Summer Blogging Cutback

Memorial Day is the traditional beginning of the summer season and I've made a decision about my Summer, 2007, this morning, following several weeks of consideration. I'm going to cut back on my blogging over the next several months. My Sunday messages and an occasional newspaper column will appear. But that's it. I have a busy summer ahead and I want to focus on other things.

Thank you to everyone who makes this blog a regular part of your days.

And speaking of Memorial Day, be sure to take some time this weekend to remember all who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom.

God bless.

Update on John Schroeder's Parents

Here. Please continue to pray.

Someone Put This 'Video' Together for the New Macca Single...

'Ever Present Past.' I like the song a lot!

I Don't Understand It...

but it's fun. So watch.

Pentecost is This Sunday

Pentecost is one of the great festivals of the Church Year. Here are links to some of my recent Pentecost messages...

The Holy Spirit! (2003)
How to Fulfill Our Mission (2004)
The "E" Word (2005)
God's Presence in the Present (2006)

It's Bob Dylan's 66th. Birthday

Rather than writing a new retrospective of Mr. Zimmerman's music and influence, here are links to a few posts in which he played some part...

On Dylan's Contrary Courting of Fame
Dylan Dismisses Modern Records with 'Sound All Over Them'
The Dylan Exhibition
Why Does Richard Cohen Cry More These Days? Why Do I Cry Less?

Third Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Acts 2:1-21

[Verse-by-Verse Comments, continued]

14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.
(1) This demonstrates the power of the Holy Spirit. Just seven-plus weeks before, Peter denied even knowing Jesus. Now, in spite of the implicit danger of being associated with Jesus, Who was executed, Peter stands up to give witness to his faith in Christ.

15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning.
(1) Peter evidences having done the very first thing any witness for Christ must do. He listened. His words come in response to the questions and accusations of the crowd in Jerusalem.

(2) Peter is arguing that it's way too early for all these people to be drunk; the taverns aren't even open yet!

16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
(1) Another thing a witness for Christ must do is connect God's story with my story and your story. By knowing the Bible, Peter knows God's story.

(2) Peter is saying that there is a different explanation for this strange phenomenon. Simply, God's Holy Spirit has come to Jesus' believers, empowering them to witness for Christ.

(3) To prophesy, in Biblical terms, is to share God's truth.

21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
(1) In its way, this passage, lifted from the Old Testament prophet Joel, is "the Gospel in a nutshell." Gospel is the Old English translation of the New Testament Greek term, evangel, meaning good news. Christians have good news to share: God is for the human race. All who seek help and forgiveness from the God we meet in Jesus Christ will be saved from sin and death and have fellowship with God forever.

'The New Monastics'

An intriguing interview by Krista Tippett with Shane Claiborne. I don't necessarily agree with everything Claiborne says, but he does present important things for us to consider.

Please Pray...

for the parents of blogger John Schroeder. They were involved in an automobile accident.

Second Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Acts 2:1-21

Verse-by-Verse Comments:
1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
(1) Were these first Christians afraid? Probably. Were they praying? No doubt. But they were also doing what the risen Jesus told them to do just before He ascended to heaven: waiting for the promised Holy Spirit. Faith often involves patient waiting.

2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
(1) In Old Testament Hebrew, there is a word (ruach) which can be translated as wind, breath, or spirit. A similar word exists in New Testament Greek, pneuma. It's God's ruach that bears down upon the watery chaos in Genesis 1 and brings life into being. God also breathes ruach into Adam to give the first man life. Here, the very life-giving breath of God breathes His Church, the fellowship of believers committed to Christ's mission for it, into being.

(2) Luke, the writer of Acts, is at pains to point out that this wasn't some gentle little breeze. The Holy Spirit came into the place where the first Jesus-Followers were gathered "like the rush of a violent wind." The Spirit filled the entire house...there was no escaping God for the believers who were there!

3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
(1) This is different from the gift of tongues which the New Testament talks about elsewhere. As Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 14, that's a worship language which God gives to some Christians as a means of building up the church internally. The Holy Spirit is given to every believer in Christ. It's the Spirit Who makes it possible for once-fearful followers of Christ like Peter to share the good news of new life for all with faith in Jesus with boldness and humility.

(2) See yesterday's pass, in which I talk about how, in some respects, this event is a reversal of what happened in the Old Testament city of Babel.

5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.
(1) They were in Jerusalem, the center of worship for God's ancient people, as explained here.

