A Fun and Profitable Day for a Wonderful Cause

On Saturday, June 6, we had a RUMMAGE SALE/BAKE SALE/CAR WASH EXTRAVAGANZA at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. The proceeds will support the youth ministries of our congregation, including the group's upcoming mission trip to Nashville, Tennessee. We raised about $1000. Thanks to everyone who helped! Here are some pictures...


The baked goods were a hit.


Jen, Critter, and Sam were part of the car-washing crew.


Shoppers rummaging through the rummage at the rummage sale.


Kayla drumming up business.

[Thanks to Carol for snapping the pictures! You can click on them to enlarge.]

How God Defeats Our Fear

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today, Holy Trinity Sunday.]

Romans 8:12-17
I recently interviewed Barb Smith, a Logan High School teacher, for an article in our county’s quarterly youth newsletter. An educational veteran with over thirty years of experience, she told me that when she first started teaching, her students had overly high expectations, thinking that the world would and should bend to their desires.

“Today,” Smith told me, “I tell students that their expectations are unrealistically low.” She’s shocked by how many think that they can’t have happy, successful lives. Unrealistically high expectations are the result of naive egotism. But unrealistically low expectations stem, quite simply, from fear.

Fear is a common element of life these days, it seems. And to be honest, there’s a lot to be afraid of: terrorism; recession; big corporate bankruptcies that could cause millions to lose their jobs; two wars; and a culture that seems to have lost its way when it comes to moral values and common sense. Recent polls show that most American parents are afraid that their children won't have better lives than they’ve had.

This is all so sad because fear is such a destructive thing. It’s even possible to be frightened to death. Back on January 17, 1994, the famous Northridge/Los Angeles earthquake hit. More than one-hundred people literally died of fright that day, according to a cardiologist, Robert Kloner, of the Good Samaritan Hospital in L.A. According to his research, “excessive fear can cause sudden cardiac death. In many cases the terrorized brain triggers the release of a mix of chemicals so potent it causes the heart to contract so fiercely it never relaxes again.”

To yield to fear, to allow it to control our lives, is more than psychologically and physically destructive, though. Fear, quite simply, is the opposite of faith.

In today’s second Bible lesson, taken from what I consider to be the greatest chapter in one of the greatest books in the Bible, the apostle Paul writes about the very human tendency to fall into fear even after we’ve come to faith in the God we know through Jesus Christ. He writes:

So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ...

When Paul speaks here about “flesh,” he’s talking about the world’s way of doing things. It describes all that we do in order to feel important or secure, gain acceptance from others, and even, to placate God. We can be enslaved to the fear that that system breeds, Paul warns us.

I once heard a radio report about the World Cup soccer tournament held a few years ago. The reporter said that beyond the competition on the field, this was a big-stakes game between two major world powers: Adidas, the traditional soccer sponsor, and Nike, the up-and-comer in the futbol world. Each company spent about $1.5-billion on World Soccer Cup-related sponsorships. And how would they try to make good on their investments? Through commercials that made billions of young people the world over afraid that if they weren’t wearing three stripes or a whoosh on their shoes, they wouldn’t be cool.

Adults are prone to such fears, too. I’ll never forget hearing about the guy who lived in the community where we used to live. He was at an orientation meeting for parents of second grade boys about to embark on their peewee football careers. There was a Q-and-A period and this guy asked, in all seriousness, “What percentage of the children who go through this program end up in the NFL?” That guy was afraid that if his peewee didn’t eventually make it to the NFL, his poor little life would be a bust!

The world’s fear system also drives a lot of people when it comes to religion. Their faith isn’t a joyous response to God’s goodness and love, an appropriate use of the gifts God has given them to love God and love neighbor. Instead, they see God as a cosmic commander who must be placated by the doing of certain grim duties: enduring some earnest preacher's sermon, making it to worship often enough, apologizing when they’re wrong, obeying the law. God certainly loves it when we regularly worship, take responsibility for our wrongs, and act as good citizens. But these things don’t constitute faith.

So, two simple definitions: Fear is something that we do, something we do to ourselves. And it’s ultimately destructive. Faith is a gift from God, something God gives to those who open their hearts, minds, and wills to Him. And it gives life.

Let me expand and explain those definitions a little: Fear is a roiling emotion that causes us to act defensively or in panic.

Faith is the calm assurance that we are accepted by God as we are.

Faith is the certainty that God accepts and transforms sinners into His friends.

Faith is the belief that no matter what, God is bigger than our problems, bigger even than death, and that when we belong to God, all ultimately will be well.

Faith is the God-given certainty that the Lord we know in Jesus Christ, Who has conquered sin and death, will stand by our sides in all circumstances, granting us peace today and life forever with God tomorrow!

