What is Abundance?

Most days, I have a quiet time with God, a time when I consider God's Word and ask Him to reveal the truth He wants me to see in it for that particular day. To see how I approach quiet time, read here.

Look: “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:6-8)

Paul continues here to write to the relatively wealthy Gentile congregation in Corinth about an offering they had once pledged to give for the relief of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. The latter were impoverished and struggling.

On first blush, one might think that what Paul writes in chapter 9 of 2 Corinthians supports the “prosperity gospel,” which is no gospel but a heresy and is popular these days. NOT AT ALL.

Paul is NOT saying, as the proponents of the heresy say, that if you give a lot, God will make you wealthy. Jesus gave and He wasn’t wealthy. Paul gave and he wasn’t wealthy. Peter gave up what was likely a lucrative business in order to follow Jesus. So did Matthew.

Following Jesus, believing in Jesus, is no guarantee of wealth. The God we meet in Jesus makes no deals for His mercy or His grace. Both are things that He gives to us.

So what is the promise of God to “cheerful givers” (in the Greek in which Paul composed this letter, the phrase is “hilarious giver) that Paul offers here?

Listen: The pertinent passage is verse 8. Paul says: “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

The verse is bracketed by abundantly and abound. This English rendering from Paul’s Greek is accurate. In both instances, the root word is περισσεύω, perisseuo, meaning literally, according to Strong’s concordance, to be over and above, to exceed the ordinary.

The double use of that term, appearing near the beginning and near the end of the verse forms what the scholars call an inclusio (or inclusion). It tells us, if it wasn’t clear enough on the face of it, that the verse deals with the subject of abundance.

The verse gives God’s understanding, the Bible’s understanding of abundance, though.

This understanding of abundance doesn’t mean that you won’t sweat out paying the mortgage some months.

It doesn’t mean that you’ll have the nicest car or bling.

It doesn’t mean that care and struggle with finances will necessarily go away.

Some believers in the God we know in Jesus will be entrusted with wealth. Abraham was wealthy. So were Joseph of Arimathea and Lydia of Thyatira. But some have been poor. Joseph and Mary were poor. So were others already named, including God in the flesh Himself, Jesus.

Some believers in the God we know in Jesus are gifted with a capacity for generating greater wealth or have inherited it.

But with greater wealth comes greater obligations (Matthew 25:24-27).

It also present greater spiritual danger. When Jesus encountered a wealthy man who asked what “good thing” he needed to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus saw straight through the man. (The question itself was all wrong. The rich man wanted to know what he good work he needed to do to gain eternal life. But no good work, not even making big donations, will gain eternal life for us. We are saved by God’s grace through our faith in, our trusting surrender to, Jesus alone.)

Jesus understood that this man’s wealth was his idol. Wealth was a spiritual danger to him. Wealth deluded him into thinking that he had control of everything, even his own salvation. The rich man did many right things, but in his heart, he worshiped money, not God. Radical surgery was necessary.

When Jesus told the man that the only way he could get free of the idol he worshiped and get with God, was to sell off everything he owned, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Him, the rich man walked away sorrowful. He was sorrowful because he knew that he would never have eternal life; his money was too important to him, more important than God.

This gave rise to Jesus telling the disciples: “I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:16-24)

Wealth might not be the idol or impediment for everyone that it was for that man. But Jesus’ words are a solemn warning against taking anything as our god but the one true God revealed to all the world in Jesus Himself. He’s the only One Who can give us life with God.

This kind of talk is anathema to the advocates of the “prosperity gospel.” They think that following Jesus is a matter of making deals with God: They will follow Jesus and He will put them on easy street. No financial worries. No sickness or disease. No hard times. But one look at the faithful Christians we have known in life will tell you that such immature heresies are all cow pie!

Jesus never promises that following Him will ease the financial strains--or any other stains--of this life. “In this world you will have trouble,” He says truthfully. “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

And Paul warns Christians elsewhere: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)

That’s why what Paul says in this verse is so important. He tells those who have made up their minds to give cheerfully, not under compulsion, but as a joyful response to the undeserved grace God gives to those who turn from sin and follow Jesus:

“And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

To be blessed abundantly by God because we divest our idolatrous attachment to money doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be wealthy. But it does mean two other things:

“...that in all things at all times 

1. We will have all that we need. This is what Jesus calls “our daily bread,” what we need. 

2. We will abound in every good work. In other words, when we give to cause of God in the world, when we PUT GOD FIRST--loving God, loving our neighbors, making disciples, God will magnify our giving and living so that it glorifies God and points others to Christ.

We will have what we need. And what we give, whatever we give--our time, possessions, money, service--will contribute the growth of God’s kingdom. We will be empowered to use our lives and all of our gifts for the purposes for which God gave us life in the first place and for which He gives new, everlasting life through Jesus to all who trust in Christ. THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE AN ABUNDANT CHRISTIAN LIFE.

