Impossible Righteousness...Forgiving Christ

[This message was shared during worship this past Sunday with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 5:21-37
I was baptized as an infant. 

As I was growing up, I loved going to church and I loved Jesus. 

In my pre-school and elementary school years, I broke all the Sunday School attendance records.

I was president of my third-grade Sunday School class. 

I starred in all the church plays. (I remember vividly playing the apostle Paul imprisoned with Silas, both of us shackled with construction paper chains!) 

My dad told Ann this past Thursday, “After we came home from church on Sundays, we had church again because Mark would re-preach the pastor’s sermon almost word for word.” 

My great-grandmother called me her “little preacher.” 

According to my pastor, I was the star pupil in Catechism class. When I got a 92 on an exam, he handed it back to me and said, “You could do better, Mark.” 

Here’s the deal: I believed in Jesus. 

To the extent that I was able to understand, when I heard His Word calling me to turn away from sins, I did that, asking for God’s forgiveness. 

And when I heard His Word, with its power to save and create faith, I believed.

But, as you know, when I was about fourteen, I stopped believing in Jesus. I was an atheist...for more than ten years. 

No trauma caused this change. I was just an adolescent who thought that science had somehow disproven God’s existence, as though knowing the answers to the what, when, and how of the universe somehow also answered the questions of its why and who. 

On top of that, my dad was working eighty hours a week, we had transferred to a different church to which none of us felt connected, and, I suppose, getting five kids ready for church was a mountain my folks found too difficult to climb. 

The upshot of it all was that I lost my faith. 

I no longer had a relationship with Jesus. 

I was dead, lost, just like the prodigal son, who knew about and had experienced the love of his father, but walked away from that relationship until he came to his senses and returned. He had been lost but was found. He was dead but was alive again. 

The amazing thing is that through the preaching and teaching of the Lutheran congregation that was Ann’s home church in Columbus, I heard the Law that convicted me of my sin and I heard the Gospel that brought me once more to faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. I was lost but was found. I was dead but was made alive.

Over the past two Sundays, as we’ve listened to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we’ve heard Him make a series of gracious declarative statements about us. He has conferred status on us that we do not deserve, but which He gives by grace through the faith in Him that His Word creates within us. 

“Blessed are you…” Jesus has told us. 

“You are the salt of the earth,” He has said. “You are the light in the world.” 

Elsewhere in the New Testament, we hear echoes of Jesus’ gracious words for Christian disciples: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession...Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10) 

And what do we do to get the incredible gift of life with God that u starts now and culminates in perfection in eternity? Nothing. 

As Ephesians 2:8 reminds us: “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

But the Bible reminds us that, just like the Prodigal Son and just like Mark Daniels, it’s possible for Christians to walk away from God and the salvation He gives through Jesus. The apostle Paul tells the young pastor Timothy, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” (1 Timothy 4:1) 

There is evidence of the devil’s work in churches all around the world today--in those that say that God saves everyone no matter how contemptuous they may be of Christ or God’s Word as well as in those that say God only saves those who follow their rigid rules. 

Here’s the deal: When God saves us in Christ, we are saved. But God doesn’t hold believers in shackles. 

If we refuse to hear His Word calling us to repentance and faith, we erect a wall between God and ourselves. 

This is why Jesus warns, “...every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit [that is, refusing to let the Holy Spirit convict us of sin or convince of us Christ’s power to save us] will not be forgiven…” (Matthew 12:31). 

God gives life. 

He declares you His own through faith in Jesus. 

But He will not stop you if you choose to walk away from life with Him.

All of this, I believe, lay in the background of Jesus’ words in today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 5:21-37. 

If almost all of Jesus’ words up to this point in the Sermon on the Mount have been Gospel--pure, undeserved grace, His words today are Law, showing us the depths of our sin and our need of His grace. 

At the end of last Sunday’s lesson, Jesus said, “...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20) And, we said that we have that righteousness through Jesus, Who covers those who repent and believe in Him with His righteousness. 

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus shows us how high a standard for righteousness God has for human beings. 

He says that not only are we not to murder but that even anger against fellow Christians can be sinful. 

