Wednesday, April 07, 2010
One of the things I like about Linkedin...
is that it allows you to share a little bit about what you've been reading. The discipline of writing those brief descriptions actually helps me to get more out of my reading.
Disagree without Engaging in Character Assassination
That seems to be the sentiment of Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Can politicians of either party afford to be respectful of one another without ticking off their bases?
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
The People of Haiti Still Need Prayers and Help
Lutheran World Relief (LWR) is working in Haiti. LWR is the world's most efficient and well-run charitable organization.
Monday, April 05, 2010
God Can Bring Blessings from Anything
My friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, shared the following in his daily emailed inspiration for today:
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
"If God can bring blessing from the broken body of Jesus
and glory from something that's as obscene as the cross,
He can bring blessing from my problems and my pain
and my unanswered prayer. I just have to trust Him."
Anne Graham Lotz
Scripture
Proverbs 3:5 NIV
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.
Prayer
Lord help me to the look at the cross and be reminded
to trust you for all things and in all circumstances.
Amen
*************************************************
He is Risen!
This picture was sent to me today by a member of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church. It shows an Easter Sunrise worship service for US service personnel that happened in Afghanistan yesterday morning. [Please click on the image to enlarge.]
Sunday, April 04, 2010
How to Believe in Easter
[This was shared during the 10:15am worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Luke 24:1-12
There’s a joke about an expectant couple, anxious to confirm their suspicions about the gender of their baby. They arranged to have an ultrasound done at the doctor’s office. So, they arrived for the appointment, the pregnant mom got onto the table, and the doctor began the procedure. Suddenly, the doctor let out a, “Wow!” “What is it?,” the couple wondered, “Is it a boy?” “Well,” the doctor replied slowly, “the middle one is.”
Sometimes life surprises us and the only appropriate response from us, apart from fainting, is, “Wow!” Easter records the greatest event in human history. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rose from the dead. And yet, in our daily lives, we manage somehow not to be amazed by it. How is it that you and I can “acquire the fire,” gaining or regaining our sense of wonder at the most wonderful thing that has ever happened?
Maybe the answer lies in going back to the original Easter and following what happened according to one of the Biblical writers on the first Easter Sunday. I want to do that by considering Luke’s telling of the Easter story, which we read as our Gospel lesson a moment ago, doing so from three different perspectives.
First, there is the perspective of the women who came to the tomb at sunrise that Sunday morning. They came to anoint Jesus’ body with spices, a task they had been unable to do before it had been buried. But the women got a surprise! The stone was rolled away. Jesus’ body was gone. Luke says, with incredible understatement that they were “perplexed.”
You and I would be perplexed, too! That's because we get used to certain set patterns in our lives, like dead people staying dead and tomorrow being pretty much the same as the day before.
Most people have low expectations of life. These four female disciples from Galilee would have been no different from most. As they went to the tomb, driven by grief and a sense of duty, Jesus’ often repeated promises were far from their minds.
In a fog, they wouldn't have been quick to remember promise like the one Jesus gave shortly after Peter had confessed Jesus was the Messiah. Speaking of Himself as the Son of Man, Jesus had said: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Nor would they have likely remembered aother time, shortly before Jesus went to Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. Then, he had said: “Everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.”
None of the disciples had really paid much attention to words like these from Jesus. A dead man rising again? It didn’t fit in with their expectations of life.
But on Easter, God shouted to the world that He reserves the right to surprise us! Easter is worth a WOW!
The second perspective on the first Easter is that of the other disciples, the other followers of Jesus with whom the women at the tomb shared the news of Jesus’ resurrection that day. "Jesus is alive!" they said. The other disciples didn’t believe them. Why?
Some scholars think that the women were disbelieved because they were women. It may be. In those days, for example, a woman’s testimony was never deemed valid in a legal proceeding.