How do I know that this is what Paul has in mind when he wrote this verse?

In the previous chapter, when he begins this appeal to the Corinthian Christians to follow through on their public pledge to help the Jerusalem Christians, Paul mentions an incident when ancient Israel, having been freed from slavery in Egypt and heading for the promised land that God would show them, was in the wilderness. They had no food. But God daily provided them with something called manna, an edible substance like bread.

Exodus 16:1-36 tells about this incident. When God provided it, He told Moses that the people were to collect the manna when it appeared on six days of the week. On the sixth day, they would be enabled to collect more than they needed for that day, double the usual amount, in fact; the people were to prepare all of the manna to eat and not collect on the seventh day, the sabbath, a day of rest. They were all to collect the same amount, an omer. When they measured what everyone had collected, from the oldest to the youngest, “Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.”

(Some got greedy for the world’s version of “abundance” and went out collecting the manna on the seventh day. They trusted this stuff that they could see, touch, and eat, more than they trusted God. Even though God was the One Who had given it to them!)

Paul references this entire incident in 2 Corinthians 8, writing to a church that may be thinking that if they give away money, there will be less abundance for them:

“At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.’” (2 Corinthians 8:14-15)

Paul’s picture of abundance then, is the same as that of Jesus, Who taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

I love how Martin Luther explains this petition of the Lord’s Prayer in The Small Catechism:

God indeed gives daily bread to all, even unbelievers, without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that he would help us to recognize this so that we would receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

And then, Luther tackles the question of what is meant by daily bread:

Daily bread includes everything required to meet our earthly needs, such as food, drink, clothing, home, property, employment, necessities; devout parents, children, and communities; honest and faithful authorities, good government, seasonable weather, peace, health, an orderly society, a good reputation, true friends and neighbors, and the like.

In Biblical terms ABUNDANCE=DAILY BREAD.

And where it’s lacking, it isn’t due to a deficiency in God’s creation, but a deficiency in His creatures, His human creatures, the ones intended to be Creation’s caretakers, the ones made in the image of God whose fall into sin impacted the entire Creation over which it was to have dominion.

It’s the condition of sin with which the whole human race is afflicted at birth and from which only Christ can free us--and then only fully in eternity--that lay behind so many people getting their daily bread from God.

Famine and starvation, for example, are problems rooted in human sin. If those who have shared with those who haven’t more completely, including sharing technologies, no one on earth would go hungry.

Wars are the result of the human unwillingness to give a little.

It should also be evident that even many natural disasters are either the result of or are exacerbated by human sin. Climate change, which made the recent horrors brought to Texas by Hurricane Harvey worse, all the result of the hellish pursuit of more and of conspicuous consumption. Bad weather itself results from human sin, since the whole universe has been screwed up by the fall of the species who were meant to take care of it.  

In Romans 8:22, Paul writes that, “...the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time,” awaiting the final consummation of God’s plans in Christ. Christ will return, the old creation will be no more and the new creation--of which those who follow Jesus in this imperfect world are the “early adopters” who will populate the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)--will be brought in its fullness for all who have loved Christ’s appearing (2 Timothy 4:8).

Whether I am wealthy, poor, or of the middle class, I must not be dazzled by the finite wealth of this dying world!

I must use whatever wealth I possess not just for my own daily bread, but with gratitude to God for Christ’s cross and empty tomb and all the promises I have as I follow Him, learn to give. This is how the abundant life is lived.

Respond: Lord, in Your Word, You declare, “...my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). And sometimes, as one of Your departed saints, Rich Mullins, wrote, You are “hard to get.” But, Lord, help me to live the abundant life You have in mind for me and all of Your people, a life of usefulness and gratitude, of giving what I can from whatever means I have. Help me to be grateful for my daily bread and not to covet what others have. And where others lack daily bread, help me to do what I can to see that they have it. In Jesus’ name.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Opened Eyes, Burning Hearts

Luke 24:13-35
Today’s gospel lesson begins, as all incidents lived out on the salvation journey wrought by the God we know in Jesus Christ, in grief. But like all such incidents, it ends in life and in joy.

It’s late in the afternoon on the first Easter, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Two disciples, filled with grief, not yet convinced by the testimony to Jesus’ resurrection given to them by two different groups of their fellow disciples, are walking from Jerusalem, where they witnessed Jesus die, toward Emmaus.

This is where our lesson, Luke 24:13-35, begins: “That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

Why were these two disciples kept from recognizing Jesus? Was Jesus engaging in a little heavenly hocus-pocus? No, I think there are two reasons they didn’t know the man walking and talking with them was Jesus.

First, neither one of them was expecting to see Jesus. They had watched Jesus die.

Second, taking all the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection into consideration, one gets the idea that in His risen form, Jesus was the same, but different.