He says that to look at someone lustfully is a violation of the sixth commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” 

He says that divorce apart from a spouse’s disloyalty is a sin. 

And He says that our truthfulness should be such that we needn’t resort to oaths. 

Quick poll, no need to raise hands, two questions: How many feel like you’ve been innocent of all these sins as God interprets them? 

And if you feel utterly innocent, the second question is this: How long have you been in living in denial about yourself? 

Truly, no human being measures up to the standards for purity of life and thought that we find in these words about the righteousness we need for entering the kingdom of heaven. 

This is what Scripture teaches. “There is no one righteous, not even one,” we’re told in Romans 3 and elsewhere in Scripture.

When I first began digging into God’s Word with a group at that Lutheran congregation in Columbus, I began to see the depths of my sin and rebellion against God. I wondered if I wasn’t doomed to separation from God, now and always. 

But I ran into passages of Scripture like this (listen carefully, please): 

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:8-11)

If we take our cues from the world, accepting its standards, being pacified by its entertainments and rewards, relying on ourselves, following our own deceitful hearts, we will drift from God. 

But if we remain attentive to God’s Word, we will hear God’s call to repent--to turn from sin--and we’ll be saved by His gospel. Christ will transform us. He will make us new each day. 

This is the work God does in us when we read, study, and listen to His Word together and on our own, when we worship and receive the sacraments: God saves us from our sin and replaces it with the righteousness of Jesus. 

That’s grace! 

And for that, this old sinner says, “Thank You, God!” Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

When Bad Things Happen

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during worship on Sunday, March 24, 2019.]

Luke 13:1-9

Why do bad things happen to people? 

We ask this question, in many different ways. The main reason we ask it, it seems, is because we want the world to make sense. 

Often though, it just doesn’t. 

Marriages end. 

Spouses and children die. 

Tragedies occur. 

And we wonder why.

This question seems to be on the minds of people who approach Jesus in today’s gospel lesson, Luke 13:1-9. Let’s look at it together. 

Verse 1: “Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.”  

Apparently, pious, believing people from Galilee, the region where Jesus grew up, had been offering sacrifices to God at the temple when Pilate set Roman soldiers on them, murdering them and, showing added disrespect to the Jews, polluting their sacrifices by mingling the blood of the worshipers with them. 

We have no record outside of the New Testament of this particular incident. But we do have independent records of Pilate doing equally awful things. Pilate was a well-documented thug.

The unspoken question of Jesus’ interlocutors here, of course, is, “Why?” 

Now, it’s possible as you read their words to Jesus to think that they wondered how an omnipotent and loving God could allow worshipers to be killed in the Lord’s house. But, it’s apparent from Jesus’ reply to them that He reads their question differently. He sees that they already had their own explanation for what happened to the murdered Galileans and were there just to get Jesus to agree with them. 

He doesn’t

Verse 2: “Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’”

The unspoken assumption of the people who approach Jesus is that, somehow, the Galileans murdered in the temple deserved to die. And mentioning what must have been another bit of recent news, Jesus says that eighteen people who had been killed by the collapse of a tower built into Jerusalem’s city walls didn't deserve their tragic deaths either.

As we read this passage, we may be horrified by the suggestion that the victims of these tragedies and the family members who mourned for them deserved these horrors. 

But don’t we hear people say similar things in the face of tragedy that befalls people today? 

Don't we, sometimes, looking for a rational explanation of irrational events, say such things ourselves?

When Alabama was hit with flooding recently, some claimed that it was God’s punishment for voting for Trump in 2016.

Back when much of California was ablaze with fires, some people on Twitter claimed it was  God’s punishment for filthy movies that came from California.

Ideas like these appeal to human ego because they say that if we’re doing the right things in life, nothing bad will touch us and that if bad things like these happen to other people, it must mean that they’re not good people like us, not right with God like us.

But, as disciples of Jesus, we know that we are, every single one of us, and that, at best, Christians can only claim to be sinners saved from sin and death not by how good we are, because we could never be good enough to be counted righteous, but only because of what God has done for us through the crucified and risen Jesus and through the faith in Jesus that has been set in us, not through our effort, but by the Holy Spirit. 