But I think that there’s a likelier reason the disciples didn’t believe the women. A few years ago, a prominent preacher told the true story of a friend and his son when the boy was small. The little guy had two heroes: Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers, back when both of those children’s show hosts were on TV. The father and son would sit and watch these two stars every day. Then it was announced that Mister Rogers was going to visit Captain Kangaroo’s show. The boy was so excited he could hardly stand it. Day in and day out, he would ask his father, “Is this the day? Is this the day?” Finally, the day came and father and son sat in front of the TV to watch this magic. Captain Kangaroo’s show began and after a few moments, Mister Rogers was introduced. The boy watched this for a few moments and then, left the room. Mystified, his dad found the boy in another part of the house. “What’s wrong?” the dad asked.” The son replied, “It’s just too good. It’s just too good!”
The women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection may have been dismissed because it simply seemed too good to be true. I know people today who refuse to trust that the resurrection Jesus promised actually did happen.
But if we consider Jesus’ track record, how, unlike us, He always fulfilled His promises and how His other predictions—predictions of His being arrested, betrayed, and crucified—all happened, maybe we should be open to the possibility that His resurrection victory over sin and death, a victory He promises to share with all who turn from sin and trust in Him, might be true too. Maybe Easter is one of those things too good not to be true!
The third perspective on the first Easter comes from Peter. Peter, you know sometimes gets a bad press because like us, he’s proud, impetuous, and prone to snap judgments.
But when Peter heard the women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection, he reacted differently from the other disciples. They sat their like bumps on a log or dismissed the lunacy of an idle tale about a dead Messiah come back to life.
Maybe Peter reacted differently because of his personal track record with Jesus. To Peter, on hearing the news the women brought from Jesus' tomb, memories would have come flooding back.
Maybe he remembered the early morning when he and his fishing crew returned from a night of futility when they’d been unable to catch any fish. They found the preacher Jesus, from landlocked Nazareth, waiting on the shore. He suggested that they put back out and lower the nets. Reading about that incident in the Bible, you can almost hear the smirk in Peter’s voice when he tells Jesus that, like generations of Galilean fishermen, they’d been out trolling the waters all night long. He knew what he was doing, Peter seemed to say. He was a professional fisherman. But then, he said, as if to prove Jesus wrong, he would go out again. They’d gone just a few feet from shore and lowered the nets. The nets became so full that the catch nearly sank the boat. Peter was overwhelmed. He collapsed before Jesus and begged the Lord to go away. Peter was aware in a sudden, dramatic way of how great the distance between him and the sinless Lord Jesus was.
Peter may have also remembered the events of just a few days before that first Easter Sunday. Jesus had told Peter that when the going got rough on the first Maundy Thursday and the world turned against Jesus, Peter would deny knowing Jesus three times. Peter told Jesus that would never happen. But it did.
Those and so many other memories may have incited Peter to not walk, but run, to the tomb and investigate for himself. There, he saw all the evidence he needed: the tomb empty and the linen burial cloths, left behind. Our Gospel lesson says that Peter went back home “amazed.”
Peter, I think, holds the key to our believing and our greeting the good news of Easter with a Wow! And not just on Easter Day, but every day of our lives.
For Easter to have meaning for us, it won’t be the result of our gaining knowledge through say, the reading of Scripture. (Although anyone who follows Jesus will want to read Scripture in order to know Him better!)
And the meaning of Easter won't stay with us because of emotions we experience. (Although the better we know Jesus, the more our emotions—like love and gratitude and even others like anger with injustice—will be roused.)
The wonder of Easter comes to us in another way, Peter’s way.
Years ago, a prominent psychologist told the story of being alone with his then-toddler son, Ryan, shortly after they’d moved into a developing neighborhood, with new houses being constructed all around. The psychologist was busy preparing dinner when he became aware of silence in the house. He called for Ryan...no answer. He looked all over the house and couldn’t find him. He then ran outside and saw, to his horror, that, some distance away, Ryan had crawled into the back of a large dump truck. How this little guy had climbed up there, the psychologist didn’t know. He wanted to avoid startling his son, so he approached him quietly. The closer he got to Ryan, the more he could hear Ryan talking to himself. At one point, Ryan decided he wanted to get out of the dump truck bed. So, backing up toward the edge of the truck, he began to probe with his feet for a place where he could land. Try as he might though, he couldn’t find it. The psychologist heard his son saying quietly, “Somebody help the boy.” Ryan finally decided that he would just back off the bed and see where he would land. He did so and fell...right into the waiting arms of his dad.