He could express a desire for food. He could be touched. He could show people the wounds He’d incurred during His passion and crucifixion.

But He also could show up in rooms behind locked doors. He seemed capable of being in multiple places at the same time.

Jesus was the same, yet different, just as God’s Word promises that you and I will, beyond our own deaths and resurrections be the same--recognizable as the people we have been in this old creation--yet new, surprising, different, more whole, bathed in eternal life.

Verse 17: “And he said to them, ‘What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?’ [Jesus always meets people where they are. He often starts with a question, a good way to start any conversation.] And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?’ And he said to them, ‘What things?’ And they said to him, ‘Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.’”

Can’t you hear the hopelessness in the voices of the two disciples here? They had put all of their hope in Jesus. But what had their hope really been in? They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel, by which they meant, that Jesus would set the Jews free from the Romans. But it hadn’t happened.

I know a man who was super-active in his church. He was considered a leader in the congregation, a person of prayer. But one day, he just gave up on God, dropped out of church.

What happened? He’d counted on Jesus to make him wealthy and successful. He thought that he had a deal with Jesus: he would be a good guy and Jesus would give him what he wanted. He thought Jesus was a genie subject to his command, rather than the Savior from whom he took commands. When the man’s dream job turned to ashes and when his personal life got hard, he gave up on faith.

Jesus can and does redeem from sin, death, darkness, and futility all who turn from sin and trust in Him. But that doesn’t mean that the lives we live before our own deaths and resurrections will be successful or easy. The Bible reminds us: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)

And Jesus did pity these two disciples who had placed their trust in Jesus for the wrong reasons. We see this as the two tell Jesus about the strange reports they’ve heard of Jesus rising. “‘Moreover, [they continue] some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.’ And [Jesus] said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’”

Jesus’ words of admonition remind me of Psalm 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’"

Jesus was saying that the two disciples were foolish for not believing that God is God. He chastises them for failing to believe that Jesus Himself could do what He'd said He would, die and rise for the sake of sinners like them like me and you.

The disciples were stuck in the same kind of thinking you hear from modern-day atheists and agnostics who say, “People don’t rise from the dead. Therefore, Jesus couldn’t have risen from the dead.”

These folks are half right: According the ordinary laws of this world, dead people don’t rise, just as, according to the ordinary working of the law of gravity, an apple that falls from a tree will land on the ground below.

But what if, as I walk by that apple tree and see the apple start to fall and, instead of letting it hit the ground, I catch it?* The law of gravity will not have been rescinded; but I will have intervened to change the usual outcome.

Like every other human being, Jesus died.

But then, God the Father did something: He intervened in the normal outworking of this fallen universe’s laws. He changed the outcome and raised Jesus, His Son, to a new and eternal life.

And by His death and resurrection, Jesus both paid the debt we owe to God and neighbor for our sins and then opened up a perfect eternity with God to all who trust in Him.

The God we meet through Jesus can intervene in our lives to make us new.

It’s foolish to think that the One Who made everything in the first place can’t make it new when it gets messed up.

That’s effectively what Jesus tells these two disciples walking to Emmaus.

Jesus now teaches them how the Old Testament had pointed to His death and resurrection. Jesus no doubt mentioned chapters and verses of prophecy.

But more importantly, He must have pointed to the character of the Creator God,

• Who created out of love, 
• Who was loathe to give up on the human race, 
• Whose passion for us all would inevitably lead Him to stop at nothing--not even death on a cross--to destroy the power of sin and death over our lives. 
• The God with this character and these traits would, of course, enter our stories to write new, everlasting endings for all who believe in Jesus.

The disciples are now stirred by Jesus speaking the Word of God and, as they come to their house, beg Jesus to stay. Then, we read this: “So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.”

I love this part of the Emmaus narrative! Notice two things.

First, this: Luke tells us that when Jesus broke the bread, “their eyes were opened.”

Does that sound familiar? It should. Think back to Genesis 3:7. Adam and Eve have just violated God’s command that they not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Until this point, the two had been blind to sin, knowing only good. But, as soon as they eat of the fruit, Genesis says, “...the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked…”

Suddenly, the two now saw how their bodies and their lives could be misused. And they were ashamed.

Now, come back to Emmaus. The two disciples--who many scholars today believe are husband and wife--see Jesus break the bread and they see, not their own capacity for evil, but God’s infinite capacity to forgive, restore, renew, and remake those who turn from sin and trust in Jesus.

Jesus reverses the curse of Eden.

In Him, this couple sees not their own sin, but Christ’s righteousness. That’s what Christ wants all of us to see.

Our sin left uncovered by Christ’s righteousness will damn us. But Christ’s righteousness can cover even the darkest of sins and most awful of hurts in God’s grace, love, and life!