In Jesus, true God and true man, we have a Savior Who endured poverty, pain, and death even though He was sinless and deserved none of the bad that happened to Him. Do we want to say that Jesus deserved the horrors that befell Him? 

I hope not! On the cross, Jesus got what we deserved and what we deserve! 

As God’s Word teaches, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).” God doesn’t give human beings the punishment we all deserve, but eternal punishment comes to those who choose to follow sin rather than Christ.

Bad things happen in this world simply because we live in a fallen, imperfect creation that is haywire with sin and death. 

Jesus says that God the Father “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).” God isn’t out to get anyone. 

And Jesus tells those who follow Him, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (John 16:33).”  God loves us and He makes all baptized believers in Jesus part of His new and eternal creation, but as long as we live in this old creation, every one of us is subject to its difficulty, pain, and death. 

Thugs will order soldiers to kill worshipers. 

Towers will fall on people standing in the wrong place. 

Wildfires will rage in wooded areas. 

Floods will come to coastlands and river valleys. 

There may be things we can (and should) do to prevent some tragedies, but the possibility of tragedy is baked into the cake of a creation groaning under the weight of sin and death.

And so, the first question we need to ask in the face of the tragedies that befall others or could befall us at any moment in our lives isn’t why. It’s what am I going to do about it? What will we do once we come to terms with the reality of our mortality and susceptibility to tragedy? 

Jesus has already told us how we should respond to that question twice in our lesson. He says, “unless you repent, you too will all perish” and, again, “unless you repent, you too will all perish.” 

In other words, don’t make judgments about others that make you feel superior; focus instead on daily seeking the forgiveness and new life that God offers us through Jesus. 

Daily repent: turn each day away from sin and turn each day to Jesus. 

We might take as our model the man in Jesus’ parable who prays, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner (Luke 18:13)!” God will renew us in His charitable, forgiving love, when we offer up prayers like that. 

In Psalm 51 in which David confesses his sins to God, he also confesses his faith in God’s receptivity to the repentant: “...a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise (Psalm 51:17).”

In our gospel lesson, Jesus underscores His call for us to daily repent, to turn to Him and live with God as part of His renewed people, in a parable. Verse 6: ““A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”

Here, Jesus tells the story of a fig tree that deserves to die. A fig tree that doesn’t produce fruit is only taking up space, just as a disciple who knows Jesus, but never repents or seeks to follow Jesus is taking up space. 

So, the owner of the fig tree orders that it be cut down. 

But the caretaker asks that the owner let him spend a year trenching around the fig tree to ensure that it gets plenty of water and putting lots of fertilizer on it, just as God showers us with grace so that we can know Jesus, grow in Jesus, and show Jesus to others. So that we can bear the fruit of a life filled with Jesus. 

God’s intention for us when He claims us in Holy Baptism, feeds us on His Word, gives us Holy Communion, and places us in the fellowship of the Church is clear: As long as we live in this earth, whether a long time or a short time, God means to fill us with and means for us to share with others, the life that only comes to those who trust Jesus Christ! 

Our lives are meant to be displays on which God daily writes the message for all the world to see: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).”

A moment ago, I said that the first question we need to ask in the face of life’s tragedies is not why, but what am I going to do about it? Am I going to turn to Christ and live? 

I think that in the parable, Jesus suggests a second question, the answer to which, when I remember it, sustains me and encourages me with hope in an often hopeless world. It’s this: Why me? Not “why me” as in why is bad stuff happening to me, but “why me” as in why am I still around? Why is God still pouring His grace on me?

When I suffered a heart attack nine years ago, it was the "widow maker": a 100% blockage of the left anterior descending artery that often leads to sudden death in its victims. More than two weeks after the cardiac event, a cardiologist was able to push a stent through the blockage.* Later, during my overnight stay at the hospital, the night duty nurse entered my room. She'd looked at my chart. "You're lucky to be alive," she told me. "God must have plans for you."

I'm convinced that God has plans for you too! That's why you're still drawing breath on this planet.
I can’t explain why tragedies befall some people and not others. I don’t know. 

But I do know this: God keeps us around until further notice because He wants us to let the world know about the new and everlasting life all people can have through faith in Jesus Christ. 