In the end, the power, the incredible blessing, the WOW! of Easter will be ours only after remembering Jesus’ track record as Peter did, we surrender and simply fall into Jesus’ waiting arms.
If you invest any credibility in the words and actions of Jesus, you can trust that Jesus died to destroy the power of sin and death over your life and that He gives new life to those who believe in Him. On this Easter Sunday, I invite you to, like the once disbelieving, world-weary disciples, put all your trust and all your hope in Jesus...today and every day! Jesus will catch you and you will believe that Easter is true!
Luke 24:1-12
There’s a joke about an expectant couple, anxious to confirm their suspicions about the gender of their baby. They arranged to have an ultrasound done at the doctor’s office. So, they arrived for the appointment, the pregnant mom got onto the table, and the doctor began the procedure. Suddenly, the doctor let out a, “Wow!” “What is it?,” the couple wondered, “Is it a boy?” “Well,” the doctor replied slowly, “the middle one is.”
Sometimes life surprises us and the only appropriate response from us, apart from fainting, is, “Wow!” Easter records the greatest event in human history. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rose from the dead. And yet, in our daily lives, we manage somehow not to be amazed by it. How is it that you and I can “acquire the fire,” gaining or regaining our sense of wonder at the most wonderful thing that has ever happened?
Maybe the answer lies in going back to the original Easter and following what happened according to one of the Biblical writers on the first Easter Sunday. I want to do that by considering Luke’s telling of the Easter story, which we read as our Gospel lesson a moment ago, doing so from three different perspectives.
First, there is the perspective of the women who came to the tomb at sunrise that Sunday morning. They came to anoint Jesus’ body with spices, a task they had been unable to do before it had been buried. But the women got a surprise! The stone was rolled away. Jesus’ body was gone. Luke says, with incredible understatement that they were “perplexed.”
You and I would be perplexed, too! That's because we get used to certain set patterns in our lives, like dead people staying dead and tomorrow being pretty much the same as the day before.
Most people have low expectations of life. These four female disciples from Galilee would have been no different from most. As they went to the tomb, driven by grief and a sense of duty, Jesus’ often repeated promises were far from their minds.
In a fog, they wouldn't have been quick to remember promise like the one Jesus gave shortly after Peter had confessed Jesus was the Messiah. Speaking of Himself as the Son of Man, Jesus had said: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Nor would they have likely remembered aother time, shortly before Jesus went to Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. Then, he had said: “Everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.”
None of the disciples had really paid much attention to words like these from Jesus. A dead man rising again? It didn’t fit in with their expectations of life.
But on Easter, God shouted to the world that He reserves the right to surprise us! Easter is worth a WOW!
The second perspective on the first Easter is that of the other disciples, the other followers of Jesus with whom the women at the tomb shared the news of Jesus’ resurrection that day. "Jesus is alive!" they said. The other disciples didn’t believe them. Why?
Some scholars think that the women were disbelieved because they were women. It may be. In those days, for example, a woman’s testimony was never deemed valid in a legal proceeding.
But I think that there’s a likelier reason the disciples didn’t believe the women. A few years ago, a prominent preacher told the true story of a friend and his son when the boy was small. The little guy had two heroes: Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers, back when both of those children’s show hosts were on TV. The father and son would sit and watch these two stars every day. Then it was announced that Mister Rogers was going to visit Captain Kangaroo’s show. The boy was so excited he could hardly stand it. Day in and day out, he would ask his father, “Is this the day? Is this the day?” Finally, the day came and father and son sat in front of the TV to watch this magic. Captain Kangaroo’s show began and after a few moments, Mister Rogers was introduced. The boy watched this for a few moments and then, left the room. Mystified, his dad found the boy in another part of the house. “What’s wrong?” the dad asked.” The son replied, “It’s just too good. It’s just too good!”