Secondly, notice how Jesus reveals Himself to this couple and makes it possible for them to believe. He does this in two ways:

• First, He shares God’s Word about Himself. 
• Second, He shares bread at the table with them. 

These are still the ways Jesus reveals Himself to us today. We call them Word and Sacrament: The Word of the Bible which testifies about the loving God we meet in Jesus. And the sacraments, in which Jesus uses common elements like bread, wine, and water to meet us, claim us, shower us with grace, make us new, forgive us, and assure us that He is with us always, now and in eternity.

Jesus is saying to those two disciples and to you and me, that every time we hear His Word and receive the Sacraments, as we are doing together again this morning, He is with us, making us new, replacing our doubts with faith, replacing our sin with His forgiveness.

We can come to Him whatever the current state of our lives--grieving, sad, joyous, contented, depressed, excited, whatever--and He will show Himself to us again. He will open our eyes and remind us once again that He saves by grace and eternally lives with all who surrender to Him and His love.

After their encounter with Jesus in Word and bread, the two disciples run back to Jerusalem. Suddenly, they don’t care if the sun has gone down and they can’t see the ground beneath them as they run to tell the others that they’ve seen Jesus. Their hearts are burning within them and they simply have to add their testimony to that of the others who have encountered Jesus. Their day began in grief and has ended in joy! They have to tell the world about their risen Lord.

Let me ask you: After our encounters with the risen Jesus in the Bible, in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, can we do any less?

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during worship this past Sunday.]

*This illustration comes from The Case for Faith.

You can't claim to be a Christian if you don't believe in the Resurrection

"If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." (1 Corinthians 15:19)

This past Easter, Jason Micheli, a self-proclaimed "tamed cynic," cited these words from the New Testament to say that, if the Gospel proclamation of Jesus' resurrection isn't true, the teachings of Jesus are meaningless.

Especially when it comes to Jesus’ teachings, I said, we’re off the hook if Jesus has not been vindicated by God through resurrection.

Micheli got pushback from people in his congregation. As he tells it, he was told, "But you don't have to believe in the Resurrection to be a Christian. You can be a Christian by following Jesus' teachings." (This is something people have always said, but today even more.)

Micheli's response to the pushback:

Yeah, well, not really.

Never mind the irritating fact that if Jesus was not raised from the dead then there’s nothing transformative and death-defeating about his teaching. It just got him killed. Death had the last word (and still does).

If God did not raise Jesus from the dead, then God did not vindicate Jesus’ life, his way of life.

His teachings.

So then there’s nothing special about them, they lead only to crosses.

He has a point.

If Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, then all He taught about the new life, the power of surrender to God, and His being "I AM," Yahweh, God come to earth is nonsense.

The resurrection demonstrates that everything Jesus taught--about God, about love, about sin and repentance, about love and redemption--is true.

Jesus without a resurrection reduces Jesus to the status of a delusional crank and His teachings, inextricably linked to His death and resurrection, utterly false, unworthy of anyone's attention or allegiance.

People who claim to follow Jesus, based on the testimony of the Gospel writers in the New Testament, but reject the truth of their testimony about the Jesus' resurrection are guilty of a self-indulgence, the only purpose of which is to justify themselves on the bases of their own virtue. They try to square the circle: They'll take Jesus, but not the claim over their lives by a Savior Who tells us that, apart from the grace He imparts, we have no virtue, only death and separation from God. A Jesus Who does not rise leaves us as dead in this world as in the next: dead in our vanity, in the futility of our living, and in our death-dealing sins.

As Micheli puts it:

To dismiss the Resurrection claim, which the evangelists believed whether or not you do, is to call them liars.

And if you think the evangelists liars about the climactic turn in their testimony, why in the world would you trust their prior testimony about the words and deeds of Jesus?

The disciples, after all, didn’t simply convert from one religion to another; they lived- suddenly- as if they inhabited a totally new world.

It all comes down, Micheli says, to trust. If we're willing to trust in the validity of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, then we must also trust the thing on which all four of the gospel writers agree, that after being crucified, Jesus rose from the dead.

It's only when we trust in Jesus' resurrection that we can say that we follow Jesus.

Read Micheli's entire wonderful post.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Easter: Did He Rise? What Does It Matter If He Did?

[This was prepared for delivery during the worship celebrations of Living Water Lutheran Church, Springboro, Ohio, this past Sunday, April 20, Easter Sunday.]

Matthew 28:1-10
On this Easter Sunday morning, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, I want to consider two simple questions:

• Did Jesus really rise from the dead on the first Easter? 
• And what difference does it make to us if He did?

We live in a skeptical age. The so-called “New Atheists,” people who not only adamantly reject the existence of God, but also reject all truth claims made by the Bible, are given great prominence these days.