The apostle Peter writes to we Christians in one of his New Testament letters (this translation is from The Message): “...you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference [Christ] made for you (1 Peter 2:9-10, The Message).”

The victims of tragedy in this world don’t need misinformed “Christians” piling on, telling them that their pain is punishment from God. Our call is to share Jesus. Our call is to live for Jesus, Who lived, died, and rose for us and for those who don't yet know Him. 

May God help us to do just that. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

*Why this happened two weeks after the heart attack is another story too long to go into here. But the fact that I survived after losing 40% of my heart function and still having 100% blockage in a critical artery is something which both I and my cardiologist regarded as miraculous. And that's not a term I throw around lightly.

Be Patient!

[Jesus said:] “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:32)

When it got to be this time of year back when I was a kid, the hardest thing in the world was knowing that school was going to end soon, but having to wait and wait and wait for it!

Waiting for good things to happen, having patience, is tough.

But this brief parable told by Jesus is part of a string of parables He tells in Matthew 13, all of them with the same theme: the Kingdom of God comes to the patient.

That’s true not only of those who patiently trust in Christ.

It’s also and even more true of the God Who patiently puts up with a world that wants nothing to do with Him.

For centuries now, the God of all creation Who has patiently put up with human sin and all its manifestations--including selfishness, greed, bigotry, injustice, violence, and arrogance--has planted the seeds of His kingdom in this fallen world.

Jesus Christ died and rose again so that all who believe in Him may not perish but may have eternal life as part of God’s new creation, the kingdom of heaven.

Some days, like the days that saw the Boston bombings, that kingdom can seem pitifully small; churches can seem like nothing more than holy huddles hanging in there in a world where materialism and passing pleasures are the gods of choice.

And there are times when the kingdom doesn’t grow as we pray and hope: Husbands, sons, daughters, friends, neighbors, and grandchildren for whom we’ve prayed and with whom we’ve shared our invitations to get to know Jesus for years still don’t believe.

The society in which we live has become so arrogant, so materialistic, and so far from God that many Christians--conservative, liberal, mainline, evangelical, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox--have, in practical terms, given up on God altogether.

An elderly woman, a lifelong churchgoer, told me not long ago after I had talked about Jesus’ second coming to finally and fully institute His kingdom “I don’t think that will ever happen.”

Early Christians faced a world similar to our own and were disappointed that Christ hadn’t yet returned. How long would they have to wait? When was Jesus going to make His kingdom manifest and powerfully present to the world?

The apostle Peter told them to be patient, to see the seeming delay of the kingdom of heaven as an opportunity. “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some think of slowness” he writes in 2 Peter 3:9 to the first-century Church, “but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

Christ hasn’t fully established His kingdom yet, Peter is saying, in order to give His Church the chance to reach more people with the gospel.

Instead of lamenting the sorry state of the world and of our congregations, we need to stir ourselves to prayer and to witnessing for Christ.

We need to be about the great commission, to make disciples, to teach people all that Jesus has commanded, to baptize people in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, knowing that no matter how puny the kingdom may seem to our faulty, sin-tinged, earthbound eyes, Christ is with us always and He is still doing new things in the lives of those who trust His Word.

Jesus is telling us in this little parable: “Church, Christians, don’t lose patience!”

We who follow Christ have a simple task: To keep speaking the Word about Jesus Christ.

Paul says in Romans 10:17 that “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the Word of Christ.”

So, if by words and actions and invitations, we will keep true to the Word of Christ and keep sharing it with others, faith will spread and the mustard seed Church will grow.

If you’ve become discouraged by the evil and the hard-heartedness you see in the world, the aversion to God, that tenacious human desire that can be traced back to the garden of Eden, to “be like God,” let Jesus’ words encourage you this afternoon.

Jesus is not absent.

He hasn’t left us orphaned: He’s given us His Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit has inspired God’s Holy Word, He’s created the Church, and He uplifts us with the promises of the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting to all who endure in faith.

Still we can sing with confidence of the old hymn: “This is my Father’s world; Oh, let us not forget/That, though the wrong seems oft so strong. God is the ruler yet.”

God is still at work. In your life. In my life. In the life of the world.

And one day the kingdom built on Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life, the only way to life with God the Father, will blossom in full.