The women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection may have been dismissed because it simply seemed too good to be true. I know people today who refuse to trust that the resurrection Jesus promised actually did happen.
But if we consider Jesus’ track record, how, unlike us, He always fulfilled His promises and how His other predictions—predictions of His being arrested, betrayed, and crucified—all happened, maybe we should be open to the possibility that His resurrection victory over sin and death, a victory He promises to share with all who turn from sin and trust in Him, might be true too. Maybe Easter is one of those things too good not to be true!
The third perspective on the first Easter comes from Peter. Peter, you know sometimes gets a bad press because like us, he’s proud, impetuous, and prone to snap judgments.
But when Peter heard the women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection, he reacted differently from the other disciples. They sat their like bumps on a log or dismissed the lunacy of an idle tale about a dead Messiah come back to life.
Maybe Peter reacted differently because of his personal track record with Jesus. To Peter, on hearing the news the women brought from Jesus' tomb, memories would have come flooding back.
Maybe he remembered the early morning when he and his fishing crew returned from a night of futility when they’d been unable to catch any fish. They found the preacher Jesus, from landlocked Nazareth, waiting on the shore. He suggested that they put back out and lower the nets. Reading about that incident in the Bible, you can almost hear the smirk in Peter’s voice when he tells Jesus that, like generations of Galilean fishermen, they’d been out trolling the waters all night long. He knew what he was doing, Peter seemed to say. He was a professional fisherman. But then, he said, as if to prove Jesus wrong, he would go out again. They’d gone just a few feet from shore and lowered the nets. The nets became so full that the catch nearly sank the boat. Peter was overwhelmed. He collapsed before Jesus and begged the Lord to go away. Peter was aware in a sudden, dramatic way of how great the distance between him and the sinless Lord Jesus was.
Peter may have also remembered the events of just a few days before that first Easter Sunday. Jesus had told Peter that when the going got rough on the first Maundy Thursday and the world turned against Jesus, Peter would deny knowing Jesus three times. Peter told Jesus that would never happen. But it did.
Those and so many other memories may have incited Peter to not walk, but run, to the tomb and investigate for himself. There, he saw all the evidence he needed: the tomb empty and the linen burial cloths, left behind. Our Gospel lesson says that Peter went back home “amazed.”
Peter, I think, holds the key to our believing and our greeting the good news of Easter with a Wow! And not just on Easter Day, but every day of our lives.
For Easter to have meaning for us, it won’t be the result of our gaining knowledge through say, the reading of Scripture. (Although anyone who follows Jesus will want to read Scripture in order to know Him better!)
And the meaning of Easter won't stay with us because of emotions we experience. (Although the better we know Jesus, the more our emotions—like love and gratitude and even others like anger with injustice—will be roused.)
The wonder of Easter comes to us in another way, Peter’s way.
Years ago, a prominent psychologist told the story of being alone with his then-toddler son, Ryan, shortly after they’d moved into a developing neighborhood, with new houses being constructed all around. The psychologist was busy preparing dinner when he became aware of silence in the house. He called for Ryan...no answer. He looked all over the house and couldn’t find him. He then ran outside and saw, to his horror, that, some distance away, Ryan had crawled into the back of a large dump truck. How this little guy had climbed up there, the psychologist didn’t know. He wanted to avoid startling his son, so he approached him quietly. The closer he got to Ryan, the more he could hear Ryan talking to himself. At one point, Ryan decided he wanted to get out of the dump truck bed. So, backing up toward the edge of the truck, he began to probe with his feet for a place where he could land. Try as he might though, he couldn’t find it. The psychologist heard his son saying quietly, “Somebody help the boy.” Ryan finally decided that he would just back off the bed and see where he would land. He did so and fell...right into the waiting arms of his dad.
