith in (pisteuo is the Greek verb, meaning not only to “have faith,” but also to “have confidence” or even to “believe”) God as the only source of life.  When we place confidence in created things (other people, pet ideologies, our own abilities, religious moralism) without recognizing God as the true source, we’re sliding down the greasy sled of idolatry.

The other day I was reading Luther’s The Freedom of a Christian in which he talks about justification by faith in the promise of God’s grace versus a reliance on “good works.”  Luther seems to say that, from a human perspective, a person’s works do seem to make them either good or bad. He points to MT 7:20.  “Thus you will know them by their fruits.”  But he says that this is purely external.  By making these kinds of judgments, we can be making big mistakes.

The problem is that we need to look beyond these external signs.  “One must look away from works and focus rather on the person and ask how one is justified,” remembering that “the word of God (that is, the promise of grace)” – not what we do or don’t do – that justifies us.

The trajectory here is that we don’t know whether a person is justified or not.  As people declared righteous by God’s saving power in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, we of all people should recognize free grace and treat others as though they are justified like us.  Putting others on the wrong side of the boundary denies God’s saving power and is not a faithful witness to what we believe.

So, while I believe Christian moralists are upholding what they believe is the right opinion (even though I don’t agree with them), I think there is a danger of idolatry.

The delicious irony, of course, is that I may be just as guilty by holding my opinion.  It points to Luther’s other understanding that, no matter what we do or think or say (even if we’re “sinning boldly”), we fall short of the glory of God and need justification from outside of ourselves.