Until that day, keep planting the seeds of faith in yourself and in the world: Trust in Christ as your only true and lasting hope, worship God with other Christians, pray in Christ’s Name, read and study God’s Word, receive the Sacraments, let the whole world know about the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

I promise you that in ways none of us can imagine, the seeds of the Word about Christ that God has patiently planted in you and that you, in turn, patiently plant in others, will be infinitely greater and more beautiful than words can describe.

Like the grace He gives freely to those who repent and believe in Him, the kingdom of heaven will be “so high you can’t get over it/So low you can’t get under it/So wide you can’t get round it/Oh, wonderful love!”

What a day it will be when Christ returns and reigns over His new creation!

If it seems far away and leaves you dumbfounded, afraid, or impatient, just remember how patient God is with you and then, in response to His love, be patient with Him and keep planting the word about Christ everywhere! Amen

[This message was shared during a gathering of the local conference of Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (WELCA), held in the facilities of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, yesterday.] 

The Pope Talks About the Power and Ministry of All Believers in Christ

These comments by Pope Francis to mostly lay employees of the Vatican bank are worth considering.

His assertion that the Baptized have the power of the Spirit to share their faith in Christ in words, as well as in actions, apply as much to Lutherans and to other Christians as they do to Roman Catholics.

Martin Luther spoke and wrote of the "priesthood of all believers" (based, in part, on 1 Peter 2:9-10). All baptized believers in Christ have the ministry of making disciples, of building up the faith in Christ of our fellow believers and of telling those who don't yet know or believe in Christ about "the hope that is in us" (1 Peter 3:15-16).

Because the Holy Spirit comes to every believer in Holy Baptism, every believer has the power to fulfill the call God has issued to us.

I continue to be heartened by the ministry of the Roman Catholic pontiff. While we Lutherans have obvious differences with his Church, we can joyfully affirm that Roman Catholics, like all who confess the Name of Jesus, are our sisters and brothers in Christ!

"The Greatest Form of Evangelism?"

In the thirty-plus years in which evangelism--sharing the Good News about Jesus--has been an obsession of mine, both as a layperson and as a pastor, I have seen lots of evangelism programs come and go.

Each one has promised to revolutionize individual congregations and lead to great spiritual and numerical growth in Christ's Church. I've had it up to my gills with church programs!

I'm not alone. Rice Broocks writes convincingly about the greatest form of evangelism.

By the way, preaching or telling others about Jesus is too important to be left up to preachers only and certainly shouldn't be confined to the pulpit. Every Christian needs to get into the act.

Will You Stand Up or Just Watch?

A more literal translation of the original Greek in Luke 23:35, part of yesterday's Gospel lesson, reads like this:

And the people stood beholding. And also the rulers scoffed, saying, "Others he saved; let him save himself, if this man is the Christ, the Chosen One of God."

The verse comes as part of Luke's account of Jesus' crucifixion. It describes two groups: the people (in Greek, the laos, from which we get the English word laity) and the rulers (in Greek, the archontes, or the first ones), which can be translated as leaders. "The rulers" in this passage is not a reference to the civil rulers, the foreign Roman conquerors, but to the religious leaders. They were the Temple leaders of God's chosen people, the Jews.

The "actions" of each group interest me.

The people stand and watch as a man who has committed no crime is subjected to execution at the hands of the Gentile Romans. The people may have been horrified by what they saw, but they did nothing.

I think it's safe to say that they actually relish their lack of religious power or influence. These things enable them to hide behind a feigned ignorance about Jesus. Their ignorance must be fake because even one of the hardened criminals being executed next to Jesus can see that Jesus is the King. He understands that Jesus will somehow live on beyond death, confesses his sins to Jesus, and professing faith in Jesus as the King of kings, asks to be remembered in Jesus' kingdom. The people simply could not have been ignorant about Who Jesus is.

But the people know that if they confess their sins and profess faith in Christ, crosses might await them, too. They'd rather save their necks and forgo being part of Jesus' eternal kingdom than be with Jesus in paradise. Taking a stand is too risky for them, too inconvenient.