In the end, the power, the incredible blessing, the WOW! of Easter will be ours only after remembering Jesus’ track record as Peter did, we surrender and simply fall into Jesus’ waiting arms.
If you invest any credibility in the words and actions of Jesus, you can trust that Jesus died to destroy the power of sin and death over your life and that He gives new life to those who believe in Him. On this Easter Sunday, I invite you to, like the once disbelieving, world-weary disciples, put all your trust and all your hope in Jesus...today and every day! Jesus will catch you and you will believe that Easter is true!
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Friday, April 02, 2010
Living Reminders
[This was shared during Maundy Thursday worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on April 1.]
John 13:1-17, 31-35
In tonight’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prepares His disciples for the events of the next few days and the years beyond.
He knows that it’s time for Him to go to the cross, to be the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, to die, to rise, and, in time, to leave His disciples as He ascends to heaven. Jesus wants to comfort the disciples and to assure them that however alone they may feel in the coming years, they will never be alone. That’s why later on during this dinner, in a section of John’s Gospel not part of tonight’s lesson, Jesus promises that after He has risen and ascended to heaven, He will send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to all believers. As believers in Jesus, we have that same promise today.
But Jesus knows how hard it is for us to believe that He and the Holy Spirit are with us right now. He knows how experiential we human beings are, how physical. We want evidence.
When the chips are down in life, it’s hard to believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit we can’t see. It’s hard to believe in the presence of a risen Jesus we can’t see.
It’s to help us believe that Jesus is risen and that the Spirit is with us that Jesus also gives the disciples a new commandment in our Gospel lesson. It’s our commandment, too. “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another.” This commandment, mandatum in the Latin, mandate in modern English, and, it appears, Maundy in the Middle English of long ago, is what gives this day of Maundy Thursday its name.
But how does Jesus' command that we Christians love each other help us to trust in Christ’s promises to be with us and to give us new, eternal life?
Karen, who I've mentioned to you before, was a member of our former congregation in Cincinnati. Karen died at age 37 after a two-year fight with cancer. Her death came at her home at about 2:30 one morning. Her husband called me right after it happened. He was there with his parents and sister-in-law. They were waiting for the funeral home personnel to come and take Karen’s body, he said. I asked if I could come over for a visit and he said, “Of course.” On the way, at about 3:30 in the morning, I stopped by Krispy Kreme for fresh doughnuts. We sat at the kitchen table, eating, waiting, and talking together. “Oh, I just thought of something,” Karen’s husband Tom said. He ran to another part of the house and returned a few moments later with a note from Karen. It turns out that she had written notes to many people, physical reminders of her faith, love, and friendship, and each note an affirmation of her belief that because of the risen Jesus, all who repent and believe in Christ live with God for eternity.
Sometimes, our faith needs to be bolstered by things we can see and touch, usually by the people we can see and touch. Jesus commanded His Church—you and me—to love one another just as He loved and still loves us. Jesus doesn’t do this to lay a new guilt-inducing obligation on us. He does it so that we can be personal reminders of His love and all His promises.
The most dramatic thing Jesus does at the meal recounted in our lesson, of course, is wash the feet of His disciples, a menial servant’s task done by the Maker of the universe. Jesus does this to underscore His new commandment.
After the foot-washing, Jesus tells the disciples, “I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” Jesus says that you and I are to put skin and life and our very beings into the faith we confess.
Each of us who are part of Christ’s Church are commanded to love our sisters and brothers in Christ so that whenever the faith of that person in the next pew, in the Sunday School class or Bible study, or at the potluck, is challenged or growing faint, your act of Christian love will assure them that Jesus is real, His victory over death and sin is real, His promise to be with us is certain.
A woman Ann and I got to know in our former community joined Friendship not long before we came to Logan. She and her family were going through a lot--so many challenging circumstances at once--and felt the need to connect with God and the Church. They became deeply involved and not long after we moved here, this woman’s husband died. She has written to me several times since to say, “God brought us to the church at the right time. I don’t know what we would have done without it.” The people of the congregation, by their love for her and her family, strengthened her faith in the risen Jesus and helped her to believe in the promises of Christ to be with His people always!