Even within the Church, there are theologians who claim that Jesus was not physically raised from the dead, that what the first disciples called “the resurrection” was only their subjective experience of the dead Savior’s presence in their memories. Or, they say that the early disciples experienced a mass hallucination even though psychology tells us that such a phenomenon is impossible.

And truth be known, even the most pious and convinced of believers have their moments of doubt.

But let’s be clear: If Jesus didn’t actually physically rise from the dead, we may as well pack up, go home, and eat our Easter dinners right now.

And if we're part of the church just to feel good or to help us through this life, we've got it all wrong.

In the first century, the apostle Paul wrote this to church members in the Greek city of Corinth: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”

Through the centuries and still today, some read or hear the words of Paul or those of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection and dismiss it all.

A then-fifth grader in my former congregation told me once that a classmate of his, no doubt echoing words he’d heard at home, didn’t believe in God or in Jesus. The kid said that Christianity was all a big conspiracy.

So, what do we say to such assertions? Is Easter and the faith that is built on it all a big conspiracy? Or is it the truth?

Let’s consider the evidence. Please look at our Gospel lesson for today, Matthew 28:1-10. (You’ll find it on page 698 in the sanctuary Bibles.)

Anyone who takes the time to lay out the four Gospels’ different accounts of the first Easter side by side will see differences: different women are named among those who went to the tomb; Matthew says that the women simply went to see the tomb, while other gospels say they went to anoint Jesus’ body; and there are other differences. But these differences shouldn’t bother us. They should, in fact, help convince us that the report of Jesus’ resurrection was no conspiracy, but the truth. As one New Testament scholar has said, “a calculated deception should have [caused the conspirators to agree on the details of the resurrection story]. Instead, there seem to have been competitors: 'I saw him first!' 'No! I did.'” That makes their common story that Jesus rose from the dead more likely to be true!

Now look at Matthew 28, verse 1, please. It says: “After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.”

The Jewish sabbath, of course, runs from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. As our lesson begins, the sun is rising.

The women went to the tomb with no expectations of finding any good news. They had watched Jesus die. Like billions of people who have lost good friends or loved ones, they went to the cemetery only to pay their respects, to grieve and, maybe, to remember together. Jesus’ promise that He would rise again, if they thought of it at all, would have seemed like a fairy tale memory to them.

The fact that the women who went to the tomb didn’t expect to see evidence of Jesus’ resurrection ought to make us give credibility to their later saying that Jesus, once dead, was alive again.

Now look at verses 2 through 7. It says:

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."

Notice to whom this news—the greatest news in the history of the world—is being given: women. In patriarchal, male-dominated first century Judea, the testimony of women wasn’t considered valid. A woman couldn't testify in court, because women were deemed by that society to be unreliable.

If the first Christians had made up the story of Jesus’ resurrection—if Easter was one big conspiracy, they certainly would have been shrewd enough to say that men were the first to meet the angel at the empty tomb and not women whose word would be automatically dismissed by that society.

It was poor marketing in the first century world for Christians have to admit that, in fact, women were the first to see Jesus risen from the dead. This too, is a powerful proof that there was no Easter conspiracy.

Please see what happens next in Matthew 28:8-10:

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.  Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

None of Jesus’ first followers ever claimed to have seen the precise moment when the corpse of Jesus came back to life. Instead, they all said that they were shown an empty tomb and like us, were asked to dare to trust that the Savior Who had never once lied to them was good for a promise He had made, that He would rise again.

It was only after the women at the empty tomb chose to be open to believing and chose to act on the angel’s message that they saw the risen Jesus.

When it comes to faith in God, you and I cannot fold our arms and demand that God prove Himself to us.

Nor will God ever force us to trust in Him.

We must be willing to believe. It’s then and only then that we will begin to believe. It’s only then that God’s Holy Spirit can build faith within us.

In faith, seeing is not believing; believing is seeing!

So, did it really happen? Did Jesus really rise from the dead on the first Easter Sunday? The evidence, I think, indicates that He did.

But, even if we find the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection convincing, the resurrection will still be nothing more than a bit of trivia or a blip on our calendars unless we, like the women met by the angel at the empty tomb, dare to believe—to trust our whole lives to Christ—and dare to act on that belief.

And listen: As a former atheist myself, I can tell you that God will give you faith in the risen Jesus if only, like the women at the empty tomb, you are willing to believe.

In his book, The Power of a Whisper, Pastor Bill Hybels tells of being with a group of pastors and asking them how they had come to faith in the risen Jesus. One pastor said that he grew up in an non-churchgoing home, his parents deeply hostile to Christ and the Church.

Next door was a couple who believed in Jesus, were active in a local congregation, and sensed that God wanted them to invite their neighbors to church.

So, one day, they came to that young boy’s home and invited his family to worship with them. The parents were venomous in their response to the invitation, “We want nothing to do with your God…[or] your church…[or] you.”