I know all about fear. It still haunts me at times. But I’ve learned how faith can displace fear. It’s a simple formula actually based on today’s Bible lesson: I cry out to the Father, in the Name of the Son, and receive the power of the Holy Spirit.

Every time we trustingly interact with God in this way we come in contact with one of the great mysteries of God: the Trinity, the reality that God has been revealed to the world as one God in three Persons.

The Trinity is hard to understand. And, I suppose that if you and I fully understood how God could be one while having three personalities, we would be God. And, speaking for me anyway, I know that I'm not God! Instead of fully comprehending God, my call and your call is to trust this God Who has been made known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In fact, when you cut to the chase, you learn that faith is trust in God. It’s not something that you and I can manufacture or generate. We can generate fear. We can very easily find reasons to be afraid. But faith is something we can only receive and it only comes from the Father, in the Name of the Son, Who sends the Holy Spirit to us.

When that happens, we have the capacity to cope and hope and live and know that God is with us always!

Fear is the belief that we must face life and eternity alone; faith is the certainty that in Jesus Christ, we have been adopted as God’s children forever and never face anything alone. “You’re a quick healer,” a nurse told my Dad at the hospital last week. Dad acknowledged that to be the case, but he had another explanation. “I’ve been visited by four pastors today: the woman from our church, the man who is at my daughter’s church, my son-in-law, and my son.” I know that Dad drew strength from all the praying being done for him, from pastors and churches and prayer chains all over the place. He wasn’t afraid, no matter what happened.

I remember one of the key moments of my life when the truth about faith in God began to sink deep into my soul. I was a young pastor, visiting a retired farmer and his wife in my first parish. “Pastor,” the farmer told me, “you could hardly be a farmer if you didn’t have faith. You have to trust that God will send the right amount of rain every year. You have to trust that He’ll send the right amount of sunshine. And you have to trust that, in those years, when the sun and the rain don’t come in the right way, God will take care of you until next year.” That man taught me that when you’re in the hands of an eternal God, there is always another good tomorrow!

Paul says in our lesson today that, “When we cry, “Abba! [a word that means daddy] Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”

We need never live in fear! The God we meet in the risen and ascended Jesus Christ is just a prayer away. We have the assurance as we

* Cry out to the Father
* In the Name of the Son
* and receive the power of the Spirit

that the God Who so loved the world He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will live with God forever, will also fill us with a faith that stands all the tests of this world and will carry us into eternity!

Miscellany

OK, you didn't ask. But I'm so far behind in blogging, a few items,

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: I saw it on DVD the other night. While intrigued by the technology that allowed the film to so convincingly reduce Brad Pitt's age, this movie was a crashing bore. It was three hours of both trying to imitate Forrest Gump and to make a case for Pitt having a place equal to Hanks in Hollywood celestial places. Pitt is a good actor. But this was as self-indulgent and meaningless a movie as any I've ever seen.

Obama in Cairo: I thought that it was a balanced speech. He didn't underestimate US values of freedom and rights for minorites. Nor did he excuse the radicalism that spawned September 11, 2001. But he rightly owned those times when our nation has departed from its values--like in the early 50s, when my favorite president of the last half of the 2oth century, Dwight Eisenhower, made the mistake of overthrowing a democratically elected president to install the Shah--and in other instances. This is an important beginning, confirmed by the fact that Osama bin Laden went to such extremes to pan he speech.

Monk's Wipes: I'm a huge fan of Monk. But I approach the upcoming summer season with sadness. It'll be the show's last.

My big question is that with the rise of the Swine Flu and the threat that it may mutate and become deadlier in the fall, I wonder if Monk's obsessive-compulsive reliance on wipes will have been robbed of its farcical quality. Monk seems fairly smart using those wipes right now.

The father of primal scream therapy taught his patients and readers that insanity could be a sane person's reaction to the world's insanity. Adrian doesn't seem very nuts right now.

Prediction: Monk finds Trudy's killer, which brings him amazing peace and stability. Then, he'll marry eiher Natalie or, in a real twist, Sharona, his assistant from the first few seasons.

Big Projects: I've been working on two big projects, one within the congregation and one in the community. The initial responses of people have been great. I suppose I should expect it: I began praying for both regularly almost since arriving at Saint Matthew and in Logan nineteen months ago. I'd appreciate your prayers that God will guide me, as well as church and community leaders in this two big efforts and that both will result in honoring the God Who gives the power to love our neighbors in practical ways!

To see the books I've been reading lately, go to my site on LinkedIn

Update #2 on My Dad

This really isn't "all Dad all the time" here. But I wanted to let you know how Dad is doing now.

Today, I went to visit with him again. (Our daughter once more accompanied me.) When we first arrived, he was sitting in his favorite chair, the TV showing the Indians getting trounced by the Twins. (Dad only watches the Indians if the Reds are not playing or can't be seen on TV.) But Dad was asleep and I decided to let that go so that I could visit with my Mom in the other room instead.