The other group in the verse is the leaders. One thing especially interests me about their words. There is an intrinsic confession of faith in Jesus' power: "Others he saved." They acknowledge the reports about Jesus to be true. They knew that Jesus had saved some from death (like Jairus' daughter and his friend, Lazarus), saved others from demon possession, saved some from blindness, saved some from execution, saved others from disease, saved still others from social shunning. In other words, they acknowledged all of the saving deeds that pointed to Jesus as the long anticipated Christ (Messiah or Anointed One or King), but refused to bow down to Him.

The leaders knew Who Jesus was, but instead of welcoming Him or trusting the witness about Him in God's Word--what we Christians know as the Old Testament portion of our Bibles, they wanted Jesus dead. They loved their own power and position more than they loved God. In fact, they had replaced God's Word with their own teaching. When God showed up in the flesh, He threatened them.

In the days of the Reformation, Martin Luther pointed out that the leaders of the sixteenth century Church had arrogated powers to themselves that didn't belong to them. Through an elaborate legalistic system, they stood between the God revealed in Christ and the laity. They tried to keep the people from reading the Bible. They changed the liturgy, usually spoken in a language only elites could understand, from a means of praising and interacting with God, to an object of terror, grim obligation, superstition, and extortion.

Luther, in many ways, sought to tear down the walls between the God revealed in Christ and the people. He pointed to passages like 1 Peter 2:9-10, to say that "ordinary" Christian laypeople had a priesthood. (A priest is a person who advocates for God before people and advocates for people before God.)

This, of course, is a liberating notion. Historians like Rodney Stark and Alvin J. Schmidt have shown that this teaching that all believers are equal in the sight of God, each with their own ministries, played a central role in the development of the Enlightenment, the idea of the individual, the modern democracy, and market capitalism.

But the priesthood of all believers also carries with it responsibility. Christian laypeople who know Jesus as Messiah and King can no longer dodge either His Lordship over their lives or their responsibilities as priests. Peter says that the priesthood of all believers has a purpose; God makes us priests "in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).

In Lutheran circles, this means that while pastors have certain functions--our confessions speak of the pastor's ministry of "Word and Sacrament," it doesn't alter the fact that all Christians are privileged to have their own relationship with Jesus Christ. It doesn't alter the fact that they are called to know the Word of God for themselves. It doesn't alter the fact they're called to grow and mature in their faith and that they have their own ministries.

Today, many of the elites in my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in the name of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call, "cheap grace," are telling us that people don't need Christ for salvation, that repentance is unnecessary, that the Word of God is only one source of authority in the lives of Christians and the Church (rather than the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice), and that if you accept the Bible's teachings that sexual intimacy is to be confined to heterosexual marriage, you're guilty of sin.

The question before laypeople in the ELCA is simple: Will you accept these false teachings and ignore your duties as priests of God, or will you lay claim to your God-given role and trust in Christ alone? Will you seek to reform our denominational body?

Today, in modern North America, no Christian leader can order your crucifixion. So, the only things impeding any ELCA layperson from praying and working to bring our denomination back under the Lordship of Jesus Christ are indifference, laziness, or complicity with false teaching.

ELCA Lutherans: Our denomination is in error. Will you stand up for Jesus or will you just watch?

If you're intent on doing more than watching, why not take the following initial steps?

• Pray that God will bring reform and renewal to the ELCA
• Get involved in a group Bible study in your church
• Go to the Lutheran CORE web site and see for yourself if what you find there doesn't make sense and square with what Lutherans believe about Christian faith (Lutheran CORE is a group committed to reform and renewal in North American Lutheranism, whether one is committed to remaining in the ELCA or to being part of new bodies, such as Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ or The North American Lutheran Church)
• Read The Book of Concord, containing the basic confessional affirmations of Lutheran Christianity
• You might also want to read a book of essays written mostly by Lutheran laypeople and clergy called, By What Authority?: Confronting Churches Who No Longer Believe Their Own Message
• Ask God what He might want you to do as part of your own ministry

[UPDATE: The verification words that popped up when I posted the link to this piece over on Facebook were: "On Lummox." They don't quite have the ring of, "Onward, Christian soldiers," but when spoken to a spectating denomination, might, I guess, have the same basic meaning.]