But their son said, “Hey, Dad. I’ll go.” The parents thought to themselves, “Free babysitting!” So, they let junior go to church.

All through that boy’s junior high years, the neighbors took him to church Sunday in, Sunday out. While in high school, he surrendered his life to Christ.

Later, he became a pastor and started a church on the East Coast, which today welcomes thousands of worshipers each week, changing lives and bringing the peace of the risen Jesus Christ in facing and living in this world this world and the hope of eternity with God beyond the grave through the risen Jesus.

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead! It really happened and He can change the lives and eternities of all who repent, that is, turn from sin, and believe in Him.

If you’ve come here this morning, not really certain about what you thought of Jesus and His resurrection, and you find yourself wanting Him in your life, I promise you that He wants the same thing. He wants life with you.

If you’re willing to let Him in, He can be right there with you in all the times of your life--the good and joyous, the hard and sad, and every place in between. He can give your life meaning and purpose.

And, when, like Jesus Himself, you cross the threshold of death, He will be holding you and He will raise you to life again to be with God for eternity. If you want Jesus today, just tell Him.

If you’d like a little help in either getting started in a life with Jesus or in renewing that life, you’ll see people with blue lapel badges around today. They will be happy to pray with you, share a bit with you. They’ll also ask you if you’d like a call from me this week. If you’re not a Living Water member or you don’t live in this area, please know that I won’t be phoning you to try to get you to join this church, though people are certainly welcome to take instruction and check us out. Instead, we simply want you to experience the power and blessings of the risen Jesus every day of your life, the way we do day in and day out. We want you to have eternal life with God. It happens through Jesus, the One Who rose on the first Easter.

To paraphrase the angel at the tomb, “This my message for you,” the message of new life through the risen One, Jesus. It’s God’s message for you and all the world. It can change a life for eternity. Let it change yours. Amen!

Bessie: Joy from Jesus!

[This was shared during the funeral of Bessie, a member of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, the congregation I serve as pastor.]

Job 19:23-27a
1 Corinthians 15:1-7
Matthew 26:26-29
Luke 12:35-40

For some of us, myself included, there’s a disappointment that, though she had a full life, Bessie didn’t make it to her one-hundredth birthday. But Bessie, I can assure you, does not share in that disappointment. She took a dim view of having a fuss made over her if she turned 100 and besides, she told me, “One-hundred seems so old.”

But there are other reasons that Bessie wouldn’t share our disappointment.

One is that she may have been the most upbeat, positive, joyful person I ever met in my life! She had pain and griefs in her life, of course. And she acknowledged them. But she wasn’t defined by them. She wasn’t laid low by them.

I told her about a year ago, “You know, Bessie, when your circumstances dictated that you move out of your home and into the Carlin House, I never heard you complain.” “Well,” she said, “there were two ways I could have reacted. I could have been unhappy or I could have been happy. I chose to be happy.”

I chose to be happy. Now, it’s true that some people are able, by nature, to more easily make the decision to be happy and make it stick. And Bessie understood this. When she consider people who suffered from depression, she clearly understood that depression is a disease that sometimes happens to people. “It must be awful,” she told me, with empathy. And I saw her display her empathy toward people who were depressed. She was a comforting presence to them.

But the big reason, I believe, that Bessie was able to choose to be happy was that she had a rock solid faith in Jesus Christ. And hers wasn’t the superficial faith of someone who had a passing acquaintance with the teachings of the Church. She had a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That was so clear every time I visited with her over the past nearly six years. I took Holy Communion when I visited Bessie, whether at her home on Culver, or later at Carlin. Every time she received the Sacrament, she expressed gratitude that Christ had come to her and offered her forgiveness and His presence and His promise of eternity once more. “Oh, thank you,” she would say, sometimes with tears, “It’s such a gift!”

And the last time I was able to take Communion to her, Bessie told me, “You know, I don’t think some people realize what a blessing this is!” She knew that in the Sacrament, the God of all creation was coming to her and she was grateful!

No one needs to be reminded, but it should also be pointed out that Bessie had a lot of oomph! (Someone said earlier that she had a lot of spunk!) She had energy and joy to the end of her days.

I told her once, “I used to visit you thinking that I was going to inspire you. But I always leave here inspired by you.” She looked at me quizzically. She couldn’t understand what a special person she really was.

And maybe that was part of what made Bessie so special. She lived. She loved God. She loved others. She didn’t try to impress anybody. She didn’t know how impressive it was that someone legally blind would take the time and the effort to send birthday greetings, notes of encouragement, or thanks to people. (Every time I saw one of those notes, I was struck by the effort it required to do that!)

Bessie lived in the freedom of being a child of God, a living, loving member of the Body of Christ, the Church. That was inspiring!