After a half hour or so, we heard him rustling and went in for a visit with him. He was showered and shaved and in fine spirits. When he heard one of my sisters in his living room, he called out jokingly, "Who's that stranger in our living room?" He was glad to see her as she came into the room.

We had a long visit. When I announced it was time for us to shove off, Dad stood. "You don't have to do that, Dad," I told him. "I know," he said, "but I think I'm going to fix myself a pot of coffee." That was good news!

Thank you for your prayers. Dad has separate appointments with his surgeon and his GP next week. The surgeon will be removing his "clamps" and the assistant promised the procedure will hurt. But the man who never flinches when taking a shot says that he doesn't think so. Funny, he given his track record, I'm betting on Dad.

Please continue to pray and thank you very much.

Update on My Dad

I spent last night--from 5:00pm on Sunday through 7:00am today, with my Dad at the hospital. My sisters have been staying there with him to this point in Dad's hospital stay and it's important for me to do my part. (Besides, I remember many childhood nights when I was sick and, once, nearly dying, that my Dad stayed up with me!)

"You're a quick healer!" said Dad's nurse last night after listening to him through her stethoscope. If you read this post, you know that Dad had emergency surgery on Wednesday. Though he had a scary inventory of previously unknown problems, Dad has bounced back remarkably well. Last night and this morning, he sat up for hours at a time and we had great conversations. Dad is eating solid foods, taking walks up and down the hospital hallway, and lobbying to be sent home.

It helps, of course, as my Mom said today, that Dad has always taken care of himself. He's a walker. He rarely overeats. He doesn't drink. He quit smoking years ago.

But prayers are helping him too, no doubt. We've been made aware that Dad is on many prayer chains and prayer lists at many churches across the country. And thanks to The Moderate Voice colleague Holly Robinson, I know that Dad will soon be added to the prayer list for at least one synagogue. Thanks to all of you.

And of course, I thank God for Dad's progress!

[UPDATE ON THE UPDATE (June 3): Dad was released today! I got to see him. He was sleepy. In fact, we sat for a time in his TV room; he slept and I nearly did so on the nearby couch. One of my sisters came by and fixed dinner for him. He snarfed it all up and announced he was taking a shower, something he hadn't been able to do since last Wednesday morning, before his emergency surgery.]

Afraid of the Holy Spirit?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio on Pentecost Sunday, May 31, 2009.]

Acts 2:1-21
Erv Streng is a retired Lutheran pastor who was part of a group which, for several years, I met weekly for study and prayer. One day, Erv told our little group: “The problem with the Church is that we’re afraid of the Holy Spirit.”

I think that he’s right.

Truth be told, talk about the Holy Spirit in some churches—like, say, Lutheran churches—makes us feel uncomfortable.

One reason for that is that we likely feel that we know little about the Holy Spirit. The average church-going Lutheran can speak more confidently about the God the Father and God the Son Jesus Christ than they can about God the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is more mysterious to us.

But here’s what really makes us afraid of the Holy Spirit: We worry that the Spirit will make us take risks or do weird things.

And, whenever we put ourselves at the disposal of the God we meet in Jesus Christ, the Spirit will put us out on limbs and make us do weird things.

I’m not talking about things like speaking in strange tongues or touching people to bring instantaneous healing, both of which God gifts some Christians to do. But I am saying that the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity Who never calls attention to Himself, may sometimes cause us to do things to call attention to Jesus Christ which we’d rather not do.

What do I mean by that? On this Pentecost Sunday, our first lesson tells us what happened on the first Pentecost after the risen Jesus had ascended to heaven. Just before His ascension, Jesus told His disciples to go back to Jerusalem and wait for God’s power to descend on them so that they could be His witnesses, first in Jerusalem, then in Judea (the nation of which Jerusalem was spiritual and political capital), then Samaria (the neighboring country, which had once been part of greater Israel), and finally, “to the ends of the earth.”

It’s likely that down in the gut, no matter how willing the first disciples were to be witnesses for Christ, they also hoped to avoid having to tell a hostile or indifferent world about the carpenter they knew to be God. They may have even hoped that once Jesus was out of sight, sitting on the right hand of the Father in heaven, they could put their experiences with Him, including His resurrection, out of their minds. They could go back to life as normal.

But the Holy Spirit doesn’t want us to live normal lives. In The Small Catechism, we’re taught to confess, “I believe that by my own understanding or strength, I cannot believe in Jesus Christ or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy, and kept me in true faith…”

Faith in God—trust in God’s grace and goodness—isn’t a normal thing. My nephew Dan just graduated from high school. He’s joining the Army Reserve. It’s been made clear to him and to my sister Dianne and brother-in-law Ken that there’s a high probability Dan will go to Afghanistan. My sister spoke with the rest of us about that this past week. “I don’t understand why Dan feels the need to do this, though I’m thankful for people who feel the way he does,” she said. “But I have to trust that whatever happens, I know that Dan believes in the Lord and I trust that he is always in God’s hands.”