6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
(1) The crowds didn't hear a strange language, as would have been the case if the first Christians were speaking "in tongues." They heard intelligible accounts of God's mighty acts in their own native languages, the ones they spoke in their dispersed homelands.

7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”
(1) How is it possible, the crowd wonders, for these Galileans to speak in their languages? This really is the miracle of Pentecost: God empowers the first Christians to share the Good News in accessible ways!

12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
(1) People always try to explain away the miraculous intervention of God in human life, including Jesus' resurrection. Even religious folks do that. In Old Testament times, a devout woman begged God for a child. Overcome with emotion, the priest thought she was drunk. But she wasn't drunk and God gave her a child destined to be one of the great figures in Israel's history, Samuel.

[More tomorrow, I hope.]

First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Acts 2:1-21

[Most weeks, I present as many updates on my reflections and study of the Biblical texts on which our weekend worship celebrations will be built as I can. The purpose is to help the people of the congregation I serve as pastor, Friendship Lutheran Church of Amelia, Ohio, get ready for worship. Most weeks, I hope, it's helpful to others as well, since our Bible lesson is usually one from the weekly lectionary, variations of which are used in most of the churches of the world. But, beginning Sunday, June 3, and continuing into October, I'll be doing a series of topical messages. Watch for those.]

The Bible Lesson: Acts 2:1-21
1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

General Comments:
1. Pentecost already was a festival on calendar of pious Jews. It was a harvest festival, falling fifty days after the Sabbath of Passover week. For more, see here. On the Christian calendar, Pentecost is one of the three great festivals of the Church Year, along with Christmas and Easter. The first Christian Pentecost happened fifty days after the first Easter and ten days after the risen Jesus ascended to heaven.

2. The they mentioned in verse 1 are presumably the group of 120 Christ-Followers mentioned in 1:15.

3. The events of Pentecost fulfill the promise Jesus made in 1:8, that He would send the Holy Spirit, Who would make it possible for them to boldly witness for God in spite of their fears. The gift of the Spirit would also fulfill Old Testament prophecy, Peter points out. We'll discuss that more in the verse-by-verse comments.

4. The events of Pentecost, in a way, reverse the conclusion of the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. There, filled with arrogance, the people of a city called Babel, decided to build a tower which, they thought, would make them as great as God. To save from themselves, God confused them by causing them to speak different languages. Their inability to communicate made working together impossible and soon, worked stopped and the people moved in every direction, establishing their own countries and customs. (For more, see here.)

Through the events of the first Christian Pentecost, the Holy Spirit made it possible for followers of Jesus Christ to communicate in ways that were understandable to the varied representatives of the Jewish disaspora gathered in Jerusalem for the festival. Instead of using their communication skills to glorify themselves, the first believers went around, "speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

5. The first Christian Pentecost introduces what might be called "the era of the Holy Spirit." The Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity and has always been present from eternity. But in the era in which we live now, it's the Holy Spirit who makes faith possible and who gave birth to the community through which God speaks to the world today, the Church. (For more see here and here.)

More tomorrow, I hope.

When Asking Becomes Easier...for Some People Anyway

From James Traub's profile of Al Gore, which appeared in yesterday's New York Times:

One of his longtime political supporters watched in amazement as Gore badgered Kevin Wall, the rock promoter, into working with the Alliance for Climate Protection. Here was a man who as a presidential candidate could barely ask anyone for a dollar, much less browbeat them. “It was a total behavioral change,” says this old ally. “It was just shocking.”

Maybe not. I personally have never been comfortable with asking for things for myself. Part of my reticence is no doubt neurotic, a nagging feeling that what I may want is selfish. Another piece of my hesitation about asking for help is also pride, a damning unwillingness to admit that I need others. But a good part of it is that in a spiritually and psychologically healthy way, I really don't want to be selfish.

It's possible that this same complex of desires once hampered Gore's willingness to go to potential backers and ask for money for his campaign. When I myself ran for the Ohio House of Representatives, it felt terribly self-centered to ask people I know and care about to donate money to my campaign. And I know at least one successful politician who has told me privately about how horrified he is by the amount of money required to get elected. "If that money could be given to charity, Mark," he told me once, "it could do a lot of good."

For me to ask for money, material aid, or volunteer help for the church I pastor, for the local Boys and Girls Club on whose board I serve, for CASA for Clermont Kids!, an agency that advocates for foster children, for the Clermont County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, or for our area Habitat for Humanity isn't difficult for me at all. It doesn't feel selfish to ask for help for any of these organizations.

And though, as a Christian, I believe that God wants people to ask Him for help and to live in caring relationships with others in which it's possible for us to ask for help from others, I still find it tough to ask people to help me personally.