Bessie remained special to the end. Deprived of much of her sight, she was also deprived of pursuing her lifelong passion for reading. Even big print books wouldn’t have been big enough for her to read. Undeterred, she ordered cassettes and later, CDs, of books and was always ready to recount the plot of the latest book she’d “read” in this new way.

She was part of the garden club at Carlin. (She told me once, “Some people just stand around at garden club, but I like to get my hands dirty.”)

Though she couldn’t see, she still helped out with the crossword puzzles the residents did together at Carlin.

She was always in Bible study and the weekly devotional worship there.

She went out on shopping forays whenever she could.

She made the best of challenging situations, like when Carlin was without power and she and the other residents had to be moved to the high school, where they slept on cots. Interviewed by the newspaper about it, Bessie, in typical fashion, talked about what a good job the Red Cross was doing.

She was always ready to talk about the Cincinnati Reds!

And, she seemed to pray for everyone!

Sometimes, she could give me the devil. When I forgot appointments with her or my commitment to do worship at Carlin, she let me know about it. I would get a phone call and a little lecture the next time I saw her. But she was quick to forgive and could tease me about the incidents later. And she was always after me to take better care of myself.

As was true of her attitude, Bessie’s oomph too came, I am convinced, not just from her nature or her upbringing, but from her faith in Christ. This is a person who truly lived in daily repentance and renewal. She used a scanner connected to her TV set to read the daily Bible readings and devotions and she regularly prayed for everyone on our congregation’s prayer list.

Bessie had no fear of death nor of dying. She knew that the crucified and risen Savior Jesus in Whom she believed had destroyed the power of sin, death, and futility over the lives of those who turn from sin and follow Him.

Bessie didn’t see Jesus as a rabbit’s foot who would make the bad things of this life go away. She agreed heartily with the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:19: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

In the time I knew Bessie, her life demonstrated the truth that while Jesus doesn’t insulate us from life’s difficulties or from death, knowing that we have eternity with God, we are set free to live this life with joy, hope, a love for others, and a positive attitude. These attributes were all ones that Bessie lived out.

Especially, I think, joy. Joy is the word that springs immediately to my mind when I think of Bessie.

Now, I know for a certainty that there was nothing that Bessie more passionately desired nor more fervently prayed for than this: That all her friends and family would entrust their lives to Jesus Christ. She often spoke with me about this. She often asked me to join in praying with her about it. She believed in Jesus’ words in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believed in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life.”

The Bible tells us that the capacity for faith in an unseen God Who has conquered sin and death through His crucifixion and resurrection--the ability to believe in such overwhelmingly good news in a bad news world--is the proof of this unseen, loving, compassionate, powerful God.*

Let Bessie’s faith in Christ be exhibit one for any who may doubt this God in Whom she believed.

Let her life of joy, hope, love for others, and incredible positive attitude in the face of life’s challenges be exhibit two.

And may we all learn to believe in and follow Christ as Bessie did and so, live this life to the fullest, and one day, enjoy a reunion with our Lord and with all the saints who have believed in Him, including Bessie, that will last for eternity. Amen

*Hebrews 11:1 says: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Only a Living Christ is Worth Following

I love this article by retired Lutheran missionary Donald L. Raun here.

The implications for the North American context are clear. Today we have Lutheran and mainline pastors and theologians who deny truths like Jesus' virgin birth and His resurrection.

Without these truths and the new life that come from trusting in the living Christ they proclaim, we Christians are "of all people, most to be pitied" and, when your beliefs and teachings are no different from what the rest of the rest of the world subscribes to, there is simply no reason for a person to become a Christian.

Non-Christian Christianity is not only oxymoronic, it denies those who fall under its influence of the unique hope that comes from the living Jesus Christ. Only a living Christ is worth following!

When Tragedy Hits the Innocent: Part 2 (Rerun)

[Here, I present, with some modification, the second part of a series I first wrote back in November, 2004. I hope that you find it helpful.]

In my first post on this topic, I said that it's natural for us to wonder why we suffer because somewhere in the recesses of our collective DNA, there is this notion that our lives are meant to be good and eternal.

But even if it's natural for us to do so, is it right for us to ask, "Why?"?

Years ago, a friend of mine attended the funeral for a young man who had been killed in an accident. My friend, a committed Christian, was appalled by what he saw among the parents and siblings of the dead young man. They were going around praising God for the death, saying that their loved one was now in heaven, and asking mourners wasn't it all just too wonderful for words? "They were in complete denial, Mark," my friend told me. I think that he was right.

It is true, of course, that followers of Jesus Christ live and die with hope. I love what Paul says in the New Testament book of First Corinthians:

"...Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ..." [First Corinthians 15:20-22]

and

"If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." [First Corinthians 15:19]

When I preside over funerals, I often tell the families and friends of the people who have died: "If what we say about Jesus conquering death for all who believe in Him isn't true today, it simply isn't true at all."