Every person who is part of the Church—including those of us who are part of Saint Matthew—has something in common: We are all ordinary, imperfect, sinful human beings.
For many, this is a disappointment because church people aren’t as perfect or as sinless as they want them to be. When the Church disappoints us—and it does and it will—it’s good for us to take a close look in the mirror. Jesus commands us to love the Church as it really is, filled with people as imperfect, as prone to sin and mistakes, as we are, in as much need of forgiveness, understanding, and charity as we ourselves are.
In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul marvels that “God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Jesus didn’t wait for the disciples to get clean before He washed their feet. And He didn’t wait for the world to repent before He died for the sins of all. Jesus proved that, as several Old Testament passages remind us, God is gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
This is a good thing for we Christians because every congregation I’ve ever been part of or observed is filled with a cast of characters, including the pastors, who could make up a hit television sitcom or drama. We all have our faults. We are all recovering sinners.
But when we love one another where we’re at, as we are, we remind one another of a love so great that not even Good Friday could kill it off. Love like that transforms those who receive it and those who give it. The love of our fellow Christians makes us want to follow Jesus more closely. It incites us to deeper faith and greater self-sacrifice.
Once, I heard the lay member of a congregation who was asked by his pastor to speak for a few moments one Sunday morning about what that church meant to him. He couldn’t help thinking, this man said, of the scene in the movie, As Good As It Gets, when Jack Nicholson’s character tells Helen Hunt’s, “You make me want to be a better man.” The love of Christ he had experienced in his church, that man said, incited the exact sentiment in him.
In each other’s patient love, we experience the kindness of God and, as Paul reminds us in Romans 2:4, it’s the kindness of God—not harsh judgments, not haranguing sermons, not spiritual tongue-lashings, not perfectly-executed liturgies, but the kindness of God—that leads to repentance, that leads us all back, again and again, to the God we know in Jesus.
And when we in the Church share this kind of love for one another, it has an effect on more than just those within our fellowship.
Pastor Bill White recounted the legend of two old friends who, through the circumstances of history, ended up living in two kingdoms that were hostile to one another. But their friendship endured. One of the men visited the other friend in his country, the king got wind of this foreigner’s presence, and ordered the visitor’s execution. The king was sure that the visitor was a spy.
“Your majesty,” the man begged. “Please give me 30 days to settle my affairs in my homeland. When I return, you can execute me.” Naturally, the king didn’t believe him. “A condemned man will return to his execution after he gains his freedom? Do you think I’m a fool?” That’s when the man’s old friend, stepped forward. “Jail me, your majesty. This is my friend. I trust him. But if he isn’t back in thirty days, you can take my life.” Incredulous, the king went along with the plan.
The thirty days were nearly up, when the accused man, having gotten his affairs in order, returned for his execution. His jailed friend said, “You should let me take your punishment. I’ve prepared myself to die in these thirty days. You can go free and live.” But the accused man said, “It isn’t right that you should take my punishment in my place.” They argued like this for some time. Finally, the king interrupted, “Enough!” He had never seen selfless love before, the king said. “I pardon you both and I ask you a favor: May I become your friend? I would give anything to be like you!” The two men agreed and the three became fast friends.
Some fifty years after the incidents recounted in tonight’s Gospel lesson, one of the disciples whose feet had been washed by Jesus, by then a much older man, wrote a letter to be circulated among churches then experiencing persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire. Faith in a Savior they could not see was hard to maintain in the face of the threats of the Roman Army they saw every day.