Maybe Al Gore, the one-time seminary student whose speeches can resemble sermons at revival meetings, deals with a similar complex of emotions and motives. Gore believes that global warming is destroying the planet and that he can influence people to do something about it. If that belief is authentic, it may be a whole lot easier for Al Gore to ask people to make out a check to an environmental group than to the Al Gore campaign.

Of course, we all act out of a complex of motives. Al Gore wouldn't be the first pol to attempt to use a cause to vault himself into contention for the presidency. In 1966, Richard Nixon campaigned, selflessly it seemed, for Republican congresional candidates across the country. When his once-moribund party scored big wins that November, the once-moribund career of Richard Nixon was revived. He went on to win the White House in 1968.

Given people's general disgust with politics, it may be the height of shrewdness for Al Gore to immerse himself in an environmental issue, to be a passionate leader for a cause that is increasingly becoming important to millions of Americans. This has been done before, too. When millionaire mining engineer Herbert Hoover laid aside the acquisition of wealth that had occupied him for something like forty years, he took on the feeding and re-clothing of Europe following World War 1, spearheading a major charitable effort that won him credit both for his philanthropy and his leadership acumen. (This is ironic in light of his largely deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the Great Depression during his White House tenure.) Lauded for his efforts in Europe, Hoover became Secretary of Commerce and, some said, "Under Secretary of Everything Else" during the Harding and Coolidge years. Hoover's involvement with a cause bigger than himself led him to the presidency.

Al Gore may really be thinking about presidential politics as he seeks support in his global warming campaign. Or it may be that he's found a cause he believes in even more than he believes in Al Gore.

Famous Last Words

[This message was shared during worship with the people of Friendship Lutheran Church and their guests on May 20, 2007. Megan and Shane are two young people who were confirmed during today's worship celebration.]

Revelation 22:12-21
Last words, whether in a will or from the dying or in other contexts are important to us. One woman’s last words from her deathbed were both scolding and funny. She turned to her husband and said, “I told you I was sick!”

And many of you have heard me tell the true story of the retired pastor, seemingly no longer able to hear or speak as he slipped toward death. The nurse at the nursing home where he lay knew his favorite song. So, she began to sing it to him: “Jesus loves me, This I know, For the Bible tells me so.” I heard that very nurse tell what happened next. That pastor popped up from his bed to say, “And don’t you ever forget it either.” He then fell back on the bed and died. Great last words!

Often the last words of a book explain everything that has come before it and give us understanding for the future. The words of our Bible lesson for today are the very last words in the Bible. And they both explain a lot and give us hope for our future!

Pastor John Jewell has identified three great truths in these words and since the Eleventh Commandment for all preachers is, “Thou shalt steal good ideas...as long as you give credit where credit is due,” I want to put my own spin on these three truths.

Truth Number One: God is in charge. Megan and Shane, as you begin your life as adult followers of Jesus Christ today, this may be the most important thing for you to realize. No matter what happens in the world. No matter what happens in your lives. No matter how crazy things may sometimes get. God is in charge.

As He does at other places in Revelation, Jesus includes in the last words of this book of the Bible His claim: “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” Using the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet in which the New Testament is written, Jesus says, “I’m the One Who got everything started. And when I draw the curtain on the life of this world and bring in the new heaven, the new earth, and the new city of God, I’ll still be in charge.”

Sherri Conley and her family learned for sure that God is in charge back in 1999, when a tornado ripped through their Oklahoma community. “We said a prayer that God would watch over us,” she told The Daily Oklahoman newspaper. That’s what Sherri and her family did as they huddled in their hallway linen closet for protection. After the storm had passed, they discovered that the closet was the only thing left of their entire house.

Of course, God being in charge doesn’t always mean that everything will go the way we want it to. Praying people are sometimes swept away by tornados, tsunamis, and the tragedies of life. The pastor who presided at my uncle’s funeral on Thursday said that my uncle wanted to confess his sins and his faith in Jesus Christ when the pastor visited him. That didn’t take my uncle’s pancreatic cancer away. But it did mean that when he died, the God Who is in charge was waiting for him. If you will persevere in your life with Christ, Shane and Megan, you can live each day with the assurance that Christ is waiting for you, too!

The second truth in the last words of the Bible is this: Christ has a gift for all who want it. The gift is life with God, now and forever.