Jesus isn't just our Lord when life is going well and we're living large. He's also our Lord when this world hands us its worst. That's because we believe that on an Easter Sunday two-thousand years ago, Jesus rose from the dead, certifying His power to deliver on all His promises, even beyond our deaths and our funerals.

But no matter what our hope and no matter how sure we are that "all who call on the Lord shall be saved" (Acts 2:21; Psalm 55:16; and other places), we still experience loss when loved ones die, or when we lose our health, a job, or a marriage, or when we experience any tragedy. It's normal even for Christians to experience grief.

The New Testament tells us to "give thanks in all circumstances," not for all circumstances. In other words, our circumstances may be lousy or painful, but we can be thankful that even in those times, the God we know through Jesus Christ is with us.

Although my friend attended the funeral I mentioned many years ago, I still wonder why that family reacted as they did to their loss. Maybe they were taught that any other reaction would reflect faithlessness, a lack of trust in God. Maybe they thought that an angry God would punish them in some way.

If they entertained such thoughts, they obviously hadn't spent much time reading the Bible. Back when I was moving from atheism to faith in God, I spent some time exploring the Bible as I never had before. One thing that kept striking me me then was how honest the Bible is. No facts are sugar-coated. Great heroes of faith---from David to Moses and Peter and Paul---are seen warts and all.

And when people of faith mentioned in the Bible encounter mysteries about God and about life with God, they honestly own up to being confounded and confused. In the Old Testament's book of worship songs, the Psalms, for example, there are whole genres of songs called laments: community laments and individual laments. In them, believers in God express sadness and bafflement at their suffering. They complain about the seeming inactivity or insensitivity of God. In Psalm 13, for example, the psalmist talks to God:

How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long? [Psalm 13:1-2]

If any believer was worthy of being zapped on the spot, at least according to religious thinking, it was the writer of those words, traditionally held to be David, a person the Bible describes as a "man after God's own heart." But God didn't zap David.

A man named Job didn't get zapped either. His story is told in a lengthy and eloquent book of the Bible's Old Testament. Job was such a good man that God bragged about him. But in rapid order, Job was subjected to a series of personal tragedies. He lost his vast property and land holdings, all his children were killed, and he became afflicted with a disease. At first, Job seemed to handle things well, insisting that he would keep worshiping and serving God. But, understandably, Job broke. He never stopped believing in God. But, despite the saying, "the patience of Job," Job exhibited a lot of impatience...with his circumstances, with other people, even with God. And neither the Bible or God reproach Job for that!

Three friends came to visit him and for a time, simply allowed Job to "vent," sharing his feelings of sadness and grief and mystification that a good God would allow all this to happen to him. It was then that Job's friends made a huge mistake. They tried to explain what had befallen Job. In a nutshell, they were sure that Job was guilty of some secret sin and that God was punishing him. While Job wouldn't have claimed perfection for himself, he was sure that the friends' explanations were off-base. He tells them, "If you would only keep silent, that would be your wisdom!" (Job 13:5) (I laugh every time I read those words, remembering with embarrassment and regret all the stupid explanations I've tried to offer for the bad things that have happened in my own and in others' lives.)

Job then complains bitterly to God and about God. Given their "theology," Job's friends may have felt vindicated in their "explanations" of Job's plight. They may also have considered moving a few feet away from Job just in case a stray lightning bolt from heaven hit them.

In the end of the book of Job though, God responds to all that Job and his friends have said. But God offers no explanations. First, God upbraids the friends for pretending to know what they couldn't possibly know, for judging their friend Job as worthy of all the suffering he was enduring. He even tells them that they were wrong and that Job, who they'd accused of being impious and unbelieving for expressing anger with God, was right!

Then, in a long discouse, God reminds Job of a few simple facts: God is God, Job isn't, and no matter what, God would be with Job.

In a way, that may not seem like an especially satisfying resolution. But, remember Paul's words, "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." [First Corinthians 15:19] This life, consequential as it may be for eternity is just a blip on our journeys. Paul, a man who certainly had a lot of suffering in his life, said in another place:

For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. [Second Corinthians 4:17-18]

Ultimately, every person I have ever observed to have come to a place of peace in dealing with life's tragedies has done so because they've adopted an eternal perspective. They know that this life isn't all there is to life and choose to trust God in spite of the mysteries and unanswered questions. And in the midst of those mysteries, they discover comfort in knowing that the God of all creation is with them always.

Summing up this post:

1. It's normal for us to grieve.

2. It's normal for us to ask God why we suffer.

3. God won't zap us for wondering why we suffer.

4. Even when we grieve, we have an eternal hope when we trust Jesus Christ as our God and Savior.

5. God is God.

6. We're not God.

7. God is with us.

More on point 7 in my next post. [Use the Comments post below to dialog, give feedback, and tell me if this is helpful at all.]