But John, the beloved disciple, traditional author of tonight’s Gospel lesson, encouraged those fearful believers to keep loving God, loving their neighbors, and loving one another. In fact, John says the love of Christians for one another verifies the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Listen to what he says in 1 John 3:14-16:
Then dare to love the Church and all who are part of it as you have been loved. The Bible says that the Church is a living organism and when the faith of one member is built up by love, the faith of the whole Church is built up. And a faithful, loving Church, as you know, is among God’s very best gifts. Amen
John 13:1-17, 31-35
In tonight’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prepares His disciples for the events of the next few days and the years beyond.
He knows that it’s time for Him to go to the cross, to be the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, to die, to rise, and, in time, to leave His disciples as He ascends to heaven. Jesus wants to comfort the disciples and to assure them that however alone they may feel in the coming years, they will never be alone. That’s why later on during this dinner, in a section of John’s Gospel not part of tonight’s lesson, Jesus promises that after He has risen and ascended to heaven, He will send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to all believers. As believers in Jesus, we have that same promise today.
But Jesus knows how hard it is for us to believe that He and the Holy Spirit are with us right now. He knows how experiential we human beings are, how physical. We want evidence.
When the chips are down in life, it’s hard to believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit we can’t see. It’s hard to believe in the presence of a risen Jesus we can’t see.
It’s to help us believe that Jesus is risen and that the Spirit is with us that Jesus also gives the disciples a new commandment in our Gospel lesson. It’s our commandment, too. “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another.” This commandment, mandatum in the Latin, mandate in modern English, and, it appears, Maundy in the Middle English of long ago, is what gives this day of Maundy Thursday its name.
But how does Jesus' command that we Christians love each other help us to trust in Christ’s promises to be with us and to give us new, eternal life?
Karen, who I've mentioned to you before, was a member of our former congregation in Cincinnati. Karen died at age 37 after a two-year fight with cancer. Her death came at her home at about 2:30 one morning. Her husband called me right after it happened. He was there with his parents and sister-in-law. They were waiting for the funeral home personnel to come and take Karen’s body, he said. I asked if I could come over for a visit and he said, “Of course.” On the way, at about 3:30 in the morning, I stopped by Krispy Kreme for fresh doughnuts. We sat at the kitchen table, eating, waiting, and talking together. “Oh, I just thought of something,” Karen’s husband Tom said. He ran to another part of the house and returned a few moments later with a note from Karen. It turns out that she had written notes to many people, physical reminders of her faith, love, and friendship, and each note an affirmation of her belief that because of the risen Jesus, all who repent and believe in Christ live with God for eternity.
Sometimes, our faith needs to be bolstered by things we can see and touch, usually by the people we can see and touch. Jesus commanded His Church—you and me—to love one another just as He loved and still loves us. Jesus doesn’t do this to lay a new guilt-inducing obligation on us. He does it so that we can be personal reminders of His love and all His promises.
The most dramatic thing Jesus does at the meal recounted in our lesson, of course, is wash the feet of His disciples, a menial servant’s task done by the Maker of the universe. Jesus does this to underscore His new commandment.
After the foot-washing, Jesus tells the disciples, “I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” Jesus says that you and I are to put skin and life and our very beings into the faith we confess.
Each of us who are part of Christ’s Church are commanded to love our sisters and brothers in Christ so that whenever the faith of that person in the next pew, in the Sunday School class or Bible study, or at the potluck, is challenged or growing faint, your act of Christian love will assure them that Jesus is real, His victory over death and sin is real, His promise to be with us is certain.
A woman Ann and I got to know in our former community joined Friendship not long before we came to Logan. She and her family were going through a lot--so many challenging circumstances at once--and felt the need to connect with God and the Church. They became deeply involved and not long after we moved here, this woman’s husband died. She has written to me several times since to say, “God brought us to the church at the right time. I don’t know what we would have done without it.” The people of the congregation, by their love for her and her family, strengthened her faith in the risen Jesus and helped her to believe in the promises of Christ to be with His people always!
Every person who is part of the Church—including those of us who are part of Saint Matthew—has something in common: We are all ordinary, imperfect, sinful human beings.