Early in our passage, Jesus says, “My reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work.” And what is our work? It’s to listen to Jesus’ call to turn away or repent for our sins and to believe in only Him. That’s what Jesus means when He says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes [blessed are those, in other words, bleached clean by Christ’s blood, shed on the cross] so that they ...may enter the city [the new Jerusalem] by the gates.”

And describing the new life He gives as “living water” that can refresh us and renew us for all eternity, Jesus says, “Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”

Megan and Shane today have affirmed that they want to live in the covenant God made with them when they were baptized. They want Him to be their God and they want to take the gift of new life offered to everyone through Jesus Christ! In our lesson today, Jesus is saying that all they have to do--all any of us has to do--is take it. Take God’s gifts. Let Him love you. That’s it!

The third truth in the Bible’s last words is this: It won't be long. It won’t be long until this life or the life of this world come to an end. But what does that mean exactly?

In an old joke, a man has a conversation with God. “Tell me, Lord,” he says, “is it true that in your eyes a million years is like a second and million dollars is like a penny?” “Yes,” the Lord answers. “That’s true.” “In that case, Lord, could you give me a penny?” The Lord says, “Just a second.”

When I was a child my birthdays only came around once a year. Now they come every single year! Just as the picture of time varies between children and adults, so does God’s picture of time differ from all of our understandings. When Jesus says, as He does to us today, “See, I am coming soon...” and “Surely I am coming soon,” we have to remember that, as Peter tells us in the New Testament, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.”

There will be times in your life, Megan and Shane, when you’ll pray and pray and pray and wonder what God is doing. What is the holdup? God always answers prayers sincerely brought to Him in Jesus’ Name. But His answers aren’t always, “Yes.” Sometimes Gode says, “No.” And sometimes He tells us, “Maybe” or “Wait.” In my own life, I’ve had things for which I’ve prayed literally for decades and then, seen God answer them with a Yes that’s been stunning and totally unexpected! When God seems to put off His answers to our prayers, it’s because He’s waiting for the right time to do the right thing in the right way for us. Often, He makes us wait because it’s only when we do wait that we realize that the good things that come our way are really from Him, the God in charge Who loves to hand us His free gifts, and not because of anything we’ve done.

I hear some Christians say that they wonder why Jesus is waiting so long to come back into this world and usher in the new world in which all who believe in Him will live. They think that this old world is in worse shape than it ever has been before. Surely, Jesus needs to return before things get any more terrible, they think.

I have two responses to that. First of all, there are some ways in which this world is worse than it has been before. But in many other ways, it’s much better. When I was growing up, there were no seatbelts or airbags in cars and trucks. There was lead in paint and asbestos in public schools. There were no Amber Alerts. Racism and ethnic stereotyping, surely horrible sins, were widely accepted. And girls were made to feel that they shouldn’t aspire to use their God-given talents in the professions. I think that, at least in our little corner of the world, things are better in these and many other ways. When Adam and Eve, our first parents, plunged the human race into the cesspool of sin, the fall was complete. There are no new sins. But some sins go in and out of style. Don’t let the sins that people specialize in today make you think that the world is worse off today than it was when Jesus walked the earth.

But, here’s the real reason I think that Jesus is waiting to return: He’s giving those of us in the Church time to do our mission.

And our mission is simple...

• We’re to make disciples.
• We’re to tell others about Jesus Christ.
• We’re to invite them to come and see our Savior Jesus active in our church.
• We’re to invite them to worship with us and to follow Jesus with us.

Those of you who have been through the recent Witnesses for Christ classes have been particularly trained and empowered to share Christ both boldly and humbly. You can play a critical part in helping our congregation to grow by twenty-five new households before the end of this year.

I ask all members of Friendship to make it a personal goal to ask at least one spiritually-disconnected person to come to a Friendship activity each month for the rest of the year.

We all have our parts to play in Christ’s mission for His church and we all can be excited that at least five new households are about to go through the new members’ class, Friendship 101.

Jesus says that in His eyes, it won’t be long before He returns. However long that is in our eyes, our job is to invite as many people into eternity with us as we can.

I hope that you’ll make that your mission, Shane and Megan. I hope that we all will.

The Bible’s last words for us are simple and important:

• God is in charge.
• Christ has a gift of life for all who want it.
• And He will return.

So, Megan and Shane, and all of us, let’s be busy doing the mission Christ has given to us and pray in every time and circumstance, “Come, Lord Jesus! Fill our hearts and our world with You!”

[THANKS TO: John Schroeder of Blogotional for linking to this sermon. Whatever good is in my sermons is from God. It's nonetheless reassuring to know that someone like John finds something of God in this message. Thank you, John.]