Mind you, Dianne doesn’t see faith in God as a good luck charm. She sees God as the One Who died and rose, Who doesn’t promise ease in this life, but promises the presence and love of God with us here in our imperfect world AND in eternity.

In the eyes of the world, faith like that is weird. It’s the kind of faith that has Christians regularly praying, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” That’s the kind of faith God was forging in the disciples as they waited those ten days between Jesus’ ascension and Pentecost.

Then their waiting ended. And that’s when the real weirdness began. The Spirit filled the place where the 120 disciples were doing their waiting with the rush of a mighty wind. It got people’s attention.

In the meantime, the once-fearful disciples went into the streets of Jerusalem and began to tell all about the mighty acts of God in the languages of all the folks then visiting Jerusalem.

And this exemplifies the weirdest thing that the Holy Spirit does, the thing that makes us most afraid of the Spirit: The Spirit empowers us to share our faith with others.

On Monday, I got an email from my brother Marty. He’s now managing a Chipotle restaurant in the Columbus area. One of his employees, knowing that, a few years ago, Marty and his wife Trina lost a child thirty-six hours after she was born, called Marty and asked if they could talk. The employee and his wife had just lost their own baby. Marty wrote to seek prayers, asking me and others he'd written to ask God to tell him what to say when it was time to speak and to remain silent when there were no words to say. Marty wanted to be able to share his faith with this man who needed the help of Jesus Christ. But he knew that if he tried doing it on his own power, he would fail.

And that points us to something especially fearful about God’s Spirit: The Holy Spirit incites the faithful not only to believe and to share their belief in the risen Jesus, the Spirit also causes us to want to share our faith.

The first book of the Bible I read after coming to faith in Christ as an adult was Acts. I was inspired by the faith of these early Christians, people I recognized as being, in many ways, as ordinary and fearful, as short-sighted and sinful as I am. Yet, they fulfilled the mission Jesus Christ gave to them. They did share their faith in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Jesus had become, for me as for the first disciples, the most important priority in my life. And yet, I found it hard to share my faith.

I remember that, in the early days of my faith walk, a friend was going through the slow, tortured crackup of his marriage. Neither he nor his wife were believers. I felt that, at the very least, God could help them whatever happened to their marriage. But every time I started to even say something as simple as, “I’m praying for you,” the words got stuck in my throat. They remained there. Our friends divorced and went through that terrible experience without a connection to Jesus Christ.

I believed in Jesus and I wanted to share my faith. But I didn’t do it because instead of relying on the Holy Spirit, I was relying on myself. That never works!

By contrast, Peter, the disciple who had, little more than seven weeks earlier, denied Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest, spoke out clearly and lovingly about Jesus on the first Christian Pentecost. That kind of bold sharing of Christ can be characteristic of all who are baptized and who believe in Jesus!

By our front door at home, Ann and I have a little plaque. It’s a prayer, a variation of which I try to keep in my heart every time I walk out of the house. “Dear Lord,” it says, “please put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.” There are times when the best thing a witness of Christ can do is to be silent.

But there are also times to speak. Our own Bailey Morgan showed us that in the interview with her which appeared this past week in the Logan Daily News. Bailey talked about her college and career plans and how she hoped to live out her faith in Christ in both spheres of her life. Bailey is a witness for Christ.

The Holy Spirit incites faith in Jesus within us, makes us want to share our faith, and even in those of us who are reluctant or fearful, empowers us to share our faith. Week before last, I got my eyes examined. The doctor seemed like a nice young woman. She found out that I was a pastor and commented, “I could never do that. I have stage fright.” “So do I,” I told her. “I have ever since I was a young adolescent. But I pray about it whenever I have to do things in front of people and God always seems to get me through.”

I thought about that later and realized that I had testified to the mighty works of God without thinking much about it. I had shared my faith. I don’t know what impact my words may have on that young woman. But I do know that the Holy Spirit uses our words—and our actions—about Jesus to incite and build faith in others.

At Saint Matthew, we have the same mission Christ gave to the early Church—to teach and baptize and make disciples—and to do it right here in Logan.

But we needn’t be afraid about doing that. Christ has given us the same Holy Spirit He sent to the first disciples on the first Christian Pentecost day. Now, as then, the Spirit is inciting faith and helping us to share that faith with others.

Today, I ask you to dare to believe that. Dare to believe that in spite of whatever fears you may have, God’s Spirit can help you to share your faith and, through your faithful dependence on Christ, change our community and world.

It’s happened millions of times before. It can happen hundreds and thousands of times again right here in Logan and Hocking County. Amen