For many, this is a disappointment because church people aren’t as perfect or as sinless as they want them to be. When the Church disappoints us—and it does and it will—it’s good for us to take a close look in the mirror. Jesus commands us to love the Church as it really is, filled with people as imperfect, as prone to sin and mistakes, as we are, in as much need of forgiveness, understanding, and charity as we ourselves are.
In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul marvels that “God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Jesus didn’t wait for the disciples to get clean before He washed their feet. And He didn’t wait for the world to repent before He died for the sins of all. Jesus proved that, as several Old Testament passages remind us, God is gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
This is a good thing for we Christians because every congregation I’ve ever been part of or observed is filled with a cast of characters, including the pastors, who could make up a hit television sitcom or drama. We all have our faults. We are all recovering sinners.
But when we love one another where we’re at, as we are, we remind one another of a love so great that not even Good Friday could kill it off. Love like that transforms those who receive it and those who give it. The love of our fellow Christians makes us want to follow Jesus more closely. It incites us to deeper faith and greater self-sacrifice.
Once, I heard the lay member of a congregation who was asked by his pastor to speak for a few moments one Sunday morning about what that church meant to him. He couldn’t help thinking, this man said, of the scene in the movie, As Good As It Gets, when Jack Nicholson’s character tells Helen Hunt’s, “You make me want to be a better man.” The love of Christ he had experienced in his church, that man said, incited the exact sentiment in him.
In each other’s patient love, we experience the kindness of God and, as Paul reminds us in Romans 2:4, it’s the kindness of God—not harsh judgments, not haranguing sermons, not spiritual tongue-lashings, not perfectly-executed liturgies, but the kindness of God—that leads to repentance, that leads us all back, again and again, to the God we know in Jesus.
And when we in the Church share this kind of love for one another, it has an effect on more than just those within our fellowship.
Pastor Bill White recounted the legend of two old friends who, through the circumstances of history, ended up living in two kingdoms that were hostile to one another. But their friendship endured. One of the men visited the other friend in his country, the king got wind of this foreigner’s presence, and ordered the visitor’s execution. The king was sure that the visitor was a spy.
“Your majesty,” the man begged. “Please give me 30 days to settle my affairs in my homeland. When I return, you can execute me.” Naturally, the king didn’t believe him. “A condemned man will return to his execution after he gains his freedom? Do you think I’m a fool?” That’s when the man’s old friend, stepped forward. “Jail me, your majesty. This is my friend. I trust him. But if he isn’t back in thirty days, you can take my life.” Incredulous, the king went along with the plan.
The thirty days were nearly up, when the accused man, having gotten his affairs in order, returned for his execution. His jailed friend said, “You should let me take your punishment. I’ve prepared myself to die in these thirty days. You can go free and live.” But the accused man said, “It isn’t right that you should take my punishment in my place.” They argued like this for some time. Finally, the king interrupted, “Enough!” He had never seen selfless love before, the king said. “I pardon you both and I ask you a favor: May I become your friend? I would give anything to be like you!” The two men agreed and the three became fast friends.
Some fifty years after the incidents recounted in tonight’s Gospel lesson, one of the disciples whose feet had been washed by Jesus, by then a much older man, wrote a letter to be circulated among churches then experiencing persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire. Faith in a Savior they could not see was hard to maintain in the face of the threats of the Roman Army they saw every day.
But John, the beloved disciple, traditional author of tonight’s Gospel lesson, encouraged those fearful believers to keep loving God, loving their neighbors, and loving one another. In fact, John says the love of Christians for one another verifies the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Listen to what he says in 1 John 3:14-16:
“We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he [Jesus] laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”As we prepare to remember the crucifixion of Jesus on Friday and His resurrection on Sunday, let the magnitude of God’s love for you, just as you are, sink deeply into your life.
Then dare to love the Church and all who are part of it as you have been loved. The Bible says that the Church is a living organism and when the faith of one member is built up by love, the faith of the whole Church is built up. And a faithful, loving Church, as you know, is among God’s very best gifts. Amen
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)